Hansard Transcript 1986-May-22 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

That in the opinion of this House, recognizing the serious nature of high levels of water along Ontario's shoreline, resulting in severe loss or damage to properties, a provincial flood insurance program should be established to ensure that flood damage insurance is available to property owners in identified flood plains and to encourage more effective flood plain management. The goals of the program would enable property owners in areas susceptible to flooding to purchase flood insurance which might otherwise not be available, and the development of regionally based programs or corrective and preventive measures for reducing flooding and flood damage in hazardous areas as a prerequisite for eligibility in the flood insurance program could result. Such an insurance program is designed to reduce the escalating costs of property damage caused by floods and is generally unavailable from the private sector insurance companies.

The Deputy Speaker: The honourable member has up to 20 minutes for his presentation and he may reserve any portion of it for the windup.

Mr. Haggerty: Moving ballot item 3, that a provincial flood insurance program be established in Ontario, provides me with the opportunity to debate for the second time the issue of high levels of water. In 1973, I introduced a motion in the Legislature concerning high levels of water in the Great Lakes basin which was considered by all members of the Legislature as an urgent public concern. Many shoreline property owners and municipalities were encountering severe damage to valuable property.

Following that debate, the government of the day introduced legislation named the Shoreline Protection Act to provide low interest rates to construct shoreline erosion-protection programs. Given the urgency and crisis of more shoreline property damage along Ontario's 4,720 miles of inland shoreline, many property owners are calling for a reduction in the discharge of water from existing water diversions into Lake Superior and the effect it has on lowering water levels, particularly in the Lake Erie basin. This requires drastic action on behalf of the International Joint Commission, which has the authority to regulate the outflow of water at Lake Superior and Lake Ontario.

Some 12 months ago, I again raised the question in the Legislature with the then Minister of Natural Resources, the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris), concerning the high levels of lake water, particularly in Lake Erie, at a record level of 32 inches above normal. I advised him of the continuing serious problems many property owners were encountering, such as shoreline erosion.

I suggested the minister follow the recommendations in the 1952 report of the select committee on high water levels in the Great Lakes system. One recommendation put forward was that a further study be initiated to deal with the adverse effect of hydro-generation structures when completed on diversion of the St. Lawrence River Robert Saunders generation plant. Second, studies were recommended on the proposed construction of control weirs on the Niagara River by Ontario Hydro and the Power Authority of the State of New York as well as on the effect of deepening the St. Lawrence Seaway system and reviewing the diversion of water from the James Bay watershed north to south into Lake Superior.

I want to commend my colleague the member for Niagara Falls (Mr. Kerrio) and Minister of Natural Resources on his initiative in appointing the shoreline management review committee to investigate the long-term approach to shoreline management and in extending the Great Lakes shoreline assistance program to 1987. This new program includes low-interest loans to private land owners for protective works along the Great Lakes in Ontario. These existing programs are of a temporary nature. Long-term solutions are necessary to reduce any further damage to property.

During the severe storm on Lake Erie of December 2, 1985, high gale winds of hurricane force, which continued for two consecutive days, pounded the north shore of Lake Erie and the eastern basin, causing estimated property damage reaching $25 million. Many homes were destroyed, and municipal roads and drains were damaged.

I covered that storm following the Lake Shore Road from Port Colborne east to Fort Erie and the Niagara River. The wave action reached 12 feet high, ripping into cottages and permanent homes, destroying everything in its path, including the retaining walls along the Niagara River at the Peace Bridge. I found many roads impassable. Three or four days later, while returning from the Legislative Assembly, I reviewed the damage in Wainfleet township too.

Many property owners lost everything, and in some cases, losses were not covered by insurance because of the wording in the contracts regarding flooding risks. It is interesting to note that the December 2 storm did not meet the criteria of the province's disaster program.

Last week I attended a conference in Albany, New York -- the centre for Great Lakes -- with state and provincial legislative caucuses on Great Lakes diversions and lake levels. The conference, dealing with the Great Lakes charter, proved to be a most useful tool in providing information and cataloguing data. For example, data recorded on Lake Erie annual water levels since 1900 to the present day show that where heavy precipitation occurs in any given year, there is a noticeable increase in water levels, particularly following the low levels of Lake Erie in the early 1960s. Surging precipitation and increased water levels created a crisis in 1985-86.

I was also interested in the documentation that in November 1983, the International Joint Commission released its last report, Limited Regulation of Lake Erie. That report thoroughly investigates the feasibility of three different sizes of control structure for limited regulation of water levels. Although the regulation would have a positive effect on erosion problems and recreational interests, it would also result in the following negative effects: increased water levels in Lake Ontario, shipping losses, hydroelectric power production losses, recreational boating losses and potential losses to the wetlands and fisheries. Ultimately, the International Joint Commission concluded that the economic losses of limited regulation of Lake Erie outweighed the benefits.

10:10 a.m.

The fact is that 60 per cent of Ontario's hydroelectric generating capacity comes from the Great Lakes. A reduction in flow of 10,000 cubic feet per second, which would alter the lake levels by six inches, would cost Ontario an estimated $20 million annually in lost hydraulic power. Lowering lake levels by one inch can result in the loss of more than one million tons of cargo capacity per year.

Based on the above facts, high levels of water on the Great Lakes will be present for a number of years, increasing the risk of damage to property owners who could be classified as living in a hazardous area and increasing the costs of flood damage in both human and economic terms.

The resolution before the Legislature this morning follows the principle of the declaration of the National Flood Insurance Act, 1968, in the United States. Its purpose was largely to authorize a flood insurance program initiated by the federal government as well as to guide development away from locations threatened by flood hazards. In 1973, the Flood Disaster Protection Act was declared. It increased the limits of coverage authorized under the national flood insurance program and required participation of the states and local communities in the program.

Until water levels in the Great Lakes basin return to normal, experts and studies initiated by the International Joint Commission show that a crisis remains, a critical element seriously threatening damage to additional shoreline property, loss of homes and cottages. It is cancerous. It can occur at any moment because of a shift in wind direction, increasing velocity and magnifying the problem on a large body of water.

The Ministry of Natural Resources mandate has identified flood plain areas in many communities of Ontario through flood plain mapping. Its engineering studies involving hydrologic and hydraulic analyses of each study area have already produced flood insurance rate mapping. Similar procedures can apply to shoreline property.

One of the major concerns of many property owners is that when the Ministry of Natural Resources, through its agency, the conservation authority, designates flood plain hazard zones, they have problems in obtaining insurance protection on their homes and contents. Obtaining risk insurance in a hazardous zone is almost impossible.

I am sure all members of this Legislature agree with the policy of the Ministry of Natural Resources in flood plain mapping, consulting and advising citizens of the flood plain regulations under the Planning Act. Almost every municipality in Ontario that has been constructed on a waterway, lake or river has flood plain risks.

The introduction of flood insurance in the United States was a solution to the many problems encountered by property owners who had floods year after year. The construction of levees, dikes, breakwalls and shoreline protection to reduce flooding risks in most troubled areas was costly and could not stand up to the forces of mother nature.

The resolution before the House this morning is to encourage private insurance companies to become involved in flood insurance. For example, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency developed the write-your-own program. Under this program, companies agree to sell and service flood insurance under their own names, with government assurance that they will not lose money. At present, participating companies represent 27 per cent of all flood insurance coverage in the United States.

The resolution this morning provides the government with the opportunity to review the effects of the establishment of a provincial flood insurance program. The reasons for such a program would be the need to ensure that flood damage insurance is available to property owners in identified flood plains and to encourage most effective flood plain management.

Accordingly, the goals of the program would be twofold. First, such a provincially supported program would enable property owners in areas susceptible to flooding to purchase flood insurance that otherwise might not be available. Second, such a program could foster more effective flood plain management. The latter suggests a development of regionally based programs of corrective and preventive measures for reducing flooding and flood damage as a prerequisite for eligibility in the flood insurance program.

I moved from the town of Port Colborne to the rural area of Sherkston when I purchased a small farm some 45 years ago. I am giving away my age this morning. One of the problems I encountered in the transition to the country was that I could not obtain risk insurance on farm property. I had difficulties. I could not get any of the larger insurance companies to provide insurance. Location was one of the reasons given to me at the time. I was not within a five-mile radius of a fire hall and I did not have water lines in front of my property. There was every excuse one could find. I shopped around and, lo and behold, I found a farm mutual insurance company and was able to obtain risk insurance on my property. I even had wind insurance at that time. This is another area the government should look at so we could say to the property owners along the lakeshore, "We will provide you with the opportunity to form a mutual insurance agency or corporation." It has worked out very well. It was called Bertie and Willoughby at that time, but now it is called Bertie and Clinton and covers much of the Niagara region. It includes not only farm land and farm property but also urban areas in the Niagara region and has provided a good protective measure for risk insurance.

It is a simple way. It does not cost the government anything in this area except for a charter for persons along the shoreline or for flood plain mapping in Ontario to obtain insurance. This is another method where we could provide assistance. The intent of this resolution is to provide these people, these property owners along the lakeshore, with some measure of insurance in case of the loss of a building.

It is great to say that by putting forward minimal efforts, government can reduce the lake levels on Lake Erie and other lakes. I know this much: I am not convinced by the experts that they are not storing water in Lake Erie for generation plants on the New York state side and for Ontario Hydro on the Canadian side. I know the problem if one opens some of the valves and control gates from Lake Superior down to Lake Ontario and into the St. Lawrence River. It would cause problems in the province of Quebec, because we would be loading water down in that area. Apparently, we are going to have to live with the risk. In Lake Erie in particular, we have shifting winds and shifting water from the western basin to the eastern basin, which causes severe shoreline problems and damage to property.

The government must move in this area. All the indications from the data and reports that have come from experts and through computer models are that we are going to have high levels of water on Lake Erie for the next 10 years because of the extraneous flow that is coming in from the watershed from northern Ontario and the diversions from the James Bay watershed to Lake Superior. It is going to cause us problems.

10:20 a.m.

Another thing I am concerned about is that some immediate steps should be taken to reduce the level of water on Lake Erie. Currently, Ontario Hydro is not using its share of the water from the water rights agreed by the state of New York and Ontario. They are not using their capacity. I understand that Ontario Hydro through the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Ministry of Energy has suggested that another hydro generating plant be constructed on the Canadian side by Ontario Hydro to produce 500 to 600 megawatts. I understand the Power Authority of the State of New York this year will be starting construction on additional generating capacity on the American side. That means they will be taking more water from the Niagara River, well above their share.

Studies in the past have indicated that the average flow of water going over the Niagara Falls is 200,000 cubic feet per second. In the past couple of years it has been as high as 285,000 cubic feet per second, even with the two power generating stations taking their share. There is an ample supply of water that should be diverted through the Welland Canal. We could increase the present flow of 9,700 cubic feet per second. I have a strong feeling that we could make better use of the Welland Canal to help reduce the water level on Lake Erie.

This would provide additional generation capacity at the Niagara Falls plant. It will not take seven or eight years to bring on stream. It could probably be constructed in a year. All that is required are tubes from the escarpment down into the old Welland Canal going through St. Catharines. We might be able to increase the flow there to 12,000 cubic feet per second. That means reducing the water levels on Lake Erie quite a bit.

There are initiatives that could be taken by this government and by the federal government, which has shirked its responsibility in this area. It is an international body of water. On the American side at least, the federal government has stepped in and provided flood insurance, giving some relief and some security to the people living along the lakeshore.

We live in a society full of risk. I suggest my resolution this morning could reduce that level of risk. At least the people would be able to rebuild new homes set back from the lakeshore or away from flood plains.

I thank the members. I am sure they will support the resolution.

The Deputy Speaker: Does the member for Erie wish to reserve the last minute and 21 seconds for a reply?

Mr. Haggerty: Yes.

Mr. Harris: While the member for Erie is sure all members of the House will support this resolution -- and I will support it -- I am disappointed in it. It is one step that may provide assistance to the residents along Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie who are experiencing problems now and will experience them in the future, as the member for Erie has stated. I do not think there is any question about that.

Where I differ with the member is on the question of how long into the future this problem must go on. I also differ with him in thinking that of all the things that could be done, this one he has chosen to bring to the fore is probably the one that will be the most difficult to implement and the one that will cost the most money.

I will talk briefly about the resolution as it stands and then I will go on to some other things that I think should be in the resolution or might be highlighted in place of this resolution.

It is true that flood insurance is not available now in a lot of areas of the province. Those are areas where the residents do not want to purchase insurance because there is no risk of floods. Those people do not want into the insurance pool; the guys on the high ground do not need it. The only people who are interested in buying flood insurance or who want to be insured are those who very likely are going to have to draw on their claims.

As the coalition members will know, and anybody who has gone down to take a look at the situation will tell members, the real reason insurance companies are not into this, particularly in the areas we are talking about along Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair, is the 100 per cent certainty that the damage and flooding are going to be there. If there is a 100 per cent risk that there is going to be a claim, the premium will be 100 per cent plus the administration fee and what not. In effect, a guy is going to be asked to prepay something to an insurance plan before the damage even occurs, with the pretty good certainty that it is going to occur.

If this resolution is suggesting the government should provide the insurance, it should say so. As I read the resolution, it is saying the government should set up an insurance plan or facilitate the setting up of a plan for which individuals would have to pay the premium. That premium will probably be at a rate of at least 100 per cent of what the damage is going to be. If the premium is lower than that, it is because the insurers do not expect flood damage, and the people who do not expect it will not buy insurance so their money will not be in the pool.

The whole thing sounds like an option we are not going to oppose looking at, but unless substantial tax dollars are thrown in, I do not see any home owners along the Lake Erie shoreline being able to afford the insurance. What is disappointing is that significant other reassurances could be provided by the government of Ontario to these residents in the short term.

We are talking about almost an ongoing daily disaster for many of these residents, and a more immediate response and recognition of that is in order. Certainly there is a need for increased funding assistance to municipalities for shoreline protection remedial work; in fact, there is not only a need but also an obligation on the part of this government to go into that field.

The coalition groups there are calling for an increased limit; it is $20,000 now. I believe they are saying that it is unreasonable and should be up to $40,000, that the interest rate of eight per cent is no longer reasonable and should be lower, that damage costs or compensation for land value could be considered through a tax credit process similar to the benefits achieved on the US side of the lake and that the conservation authorities in those areas should be given increased funds.

They are also saying there should be far more recognition of the seriousness of the problem by this government and the Ministry of Natural Resources as well as by the federal government. The government of Ontario and the ministry have to take the lead; that is how things get done with the federal government. I do not see this government taking the lead, however.

10:30 a.m.

Much study has been done. The member for Erie mentioned that he did not believe some of the remedial measures to get water out of Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair would be feasible, and in the next breath he talked about some of the measures that would get more water through the Welland Canal. The reality is that this government, the federal government and all levels of government on the US side have to recognize and accept the facts that the coalition members have put forward.

This is not a natural phenomenon of more rain, that all of a sudden more rain is accumulating there. In fact, there are man-made structures that allow more water into Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie and man-made structures that restrict the flow out, not to get into the whole area of the drainage, parking lots, clearing land, taking away the trees and all the things that municipal, provincial and federal governments have done and assisted with. They are all designed to get water off the land and into this basin faster.

We have to recognize that, were all the trees there, this "natural phenomenon" would not be occurring. Man has interfered. As in any other government, when one designs a system of government, a tax system or the rules by which one is going to operate, sometimes the best one can hope for is that those rules benefit the most people. One sets up a system wherein one hopes 100 per cent of the people can achieve in the system, but one knows that will not happen. If five per cent or 10 per cent cannot achieve in that system, the government has an obligation to provide the support programs for the 10 per cent that cannot achieve, possibly because of the rules of the game that have been set up to benefit the majority.

We have the same situation here. We have shipping interests, we have Hydro interests and we have all these structures that are impeding water going out. We have all the things that have been done to accelerate water going in. We have to accept some responsibility for that.

The member for Erie mentioned the downside effects of getting more water out, not by putting more out than should go but just by correcting the impediments that have been put in there. Plan 25-N at the Niagara Gorge should be looked at. It does not call for more water to go out than would have occurred if all these man-made structures were not there.

We talk about problems in Quebec; the engineering estimates I had were that they were adding half an inch of water. There was half an inch of water at Montreal, where it is now two feet lower than it used to be on the banks. I disagree with the member for Erie that that should be an impediment.

I call on this government now to get into some of those measures, both long-term and short-term. I am disappointed that this resolution addresses only one very narrow aspect that is difficult to implement.

Mr. Swart: I want to speak on this resolution that we have before us today, because I live in the area and I am very conscious of the financial and emotional problems many people have suffered as a result of the shoreline damage in that area.

As well, in my area I have many constituents who own cottages along the lakeshore and have suffered that damage. I have heard many figures given about the amount of damage, from $10 million along the north shore of Lake Erie to a total of $1 billion all the way around. Whatever it is, it is very substantial. Wainfleet estimates it will lose approximately $75,000 in taxes because of the real property losses. We know much of the point at Long Point has been eroded. It is not only the loss to recreation; there are also many rare birds, animals and plants there that will disappear, perhaps from Ontario or even North America, if another storm or two of that nature takes place.

I will be supporting the resolution, but I am supporting it only half-heartedly. I find it a very convoluted resolution. Its purpose is to provide insurance. Then by some sort of back-door method, the member wants to encourage more effective flood plain management. He says that "regionally based programs or corrective and preventive measures for reducing flooding and flood damage in hazardous areas" will be "a requisite for eligibility in the flood insurance program." I do not know what is going to happen to those people who cannot afford to take the remedial measures. They are just going to suffer the same consequences in another flood. It does not resolve the problem appropriately.

When he talks about the public domain providing insurance, it is another indication that the member wants the public sector to bail out the private insurance companies. It is the same all the time; if there is any real risk, the private insurance companies do not want it. "Let the government look after that." They want to insure only the good risks or the small risks.

The real reason I am lukewarm is that this deals with only a very small part of the problem. It does nothing to reimburse all those people who suffered massive losses in that storm, and some of them previously. It does not deal with assistance in building breakwalls or the other measures to prevent their property from being damaged in the future. Most of all, it does not deal with lowering the level of Lake Erie, which is the real preventive measure that should be taken.

In fact, one would almost think this resolution was introduced by a member on the government side to shield his government from dealing with the real and admittedly costly problems and solutions. Why would the member not have proposed, in his resolution, some plan for the north shore of Lake Erie so that subsidies could be provided, as they are under the Drainage Act, for protection all along that shore?

Why did he not propose to do something about lake levels which, as I have already said, are the real problem? The member must know something about those lake levels. They stayed at about the 569- or 570-foot level down in our area for many decades; in fact, from the time they were first recorded in 1912. Right through until about 1970, they stayed at the 569- or 570-foot level, and then they started moving up. They moved up to 571 feet and have not been lower than that since 1969. Then they moved up to 572 feet in 1973-74, and at present they are up to the 573-foot level.

After having been up there for 15 to 17 years, there is a real likelihood they will never go back to the original levels which existed from 1913 to approximately 1970.

The member for Nipissing gave some reasons. There has been the diversion of the Ogoki and Kenogami rivers from James Bay to Lake Superior. It is perhaps not a major factor, but it has added water to the Great Lakes basin. There has been more runoff because of the depletion of our forests and probably more cultivated land than there has been ever before. Even here in southern Ontario, there has been the loss of the wetlands, and this has all been aggravated by the warmer weather we have had recently.

10:40 a.m.

Another factor is that we have control of the Lake Superior level. They can let it out when it gets too flooded. When Lake Superior gets too high, they let it out into Lake Huron. We have had the dredging of the St. Clair River and the Detroit River. At the time it was done, that lowered the level of Lake Huron and Lake St. Clair by about a foot. All this water runs down into Lake Erie, and its outlet has never been changed. If we are going to have the additional input of all of this water and have control on Lake Superior, then control is needed to improve the outlet of Lake Erie down the Niagara River.

I was very surprised to hear the member for Erie defending the International Joint Commission for not taking any action there because the benefits did not warrant the cost. There is a new situation now that did not exist before with these ongoing higher levels, and a new study should be made. We know the 25-N study said the benefits would not warrant the cost, but that is not the situation that exists today.

It is significant that the government of the United States wants to proceed with this new study. It is the government of Canada and the government of this province that are dragging their feet. In this resolution there should be a request to the federal government to proceed with this study or at least with a study to determine whether the benefits would outweigh the costs now.

It is no fault of the people there that this damage is being done and that there is the probability of a great deal more damage being done to their property. These are the actions of somebody else, and perhaps the actions of God. Men have intervened in the flow of the Great Lakes, and they should intervene in the Fort Erie area to deepen the Niagara River so water can get away and we can control it.

The member talked about the loss of hydro generating power. I suggest that when the generating stations were built, the level of Lake Erie was substantially lower than it is now. In fact, the overall generating power could be increased by holding Lake Erie at a steady level rather than having it go up and down as it does at present.

Why did the member for Erie not ask at least for the review and reconsideration of 25-N, the plan for the control works at Fort Erie, and for a new cost-benefit study? Why did he not recommend the other measures that have been asked for by the group? The Chicago diversion can be increased; the Black Rock lock can be opened and increased; even the Welland Canal can handle more water.

This is a weak proposal to deal with a major problem. The constituents of the member for Erie will not be very proud of him for this resolution.

Mr. Callahan: It is a pleasure to participate in this debate on the issue raised by my colleague. One of the extreme difficulties that comes out of all this is that while it is very pleasant to live next to a body of water, perhaps to live as close as possible to that body of water, doing that necessarily incurs certain risks. They are not new risks; they have been with us for quite some time.

I have a statement here from the federal agency report, which was a newsletter item of the Association of State Flood Plan Managers. It indicates that evidence collected by the weather service and other federal agencies shows that flood damage has been increasing in constant dollar value since 1900. It appears this problem has been around, as I have said, for a considerable period of time.

It becomes quite obvious that the answer is not simply compensation. We are going to have problems with the ever-increasing amount of water in our Great Lakes as long as the water is there and as long as we continue to have rain and snow; and I am sure no one would ever vote against having rain and snow, because they provide a very necessary commodity to keep us alive.

For that reason, to look at it simply from the standpoint of an insurance issue is to bury our heads. We can compensate people only so many times. We can compensate them for loss of property, but we cannot compensate them for personal injury. That, as well as the loss of property, is a very considerable risk to them. Addressing for a moment the intent of my colleague's resolution that this matter can be resolved, at least in the short term, by way of an insurance scheme, one has to look at what the purpose and function of insurance is. Quite obviously, insurance is a gamble between the insurance company and the policyholder that something will not happen. The rates are set on the basis of how predictable or how imminent the thing is. It is like rolling the dice; there are so many permutations and combinations that the dice will come up for or against one.

Recognizing that the premium is based on the likelihood of something happening and recognizing that what we are told today is that damage from high water is probably going to be with us for ever, one has to look at how one establishes some form of monetary protection. Monetary protection, I suggest, would have to be contained within a policy that would be spread over the entire populace.

One cannot possibly create a policy of insurance and simply sell it to the people who have the particular risk. The premiums would be so exorbitant it would hardly be worth their while. They might decide to take the chance that this year they will not suffer significant damage or, in the alternative, that government will bail them out.

They would probably be right on either of those scores, because when a difficult issue such as this arises it calls for urgent action. Very often urgent action is not the best action. It becomes a knee-jerk reaction. Particularly with government, if we react in a knee-jerk way, we are going to wind up with a situation where we are going to make the situation worse as opposed to better.

I suggest the implementation of a review committee by the Minister of Natural Resources in February 1986 is the approach to take on a long-term basis. Quite obviously, we do not want to have to resort to any knee-jerk reaction. Being legislators and being here to represent people, we are appalled by natural disaster and at seeing these people suffer damage. However, we do not serve their long-term needs if we simply address it each time it happens, then hope it goes away and address it again the next time it comes.

Over the years, there have been attempts through the planning process to try to establish flood plain locations within which one could not build a structure. That went some way towards not only taking property out of the danger zone but also protecting life and limb from being endangered by this type of natural phenomenon. However, there are other steps that have to be taken. One cannot have it both ways. One cannot live right beside the body of water for its natural beauty and not take some of the risks. That is where government has to get involved. We have to tell people they cannot live that close to the water because there is a danger. If people choose to do so, it would have to be on the basis that there would not be any compensation; they would be voluntarily assuming that risk.

To simply try to establish an insurance program to pay after the fact is untenable. It would not work. The premiums would be enormously high. This is assuming one does it through the private sector. If one does it through the public sector, the logical extension is that for any other risk people in the community cannot find coverage for without paying an exorbitant premium, they could come to the government and say to us: "You have done it for them. We would like you to do it for us." We do not want to create that type of demand. There are enough demands on government without that.

10:50 a.m.

In the long term, I endorse what the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Kerrio) has done. He has set up a committee to examine, I hope once and for all, the causes and effects and the way in which we will deal with it on a long-range basis. That will set in place the mechanisms to deal with it in the future.

For the present, and perhaps to overcome that hiatus period when these remedies are not going to be put in place, there probably has to be some form of economic relief for the people in that situation today. They have been placed in that position by the inactivity of the previous government in not adopting some long-range plans in the past. As the government, we have a responsibility to address that need. I hope we will do that now and for ever and that it will not be a further situation which results in a knee-jerk reaction. Such a reaction is neither sensitive nor sane in terms of the fiscal responsibility of this province.

Another approach that might be looked at, although it seems very difficult in the light of the high premiums that are arising in the insurance industry, is to have a policy that covers this loss whether or not one is a high risk. That is the principle of insurance; the loss is spread over the largest number of people.

There are some people in towns and municipalities who may find it beneficial to have some form of coverage for sewer bursts or backups in their basements. The two elements might be combined to create a simple inclusion in all policies for an additional amount. In that way, everyone would pay in a bit and a program such as that could be put together. To say the people who are going to be participants are the ones who live in the high-risk areas would make the premium out of sight under a private program.

In closing, although I appreciate what my colleague is suggesting, I do not see that as the panacea or the solution to this problem. I suggest the solution rests with attacking this on a full-scale basis by way of a task force coming up with some very positive recommendations and putting them into place. If putting them into place requires the expenditure of money to eliminate places that have been built in high-risk areas to avoid the danger to life and limb in the future, so be it. It has to be at least a definite, long-term plan. Short-term, Band-Aid solutions will not solve the problem, and maybe not myself, but other members in the future will have almost a legacy of coming here and speaking on this particularly sensitive and emergency issue. The people of Ontario deserve more than that.

Mr. Sheppard: I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a few comments on the resolution as brought forth by the member for Erie. Generally, I agree with the idea of a provincial flood insurance program and that such a program should be established to ensure the availability of flood damage insurance to property owners in identified flood plains.

In my riding of Northumberland, municipalities such as Brighton, Port Hope, Cobourg and Colborne are affected by the high water levels along the Lake Ontario shoreline. There are roughly 70 miles of lakeshore in my riding. I believe there is some assistance from the Ministry of Natural Resources and the federal government. Some of the property owners in my riding have taken advantage of some grants to build retaining walls or crib walls along their properties abutting Lake Ontario.

For example, one constituent in Brighton wrote to me complaining that she continually has to dump loads of sand because part of her backyard is washed away every spring. Her primary reason for writing was to request information about the possibility of financial assistance, as every year it costs her more than she can afford.

The proposed type of insurance program, which thus far is unavailable through private sector insurance companies, would help to reduce the escalating cost of property damage caused by flood and erosion. It is my understanding, however, that the Insurance Bureau of Canada would be willing to look into the possibility of an agreement among various insurance groups to ensure coverage in case of flooding.

This resolution is surely one action we must consider to ensure property owners are compensated for flood damage, but I sincerely hope this is only an interim measure until we find a more permanent solution to the problem of flooding. Corrective and preventive measures must be discovered to reduce flooding and flood damage.

In my riding of Northumberland, some of my constituents have built retaining walls or crib walls that so far have reduced the amount of flooding and erosion. However, these measures require funding and planning, which is why I particularly agree with this resolution as a temporary measure to the pressing problem of increased flooding.

I do not know whether the member for Brampton (Mr. Callahan) realizes that assistance is available through the Ministry of Natural Resources and the federal government. I hope the Ministry of Natural Resources will contact the federal government to see whether more money is available so we can help all the people in the great riding of Northumberland, not just those living along the shores of Lake Ontario or Lake Erie.

I call on the Minister of Natural Resources to put out a real arm to get all the money he can get because we need that money to help all the people along Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

Mr. Hayes: Many of the shoreline residents probably wish they had insurance prior to the flooding last fall and the years before. I know the majority of the shoreline residents would support a resolution that would give them the opportunity to purchase insurance. However, the problem I have with this is that it seems to be a bit of window dressing when we talk about the prerequisite that is required to purchase the insurance. With this prerequisite, I do not know whether anyone in this province who lives along the shoreline would be able to take advantage of this insurance.

The people who live along the shoreline are getting into a situation where they are getting nothing but breakwalls, barriers and things such as that. The people who live on the shorelines want to enjoy the beaches that were there when they moved there.

What is needed is a government that not only listens but also truly acts. What is needed is someone with the political will to take a serious look at controlling the Great Lakes level. I find it rather interesting that the member for Erie indicated at the beginning that when he was in opposition, he was pressuring the previous government to do something about controlling the Great Lakes. Now that seems to have turned around. That member is in the party that can do something at this time.

The Minister of Natural Resources has accused me of always being critical, but I must say --

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: No, no.

Mr. Mancini: Not critical; just wrong.

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: I flew the member around and welcomed him with open arms.

11 a.m.

Mr. Hayes: Not necessarily.

I have made many suggestions to the Minister of Natural Resources. I brought people down who gave him ideas and asked him to look at solutions to reduce the flooding of the Great Lakes. They have done things in shoreline protection, such as loans and setting up of the committee and areas such as those. I welcome all that, but I feel the Minister of Natural Resources and the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Grandmaître), or whoever it takes, should take a serious look at reducing the lake levels if they really want to --

Mr. Speaker: The member's time has expired.

Mr. Hayes: I wish I had more time.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Erie has 81 seconds.

Mr. Haggerty: I was interested in some of the comments made by the member for Nipissing. He said flood plain insurance would cost the government money. There were three proposals in my opening statement. It actually says the onus is on the property owners along the lakeshore because they know it is a hazardous area. In many places it has been zoned through planning.

He talked about the cost and he said the government should spend more money on other preventive measures such as more shoreline protection. That costs the province money too, because it gives low interest rates that someone has to pick up.

The previous government had been in power for 42 years. We should go back to legislation reversing the previous government's decision of 1951 concerning the high-water marks, or riparian rights as they were known at that time. They removed that from vegetation growth to the water's edge. If they had maintained that interpretation at that time, they would have had control on where to build homes or dwellings along the shoreline.

The member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Swart), who always takes a dim view of almost everything, should read what I have said.

Mr. Speaker: The member's time has expired. That completes the allotted time for ballot item 3. The next item is ballot item 4.

TRADE UNIT

Mr. Andrewes moved resolution 34:

That in the opinion of this House the government, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, should establish a trade unit within the marketing branch of the ministry. The purpose of this unit would be to monitor and participate in international trade discussions under GATT and the current discussions on trade enhancement with the United States; to determine opportunities and/or potential damage from trade enhancement discussions; to compile a bank of information on internationally traded food commodities, including the country of origin, production conditions and costs of production and the form and amount of any government assistance. These initiatives would provide Ontario producers, processors and exporters with a database to assist in planning production, researching markets and arguing cases before the tariff board and other bodies governing international trade matters.

Mr. Speaker: The member has up to 20 minutes, and if he wishes to reserve any of that time for a windup, that is in order.

Mr. Andrewes: I propose this resolution not only from my experience as a member of this Legislature but also from my experience prior to coming into the Legislature, both as an agricultural producer and as a representative of agricultural producers and producer groups, particularly those involved in the marketing of agricultural commodities.

I am sure this is going to be of some interest to the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway). I learned during that period that no single issue challenges or frightens the agricultural community more than the whole question of trade, particularly international trade.

The question of international trade provides a great number of opportunities for expanded production in agriculture. To those who are involved in production, it provides significant challenges to look at markets abroad, to plan their crop cycles and crop production for those markets, to put in place facilities that will make them competitive in transportation and secondary processing. Unfortunately, the more successful you are and the more vibrant your own economy becomes, the more vulnerable you become to trade from other nations that affects your own home markets.

What is fair in international trade today must be put in terms of what is realistic and what is profitable. Many Ontario products today are sold abroad in the raw state, in the state in which they come from the primary producer. Many are sold as processed or secondary processed products. Commodities that are produced on Ontario farms, such as soybeans, enter international trade in the raw state and compete that way on international markets, while other products, products of the horticultural industry and products of the livestock industry, may go through some secondary processing before they move to these international markets. They can compete well if the competition is fair.

We hear this terminology bandied around on many occasions. We hear it bandied around in discussions on international trade and trade enhancement. We hear it bandied around in discussions on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The whole terminology of "fair" means that Ontario producers of agricultural commodities would have access to markets abroad and would have realistic and reasonable competition at home without significant government intervention or intervention from some other source.

Two important trade talks are going on currently. The first is GATT, which is now scheduled for a further revision. GATT, of course, is a trade agreement among several nations in North America and Europe that allows for access to markets by various traded commodities in the various nations involved in the talks. It allows for a reduction in the barriers, either tariff or nontariff, that currently exist to create a friendlier trading environment for those nations involved in the discussions.

The other significant discussion is the trade enhancement discussion that is currently being initiated by the governments of Canada and the United States, which may or may not lead to a trade agreement between those two nations. It is separate and apart from the discussions that are going on at GATT.

My purpose in proposing this resolution is twofold. First, I propose it to assist the agricultural industry in all its diversification, in all the diversified commodities that are produced by the agricultural community, to better understand the trade discussions that are currently going on, both at GATT and in Ottawa and Washington, and to have an opportunity to make input into these discussions.

11:10 a.m.

Let me give members two examples. During the days when some might say I made an honest living, it was my privilege to serve as a member of the Canadian Horticultural Council. I served with that organization during the time of the last round of GATT negotiations. The industry and its membership in that organization heard for years about the discussions that were going on in Geneva and Brussels. This seemed very far removed from those of us who were primary producers or representatives of producers' organizations. We heard names dropped periodically about certain people who were negotiating on our behalf, people who were relative strangers to the agricultural community but who were obviously becoming a very important part of that community's destiny and future.

Most producers assumed that some of the discussions and activities were not available to the public; they were clandestine and secretive. Certainly, the activities that made up these negotiations were remote. Yet it was the livelihood of these very producers that was being discussed, that was being negotiated and that was on the table before the negotiators who were there supposedly on our behalf.

A second example I might offer is the current discussions between Ottawa and the United States on so-called free trade. Groups such as the Ontario Chicken Producers' Marketing Board are terrified of the ramifications of these discussions. They fear the activities within the US and the efforts on the part of the US to market the commodities it produces at a significantly lower cost than Ontario will jeopardize the industry here.

That board has hired a former assistant deputy minister of Agriculture and Food, Bill Doyle, to monitor and act on its behalf in these discussions. They fear their production and their future will be traded off in an effort to find some way to relax the access for other commodities into this country. There is a producer group that is simply looking for input, looking for an opportunity to learn what activity is going on at the negotiations table and trying to find an opportunity to counter this kind of activity and to get involved in the whole discussion.

The second purpose of this resolution in proposing the establishment of a trade unit within the ministry is to provide information to the various sectors of agriculture on a sector-by-sector basis for the planning of their market strategies, so they might determine whether there are new markets; the size of these markets; the apparent wealth of the nation involved in the marketing strategy; and the ability of that nation to sustain that market and that growth, which are so important in the planning process.

Are new production opportunities required within our own province? Are new processing facilities required within our own province? Are cold storage facilities required within our own province? What are the problems of shipping and transportation? What are the problems of residues on products from chemicals that may be used in our own province but may or may not be used in the country to which a commodity is being shipped?

These are some long-term planning strategies that are very much involved and very important to the appropriate planning for an export strategy. At the same time, the same producer groups require a domestic market strategy. They need to know what their competition is. They need to know whether their efforts to trade with a nation abroad might bring retaliation and might open up a process by which their own domestic market could be hurt as a result of their trade initiatives.

These are commodity groups basic to agriculture that want to be prepared. They need a data bank, a bank of information, so when it comes to a confrontation or discussion around a negotiating table, they can better argue cases before organizations and quasi-judicial bodies such as the Canadian Tariff Board and so that they might seek the mechanism, whatever it is, to be put a fair and reasonable case for their trade initiative.

The Ontario Food Processors Association has brought many cases before the Canadian Tariff Board through its Canadian affiliate, the Canadian Food Processors Association. It has brought cases on whole hot-packed tomatoes, on tomato paste and on processed peaches and pears. There has been an ongoing effort on the part of this association to protect its domestic market base, to protect not only the domestic production of these commodities but also the domestic processing of these commodities and to protect the jobs that are so vital to our economy.

They tell me it takes $100,000 to $200,000 each time one of the Canadian Tariff Board appeals is heard. What is needed is a database to provide the background and information necessary to make the case effectively and well. It is very costly to gather this information and it takes a great deal of time. Often the information is out of date before the appeal can be heard. It is important that these groups have access on an ongoing, up-to-date basis to a data bank of information that can provide them with strong and effective evidence so that they can argue their case well. If the information came from a source as impeccable as government, no one would doubt it or attempt to discredit it.

The Canadian Cattlemen's Association is currently involved in a countervail debate in which it is looking to protect its own markets from imports from the European Community by applying for a countervailing duty on imported beef products. It could have access and could find this kind of information very useful.

A year ago the Ontario pork producers were involved in a countervail argument with the United States. An action was sought before various trade tribunals to impose a countervailing duty on Canadian pork going to the US. What was the argument? What was the basis for the argument? How does one counter the argument? This commodity group was left pretty well on its own to determine that information, to collect the data and to do it on a timely and effective basis so it could counter the arguments that were being put to the trade tribunals by the American pork producers.

Several years ago the Canadian Wine Institute asked the Canadian Tariff Board to consider a countervailing duty on imported wines from the European Community. It embarked on a very costly study to gather the data on the cost of production and the subsidies that were available to producers in the European Community. The data were not challenged. The data were upheld. The Canadian Tariff Board agreed that unfair trade practices were going on. However, the council could not prove to the Canadian Tariff Board that the domestic industry was being hurt by those unfair trade practices. Some two years later we have ample evidence that this industry is being hurt.

11:20 a.m.

The industry now is compelled to go through the process again, to collect its data, to ask for time before the tribunal and to renew its initiatives, all of which, as I say, is costly and time-consuming. In the meantime, the domestic market base continues to erode.

The balance of the resolution spells out, I hope reasonably clearly, the purpose and the modus operandi of the proposed trade unit. In summary, what I am proposing is the formation of a trade unit within the marketing branch of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the purpose of which would be twofold. First, it would keep the industry sectors informed of the activities and trade discussions at the GATT meetings and of the free trade discussions between Canada and the United States and allow producer groups to make input into those trade discussions. Second, the trade unit would provide a database for the planning of production and the preparation of arguments before quasi-judicial panels such as the tariff board.

I would be very interested to hear other members' views on this resolution and I hope I can anticipate members' support. I will reserve the balance of my time for comment at the end of the debate.

Mr. Hayes: I welcome the opportunity to speak on this resolution to establish a trade unit within the marketing branch of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. As the resolution points out, "The purpose of this unit would be to monitor and participate in international trade discussions under GATT...to determine opportunities and/or potential damage from trade enhancement discussions; to compile a bank of information on internationally traded food commodities, including the country of origin, production conditions and costs of production and the form and amount of any government assistance. These initiatives would provide Ontario producers, processors and exporters with a database to assist in planning production, researching markets and arguing cases before the tariff board and the other bodies governing international trade matters."

If the intention of the author of this resolution is to halt the farm crisis in this province, I support it. If the intent of this resolution is to preserve the family farm, I also support it. If the intent of this resolution is to reduce imports, increase exports and to ensure that Ontario farmers produce and process as much food of our own as possible, I support it. If the intent of this resolution is to combat such things as the latest US farm bill or the US countervail action on pork, I support it.

But if the intent of this resolution is to enter into discussions on free trade that could disrupt marketing boards, subsidy programs or any other special programs, then I am opposed to it. Maybe when the member for Lincoln has his final couple of moments to respond he can tell us whether he feels the agricultural industry should be on the free trade table for talks.

The trend in the US is to corporate agriculture and vertical integration of the agrifood process. For example, 56 per cent of the hens in that country are owned by 61 companies, all of which have more than one million birds. In Canada, the average is fewer than 30,000 birds. Canadians cannot compete on that magnitude. Besides, we do not want to see our farming turned into a multinational corporation. The family farm is the backbone of this country. If we preserve the family farm, we preserve jobs and communities and we also create many jobs.

If the agriculture industry is on the free trade table, the backbone of this country will be broken because the farm crisis will only worsen. The agriculture industry has too much at stake to consider free trade talks with the United States. Food processing employs more than 250,000 workers in this country and is vital to Ontario as a major market for primary agricultural products, as a source of employment and as a means to reduce imports and increase exports.

One of the major problems is that the food processing industry is controlled by foreign multinationals, which have publicly indicated that any free trade agreement with the US would cause severe dislocation of jobs in Canada and that they would supply Canada from manufacturing facilities in the United States.

Our agricultural implement industry is an example of free trade. It is another industry that is dominated by a few large multinationals. Unlike the auto industry, there are no safeguards or production requirements. Canada produces combines and parts, while the US produces tractors and engines. We have seen the work place shrink at Massey, for example, from more than 5,000 workers six years ago to around 1,000 today. We have seen the ruin of White Farm.

It really irks me when I see the amount of food we import into Ontario. I would like to read out a couple of examples that were compiled by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. These are the dollar amounts of food imported into Ontario alone: apples, $22 million worth; apple juice, $10 million; lettuce, $33 million; tomatoes, $37 million; peaches, $8 million; canned peaches, $6 million; potatoes, $20 million; and tomato paste, $25 million. These are foods that we have the ability to grow and also to process in Ontario.

In conclusion, our objective in our agricultural trade policy should be to expand exports and to replace imports. We have the ways and the means in the agricultural industry to fulfil both of those objectives. I believe we can do it, Mr. Speaker, without having to put agriculture into free trade talks.

11:30 a.m.

Mr. Mancini: I wish to join other members in participating in the debate on ballot item 4 introduced by the member for Lincoln. As I understand the resolution, the honourable member wishes to create a unit within the Ministry of Agriculture and Food to monitor trade on an international basis and then to use the information as a vehicle to discuss important matters with foreign nations. He also wants to use this information to supply the client groups of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food with the information compiled so that when they wish to make representations to their government or before boards which are reviewing matters such as dumping, they will have the information at their fingertips.

This would serve the client groups in two ways. First, it would not cost the client groups any money to compile the information themselves. They would be able to get verification of the information from the government. Second, it would provide a unified approach if they were all using the same information. Of course, the information has to be accurate.

In that respect, I believe the idea to be a good one, although it has been brought to my attention that the market development branch of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food does carry out many of the functions suggested by the member for Lincoln. In addition, the economics and policy co-ordination branch of the ministry compiles and maintains data on internationally traded food commodities and provides ongoing analysis of trade issues. That branch is actively involved in analysis of the impact of freer trade -- or free trade, as it was originally called by the Prime Minister -- with the United States.

It would be unfair to say that none of the work the honourable member suggests is being done. The member is suggesting that it be done in a different form and that there be a specified unit within the Ministry of Agriculture and Food so that client groups of the ministry and others wishing to have discussions with the ministry would know there is a unit. It would be much easier to deal with one unit instead of having information compiled and gathered by three or four different parts of the ministry. I find no fault with that suggestion.

The matter that concerns me in the member's resolution is that this unit not only would "monitor and participate in international trade discussions under GATT," but also, as he states, "the current discussions on trade enhancement with the United States." Trade enhancement is the new terminology that is being used in Ottawa by Prime Minister Mulroney. It is being substituted for the words "free trade."

As we know, over the past year, particularly since the first ministers' conference attended by our Premier (Mr. Peterson) and since the last Prime Ministers' conference, the term "free trade" is no longer being used in Ottawa because the Prime Minister and parliamentarians there know that free trade is unacceptable, particularly to the automotive community and the farm community. The word "resent" is too strong, but I do not like us using terms such as "trade enhancement" when we know what we are talking about is free trade.

The Premiers of Canada, who have asked Premier Getty of Alberta to head up their delegation in communicating their feelings to the Prime Minister, have stated, and at one time it was agreed, that the provinces should have some representation during the free trade negotiations. We had better call it what it is. The Prime Minister wants free trade; so let us call it exactly what it is.

To this date, the Premiers have not received any clarification from the Prime Minister as to what part he is going to allow the provinces to play during these free trade discussions he has implemented and, through his friendship with Ronald Reagan, now has on the table for discussion.

Every day we hear from the United States' senators and congressmen that they are anxious to have free trade with Canada because they believe Canada has a better deal as far as trade negotiations are concerned. That is not fair. Ontario alone buys more goods from the US than any other country in the world. Unfortunately, that message has not been sold to the American people because the American senators and the American congressmen do not want to sell that particular piece of information.

I say to the member for Lincoln that if we want to unify the way we compile our information within a particular ministry, which would be of help to the agricultural industry of this province, I do not think there is anything wrong with that. However, when he states in his resolution that one of the prime purposes of this new unit would be to discuss and to put forward information on free trade, I question what he really wants to do in this resolution. Is he supporting Mulroney through the back door? Is that what he is doing? Is he standing up and saying that agriculture, like the automotive industry, must be put on the table for free trade, as the American senators are demanding, along with our cultural sovereignty and our social network?

Mr. Andrewes: Does the member have the vaguest idea what the resolution is all about?

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr. Mancini: I know we have experts on the other side; I realize that. If they had not been turfed out of office, I wonder what would be the position today of the former Minister of Agriculture and Food, the member for Durham-York (Mr. Stevenson), if he were still the Minister of Agriculture and Food. I wonder if he would be dilly-dallying around trying to support Mulroney through the back door by having agriculture put on the table for free trade.

Mr. Stevenson: My position has not changed one iota.

Mr. Andrewes: Turfed out of office is a bit of an overexaggeration. Loved out of office maybe.

Mr. Mancini: The Premier has led all the other Premiers. The Premier of Ontario has flushed out all the other Premiers on free trade. He sure has. At the first conference he attended, everyone, including my friends across the floor, expected that every province in Canada would issue a press release supporting free trade and Ontario would be the lone province speaking up for caution and moderation. However, that did not happen and it was because of the leadership of the Ontario Premier. That is exactly why it did not happen.

With the changes of leadership in Alberta and Quebec, we are going to see, on a continual basis, pressure not only from Ontario but also from all other provinces to ensure that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney does not sell us out to the American interests. If it is the intention of the member for Lincoln to try to unify different parts of the ministries in order to facilitate the availability of information, I think that is a good idea. However, if he wants to help Brian Mulroney through the back door, he is not going to get any help from us.

Mr. Stevenson: I am very pleased to rise and join this discussion. I very strongly support the resolution put forward by the member for Lincoln.

In order to get into this discussion, I want to take a few minutes, and I hope not too long, to talk about the problems of dealing with the present situation in taking countervail action or anti-dumping action in Canada. We do have a Special Import Measures Act which is under the federal jurisdiction. The purpose of this act is to provide protection for Ontario producers, manufacturers, companies, farmers, or whomever, from unfair competition from outside sources --

11:40 a.m.

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: That is free trade. That is what Mulroney favours.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The member for Niagara Falls is being a little too noisy.

Mr. Stevenson: The outside sources are marketing in Canada at lower prices than they sell on the home market. That is called dumping. It can also come from unfair or excessive subsidization in other jurisdictions. That is referred to in the act as subsidizing.

First, one has to prove that it is going on. As the member for Lincoln pointed out, one has to also prove there is damage to the domestic industry. If the whole procedure is completed and both those aspects are proven, then the federal government will take action and provide either a countervailing duty which responds to unfair subsidization or an antidumping duty that goes against the dumping action into this country.

Basically, the format is that one must provide a formal document which explains either the dumping or the subsidization that is occurring from the other country and, at that time, give at least some indication of damage. That document is filed with the customs and excise division of Revenue Canada. Within 21 days of that being filed, Revenue Canada can ask for any further documentation it feels it needs on the issue at hand. There is an additional 30-day period for it to launch an initial investigation.

At that point, it either rejects the claim or it goes on to initiate a further investigation into the issue if it looks as though some of the claims are correct. There is a 90-day period in which this additional investigation is carried on. It contacts exporters, importers and all people involved in the issue. It asks questions relating to either dumping or countervailing and then it reports its findings.

Three things can then happen. It can find that the application is not valid and it will drop the whole issue. It can talk to the country and the importers involved to get some sort of compromise on the issue. It would then go to the complainant group in Canada and decide whether that compromise would be acceptable.

An example is the importation of processed beef into Canada where Revenue Canada reached a compromise with the European Community beef exporters. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association would not accept that and it went to the third alternative, which was to announce a temporary duty. It then goes for a further study for the final determination, which is done by the Canadian Import Tribunal. It is a semi-independent group. Its duty is solely to determine whether damage is actually occurring. It has 120 days to study and announce its decision.

At that point, after its study on the damage to the domestic industry, the temporary duty can be dropped, maintained or increased. After the import tribunal announcement, Revenue Canada actually has a six-month period to make the final determination on what the duty should be.

The problem that our farm community is running into here is one of definition. There is no question that the Ontario government could assist our producers in improving the Special Import Measures Act to improve the definition of light goods and light industry. We currently have a court challenge against the Canadian cattlemen's submission on the importation of processed beef. The challenge basically comes down to the fact that our producers produce cattle and the importers are importing beef. The challenge says they are not light goods and, therefore, the issue as put forward by the Canadian Cattlemen's Association is invalid. Of course, as soon as those cattle go to market they become beef, and any fool knows they are light goods. However, they obviously are running into some difficulty on that issue.

The other thing that is a major problem is the funding. It has cost the Canadian Cattlemen's Association about $100,000 to bring its submission forward. The Ontario Corn Producers' Association will have a similar cost. This is out of the realm of what many farm groups -- and I suspect many manufacturing groups -- can afford to spend to try to challenge some of these importations. There is no reason the government could not help in some way or other in relieving these groups of a portion of the cost and having the data bank available. The member for Lincoln had suggested that would be an important aspect of reducing the cost.

The provincial government can show leadership by having the experts available and having the data available. Right now, it is showing no leadership at all. An example is the lack of reaction to the US farm bill where Alberta, Saskatchewan, the federal government and the Ontario corn producers have all taken action and the provincial government is still totally silent on the issue. The other great indication of leadership it has taken is that it has closed two trade offices in the US. That is a step backwards, not a step ahead.

One example of an Ontario producer group that could use the help would be our peanut producers. We have a clear indication of dumping of peanuts into the Canadian market. We have an infant industry of peanut growing and processing in this province that is under some real financial strain at the moment. Until new varieties are produced in Canada for the Ontario environment, it is going to continue to struggle for some years.

To take any action on the obvious dumping that is occurring in the Canadian market is absolutely impossible without at least a $100,000 bill. They know they face that even before starting. If the provincial government could come forward and give them some support, it would be a real help to that very young and very small industry.

The financial assistance has to come indirectly, I am aware, but there have to be ways of doing it. I am sure the Americans and the Europeans would find ways of doing it if they had the opportunity.

11:50 a.m.

Mr. Ramsay: It is a pleasure to rise amid the hisses and boos of my own caucus members, whom I love and adore. Anyway, it is a pleasure to rise and speak in favour of this motion. Fortunately, I feel the language has been couched in such a fairly neutral way that we are able to do that. I share somewhat the concern of the member for Essex South (Mr. Mancini), who expressed his concerns about free trade, though upon reading this motion, it seems to be dealing fairly with the issue that there could also be potential damage from trade enhancement discussions. I think it is fairly well addressed and invites us to take a look at the matter and study it. We can support that.

It is quite timely, and I am pleased to see that this proposed unit would monitor and participate in the GATT talks. Until now and until the Tokyo discussions a few weeks ago among what I guess they call the Big Five, with the infamous rocket attack, GATT did not consider agricultural topics. The Prime Minister, trying to grapple with the farm problem, decided that might be the appropriate place to bring up these discussions. It is something that is really necessary, because what we have is about three major competing agricultural systems in this world. They govern themselves quite differently and they all have their own problems. What happens when it comes to exporting food is that in some cases they add further subsidization to export those products and cause problems for other people. The European Community is one of these areas. This year we see two of them doing this.

I envy European farmers because they are allowed to grow all they want and they have terrifically high support prices. As a farmer, I would love to have it, but it is the ridiculous system to keep on producing food. For what reason? To encourage farmers from all 10 countries in Europe to keep producing food and to get into subsidies of about $16 billion in 1984, as the European Community did, is absolutely ridiculous.

I do not suppose I would be so critical if it was their problem only, but then they decide to export that problem and create high agricultural subsidies in trading with Third World countries; so what we have is a flood on the market. For instance, France has got rid of surpluses of grain and chickens by offering extra low prices to foreign countries. This floods the Arab and other Third World countries in that part of the world and hampers our chances to export food to that area at a reasonable market price.

After France saw its share of the Algerian wheat market drop from 41 per cent to 16 per cent because of such tactics, the United States started to retaliate. We basically have trade wars going on out there where a country such as Canada cannot compete at all. It is something we have to study.

I also commend the member for Durham-York for speaking about the underfunding and the lack of resources commodity groups have in trying to grapple with these problems and research the areas and commodities that are being subsidized below the cost of production and are coming into our country and being dumped, as the expression goes. That is causing great harm to our farm economy. It is a real financial strain for our commodity groups to build a case. To build a case for the tariff board is very expensive and time-consuming. What we would have here is a database that could be accessed by the different commodity groups in preparing their cases. I am very much in favour of that. We need to see more support for commodity groups in defending themselves from commodities from other countries being dumped.

Trade enhancement, the euphemism for free trade, has been mentioned here, and it is something about which New Democrats and all of agriculture are concerned. If one looks at some of the statistics involving trade between our two countries, we are the losers. To open free trade with the United States would basically devastate Ontario agriculture. There is surplus capacity in the US that could wipe us out in the production of eggs, chickens and commodities we thought were safe because they were highly perishable, such as milk and dairy products. Today, with modern transportation systems, we are no longer safe from that. Upper New York state could supply Ontario with dairy products if the gates were opened.

We have to be concerned not only about the farm industry as an industry, and that economy, but also about a way of life in this province, and it needs to be preserved for that reason also. We need to know where we stand and have a good database when it comes to free trade.

The other topic this unit could be looking at is the US Food Security Act, commonly known as the US farm bill. This probably will be of graver concern to us in the immediate future. The US has proposed to spend C$73 billion over three years to subsidize American agriculture. The American farmers have a lot stronger lobby group than Canadian farmers do. They have really got to their politicians and they have a bill that is going to give them tremendous support in that industry. It is also going to hurt us as Ontario producers and Canadian producers.

I had trouble imagining what $73 billion is. As a way to describe it, if a farmer went out and bought a $62,000 tractor, he could do that every day from the very start of our calendar, when Christ was alive, through today and for another 200 years. He could purchase a $62,000 tractor a day. That is how much money it is. It is a lot of money and it is massive support for American farmers, support that, no matter what the political will is in this country or province, we could not match. It is something we need to be on top of right away, something a unit could be investigating. It could also be proposing talks with our American counterparts to discuss how the bill will impact upon our industry.

It is of grave concern to farming, as we are in a free fall situation now. We do not need this extra, undue competition from the US Food Security Act. It is a very big concern to us over here. We need all the help we can get. If we can get a trade unit established in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food that can study this and can be accessible to all the farm groups so they can prepare their own cases in defending their industry, it will be of assistance to the farm community and to the community of Ontario as a whole.

I rise today in support of this and I hope my fellow members will also.

Mr. Andrewes: I thank members for their words of encouragement and support. It was somewhat significant that the member for Essex North (Mr. Hayes) and the member for Essex South both rose to speak on this resolution, because they represent areas where agricultural commodities are predominant and where such a creative initiative as has been proposed in this resolution would have its greatest impact.

I was somewhat shocked, though, at the words of the member for Essex South. He obviously missed the boat. I am not sure whether he supports the resolution. He disagrees with the wording. The wording to me to some degree is a matter of semantics, but he attempted throughout his remarks to impute motives on my behalf, suggesting I was assisting the Prime Minister of Canada and all sorts of things, which indicate his lack of background in the agricultural industry.

That lack of background speaks quite clearly to his misunderstanding of the intent of the resolution. Obviously, he does not sense the frustrations shown by the industry in the GATT discussions, particularly producers of pork, cattle, wine, fruit and vegetables. These products impinge very heavily on the riding he represents, and he has completely missed his opportunity to speak on behalf of his constituents in this Legislature in support of this resolution.

Again, I thank all honourable members for their support and appreciate this opportunity.

FLOOD INSURANCE

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Haggerty has moved resolution 31.

Motion agreed to.

TRADE UNIT

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Andrewes has moved resolution 34.

Motion agreed to.

The House recessed at 12 noon.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

ESTIMATES

Hon. Ms. Caplan: I have here a message from the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor signed by his own hand.

Mr. Speaker: The Lieutenant Governor transmits estimates of certain sums required for the services of the province for the year ending March 31, 1987, and recommends them to the Legislative Assembly. This was signed by Lincoln Alexander, dated Toronto, May 22, 1986.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

RIVER BANK EROSION

Mr. Gillies: I want to advise the House of the rather serious situation threatening the east end of my riding in Brantford. Weather conditions and the pattern of movements of the Grand River have led to serious bank erosion, threatening seven or eight properties in the east end of Brantford. The mayor and I toured these properties last night, and it is very apparent to us that if there is further rain, there could be further damage. I understand from phoning down in the last couple of minutes that there has been another five or six feet of erosion since last night.

The families affected, of course, have had to evacuate their homes. They are aware that their insurance policies will not cover this type of damage, which I am sure is no surprise to members, and I am calling today on the province to assist these families either in the relocation they will need if they cannot return to their homes or in restorative measures to the bank for those properties that might be salvageable.

I understand there is provision for a capital relocation fund to be made available by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Grand River Conservation Authority and the municipality. This has been done in the past, I believe, in Onondaga township in Brant county and, I am advised by the former Minister of Natural Resources, in Thunder Bay. I call upon the ministers involved to devote their energies towards providing some sort of salvation or compensation for these families who are losing their homes.

EXTRA BILLING

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Later today, the government will have the opportunity to move Bill 94 back to the Legislature for clause-by-clause debate. Several weeks ago, the government put Bill 94 on the back burner of the standing committee on social development agenda. It stated that its reason for doing this was to allow free and fair negotiation with the Ontario Medical Association. Eleven meetings later, the OMA's position has not changed; the OMA continues to want to be able to extra bill.

The OMA's current position, as outlined in the Toronto Star today, has not changed from its 1978 position when they negotiated an agreement with the then Minister of Health, the member for Don Mills (Mr. Timbrell). The fact is, the doctors in this province want to continue to extra bill and the people of this province want a ban on extra billing. The former Minister of Health, the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman) learned that when he wanted to force the doctors at least to give advance notice on extra billing. He had to change the Health Disciplines Act to enforce that.

The solution to this problem is through legislation. It is time for the Legislature to act today. In the standing committee on social development, I will move a motion that Bill 94 be reported back to the Legislature. That will give us the opportunity to deal with the bill clause by clause, put forward positive suggestions and amendments to the legislation and then enact it into law. I hope we can expect the support of the Liberal Party and perhaps even of the Conservative Party today.

KITCHENER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Mr. D. R. Cooke: Last evening I had the privilege of sitting down with about 800 other members of the Kitchener Chamber of Commerce to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the chamber. It was during the months of April, May and June 1886 that 63 Berlin merchants and industrialists began the Berlin Board of Trade.

The interesting part is that since that time the Berlin Board of Trade and the Kitchener Chamber of Commerce have consistently been an energetic, innovative force in our community. The board of trade and the chamber of commerce made the initial efforts in the formation of a gas company to light our streets, the Berlin-Waterloo Hospital and the Berlin-Waterloo Street Railway. They have worked for paved roads, fire protection, sewage service, etc., and for 100 years they have been working for decent mail delivery.

I congratulate the chamber, its 1,000 member firms, its 1,400 members, president Sid Bergstein, president-elect Gary Alcock and general manager Jack Middlemass on an excellent and auspicious event last evening.

PARALEGALS

Mr. O'Connor: I wish to announce to the House that today I will introduce for first reading legislation to regulate paralegal agents in Ontario. There is a burgeoning profession of people serving the obvious needs of the consumer for competent and affordable representation in traffic court, small claims court, landlord and tenant tribunals and immigration proceedings. At present they are unregulated, leaving the public at risk from the very few who are unqualified.

The Law Society of Upper Canada has laid charges against some paralegals for practising law without a licence. Those charges have been dismissed by the courts. The government acknowledges the need to move into the field but has failed to date to take any of the necessary steps to ensure public protection.

This bill will regulate the activities of paralegal agents in prescribed courts and tribunals. It establishes the paralegal agents committee to make regulations with respect to the standards of admission and qualification for paralegal agents. The bill also provides for the disciplining of such agents.

I wish to thank Brian Lawrie of the Independent Paralegal Guild of Ontario for his and the guild's significant contribution to the development of this legislation. Mr. Lawrie is seated in the members' gallery, and I ask him to rise and allow the House to acknowledge his presence.

SENTENCING OF POLLUTERS

Mrs. Grier: A court decision in Toronto made yesterday a very significant day in the history of environmental law. For the first time in Canada, the president of a company that has been a persistent polluter has been sentenced to a year in jail. In addition, the company was fined $200,000. Contrast this with the $16,000 fine that was all the provincial government could have levied against Dow Chemical for a perchloroethylene spill that contaminated the St. Clair River.

Metropolitan Toronto is to be commended for the strength of its resolve. It has been prepared to do what the Ministry of the Environment has not yet done: to get tough with polluters and to treat offences against the environment as the white-collar crimes they are. We will not stop pollution without getting convictions against offenders and levying fines that are so high they cannot be considered a cost of doing business.

Last November, we in the New Democratic Party released a nine-point program for cleaning up the environment. We called for improved enforcement and higher fines, the jailing of corporate executives if spills were found to be deliberate, a superfund for chemical cleanups and improved regulations for air and water emissions. It is time for the Ministry of the Environment to assume its responsibilities and to get on with cleaning up our environment. It is time to get on with doing the job.

FREE TRADE

Mr. D. R. Cooke: Today and all this week Canada's representatives and those of the United States will be sitting down to discuss a free trade agreement between our two countries. The US representative, Peter Murphy, says everything is on the bargaining table and the purpose of these talks is the complete removal of nontariff barriers between the two countries. He also says he does not know what Canadians mean by the word "culture," and he suspects it is another word for protectionism.

I believe Mr. Murphy should be informed that the American term for culture is "national security." He should be prepared at the bargaining table to remove all nontariff barriers to the US. That means, if necessary, dismantling the American defence industry, the space program and the Star Wars project; abolishing all countervail procedures; removing mortgage deductibility from the workers' homes in the US, and removing all farm support systems and thereby, if necessary, allowing American farmers to starve.

He should come to the bargaining table with all 435 congressmen, all 100 senators and all 50 states in line. In short, he should be prepared, if necessary, to dismantle the American way as we know it today.

PHYSIOTHERAPY

Mr. Andrewes: This afternoon I will table a petition signed by some 8,000 people in support of the Ontario Physiotherapy Association. The petition calls on the government to end the inequity that currently exists between the fee the Ontario health insurance plan pays to medical doctors for physiotherapy services and the fee it pays to physiotherapists.

The frustration of this group of health care professionals sparked a rally today. Physiotherapy is a profession that is dominated by women. Last December the president of the Ontario Physiotherapy Association asked the Premier (Mr. Peterson) to test the principle of equality that he espoused in the last election. The government has dragged its feet for a year on this issue. If it believes in equal pay principles, it should practise what it preaches.

2:12 p.m.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

EXTRA BILLING

Hon. Mr. Elston: I would like to bring the members of the House up to date about the government's plans to end extra billing by doctors in this province. The government has met with the Ontario Medical Association over the past 10 months. We have had a number of informal discussions and a series of 11 formal meetings. Regrettably, we were unable to reach a negotiated settlement, something the government had genuinely hoped to achieve.

The OMA representatives were unable to accept the basic principle underlying our national health care system, that no patient should have to pay extra for medical services that are supposed to be publicly insured in the first place. The government believes this principle is fundamental and cannot be compromised.

We have two extremely important reasons for proceeding: (1) to protect patients from having to pay extra charges and (2) to permit our government to reclaim the $53 million a year currently being withheld from the people of Ontario by the federal government because some doctors continue to extra bill.

Accordingly, we will be moving to pass the legislation ending extra billing as quickly as possible. I have therefore asked that the bill now be reported back to the House by the standing committee on social development.

Mr. Andrewes: Briefly, I want to comment on the statement made by the Minister of Health. We are somewhat disappointed that the minister has to come before the House to make such a statement and that he has to say in the statement that he and the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) have been unable to reach a negotiated settlement with the Ontario Medical Association.

I remind the minister, the Attorney General and the government as a whole that to make a negotiated settlement, it takes two sides willing to enter fairly and reasonably into negotiations, not a government that is inflexible, that refuses to move its position and that sits at the table and simply ignores what the other side is offering.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Andrewes: I assure the government that the interests of democracy and the people of this province will be represented as we thoroughly debate Bill 94.

Mr. Rae: In response to the Minister of Health, one always has to have a sense of irony in this business or else one would go absolutely bananas. I have listened to the gobbledegook from his mouth and from the mouth of his leader for so long. Just 10 days ago, I personally was described as draconian and dictatorial for making the revolutionary proposal that we should be dealing with the legislation. What was dictatorial and draconian 10 days ago is apparently today the height of democratic and sensible activity.

The minister has had 10 months of so-called negotiations with the Ontario Medical Association, during which time the OMA has not changed a single position with respect to the principle. It appears the Ontario government has not changed its mind either. All I can say is that it has taken the minister a long time to recognize what all of us on this side of the House have recognized, that it is absolutely essential for extra billing to be ended. It should have been ended a long time ago, and there is no further reason for any delay whatsoever.

We look forward to participating in the debate, but we also look forward to the passage of the legislation. I am sure the minister is aware that if the government agrees to support the motion that stands in the name of my colleague the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke) today in committee, the bill can be reported to the House on Monday and we can begin to debate the legislation on Wednesday. There is no reason or excuse for further delay, and I do not think the people of the province will accept it.

I am interested to see that one of the reasons the government has to proceed is "to protect patients from having to pay extra charges." I am delighted to see that statement, particularly in view of the number of times I have asked him about this. I will make it part of my statement today. We believe patients in the province should not have to pay for the delay, the dilatoriness and the dithering that have been part of the Liberal government's approach to this issue for several months. We believe those patients should be compensated by the government with part of the money that will come from Ottawa and now held in escrow.

We look forward to patients not having to pay extra charges, but not only as of whenever the bill is passed, because that is a matter that remains to be seen. They should be compensated back to the time when this legislation was anticipated and promised, when the leader signed the accord and when the government indicated the legislation would be forthcoming. The patients should not have to pay through the nose for the government's inability to make up its mind as to what needed to be done.

FOREST FIRES

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: In view of the Terrace Bay evacuation and recent serious fires in eastern Canada, I will bring the members of the House up to date on yesterday's incident and on the forest fire situation in general across the province at this time.

Yesterday afternoon approximately one third of the 2,600 residents of Terrace Bay were evacuated to nearby towns when a 250-hectare blaze threatened an outlying subdivision. A preliminary fire investigation indicates the blaze may have been the result of work being done on the CP Rail line nearby.

Despite strong winds and quick spread, Ministry of Natural Resources forest firefighters and air attack teams, working with municipal firefighters, local police and fir teams from the Kimberly-Clark mill, were able to take quick action. The first report of the fire came at 2:20 p.m. The evacuation began at 3 p.m. By 7 p.m. residents were back in their homes. No one was injured and no private property was damaged by fire.

The firefighters were backed up by four MNR helicopters -- and I hope my critics will change that number -- and five heavy water bombers, including a CL-215 that had just returned from firefighting in New Brunswick. By the way, both CL-215 water bombers that were sent down east are now back in Ontario.

At this moment, the Terrace Bay fire is in good shape. Fifty MNR firefighters are manning a hose line that completely surrounds the fire, and water bombers are continuing to work the edges of the fire area. There is no further damage to the town.

One of the heavy water bombers working on the fire was involved in a mishap while picking up water. The aircraft is beached on Hays Lake about 10 kilometres west of Terrace Bay. No injuries occurred.

The Terrace Bay incident is a very timely reminder that the fire season is under way and that everyone has to be extremely careful.

Right now, there are 21 forest fires burning in the province, four of them not under control. The largest blaze is 32 kilometres northwest of Red Lake, a 480-hectare fire that is being attacked and is not a threat to the town.

The western half of northern Ontario is definitely the area that bears watching. The fire hazard rating in this area ranges from high to extreme. Forest fire officials do not expect any change in this for at least the next four days. Additional fire crews and equipment are being moved into the area to provide backup to local firefighters.

In the eastern half of northern Ontario and in the Algonquin region, the fire hazard is moderate.

Mr. Rae: We very much appreciate the statement the Minister of Natural Resources made today. It brings home to me in particularly the nature of the risk facing many communities in the sense that it was only on Thursday that I was in Terrace Bay for the entire day. At that time, we were discussing with many people the fact that it had been a dry period for some time and that apparently there was a greater risk.

As we hear of the water bombers that are being used, it reminds us once again of the fact that instead of a government jet, we have water bombers that are being used, and gives us a chance to reflect on the wisdom of that decision that was taken some time ago.

DISASTER RELIEF

Hon. Mr. Fontaine: I wish to take this opportunity to present to the Legislature Chief George Hunter of the Winisk band council, who is seated in the members' gallery.

As members are aware, the village of Winisk has undergone extensive damage as a result of flash flooding last Friday. Let me reiterate the deep concern of all members over this tragedy. At 11 o'clock this morning, the woman who was missing was found dead.

In a flooding tragedy, funds are hard to get. I ask all members to help to collect funds through their riding offices. Yesterday, I was told by the municipal people that when there is flooding, money is very scarce because of a lack of sympathy for people who have built homes near a river. I ask members to help with this.

Mr. Pope: With respect to the statement by the Minister of Northern Development and Mines, I want to speak directly to the honourable chief on behalf of the Progressive Conservative caucus in this House and say we extend our deep condolences to him and his people for their recent loss in this very tragic natural disaster. We assure him of our support for the efforts which must surely come from this government, not from private pockets but from the government, to support him and his people in recovering from this disaster, in relocating their village and in getting on with their lives in their own community of Winisk.

Mr. Rae: First, on behalf of the New Democratic Party, I would like to express our feelings of sadness to Chief Hunter on the loss of two of the members of his band in the recent flooding in Winisk. I hope the chief will convey, on behalf of the whole assembly, our own feeling of loss in this House because of what has happened.

I hope as well that he will know he has a great many friends in court in this Legislature fighting for the cause of his band. I and my colleagues in the official opposition are more than happy to raise questions and to raise issues with the government, both publicly and privately, to make sure his band gets the assistance it is fully entitled to from the Ontario government. We are more than prepared to work with him in that regard.

RESIGNATION OF PREMIER BENNETT

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I have just received notice that Premier Bennett of British Columbia has announced his intention to resign and has called a leadership contest.

Just before I came into the House, I had an opportunity to phone Premier Bennett and express my personal best wishes to him. He has served British Columbia for 12 and a half years. He has arranged for a stunning exposition of Canada's wares for the world in Expo 86, which I believe will be a fitting testimonial to his long reign. It has been a controversial one, but as someone who has come to know him fairly well at the councils of first ministers across this country, he has provided great leadership. This country will miss his leadership and his singleminded determination in a large number of areas.

We have again seen the resignation of a politician who has made a great contribution to this country. I know that every member of this Legislature wishes him well.

Mr. Pope: First, with respect to the statement of the Premier (Mr. Peterson) on the resignation of Premier Bennett, I wish to say that many of us in this caucus had the opportunity to meet with Premier Bennett and members of his cabinet over a period of years. We enjoyed the camaraderie. We enjoyed the federal-provincial meetings with Premier Bennett and the members of his cabinet. We regret his departure. We wish him well in retirement and we wish the government of British Columbia well as it chooses a successor.

2:27 p.m.

ORAL QUESTIONS

UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr. Pope: It is out of worry and concern for the thousands of workers in northern Ontario, their families and the communities of the north that I rise to put a question to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. What specific, immediate and concrete programs for industrial development and job creation does the minister have for northern Ontario?

Hon. Mr. O'Neil: The member was absent on a few days, as I mentioned last week, when several initiatives were mentioned by the Treasurer. The Treasurer mentioned several initiatives that were being opened up in the north. We have taken several initiatives such as the new ventures program, which we hope will create a lot of new jobs in the small business sector. We are looking at opening additional offices of the Ontario Development Corp. in the north. As the member knows, there is no easy solution when we have the job losses that we have.

Mr. Martel: What you are saying is that you have nothing.

Mr. Pope: As the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) of the New Democratic Party says, what that means is the minister has nothing.

I was in Timmins yesterday, where 269 salaried workers at Kidd Creek mine were given layoff notices effective immediately and on September 2, and there are another 180 contract employees whose contracts will not be renewed. That is in addition to layoffs in Elliot Lake, Sault. Ste. Marie, Wawa and Terrace Bay, and impending layoffs in Thunder Bay.

In the face of all these layoffs over the past few months, why is the minister so paralysed by the situation? Why can he not act and put in place job creation programs?

Hon. Mr. O'Neil: The member mentioned several areas where there have been job losses, and they are of great concern to us. One thing he neglected to mention was that when his government was in power and when he was minister, the jobs at Algoma Steel dropped from 12,000 to 8,000, a loss of 4,000 jobs. I can only say we are not looking for short-term solutions. We are looking for long-term solutions that will create additional jobs in the north.

Mr. Pope: In other words, the workers in northern Ontario can go to hell in the short term as far as the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology is concerned.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The time for members' statements has expired. Final supplementary.

Mr. Pope: Quite right. The minister wanted to give me a history lesson. The history lesson is this: There is nothing in the accord, with the exception of youth employment, that has job creation as its goal. There is nothing in the speech from the throne on job creation, a fact I raised with the Premier (Mr. Peterson) the day after the speech from the throne. There is nothing in this budget that is going to offer any immediate job creation programs for the workers of northern Ontario.

Why will the minister not look at the alternatives? Why will he not look at things such as the bridge employment programs that we began in 1983? Why will he not look at accelerated electromagnetic exploration of our mineral deposits in the north? Why will he not look at putting in place portable mills for small and medium-sized mines so that they can go into production and create mining jobs in the north? There is a whole range of capital options

Mr. Speaker: Order. The member has placed three questions already.

Hon. Mr. O'Neil: To deal with the three questions, or at least with one or two of them, if the previous minister, now the member, were to look at both the speech from the throne and the budget, he would see many things in there that are helping, as I have just stated. There are no short-term answers to this. This government, under the Premier and all of the ministers, is working very hard to put into place something that will help with jobs in the north.

EXTRA BILLING

Mr. Andrewes: My question is for the Minister of Health. A press report today indicates that the Ontario Medical Association, in its discussions with the minister and the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) last Tuesday, offered to provide all medical services to anyone in any community in the province at the Ontario health insurance plan rates. Can the minister confirm that this offer was made to him?

Hon. Mr. Elston: I would like to comment about the article that appeared in one of the papers. I can tell the honourable gentleman that the essence of this proposal enshrines in it for ever, and asks the government to condone, a two-tiered system of medicine that we do not think will form the basis of good medical care in this province. We cannot sign a document that enshrines this principle in health care in this province.

Mr. Andrewes: The minister is admitting there was a document and there was an offer to that end. I see the minister nodding.

The OMA has offered to provide a full range of services to senior citizens, people on public assistance programs and people receiving emergency care at the OHIP rate. The minister has now confirmed that the doctors have further offered to provide a full range of services to anyone, anywhere, at the OHIP rate.

In his statement, the minister said "no patient should have to pay extra for medical services that are supposed to be publicly insured in the first place." Contrary to what the minister said in his statement, they have now made the two offers that would satisfy this point. What counterproposal has the government made to attempt to make these discussions meaningful, or have these so-called negotiations simply been an exercise in futility?

Hon. Mr. Elston: If the honourable gentlemen reads the document, as I know he has, he will see that there is no guarantee that every patient in this province will be able to receive insured services at the OHIP rate.

Mr. Andrewes: That is not true.

Hon. Mr. Elston: That is right. What is in that document is a request of this government to endorse the fact that people in this province will have to pay extra for medically necessary treatment that is insured anyway. We cannot do that. That is not the basis on which this country has operated its medical care system for a long time.

While I have the opportunity, I will also add that, in effect, an offer not dissimilar to this one was made back in 1978 with respect to services delivered in hospitals. I can tell the honourable gentleman and the people of this province that we have seen that this voluntary system has not functioned properly. When people go to hospitals in this province, they do suffer extra billing for insured medical services. That has a great deal to do with why the offer was not acceptable.

Mr. Andrewes: I listened carefully to the minister's answer, and he has not named one single item of compromise that he has brought to that discussion. He has indicated in this statement that he has been negotiating. He has had 11 formal negotiating meetings. He accepts the fact that the doctors have offered substantive concessions to provide services at the medicare rate, but neither he nor the Attorney General has brought any meaningful concessions to these discussions.

Mr. McClellan: Speech, speech.

Mr. Breaugh: This is a really good speech. Do not interrupt it.

Mr. Andrewes: Listen, you guys put them there.

Mr. Martel: Thank God we did it. You guys would not do it.

Mr. Speaker: Order. All interjections are out of order. Place the final supplementary, please.

Mr. Andrewes: Now that the minister has turned his back on good-faith bargaining --

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Andrewes: -- and is attempting to provoke a situation which people in this province may not --

Mr. Speaker: Order. Are you going to place the question? Please do, immediately.

Mr. Andrewes: Now that the minister has turned his back on good-faith bargaining, what is he going to do to provide medical services to the people of this province?

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Elston: I have to apologize. Just as the member was finishing his question, the group erupted into a considerable amount of cheers because he was able to get to the point at last. I am sorry; I did not hear his question.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Because of the length of the preamble to the question, will members of the House allow him to ask the question? Very briefly.

Mr. Andrewes: Is the minister attempting to disrupt the medical care system of this province by his bad-faith bargaining?

Hon. Mr. Elston: That was a longer question than the one he asked. I know that much without hearing the words. My answer to this gentleman is no, we are not disrupting the medical system in this province. We are ensuring that it continues to exist as an insured benefit to all of the people, not just some of the people, of this province.

We in this party are not prepared to see one single person being required to pay extra for insured medical services in this province. That is the bottom line for us. It may be something different for the member, but we want a system that provides the same high level of medical care to all people, no matter what their means, and not a system where they are required to put their bank balance on the line.

Mr. Rae: What was draconian 10 days ago and a safety valve two years ago seems to have changed. All we can say on this side is thank goodness, let us get on with it.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr. Rae: My question is to the Minister of Labour. Can the minister explain why it is still the practice of the Workers' Compensation Board to deny on a systematic basis compensation to miners with various cancers and to their widows and survivors who are applying for compensation in their names? As he will know, there is more than ample scientific evidence which very clearly establishes that gold miners, uranium miners, mixed-ore miners and silver miners are all far more likely than the general population to get lung cancer, tracheal cancer, bronchial cancer and stomach cancer. Can he explain why those cases are still being systematically denied by the WCB?

2:40 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Wyre: The leader of the third party is correct in that in some cases of lung cancer there has been acceptance of claims and in many other forms of cancer there has been no acceptance. The basis of those denials of claims has been the view of the board that no direct link has been established in individual case to individual case, despite the higher-than-normal mortality rate among the miners from those kinds of cancers.

As the honourable gentleman knows, phase 2 of the study by Dr. Muller is due, is now out for peer review and should be available by the end of this spring, some time next month. As well, the member will know we are imminently putting in place the members of the Industrial Disease Standards Panel, and they will be able to offer advice to the Workers' Compensation Board on this important issue.

Mr. Rae: I wonder who Dr. Muller's peers are at the Workers' Compensation Board, the Atomic Energy Control Board or the Ministry of Labour, all of which, we understand, have now had copies of this report for several weeks, if not months. Since he raised the question of the Muller report, will the minister tell us why this report has been going around the bureaucracy but has not been given in any way, shape or form to the workers involved or affected or to their families? Can he tell us why that is being allowed by his ministry?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: Yes, I would be pleased to. The member is correct in that officials of the ministry and the board -- and I am not sure whether the Atomic Energy Control Board has, but certainly the other two -- have had copies of the draft study by Dr. Muller for some time now, since March I believe. The matter is out for review by Dr. Muller's peers, scientists who are available.

I anticipated this question and I want to say two things to the member.

Mr. Speaker: Briefly.

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I say this to the steelworkers union and others as well: If the steelworkers union wishes to appoint a peer representative, a scientist, to peer review this draft report, it can do so. I am also authorized to say Dr. Muller will be pleased if, when the final, official report is issued, we also issue the original draft at that time.

Mr. Rae: I have a copy of an advertisement, which admittedly ran several years ago, from the Industrial Accident Prevention Association. Since that time, it has run a series of ads with respect to workers in this province that most people would find offensive. They make the argument that it is the workers themselves who are responsible for their illnesses, not some other agency or the employers.

Through the Workers' Compensation Board, the government is spending literally more then $35 million for those accident prevention associations, at the same time as the steelworkers and other trade unions that are attempting to represent their members are getting no compensation or funding. Can the minister explain why that double standard exists, with this kind of sexist nonsense going on in the name of the Industrial Accident Prevention Association, when nothing is being done for anybody else?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: Let me say at the outset that I personally resent this kind of ad. As the honourable member points out, it is several years old. I trust it will not happen again. This government does not appreciate nor support it. It has been openly critical of this kind of ad in general.

Beyond that, on the comparison with the amount of money received by the accident prevention associations, we can have a good debate in the standing committee on public accounts and elsewhere, and I know we will, about whether that money is being well spent and whether we are getting good value for our money. The member will know the initiatives we have taken.

It is rather unfair to compare that with the compensation issue. It is a case of comparing apples and oranges. The ability of workers to attempt to get redress and compensation will be enhanced by the second Muller study and by the Industrial Disease Standards Panel.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind members of standing order 29(e). It says, "In putting an oral question, no argument or opinion is to be offered nor any facts stated, except so far as may be necessary to explain the same; and in answering any such question, the member is not to debate the matter to which it refers."

New question, the member for York South.

Mr. Rae: I do not know why I am getting singled out for this treatment, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to ask another question of the Minister of Labour, asking it as clearly as I am able. Can he confirm, as stated yesterday in the report issued by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, that as of May 1985 there has been an official policy of his ministry, which is that inspectors are no longer going to be making regular cycle inspections with respect to industrial sites; rather, it is simply going to be responding to emergencies, to crises and to calls into the ministry with respect to a particular problem.

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I think the member is referring to the so-called code 99s. While I do not have a complete report, I do know of the existence of code 99s. They do exist. They are, as I understand it, in effect to remove from the regular inspection rotation those work places which are not viewed to have serious hazards on an ongoing basis and, combined with that, a clean bill of health over a period of time. It allows the ministry inspectors to focus their monitoring and enforcement activities on those work places where it is most important.

Obviously, if we were to investigate every work place every three or six months or every year, we would not need 250 inspectors; we would need thousands of inspectors.

Mr. Rae: Maybe the minister ought to give the workers more power to enforce the act themselves. If he cannot do the job through his inspectors, maybe he ought to be giving the working people of this province the right to do that, so that we will not have the number of deaths, accidents and illnesses we have today. That is supposed to be the minister's job. That is why he is there.

Mr. Speaker: Is that the supplementary question?

Mr. Rae: No, my supplementary follows from that.

Is the minister aware of the fact that it is the view of his inspectors -- and it is shocking the minister has chosen not to make a statement on this report -- that the change eliminating regular inspections is little more than a public relations exercise; that it is outrageous that there are more unregistered work places than there are registered work places and it is even more outrageous that the ministry is now bent on a policy of eliminating many thousands of work places from the regular inspection process? That is the view of the minister's own employees. Why does he not have the guts to make a statement in this House with respect to that point of view?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I am aware that view is stated in the document which was given to me yesterday. The document is a very serious one and raises a number of fundamental and important issues for the ministry.

I can only say to the honourable member that we have been reviewing the document and the concerns and allegations contained therein. I expect I will have something to say, not in answer to oral questions, as the member has pointed out, but by way of a statement probably on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Mr. Rae: I want to go back to the question of funding. Since the minister knows the steelworkers trade union, in particular, has asked him directly for funding to be able to fight the cases, to fight the Workers' Compensation Board on all those cases that have yet to be recognized by the board, and there are literally hundreds of them, why does he continue to deny that funding while at the same time the Workers' Compensation Board is funding the Industrial Accident Prevention Association?

Mr. Speaker: Order. The question has been asked.

2:50 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Wrye: The honourable member will know that last year, for the first time, the Occupational Health and Safety Education Authority, in effect, publicly funded the Ontario Federation of Labour to the tune of $400,000. The member will know, and so will my friend the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel), that the 1985-86 funding has this year been increased to $1.8 million.

That shows a substantial commitment on the part of this government of public funds to get on with the job. Even if we fund it more, I do not think the OFL or others will be in a position in the short period of time to put together the kinds of programs to get full value for money. We are reviewing this on an ongoing basis and we are well aware of the views of the trade union movement that additional funding is necessary. We will continue to monitor that.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr. Pope: Because this is such a serious issue for workers and their families in northern Ontario, I would like to go back to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. By way of explanation only, I remind the minister that the Premier on April 12, in commenting on the Burns Meats closure in Kitchener, said, "There will be no higher priority for me as the Premier of this province than to create real and lasting jobs," but by October 2 he was quoted in the Toronto Star as saying in Sudbury, "There are economic realities that we have to accept in terms of layoffs in northern Ontario."

We have seen a rapid acceleration of layoffs in the past couple of months in the resource sector of northern Ontario affecting virtually every single community.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Pope: The minister has had an opportunity to study the situation. He is in charge of the development of industrial strategy for this province. What are his concrete plans to help the workers in the north of this province in the short term, right now, and in the long term?

Hon. Mr. O'Neil: I cannot understand why the member does not listen closely. We have done things in the speech from the throne and in the budget. All the ministers of this government along with the Premier are looking at long-range job-creation programs.

Mr. Pope: Many options are available to this government. By way of explanation only, it could look at thermomechanical pulp plants in Timmins and Sault Ste. Marie. It could look at tax changes to accelerate depreciation or raise the depreciation ceiling on new mining equipment. It could look at accelerated capital construction for hospital projects in northern Ontario, at medical research facilities, at a medical school in northern Ontario, at a training school for medical technicians; there are lots of options.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Pope: Why does this government think the only thing it should do in northern Ontario is to make cameo appearances at cabinet meetings? When are they going to get off their butts and do something for the north?

Hon. Mr. Eakins: Now you have all the answers.

Hon. Mr. O'Neil: As the member says, how come he has all the answers now? There were a lot of job losses when he was in government. He will find that this government is going to look at it and is going to do something to help the north.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will just wait until the debate stops.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr. Martel: I hope they do more than the Tories did when we lost 12,000 jobs in Sudbury. My question is for the Minister of Labour. The report prepared by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union on behalf of the inspectors states: "There was a reluctance on the part of senior bureaucrats to prosecute. Two hundred and sixty-three charges were laid in this fiscal year to date. Only 58 charges succeeded in convictions and some 202 charges were either dismissed or withdrawn, the same pattern as existed in previous years."

Will the minister explain why his legal branch is so inadequately prepared when it presents its cases? Is it true that some of his legal people have not shown up for the hearings? Is it not time the act was modified so that it has some teeth to protect the workers of this province?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: That is a number of questions which lead in a lot of different directions. Let me deal with the legal situation. I asked my officials some two weeks ago, because of the numbers that were coming through on prosecution requests, to review on an urgent basis the need for additional legal staff. The report suggests the legal staff is undermanned and, consequently, the cases are often not prepared as well as they might be.

I can only say I have had a preliminary indication that additional legal staff will be needed. I intend to deal with that on a priority basis because it is important to me that once we launch prosecutions, we give them every chance of success. I can also indicate to the honourable member that, with respect to those specific allegations, I have asked for a report on the number of successful prosecutions.

Mr. Martel: The ministry might want to hire Sopinka or Robinette again.

The report states, "Because of inadequate staffing, inspectors are rarely briefed for court appearances before the case proceeds." Can the minister indicate why, in the prosecution of Perley Hospital on April 28 of this year, the union witnesses were never approached? The hospital was documented when it got to the hearing, the Ministry of Labour was not and the ministry lost the case. How in God's name could that happen?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I obviously cannot give the member an answer to that kind of specific question dealing with a specific instance. I will take the question as notice and get back to the honourable member.

SENTENCING OF POLLUTERS

Mr. Offer: I have a question of the Minister of the Environment. Yesterday the owner of Jetco Manufacturing in North York was sentenced to a year in jail for repeated pollution offences. With respect to the Environmental Protection Act and the Ontario Water Resources Act, is the imposition of a jail sentence now available under those acts?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The problem is that in this particular case the person was jailed for contempt of court, or at least a jail sentence was levied by the judge for contempt of court and not because of the violation of the act.

When something is under appeal, one is not allowed to comment in detail, but in very general terms I can say it is encouraging to see that --

Interjection.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: It is not sub judice, as the member for Canton-Grenville (Mr. Sterling) says.

Mr. Speaker: Please disregard the interjections.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: However, it is under appeal. I can comment generally that I am encouraged by this kind of judgement and it sends a very good message. However, at present there is not sufficient provision within our legislation to ensure that this could be done for a reason other than contempt of court.

EXTRA BILLING

Mr. Andrewes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I am informed that the Ontario Medical Association plans a province-wide walkout next Thursday and Friday and will be providing emergency services only.

Mr. Speaker: Is your question whether the minister is aware?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Once again I will remind members that they are wasting much time when other members could be asking questions.

PHYSIOTHERAPY

Mr. Andrewes: I am amazed at the flippancy of the government members over that kind of statement.

My question is to the Minister of Health. The minister will know that negotiations between his ministry and the Ontario Physiotherapy Association have bogged down. Is he now prepared to negotiate with the Ontario Physiotherapy Association on the basis of parity?

3 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Elston: Yes. The honourable gentleman knows the problem that confronts us in a number of areas is a result of some historical neglect with respect to keeping people current. The member knows and I know we cannot move in the course of a few short months to make everything right that has gone wrong in the past. However, we are working very hard at it.

With respect to our discussions with the physiotherapists, I indicated I was willing to move much beyond the four per cent world in which we found ourselves last year and to make very real progress towards eliminating some of the gap that was described on the radio this morning and presumably to the member when he appeared with the group this morning outside the House.

I have committed myself to making real progress, but in all conscience I cannot move to eliminate the entire gap, which would be something like 15 per cent, all at one time. I have committed myself to working progressively towards resolving that gap, and I will continue to work on that basis.

Mr. Andrewes: The minister referred to the historical problem. This problem started one year ago. His ministry has not offered to close the gap; it has offered to leave a gap that amounts to 15 cents. Will the minister negotiate in good faith? This is a profession that is dominated by women.

Mr. Speaker: Order; the member asked his question.

Mr. Andrewes: Surely the minister wants to sit down and negotiate with them in good faith.

Mr. Speaker: As soon as I can hear, we will proceed.

Hon. Mr. Elston: I have sat down with the group and I have acknowledged that there is a gap. I have moved a considerable way to try to eliminate that gap. I am prepared to work with them progressively during the next several months to do more. I have moved from a four per cent world to an area of settlement for this year, for instance, that would amount to an offer of somewhere around 12 per cent. I can tell the gentleman that goes a long way to reducing that gap. It does not eliminate it; I acknowledge that.

At this time, I cannot move when all the areas in health care right across this province are looking for extra funds. I have to manage in a fiscally responsible manner. I have to take the steps we can reasonably take. I can do it in looking at a long-term solution. I have committed myself and I will continue to commit myself to reducing the gap about which he spoke.

TOBACCO IMPORTS

Mr. Ramsay: I have a question for the Premier. In keeping with the decline of our domestic tobacco industry, which especially affects southwestern Ontario, does the Premier condone the importation of tobacco from South Africa and other countries by the South African-based tobacco company, Rothmans of Pall Mall?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am not aware of the specific facts raised by the member. In general terms, it is not something that would make me very happy. Perhaps he is aware of some information I am not aware of.

Mr. Ramsay: I will be glad to send over to the Premier some clippings about this that have been in the business section of the Globe and Mail recently. It is quite serious to the constituency of southwestern Ontario.

In the same vein, does the government condone the importation of tobacco that is grown with pesticides such as DDT and many other chemicals that are forbidden, and rightly so, to the producers of southwestern Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: We are obviously not in favour of trading with countries that take unfair advantage of us. Frankly, I am not up to speed on the issues raised by the member, but I will raise them with the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Ridden), and perhaps he can shed some light on them. I will be very happy to share with the member any information we have on that matter.

Mr. Speaker: The Minister of Labour has a response to a question asked previously.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Hon. Mr. Wrye: On May 13, the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel) asked a question concerning a worker who was killed by an asphalt truck while working at a construction site in Oshawa in November 1985.

During our investigation into the matter, an order under the construction regulation was issued to the contractor to provide a signalman to direct the operators of dump trucks. The ministry has no evidence that the order issued was ignored. No complaints about noncompliance with the ministry order were received in the district office. When the inspector made his next routine inspection, the project had been completed.

The honourable member also asked whether the ministry intended to prosecute in this matter. As he knows, it is the policy of the ministry not to reveal whether a prosecution will proceed until an information has been sworn.

On Tuesday, the member also asked about Campbell Red Lake and the Hens fatality. I can tell him only that the time constraints in terms of the decision on when to make a prosecution -- he raised those time constraints -- are from the date of the completion of the inspection, not from the date of the fatality.

Mr. Martel: Can the minister tell me what he means by all that gobbledegook? We read the material he provided for us and it said it took 13 weeks to complete an investigation. The fatality in Oshawa occurred in November 1985 and the one in Red Lake occurred in January, which was 18 weeks ago. Just how long does it take to complete an investigation to determine whether the ministry will proceed with a prosecution?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I appreciate that my friend has the policy, and I urge him to go back and have another look at it. He will appreciate that one of the reasons we have not put a time limit on the investigation is that we cannot. In some cases, an investigation may take only a day; in other cases, it might take a week, a month or longer. I assure the member it is not tied to an inquest, although on occasion it may be necessary to wait for an inquest result. I am told that happens only on rare occasions.

In the sense of a clock starting to tick, it begins to tick after the completion of the investigation. There are then rules to be followed. I have instructed my officials to keep me advised to make sure these matters are being expedited. When anything goes beyond the time limits the member spoke about the other day, I am advised not only when we have gone beyond but also why.

FREE TRADE

Mr. Brandt: I have a question for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. On a number of occasions, the minister has indicated that his government will protect the interests of Ontario in any free trade talks that take place between Canada and the United States. The minister has gone so far as to say that "if it requires daily or even hourly contact with what is going on in the negotiating room," he intends to do that. Since the minister made that comment and the trade talks started yesterday, will he give us an hourly update on what has occurred?

Hon. Mr. O'Neil: As the honourable member stated, we will keep a very close watch on these talks. People from my ministry and a representative of the Premier (Mr. Peterson) are in daily contact with the people who are conducting these trade talks in Ottawa.

Mr. Brandt: I can understand why the minister has some difficulty responding to my question. The Premier has gone on record indicating that he will fight for Ontario's interests, but he has also admitted that Ontario, as well as all other provinces, will be represented by Alberta's Premier Getty in talks with the federal government, not by himself, the minister or a civil servant. The Premier went on to say that he has no plans even to send an Ontario representative to the trade talks. Since no one is going to be there representing Ontario, who is going to speak up for this province when those very important trade talks get under way?

Hon. Mr. O'Neil: I do not know whether the member is aware that Premier Getty was appointed as the spokesman for all the Premiers across Canada. He is the one who will be speaking to the Prime Minister and the other officials concerning the role of the provinces in those discussions. As I mentioned previously, we have people from my ministry and from the Premier's office who are keeping a day-to-day watch on those talks and reporting back to us.

3:10 p.m.

CONTAMINANTS IN FOOD

Mrs. Grier: I have a question for the Minister of the Environment. The federal government has set a safe level of zero for dioxin in food, and yet the minister has told this House that his ministry is presuming to set acceptable levels for this unacceptable substance. Does the minister believe there is any safe threshold for dioxin in food?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The honourable member is correct in what she has said. What they are looking at is the total intake that comes from all sources; for instance, breathing, drinking water, fish -- which is an exemption under food -- and food. If the member remembers, Dr. Davies said we could not set one standard exclusive of others, because a human being has a total intake.

The member will agree, and I do not think anyone in the House would dissent, that all of us would like to see no dioxin. Dioxin is just the one genie that is out of the bottle now as a result of this. There are a lot of other contaminants of which I know the member is aware. That is why all of us are in agreement that we should be getting at the sources to get them out of there.

I do not want to put it outside Ontario alone, but I think it is a worldwide problem. If we look around the world, we would probably have to exclude most foods from our diets if we were to exclude the contaminants that are there, which is most unfortunate. I do not think any of us intend to do that; so what we are going to do, and what is important, is to get rid of the sources. We are in the process of doing it now, and I think this involves more than our jurisdiction.

Mrs. Grier: The Royal Society of Canada and many others have said there are no safe levels for any chemicals that act as initiators of carcinogens. Dioxin is a carcinogen. Is the minister developing standards that are safe or standards that reflect what he finds?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: In their eventual establishment of standards, the federal and provincial authorities in this country want to reflect those that would be safe rather than those that would be based on what one happens to find and then making a judgement of that as being too high or too low. That would be the most appropriate route to follow.

At the conference in Mackinac, Michigan, many people spoke to this issue. It is essential to get a consensus, not only on a Canadian basis but also an international basis, and one that deals with what the best health authorities, toxicologists and scientists have to say on establishing these levels.

Putting all that aside, I think they recognize and agree with Ontario's approach. Our delegation was certainly looked upon favourably there. We should be going after the sources and removing those so we do not have the contaminants in our food and drinking water.

PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED

Mr. Baetz: My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. Is he aware that a 27-year-old Ottawa man who is paralysed and confined to a wheelchair has been placed in an apartment that simply cannot accommodate a wheelchair? Consequently, Bernard Marleau has been unable to use his kitchen or his bathroom for the past five months.

Will the minister please explain why this obviously improper placement occurred in the first place? When will this man be moved to an apartment that can accommodate somebody who is totally confined to a wheelchair?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The member will know that we have an independent living program for people who are physically handicapped, providing not only living spaces that are appropriate for their needs but also attendant care. I cannot respond specifically to the issue the member has raised about why the man is in that situation. I can only presume he is on the waiting list for something more appropriate. I will most certainly look into it and get a more precise answer.

Mr. Baetz: It is clear that for the past five months, Bernard Marleau has not received even the basic essential services to which he is entitled by law, as the minister knows.

Will the minister also explain why it apparently took an article in the Ottawa Citizen before his ministry was sufficiently motivated even to begin to meet this client's basic human needs and rights?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: It is not the usual practice for my ministry to have to respond to a newspaper article. The services that are provided to physically and developmentally handicapped people across this province are very extensive. The member will remember in the most recent budget there was an allocation of $10 million specifically and strictly for services to the physically handicapped and an additional $5 million to my colleague the Minister of Housing (Mr. Curling) to provide housing specifically for the physically handicapped.

There has been very recent movement on the part of this government to provide for those kinds of services. There is no doubt that the total number of services available for all the people who need them has not yet reached the need, but we will do so.

I repeat, I will get back to the member on the specific case he brought to my attention.

INSURANCE RATES

Mr. Swart: The Minister of Financial Institutions will recall that in his report, Dr. Slater commended the efficiency of the public auto insurance plans in the western provinces and said they return a larger share of the premium dollar in claims payouts to motor vehicle owners. I wonder whether the minister is amazed, as we are, that Dr. Slater did not quantify that savings for the people of Ontario.

Does the minister not think that he and the public ought to know the detailed amount of the savings of the public alternative before he issues the crutches to prop up the present broken-down system?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: The member will know that Dr. Slater made a report. In it he canvassed all the insurance programs in Canada. He commented on them, and the member is right: He commented that in some of them there are some efficiencies. But he also asked -- I do not recall if it is in the report, but he said to me personally -- "At what cost?"

I have said this to the member before: Dr. Slater had all this information, and no one has ever questioned Dr. Slater's capabilities, yet after all his canvassing he made a recommendation, and he made it very strongly, that this government should not get into the automobile insurance business.

Mr. Swart: Research based on the figures of the superintendent of insurance for 1983, which are the most recent available, show that in that year, with the greater efficiency of a public system alone, Ontario motor vehicle owners would have saved $311 million by the application of the Manitoba plan and $412 million by the application of the British Columbia plan to this province.

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Swart: So that there can be no public doubt about the benefits of public plans -- and perhaps about the minister's bias against them -- will he authorize Woods Gordon or some similar independent firm to prepare a comparative update study similar to the one done in 1977, which proved so conclusively the benefits of a public plan? Will he do that before he rules out a public plan for Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: The member will also know that in the recommendations Dr. Slater made, he bemoaned the fact there was not a lot of statistical information available. One of his recommendations was that we should get some material so we can make our decisions based on good data. That is one of the recommendations that he has made and that we will act on.

WASTE DISPOSAL

Mr. McCague: Now that the Ministry of the Environment has decided to extend the waste disposal site in Tecumseh township, contrary to previous understandings, why does the minister not agree to assume any risk with well-water contamination and put the fears of the citizens to rest?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: That is a good question. It sounds sensible. I will be pleased to evaluate that option. The member, as the people in his area should know, has brought this matter to my attention previously by way of correspondence, and I am giving full consideration to the option he mentions. I am pleased to see him ask that question in the House.

3:20 p.m.

RENTAL HOUSING PROTECTION LEGISLATION

Mr. Allen: I have a question for the Minister of Municipal Affairs. In my riding, the new owner of the Longwood Road Apartments, with the improbable corporate name of Annie Laurie, has given notice to the tenants of this building that he wishes to have vacant possession to convert the apartment into a lodging house. He will shortly place those tenants in the street in a very difficult tenant situation we are all familiar with.

Will the minister tell us whether he approves of that kind of conversion taking place in the municipalities of Ontario and, if not, what he as minister can do to help tenants such as the Longwood Road tenants in their predicament?

Hon. Mr. Grandmaître: I remind the honourable member that at present the eviction notice received by these tenants is not applicable, for the simple reason that the owner or owners of the building have not applied directly to the municipality in which this eviction is taking place.

As for the second part of the question, this government and my ministry are committed to protecting the rental stock of this province, and we will continue to do so. To prove this, the Minister of Housing (Mr. Curling) introduced a bill which said very simply that all severances and conversions will now come directly to my office.

Mr. Allen: Inasmuch as this group of tenants is relying a good deal on at least the moral force of Bill 11, will the minister perhaps presume to act in this situation as though Bill 11 were now in place and send the appropriate message to the municipal council, whose licensing committee is now looking at the application? Will he act immediately with the Minister of Housing to plug that lodging house conversion loophole, which still sits out there and entices landlords to evade the provisions of the Landlord and Tenant Act?

Hon. Mr. Grandmaître: I will repeat the commitment of this government. It is our intention to protect rental housing, and we will do so. If amendments are needed, they will be brought forward.

In the meantime, to go back to the honourable gentleman's question, the application made to the municipality will have to come to me in order that a decision can be made. However, at present there is no application before me.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr. Turner: I have a question to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. The minister is undoubtedly aware that Friedrich Industries of Peterborough is a group of nine highly advanced technological industries that is now in receivership and facing auction within 10 days. What steps will the minister take today to prevent more than 200 skilled workers in these plants from being laid off as a sacrifice to government indifference?

Hon. Mr. O'Neil: The member is aware that I met with Mr. Friedrich approximately a week and a half ago. We had a good meeting, and I told him at that point just what we could do in the way of possible Ontario Development Corp. assistance to him. He asked for a very large sum of money to help him get straightened around. Of course, it would not be within the prerogative of ODC to give him that much money, but I did tell him we were prepared to help him if we could.

Mr. Turner: I too have met with Mr. Friedrich. I have met with the workers as well. I am sure the minister is aware that the layoffs affect the riding of his colleague the member for Victoria-Haliburton (Mr. Eakins) as well as my riding. While the minister is off globetrotting and making speeches, Ontario high-tech industries, which often require upfront capital, are dying on the vine. Will the minister act immediately to ensure that Friedrich Industries will not become a garage sale of Ontario high technology?

Hon. Mr. O'Neil: Sure, I do a little travelling, and I do a little speaking. I spent Friday a week ago in the riding of Peterborough. The member will be aware that a new industry was announced there on Tuesday of this week which created close to 300 jobs. We have also made recent announcements of two new factories in the city of Lindsay, and they will create hundreds of jobs.

I can only try to assure the member, because I know he asked the question in earnest, that within the limits of ODC we will do anything we possibly can. I believe Mr. Friedrich must get other funding from other places.

TENDERING PRACTICES

Mr. Philip: I have a question for the Minister of Housing. Can the minister confirm the validity of the information I provided to him only two days ago, that Ontario Housing Corp. signed a sweetheart contract without tender to a company known as Community Guardian for security services amounting to more than $24 million? OHC did no evaluative studies on the quality of the previous sweetheart contract, which was signed with the same company without any kind of tendering. The contract in that case was for more than $4 million.

What is the minister going to do to stop this kind of squandering of the taxpayers' money and to ensure that the tenants of Ontario Housing get adequate security without additional cost to the taxpayers?

Hon. Mr. Curling: It is my understanding that the contract was tendered. If that is not so, I will investigate and come back to the member on this matter.

Mr. Philip: I told the minister two days ago it was not tendered.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

PETITIONS

PHYSIOTHERAPY

Mr. Andrewes: I have a petition, which reads as follows:

"To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of the province of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario as follows:

"We, the undersigned, are deeply concerned that the government of Ontario discriminates in its Ontario health insurance plan fee schedules. OHIP pays 21 per cent more to physicians for physiotherapy treatment than it pays to physiotherapists. Most unsettling is the fact that OHIP's schedule of benefits makes it possible for an unqualified assistant in a physician's office to treat a patient.

"This is a very unfair and unjust situation and should be corrected by your government immediately."

GASOLINE PRICES

Mr. Sheppard: I have a petition signed by more than 100 people from the great riding of Northumberland.

"To the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of the province of Ontario:

"We request the government of Ontario to reduce gasoline tax by 1.1 cents a litre from 8.3 cents a litre to 7.2 cents a litre immediately and to phase in further reductions over three years to 5.4 cents a litre by 1989."

Mr. Speaker: Order. There are quite a number of private conversations taking place. They may be necessary, but they are unnecessarily noisy.

Mr. McCague: I have a petition from 142 people in Dufferin-Simcoe. It reads the same as the one just read by the member for Northumberland (Mr. Sheppard).

3:30 p.m.

ELECTORAL DISTRICTS REDISTRIBUTION

Mr. Jackson: I brought with me today a petition signed by 3,500 residents of the great riding of Burlington South specifically addressed to the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon).

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Do they not want their roads paved?

Mr. Jackson: It is not their roads. What they have said is:

"To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario, as follows:

"We strongly oppose the Ontario Electoral Boundaries Commission's proposed boundary change to have the southeast portion of the present electoral district of Burlington South, that area between Burloak Drive and Appleby Line and south of New Street to Lake Ontario, added to the proposed electoral district of Oakville South.

"We, therefore, respectfully petition for the inclusion of the designated southeast portion of Burlington as described above in a Burlington-based electoral district."

I have a second petition signed unanimously by the councillors of the city of Burlington strongly opposing the Electoral Boundaries Commission's recommendation to remove the Elizabeth Gardens community of southeast Burlington from its traditional Burlington South electoral district and to add it to the proposed electoral district of Oakville South. It also says the city of Burlington through its MPPs should petition the Legislative Assembly to keep Elizabeth Gardens in a Burlington-based electoral district.

I have a third, even shorter, petition, signed by every councillor of the regional municipality of Halton, objecting to the proposed amendments and endorsing the resolution of the council of the city of Burlington.

Mr. Speaker: I missed whether they were addressed to the Lieutenant Governor.

Mr. Jackson: All three.

NATUROPATHY

Mrs. Grier: I have a petition signed by 50 residents of this province petitioning this Legislature to guarantee naturopaths the right to practise their art and science to the fullest without prejudice or harassment.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr. Harris: I have a petition signed by four concerned citizens of this province. It reads as follows:

"To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned, express our grave concern over the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology (Mr. O'Neil) for his lack of concern for the laid-off workers of northern Ontario."

Mr. Speaker: Is that signed by the member as well?

Mr. Harris: No.

INTRODUCTION OF BILL

PARALEGAL AGENTS ACT

Mr. O'Connor moved first reading of Bill 42, An Act to regulate the Activities of Paralegal Agents.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

BUDGET DEBATE (CONTINUED)

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: I am very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in this budget debate. I urge the government to look at all the suggestions my colleagues and I in opposition are proposing and seriously consider implementing at least some of them.

Ontario's present economic strength is largely the result of the economic leadership of and responsible financial management by Progressive Conservative governments. Years of expenditure control in efficiently delivered programs have paid off. Ontario's economic strength is also the result of the decrease in energy prices. In 1986, Ontario's crude oil bill will be about $2.5 billion less than it was last year. These factors have greatly contributed to the $2.26-billion revenue windfall with which the government finds itself.

Instead of spending at almost twice the rate of inflation, the government should be taking advantage of the opportunity presented by current economic conditions. It should be reducing the deficit and eliminating the needless spending to service the debt. In doing so, more funds would be available in the future to create and support social programs. Also, further funds would be available for these social programs if the government would allocate the $300 million of tax revenue which remains unaccounted for in this budget.

With the tax revenue, the government has many opportunities to improve and implement programs for the benefit of the people of this province. These opportunities were missed in the throne speech and now they are being missed in the budget.

I would like to make a few suggestions to the government on how it can allocate this revenue. A major theme of the budget and of the throne speech was the future industrial development of this province. I wholeheartedly support this commitment, as it is one the former Progressive Conservative government put forth through its Board of Industrial Leadership and Development and Enterprise Ontario programs and through its corporate tax exemptions for qualified small business.

I was saddened to see that the budget and the speech from the throne offered little to assist the many municipalities of rural Ontario where there is a very serious lack of industrial and commercial development. For that reason, I would like to remind the House of a resolution on the subject of an industrial strategy for rural municipalities which I tabled and which we debated in this House in November, a resolution that received the unanimous support of all members of this Legislature. Mr. Speaker, I believe you had an opportunity to speak in support of that resolution.

There are very serious limitations placed on our smaller rural municipalities in their ability to stimulate industrial growth. The government of Ontario should develop and implement an industrial strategy that would provide these municipalities with the much-needed expertise and financial resources necessary to enhance their position in this competitive field. This would result in three things: (1) give added strength to rural communities trying to attract the kind of industry they feel is appropriate for their needs, (2) enable newly created wealth to be better distributed throughout the province and (3) have the overall effect of strengthening Ontario's economy.

The spreading of growth throughout Ontario will provide great incentives for the creation of small business. Over the last five years, small businesses have created more than 90 per cent of the net new jobs in our economy and currently provide more than 50 per cent of private sector employment in our province. This industrial strategy could provide both economic and social benefits to Ontario.

As an example to support my case for an industrial strategy for rural Ontario, I might use the farmers-in-transition program the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Ridden) announced several months ago. FIT assists farmers to leave agriculture. It suggests that farmers should receive assistance, a relocation grant, on-the-job training, living allowance during institutional education, cash transition grants and wage subsidy. It supports farmers when they have to leave their land because they cannot obtain a satisfactory living on the agricultural land that they farm.

3:40 p.m.

If industry were located in small rural communities, these people might be able to stay on their land. In a larger family, a couple of the members of the family could work in industry to help supplement the farm income and allow the farm to stay in existence. Even if they could not afford to farm the land at present, they could maybe maintain their home, rent the farm land and work in industry for a period of four, five or six years, whatever is necessary, until the agricultural economy turns around and they are able to come back to the farm and start their operations again.

If they relocate, it will likely mean they will relocate in one of the larger communities such as Toronto. Once they move to Toronto or to another city, they will not return to the farms and they will be lost to agriculture for ever. If industry were in these rural communities, they would have that option. We should encourage industrial growth in rural Ontario to help preserve our farmers and farm land.

The agricultural sector is a vital one and is one of the most important industries in my riding of Wellington-Dufferin-Peel. It should be of great concern to the government as well, but the government has abandoned the farmers and there is no financial reform to speak of in the budget.

I do applaud the government for increasing the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food by 13.3 per cent and for continuing financial assistance for the Ontario family farm interest rate reduction program, the farm operating credit assistance program and the beginning farmer assistance program. These are three good programs.

I feel, however, the government should have committed more funds to agriculture, because the farming community is encountering extremely serious economic problems this year. Farmers are not only faced with increased production costs, but also must contend with low commodity prices and depressed farm incomes. Unfortunately, farmers cannot resort to strike action to resolve their economic problems.

Regardless of the increase in the budget, since this government took over, our farmers have fallen behind in the face of competition from the farmers of other provinces and American farmers, whose governments are extremely committed to agriculture. Since July 1985, Alberta has introduced more than $800 million in new agricultural programs and a $2-billion interest subsidization program. Saskatchewan has introduced a $1.2-billion interest subsidization program for operating loans for spring seeding, plus a lucrative hog program, giving each hog farmer, on average, $11,000 per year.

The United States farm bill subsidies will be almost $100 billion. The provisions of this bill are designed to protect US farm incomes by means of so-called deficiency payments. Since American farmers are guaranteed a good price from Washington, they will sell more grain on the world market, which will cause a decline in world grain price. Canada will inevitably suffer.

It has been forecast that wide-ranging changes in US agricultural policy will have a serious impact on Canadian farm incomes over the next few years. The US farm bill will lower the income of Canadian farmers by 10 per cent, which will cause extreme financial stress for Canadian farmers already suffering in a very serious year. Because Ontario produces 75 per cent of the corn grown in Canada, this bill will have a devastating effect on our farmers.

The potential impact of the bill must be minimized and the Minister of Agriculture and Food has the responsibility of defending our Ontario farmers during this agricultural war between the American and European markets.

I am glad to see the Minister of Agriculture and Food and the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Grandmaître) are following up on a process to preserve our prime agricultural land. That process was initiated by the previous Progressive Conservative government. This Liberal government, through its introduction of the new food land preservation policy, is following suit. However, I am afraid the Minister of Agriculture and Food has taken his eagerness a step too far to the detriment of farmers and local municipalities.

There are many areas of this policy that are in need of further clarification. There are also two main areas of the food land preservation policy that are creating much anxiety in my riding and causing me a lot of concern. They are severances and the 10-year time limit in planning.

The government's callousness towards farmers is evident in its restriction on severances for retiring farmers. The government must not override the property rights of farmers in its attempt to preserve prime farm land. This objective can be achieved without unduly encroaching upon the property rights of family farmers. Most rural Ontarians feel the present land severance committees are operating quite satisfactorily, but are concerned that should the new food land preservation policy be implemented, their local rights will be taken over by bureaucrats at Queen's Park, bureaucrats who have no knowledge of local issues and concerns.

Furthermore, I believe the 10-year time limit set for the planning of future urban expansion should be reconsidered. This policy also has the effect of severely restricting the autonomy of local councils. Many of my municipal councils have expressed concern over the 10-year time limit as it does not allow sufficient time for planning future growth or accommodating changes in the designation of their official plans. These municipalities also want to attract industry, but industrial growth cannot be planned in a 10-year time frame because it is an ongoing process.

Both the severance restrictions and the time limit are indicative of the centralization of power at Queen's Park under the new Liberal government, headed primarily by the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon). Municipalities are worrying that, at this rate, decisions could be made at Queen's Park that would force them into stagnation and situations of no growth. I fully support my local municipal councils in their attempts to retain their local autonomy.

A matter which I would like to deal with is that of waste disposal and resource recovery. This issue has been brought to my attention in my riding, and is a matter about which all members should be aware and sensitive. Garbage is worth its weight in energy. It can heat our buildings. It can fuel our giant electric generators. It can operate heavy industrial machinery. However, we are not using this valuable resource because we are still too reluctant to invest in the development and building of the equipment needed to recycle waste generated by households, farms and industry.

A new trend in municipal waste disposal, energy-from-waste plants, is under consideration by many Canadian private firms and municipalities. One such plant is currently under construction at Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario. The Victoria Hospital energy-from-waste facility will supply heat and electricity to the hospital complex through the burning of garbage from the London area.

The plant will bring in more money than it is costing within three to five years of startup. With the installation of this facility it is estimated the hospital will save approximately $1 million per year through tipping fees and the elimination of purchasing energy for heating and electricity. The city of London also benefits in that it saves on the cost of hauling garbage to distant sites.

This might be extremely important to you, Mr. Speaker, and for your county of Oxford, as it has experienced difficulty obtaining a sanitary landfill site. The highest saving to the city of London comes from the reduction of landfill site requirements. Landfill sites are a thing of the past. They are glorified dumps that cause fear of contamination and loss of property values for the nearby residents. Technology has now developed, so that we no longer have to rely on so-called sanitary landfill sites.

3:50 p.m.

In theory, incinerators could reduce the demand for garbage dumps by 90 per cent. In my riding, both the county of Wellington and the town of Caledon are seriously looking at energy-from-waste facilities. For the past several years, Caledon has been trying to persuade the provincial and federal governments to assist in the establishment of these facilities, as they would solve the waste disposal problems being encountered.

I might just mention that the Minister of Energy (Mr. Kerrio) has agreed to meet with the people of Caledon and Wellington to see whether he can help solve the problem; so I give that minister credit. The Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) has not been so supportive.

In Wellington county, the existing waste management system cannot serve the county's needs for very many more years. The waste management plan for the county of Wellington and the city of Guelph concluded that the preferred option of waste control for these areas in the next 25 years is an energy-from-waste facility to be located at the University of Guelph. About 200 tons of city and county garbage could be incinerated at the plant each day to produce steam that could be used for heating in the winter and electricity for air-conditioning in the summer.

Because of the instability of the energy sector, this is an economically viable solution. Canadians throw away 16 million tons of garbage annually. One ton of garbage can produce an amount of energy equivalent to that of one barrel of oil. This means that Canada is foregoing the opportunity to produce an amount of energy equivalent to that provided by 16 million barrels of oil annually.

There are no revenues from burying garbage. An energy-from-waste plant is the best way to go. It has been tested and proved in communities in Europe, Japan and the United States, where it has become a system of choice. Energy recovery will go a long way to contributing to the solution of municipal waste disposal problems and at the same time help to conserve nonrenewable resources. The provincial government will have to play a more effective leadership role if Ontario is ever going to profit from this energy source.

Finally, the government should subsidize capital costs of projects that might not be financially attractive to private industry or local governments, similar to the way the former Progressive Conservative government pledged $6.9 million towards an energy-from-waste facility at Victoria Hospital in London.

This suggestion is for the Treasurer, who has now disappeared. I would like to suggest to him that part of the government's $1-billion technology fund, if allocated to refining energy-from-waste technology and promoting such facilities throughout the province, could be used very handily in this program. By further developing these technologies, Ontario could become a world leader in this area. Therefore, the government should develop a market strategy for these environmental technologies, as there is a secure supply of waste and there is a long-term demand for the recovered energy. Agricultural land is no longer available for waste disposal in many parts of Ontario. This is the kind of initiative that could demonstrate how industry and government can work together effectively.

I regret the budget did not adequately address the topics I have raised, nor did it address a few others I would like to touch upon briefly in conclusion. While the $850-million allocation to capital funding for hospitals sounds commendable, when spread out over several years it amounts, at the most, to $150 million a year, which is really not much more than the previous government allocated in past years. It also does not address the very pressing need for operating grants for hospitals, which will be held to four per cent.

In my opinion, the budget also neglects the need for more nursing home beds to alleviate the overcrowding in hospitals. It just does not make economic sense to me that we can spend $40 for a nursing home bed and yet it costs $400 to $500 for a hospital bed to keep the same people. I am not suggesting that if there is a medical problem they should not be in the hospital; but many of our seniors are kept in hospitals because there is no space available in nursing home beds. At 10 times the cost, it is not sensible.

Furthermore, with savings of $2.5 billion in Ontario's crude oil bill in 1986, I feel the Treasurer and the government could have demonstrated some compassion for the consumer by substantially reducing the gas tax. On budget day, I tabled a petition in the House on behalf of many of my constituents requesting the government to consider reducing the very high gas taxes in existence at this time.

Further to the gas tax, on Thursday, May 15, my colleague the member for Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry (Mr. Villeneuve) debated a resolution calling on the government and the Treasurer to remove the tax of 8.3 cents per litre on gasoline and 9.9 cents per litre on diesel fuel on all farm-licensed, commercial vehicles. This Legislature voted 50 to 10 in favour of my colleague's resolution. One of the 10 to vote against the motion to help farmers was the Treasurer himself. Not only did he vote to make agriculture pay the full cost of road tax, but he also reinstated the seven per cent tax on heavy trucks. All farm produce goes to market by truck. Once more, farmers have been forgotten by this government.

In the budget, which was dressed up in a pretty red cover, tourism was briefly mentioned. A few dollars were allocated to a few programs of an advertising nature. For several years, I have advocated a farm vacation program. There is no mention of this program. In my opinion, as I mentioned to the Minister of Agriculture and Food, the program is lost between two ministries. The Minister of Agriculture and Food is supposed to look after the program; yet, to my mind, it belongs in the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation. The Minister of Agriculture and Food has enough problems in his field without becoming involved in a tourism project.

I am disappointed that the Minister of Tourism and Recreation (Mr. Eakins) has not seen fit to request the transfer of this program to his ministry. For the past several years, the minister has been one of the most supportive members in this House for a farm vacation program. I hope the government will consider transferring it to its rightful place and get on with what could be an extremely important tourist attraction for this province.

It is very sad to think that Prince Edward Island, the population of which is one fiftieth that of Ontario, has more farm vacation homes than does this province. I hope the minister will give consideration to this. I have offered my services to travel to Prince Edward Island and other areas to investigate the feasibility of these programs. I hope the member for London North (Mr. Van Horne) will convey this information to the two ministers.

On a personal note, I want to express my disappointment with the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. I say ministry because I am not sure the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Fulton) is knowledgeable about all the events that unfold in his ministry. Apparently, the Treasurer has not allocated MTC enough money in this last budget and this ministry has started to slash services to our citizens.

4 p.m.

The ministry has refused to continue to operate a motor vehicle licence issuing office in one of my communities, the village of Erin in Wellington county. MTC claims this office is underutilized and not busy enough. The agent did not make enough money. However, it provided a service for thousands of my constituents, many of them seniors and many of them commuters who have difficulty with the nine-to-five hours of most of the adjacent licence offices.

The office in Erin is needed, and the business community has circulated petitions requesting the ministry to reopen this motor vehicle licence issuing office in Erin. I fully support their requests and intend to table their petitions in this Legislature this coming week. I understand there are a couple of thousand signatures showing support for the office if it is reopened.

I hope the Liberal government will continue to provide these much-needed services to rural Ontario, as the former Progressive Conservative government had done for so many years. Everyone does not live in large urban centres. We in rural Ontario surely can expect equal services, perhaps no more, but certainly no less.

In conclusion, I would like to describe the Treasurer's budget as a painless, middle-of-the-road document. The Treasurer gave the consumers a tax break and a mortgaged future.

Ms. Gigantes: I welcome this opportunity to use a few minutes of the time of the House to lay out some of my concerns as they arise when I read the budget. They are concerns that relate very distinctly to the last year of government in Ontario. We have had a year that gave us legislative promise, a mini-budget last fall, or a budget statement as the Treasurer called it, a throne speech for the new spring session and now a new budget for fiscal 1986-87.

I raise concerns at this stage, not because I am unfamiliar with the due process that one might suffer through as an elected member. I am not a starry-eyed novice, expecting a rush of new ideas to sweep the world when government changes hands. I was not born yesterday and I was not sent to voluntary confinement at this place only recently.

I do not feel disillusioned with our progress over the last year because, after all, if I had ever felt the Liberal Party was a vehicle for real reform, I could have chosen to become a Liberal. I never did, never have and never will. Still and all, if one measures this government by what the Liberals claim as their Liberal standards, this government is showing the signs of failure.

It is an interesting kind of failure; at least, I find it interesting because I have never watched a Liberal government fail close up, even though Ottawa is home. Like others in Ottawa, I have seen Liberal failures before, but never so intimately. It is in the nature of my work and my interest to observe only Conservative failure at close range until this past year. The most interesting part of what we have seen in the last year is that Liberal failures look very much the same as Conservative failures the closer one gets to see them.

I want to speak briefly about three areas of faded, faltering and failing Liberal promise: housing policy, fairness for women and children, and social policy as it relates to incomes.

First, let me mention two very unabstract program areas which this Liberal government has very specifically and deliberately failed to address. Both are programs for which the policy base was created before I was first elected to this Legislature back in 1975. The ideas for the policies go back even further in time. They were ideas, like so many of the ones that we are struggling with still in this Legislature, that were generated first in the 1960s. They became part of political and bureaucratic lingo in the early 1970s, and in many other jurisdictions they found reality in the 1970s.

Like so many of the notions that still seem to require enormous study and debate here in Ontario, they are old hat in the more progressive political jurisdictions. I am talking here about what we call our assistive devices program and our integrated homemaker and attendant care programs. They are both in disgusting shape. In Ontario, because of the state they are in, they barely qualify to be called programs. There is simply no excuse for the shape they are in.

It is kind of boring these days to hark back to Conservative promises in this province, but on some items there is just no avoiding it. Members do not need to be reminded of the excruciating and inexcusable delay which the Conservative government of Mr. Davis used in first implementing a peewee assistive devices program and how that government then announced yearly reviews promising to deliver a real, major league assistive devices program. That was a cruel process. Everyone with an ounce or a gram of common sense knows that most people who use assistive devices are not under the age of 18 and not under the age of 21. Most people who have to use assistive devices are older people, and a great many of them need assistive devices because they have suffered work-related injuries or diseases that have crippled their ability to earn income.

In Ontario, in May 1985, we were still making those people pay for their own assistive devices. One year later, under this new Liberal government, we are still making them pay for their own assistive devices. There is a new review going on with a new promise to develop a comprehensive program. I will not quote the fiery comments of the Liberals in former days, arguing for a real assistive devices program in the bad old days before May 2, 1985. It would be boring to hear those quotes again and it would be distressing.

I want to say a word on the integrated homemaker program and attendant care services, the services that would help elderly and handicapped people to live independent lives outside institutions in Ontario. The pattern we have seen in the assistive devices program is repeated in the so-called integrated homemaker program. It is so similar it hardly bears description. Just like the pilot program of assistive devices assistance for an age-limited group of Ontario citizens, we now have a pilot program of integrated homemaker services for a geographically limited group of Ontario citizens.

After years of Conservative promises and Liberal fiery demands, we now have what is called an integrated homemaker service in six communities of this province. In spite of the fact that now even the Conservative Party is giving fiery speeches about the inequity, stupidity and insincerity of the Ontario government's refusal to put a real assistive devices program and a real integrated homemaker program in place once and for all, not one cent was set aside for either of these programs in last week's budget; as Kate Smith used to say, "Not one lousy dime." I will not give full throat to my irritation because I know my sentiments have been registered.

I now turn to three major areas I want to mention. The first is housing policy. In the full year the Liberals have had to develop and implement a firm housing policy, they have not really understood either the urgency of the housing problem or what they have to do to get a housing policy in place that will effectively tackle that problem.

Here is the essence of the problem. Since the time back in 1978 when the member for Ottawa South (Mr. Bennett) became Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs right up to May 2, 1985, when the Liberals were part of the transformation of the political history of this province, the policy of the Ontario government was not to have a housing policy. For close to seven years, the attitude of the Conservatives was to avert their eyes while untrammelled market forces marauded the housing market, tramping all over a rent review system which did not even have the minimal protection that a rent registry would have provided.

When one tenant household moved and new tenants signed a lease, the new tenants were not informed about the previous rent and did not know if, as has been the normal pattern, the new rent they were being charged was illegal. There has been no rent registry to inform them, and the result is a rent review system which is no longer a real system. It merely floats on top of the waves of a tide of illegal rents.

4:10 p.m.

For seven years, from 1978 to 1985, affordable rental units were being removed from the rental market by landlords who found an amazing array of ways to evade rent review. Tenant households in affordable rental units were subjected to what I call economic eviction. They have had their apartments demolished, renovated to higher rent levels, converted to offices, converted to apartment hotels and converted to high-priced rooms. They have had their row housing units severed and sold from under them.

They have been swept out of homes they could afford by a tide of economic evictions, and in case after case they have been forced to move right out of the neighbourhoods that had been theirs and where they and their families had had access to schools, recreation facilities, good bus service and all the physical and service infrastructure that municipalities have had to provide. In case after case, they have had to move right out of urban centres and far out to the outer reaches of suburbia to find accommodations. They have had to move to areas where school services are not sufficient for the hundreds of refugee families -- and they are economic refugees -- where there are not recreation facilities or shopping facilities nearby and where public transit service is very limited.

What does this mean for our cities? It means, first of all, the costly schools, recreation facilities and public transit services we have built into our urban core areas are now falling into disuse, as childless upper-income households, young or old, have little need for the infrastructure we have built up so carefully in downtown areas. It also means the public will now be asked to pay for the installation of new services in the outer reaches of suburbia. There is a public financial cost for all this private pillage and profit in the rental housing market. We are allowing the public purse to be raided when we allow private profit rampage in the rental housing market.

The other price we pay is a social cost. We are allowing our downtown areas to become enclaves of the rich. The buildings that have traditionally been the homes of low- and middle-income households are now being demolished to provide upper-income homes or are being converted to offices, apartment hotels or chichi, expensive apartments. Only the well-off will be able to live in downtowns around Ontario. The social implications of that are profound, they are unhappy and they will be very expensive socially if we allow them to continue.

My point is that the Liberals understand the need for one part of the equation of good housing policy, and that is the production side. Ottawa-Carleton, for example, will be getting up to 743 nonprofit units through the federal-provincial program announced a few weeks back. That is great; it will help ease the housing crisis in Ottawa; but it will not make up for the thousands of affordable rental units that have been haemorrhaging from the private rental market in the last few years. We are losing hundreds of affordable rental units each year in the Ottawa market, and a year after the Liberals said they would stop the haemorrhage, we are still losing them.

We do not have legislation in place that will stop the erosion of the affordable rental stock, and the legislation that has been tabled is not going to do the job. Not only have the Liberals failed to implement an effective housing policy, they have failed to develop an effective housing policy. Bill 78 is not good enough; Bill 11 is not good enough; and the policy urgings of the Minister of Municipal Affairs to municipalities are not good enough. The sum is even less than the parts, because the Liberals have not developed a policy that covers the whole housing problem.

My other two concerns are closely linked to the urgent question of affordable housing. The largest group of poor people in this province are poor women and their poor children, and only one in five of the households composed of poor women with children in Ontario can find assisted housing. That is 20 per cent of those households that get assisted housing. The rest, 80 per cent of poor households led by women with children, either crowd themselves and their children into the homes of friends or relatives, or they struggle out to battle for housing in a private market that has a dwindling number of affordable rental units.

It is crazy and it is almost criminal. What is going to happen to the thousands of children if their mothers break down? It is happening. What will happen to this province as those thousands of children drop out of school because they have been too hungry, tired and sick and because they have been transferred from school to school and from neighbourhood to neighbourhood? Why are we allowing this to happen?

Even when women are able to find paid work they cannot provide housing, food, clothing and a sense of security for their children. There are two million women doing paid work in Ontario. Forty per cent of them are living without a spouse and 25 per cent have only part-time work. A large proportion of working women are in the category we call the working poor. They get paid the minimum wage of $4.50 an hour or just above the minimum wage. They and their families live below what we call the poverty line. We use those two expressions, "the poverty line" and "the working poor," to describe the fact that in 1986, in Ontario, 286,000 families did not have enough money to pay for housing, food and general expenses.

The budget did not help the single mother with two kids who earns just enough to meet the poverty line. She pays $1,200 in taxes to the federal government, about which I will not comment. She pays $625 in taxes to the Ontario government. That is personal income tax. She pays more than $700 in Ontario health insurance plan premiums for herself and her children.

One has to ask what is going on here. Why are we doing this? Why are we asking people who cannot house, feed and provide a stable economic framework for their children to pay more than $1,300 of their meagre family incomes to the general revenues in Ontario? The total amount they pay means only $262 million to the provincial budget, where the Treasurer himself confessed he had lots of room for manoeuvre. That is $262 million out of a budget of $30 billion. That $262 million means financial despair to tens of thousands of families in this province.

The Treasurer had the money to increase family benefits assistance payments to the poverty line in this budget. He had the money to lift income taxes and OHIP premiums off the financial burden carried by the working poor. He did not do it. It is a rotten shame and a grave social mistake to continue the unthinking and unfeeling patterns of tax policies that let the rich get richer while more and more people in this province struggle in poverty, while children in this province learn hunger, defeat and despair.

The Liberals still talk about reform, but there are not the fiery speeches we used to hear from the Liberals in the past. There are the old tired phrases we heard from the previous government, which are used to camouflage the harsh reality of fiscal policy. From time to time, the Liberals have tried to suggest that New Democratic Party economic policy is a simple-minded slogan that says, "Make the rich pay." The members have heard the full outline of our economic proposals for this budget; so they know that fairness in tax policy is a strong part of NDP economic policy, a major part of our policy but not all of our policy.

As we have seen in the three provinces that have benefited from time to time from NDP economic policy, NDP policy is based on a very mature and capable grasp of how a healthy economy can be nurtured, developed and shared. We are proud to speak for real reform. The Liberals, like the Conservatives who proceeded them, should be ashamed to speak for reform and act for the economic status quo. We need to start counting people in when we address economic issues in Ontario, and the time to start is now.

4:20 p.m.

Mr. Speaker: Are there any questions or comments?

Hon. Mr. Nixon: I would like to make a brief comment. I have a high regard for the honourable member's opinions. It is not often that she is so unfair in her approach to something as important as the budget. Perhaps I am a little too sensitive to the charge she would levy that the Treasurer and government would talk one way about improving the lot of the less fortunate in the province and then act in another.

The member knows we have added a three per cent surtax to incomes over $50,000, at the same time as strengthening the Ontario tax reduction program for the second time. She might say, and properly so, that the tax reduction program is still inadequate, but at least we have strengthened it twice.

At the same time, we are allocating an additional $25 million for additional shelter subsidies, which will help 50,000 low-income families. We are adding $32 million to the child care budget, plus a statement of policy even she would support for a while. In community support services, we have $13.5 million for additional services for seniors, $10 million more for the disabled, $5 million more for housing for the disabled and $17 million for the developmentally handicapped.

We have improved OHIP premium assistance at a cost of an additional $20 million. Once again, it is insufficient but a substantial improvement. These are just some of the things I have been able to draw off my crib sheet that leaped to my attention. It is not fair for her or her colleagues to indicate the government does not have a sensitive response to the needs of those less fortunate in the community.

Mr. Speaker: Do any other members have any comments or questions? The member for Ottawa Centre has up to two minutes.

Ms. Gigantes: I appreciate the comments of the Treasurer. It is my personal belief that if he had his way, we might have seen a great deal more progress and a great deal more progressive policy in the budget than we have seen. I am not at all convinced the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney), the Minister of Housing (Mr. Curling), the Premier (Mr. Peterson) or his other colleagues have any kind of sensitivity compared to that of the Treasurer. Indeed, I believe he personally would like to do more.

He and his colleagues have failed to do more. To take the burden of provincial taxes and OHIP premiums off the working poor of Ontario, $262 million has been allocated. There are 100,000 families in Ontario receiving no relief, 50,000 of whom will get a little shelter allowance assistance. It was a small step to take. What we have seen is a minor little ripple; we have not seen a step forward.

Mr. Treleaven: These excellent speeches should be listened to by more members. I do not believe a quorum is present.

Mr. Speaker ordered the bells rung.

4:25 p.m.

Mr. Speaker: A quorum is now present.

Mr. Breaugh: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: Is it in order for the Deputy Speaker, who was just sitting in the chair but could not be aware that there was not a quorum in here, to leave the chair, come down to his seat over here and finally recover his vision enough to identify that there are not enough members sitting?

Mr. Speaker: In response to the honourable member, I believe it is in order for any member other than the Speaker to request a quorum.

Mr. Callahan: I listened to my colleague from the third party with reference to her comments about the sensitivity and the desire on the part of this government to be sensitive and to show initiative in solving the economic problems that exist for many Ontarians. I suggest that for the first time in the history of this province a particular government has dealt with it in a sensitive fashion in terms of what we are looking at for the future, not what is good for the next election or for the particular day, but what is good for an overall plan of dealing with these problems.

I do not think any member in this House can attack or comment on the way the Minister of community and Social Services has cared and been concerned about what is happening in this province in terms of those people who do not have as much as you and I do. What is happening is that we are trying to find the long-term solution, not the short-term solution.

The member is saying that the parsimonious Treasurer should address all those issues in one fell swoop. That would be very popular. It would be something the member would applaud. I am sure it would make the headlines for about three days, but that is not the purpose of this government. The purpose of this government is to serve the needs of this province and to look after the needs of this province in a sensitive fashion, to try to plan in a different fashion than occurred with the official opposition in those days when it skulked the halls of power worrying about what the next Decima poll might say with reference to the way it was caring about the bag lady on the street, the people who were on welfare and the children who had no chance of getting out of the predicament they were in.

This budget addresses innovation. It addresses the future for the children of this province. It does not address just the immediate needs for the purposes of being popular. Although it would have been fine for the Treasurer to have taken all the cookies out of the cookie jar and said, "Here it is; here is what we are going to do," that would have been dishonest. The Treasurer has addressed the needs that he sees now. I am sure that as budgets are presented by this Liberal government over the next 42 years, members will see all this unfold in a very sensitive and well-planned fashion.

Ms. Gigantes: Since the member referred to comments I made earlier, I point out to him that one cannot eat promises. It does not help poor kids to know there are promises from a Liberal government. They have to have food and housing and they have to be able to stay put in one school.

4:30 p.m.

Mrs. Marland: The member for Brampton (Mr. Callahan) is probably due an Academy Award when he stands and pleads and talks about children's needs. It is very interesting to have any member of the Liberal government stand up and talk about children's needs when the government has done what it has done with Bill 94 in terms of real children's needs.

I am talking again, as I mentioned yesterday, about the children in this province who require cranio-facial surgery. There is one doctor in Canada and two in the United States who are capable of rebuilding these children's faces, to use their own parents' words, from ugly to something that they can survive for the rest of their lives.

The fact that Bill 94 has sent Dr. Ian Munro to the United States is a tragedy for these families, because while the government has said it will perhaps pay the medical expenses -- it is going to decide; the government is going to evaluate whether there is someone still capable of that kind of surgery in this city -- in the meantime, those children, who will need the surgery at least into their teen-age years, will be deprived of the opportunity at least to have a face.

When the member for Brampton talks about children's needs, he might look very closely at the budget, which allocates no money whatsoever for women's shelters for families that are victims of violence in his own region, where we have one shelter for battered wives and children. There is no money in the budget for additional shelters for those women.

Mr. South: I have just a very brief remark. In regard to the honourable member's comment that only the well-off will be allowed to live downtown, that is a punishment they deserve. Anyone who wants to live downtown, good luck to him.

Mr. Ashe: I have to respond very briefly to the tirade, albeit delivered in a very appropriate way, by the member for Brampton. When I listened to the diatribe he was putting out about the past government and about what happened before compared to what is happening now, I once again frankly felt embarrassed.

The honourable member made references to the good government of the last 42 years and to a constituency that was so well and honourably represented until fairly recently, and he was able to come up with that kind of diatribe without even knowing what happened in the so-called hallowed halls of power, to paraphrase his words. I really felt embarrassed for him to know that this could come from a member who did not have a clue about what went on here and what was done here, not only by the member who represented that area and led this great province but also by the government that sat across there until May of last year.

Mr. Callahan: I am glad to see that one of those guys likes Bill, because he can tell that to the people in emergency who wait five hours.

Mr. Speaker: Does the member for Brampton wish to respond for up to two minutes, rather than by way of interjection?

Mr. Callahan: Rather than by way of interjection: I have to say to the honourable member that, if he wished to talk to the people of my riding, who have to wait five or six hours in emergency in Peel Memorial Hospital, I am sure they would tell him we were not necessarily unrepresented. A Premier representing a riding has always been a difficulty. Because he is the head of the cabinet, he probably finds it difficult to ask for things for his own riding; so there is really a negative side to being the Premier and having to ask for those things.

During the 42 years the Conservative government was in power, I saw Brampton have tremendous growth without addressing the needs of hospital services, courthouse facilities, transportation -- name them, they are there, if the member wants to come out and see total chaos because of the growth and the inability of the former government to address those issues. I am sure this sensitive Liberal government will address those issues in a very direct way.

That is one of the things about the budget that really excites me. We do not run around, as ministers of the former government used to do, asking: "Would you like another arena? Would you like your roof repaired, even though you do not need it repaired? Would you like a Wintario grant for this, that and the other thing?"

We have now taken those funds and plugged them into hospitals, which are essential. The Treasurer has allocated $850 million for hospitals in this province. No longer are we going to get the promise, "We will put you through the district health council, and five or 10 years down the line you will get your hospital." We are saying all of that will occur within five years, and the people of this province and the people of the fine city of Brampton will get their hospital. They will get their day.

Mr. Speaker: The member's time has expired.

Mr. Sheppard: I am delighted to rise and participate in the debate of the May 1986 economic and budgetary policies of the government. I must make a comment in regard to the member for Brantford.

Mr. Gillies: Brampton, please.

Mr. Sheppard: I mean the member for Brampton.

Nevertheless, if the Liberal government is going to do all of these things in the next five years, it had better carry out some of the promises it made in the last 11 months. Goodness gracious, they are so far behind in those promises, they may never catch up in the next five years. Nevertheless, we will wait and see.

When the Treasurer presented his maiden budget last October, I sympathized with him over his difficult task. After all, he was still getting used to the new position. Almost one year has gone by, however, and I expected much more from this year's budget. I was disappointed.

At first glance, it appeared that the budget did not really affect the average individual. Upon further study, the budget does not affect the average individual, but it does not do much for him either. Quite frankly, I was hoping this budget would deliver more in incentives and initiatives than the last budget did. Furthermore, I was hoping, as I am sure most people in Ontario were, to see the realization of the many campaign promises made in 1985 that have yet to be fulfilled.

The Treasurer allocated $26 million this year for the 10,000 subsidized day care spaces that were promised in the last budget but have yet to be created. This amount will not even begin to cover the commitment that was made last October. What is even more pathetic is the fact that a mere $6 million was allocated to cover what the Treasurer has termed a pressing problem, including capital expansion with respect to child care.

The Ontario Coalition for Better Daycare informs us that the government could probably cover one of three areas with the mere $6 million allocated. It could reduce the cost of Ontario's 80,315 licensed day care spaces by 28 cents a day. The $6 million could provide capital costs to set up 24 new day care centres, each with a capacity of 50 spaces. That could cover about 1,200 children or, in other words, a municipality the size of Port Hope in my riding of Northumberland, with a population of approximately 12,000.

Last but not least, the $6 million could raise the salaries of the 10,000 Ontario day care workers by a little over $11 a day. As members know, the average wage at present is about $13,200 a year. I cannot possibly imagine which of these areas the Treasurer would call pressing; they all sound pressing to me and to the people of my riding.

If memory serves me correctly, in the 1985 election campaign the Liberals promised to reform the day care system in Ontario. I cannot agree more that day care is an issue that deserves priority attention at present. It is disturbing to note, however, that the budget lacks any kind of comprehensive strategy or policy direction for child care. Not one word was spoken with respect to rural day care. Furthermore, the Liberals totally ignored the thousands of middle-income families who cannot afford the high cost of day care and who are not eligible for subsidy.

Despite the fact that the Treasurer says he is aware of the plight of many Ontario farmers, we would never know it judging by this budget.

4:40 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Expenditures are up 20 per cent in one year.

Mr. Sheppard: It is 13 per cent. There is an increase of 13.3 per cent in the overall agriculture budget for 1986-87, but that is still a far cry from the September 1984 promise made by the Treasurer himself that a Liberal administration would double its commitment to agriculture.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Forty per cent in one year is not a bad start.

Mr. Sheppard: It is 13.3 per cent. An extension of the Ontario family farm interest rate reduction program was anticipated. Further, the Treasurer announced expansion of the farm operating credit assistance program and the beginning farmers assistance program, both of which were introduced by the previous administration. I might add, "details to follow on this program." I certainly hope so; I am looking forward to hearing them.

The farmers in transition or FIT program must have left a bad taste in the mouths of the Treasurer and the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. Ridden). After the last budget, we note the winding down of the program. The funding for this program is to be reallocated to other agricultural priorities at some time in the future. At least, I am sure it will be.

I seem to have missed any mention at all of any assistance for Ontario tobacco farmers. What about the Liberal-New Democratic Party accord for farm financing reform, including low-interest loans for farmers? As a farmer and more so as a representative of many farmers, I assure the Treasurer we have not forgotten that promise, which has yet to be fulfilled. How long are the Liberals going to keep up their Band-Aid relief program instead of coming up with long-term answers to the financial crisis our agricultural industry is currently faced with?

I cannot visualize how the Ministry of Transportation and Communications is supposed to make all types of repairs to Ontario highways such as Highway 401, considering how little money has been allocated to the ministry's budget. Highway 401 between Brighton and Port Hope is in dire need of repair, not next year but right now. Repairs have been put off and put off again because of lack of funding. It is beginning to look to me as though Highway 401 in my riding will never be repaired, despite the minister's promise that it will be taken care of. I must say that starting next week, Harnden and King, a contractor in my riding, is supposed to do 9.6 kilometres on Highway 401 between -- is the Treasurer listening? -- Cobourg and Brighton at a cost of $1.6 million.

Mr. Gillies: Tell the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Fulton) about it.

Mr. Sheppard: I hope he is listening. I hope the minister can find more money to do more repair work on it. I was just talking to his colleague the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology (Mr. O'Neil). He told me himself, "The highway is in terrible shape, but they are working on it." The minister did a little patch job down there. I hope he will do a big long patch job between Highway 33 and Highway 28, more than what I have said here.

Hon. Mr. Fulton: What did the member say?

Mr. Sheppard: I cannot hear the minister.

With respect to skills development, as my colleague the member for York Mills (Miss Stephenson) mentioned in her speech, the program we began last year would have established specific requirements for skills training with any company assisted through Enterprise Ontario activities. The funding, the framework and the direction were clearly established and laid out. This budget states that the goal is to expand and reshape the system, again with "further details to follow." I am happy to hear further details are forthcoming because, honestly, nothing is detailed in this budget with respect to skills development. We have no implementation dates, nor are we given any indication as to how the program will be set up.

Senior citizens must be disappointed once again by the failure of the government to establish the denticare program it promised during the 1985 election campaign.

Mr. Gillies: Another broken promise.

Mr. Sheppard: That is right. I am sure the Treasurer will get up in a few minutes and say, "The money is there, but I had to save it because there might be an election just around the corner."

Despite the fact that the Treasurer said, "Economic conditions warrant special attention in eastern Ontario," nothing specific was mentioned, unless one wants to cite the reorganization and a little increased funding to the Ontario Development Corp. To quote the Treasurer, "New funds will also be available to boost tourism in this region." What I need to know is how much money will be allocated and when he will see fit to give the so-called funds to eastern Ontario. I am already aware that boosting tourism in eastern Ontario is a must. We want to know how soon we are going to get that money.

Last, it is peculiar that approximately $300 million of tax revenue, and I understand it is now close to $1 billion, appears not to have been allocated in this Liberal budget. Is the government holding on to this play money, only to dole it out in new announcements as an election draws near? It is highly unlikely the Treasurer would displace such a figure.

In summary, this budget is unacceptable because it fails to support the development of our rural and single-industry communities. It also fails to provide for the preservation of our environment. I see that the Minister of Energy (Mr. Kerrio) has left. Basically, this budget repeats previously announced programs; no new programs are proposed or are only briefly mentioned. In most cases, we do not see any real announcements of dollars, but we hear of a lot of details to follow. This indicates to me that the Liberals have not been able to come up with their promised programs, despite having been in office for 11 months.

This evening at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Trenton, the Lower Trent Region Conservation Authority is having a meeting to discuss landfill sites. A busload of 29 people, some from Hastings county, some from Peterborough county and the rest from the riding of Northumberland, went to Cuba, New York, to discuss and to see an incinerator works there. I hope the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) will have a look at that and perhaps be called to the riding of Northumberland or Hastings to discuss how and when an incinerator plant can be built. As I understand it, the incinerator plant in Cuba, New York, will produce enough steam to supply all the industries in Port Hope.

Ms. Gigantes: How much dioxin?

Mr. Sheppard: I do not know. I have not heard that yet.

There is one other thing I had hoped the Treasurer would put in his budget, which was to find some other way of raising taxes for elementary and secondary schools. In the riding of Northumberland, the school tax alone went up by 15.5 per cent in one year. The Treasurer should be looking for some other means to raise taxes for elementary and secondary schools.

I want to compliment the Treasurer on two things. He is allowing the new addition to the Campbellford Memorial Hospital to be carried on. The Minister of Health (Mr. Elston) and I were down there to turn the sod on January 13. The addition is supposed to be completed in 18 months. I am glad to see the Liberal government is allowing the contractor to finish the fish culture centre in Harwood, as it will produce approximately 800,000 to 900,000 fish per year to supply the lakes and the streams in the county of Northumberland and the surrounding areas.

That is all I have to say at this time.

4:50 p.m.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: I want to make a couple of comments about the honourable member's speech. I have a very high regard to him, of course. As a farmer, he has a certain practicality that always appeals. However, I want to make it clear that the 40 per cent -- actually, 39 per cent -- increase in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food budget is not in this budget; it is in this budget and the one last October. It is actually in the expenditures available from the estimates we inherited from the previous government to this time.

It is true, although it is not the policy of the government in general to double the money for the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, that in opposition I made it very clear I felt the allocations were totally inadequate and I indicated at one moment that they should be doubled. Perhaps they will be if we wait long enough, but in less than a year they are up by 39 per cent.

I am also a little sensitive to the question, "What have you done for the tobacco farmers?" As the member knows, they are really under the economic gun now. They are having to accept a 30 per cent reduction in their agreed-upon purchases, and this is going to be extremely difficult for many farmers to cope with. I was in Tillsonburg last night in the backyard of the Deputy Speaker, who unfortunately was not able to attend for some reason, meeting with the tobacco farmers and trying to respond to them.

One of the things I put to them is that if the 45 per cent ad valorem tax that was imposed by the previous government had been in place, the revenue from taxation would have been increased this year by $140 million. I pointed out to them that one of the more severe criticisms I get of the tobacco tax is that we did not raise it enough. Whatever the member thinks about that, those are the facts. There is $140 million left in the business, which I believe is available to the manufacturers and the growers for improving their own position in support of export.

Mr. Gillies: First of all, I congratulate my colleague on an excellent speech. I can only concur with the Treasurer that the member for Northumberland (Mr. Sheppard) has a tremendous grasp of the issues of concern to his constituents.

I would like to ask questions about a couple of them. My colleague mentioned that he felt there was some money missing from the budget that was unaccounted for in expenditures. I ask my colleague whether he thinks the fact that the government is taking in more revenue than it is going to expend means that the money which makes up that difference is being held for election goodies. I would be most interested to know whether it is being held for election goodies.

My colleague mentioned the problem with Highway 401 east of this city, which has become known as pot-hole row. I am stunned, frankly. The last time I was in Northumberland with my colleague, he told me he was sure the Minister of Transportation and Communications was going to take care of that soon. I am absolutely astonished to hear it has not been done. I wonder whether my colleague could elaborate on any dealings he has had with the minister and advise the House when Highway 401 east of Toronto is going to be repaired. I would have thought it could be done.

My colleague did not touch on the question of the Brampton hospital, but the speaker before him did. I would like to ask my colleague whether he can confirm what I hear, namely, that the region and the province had approved the expansion of the Brampton hospital during the time when the former Premier was the member for that riding but the hospital decided not to proceed with it at that time, that Brampton could have had that hospital some years ago. I wonder whether my colleague could comment on that, because the member for Brampton has left the false impression on the floor that the former government did not want to build a hospital in Brampton, and I understand it did.

Mr. Callahan: I would not want to leave that impression without clarifying it. First, I point out to my colleague who just spoke the fact that this government is so sensitive that we do not deal with issues on a partisan basis. He put the shovel in the ground in January in his riding, which is a Tory riding, and yet in the Liberal riding of Brampton we have not put the shovel in the ground yet. I put to him that this government does not operate on the basis of what one's party politics is. It is very sensitive to the needs of the people of Ontario.

I heard something on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. the other day. I guess it is in New Brunswick or in Nova Scotia that one can tell when one is going through a riding of the opposition. It goes from pavement to dirt. That used to happen in this province too. I could always tell when an election was coming because the roads would get done. I would look at it and say to my four sons sitting next to me in the car, "There is going to be an election in a week or a month." They would ask, "How do you know that, Dad?" I would say, "You just wait and see." Lo and behold, there was an election. They would ask, "How did you know, Dad?" I would say, "Because the roads were being done."

To get back to the issue of the Brampton hospital, I dogged the former Premier of this province about that issue for eight years through two previous elections. That issue was up front. It was the only issue and nothing was done about it -- nothing, square root. The people of that riding are still waiting for it. I think we will see it happen under this sensitive Liberal government, but it will happen on the basis of need as opposed to partisanship as in the past.

Mr. Stevenson: I would also like to make a few comments. Possibly the member for Northumberland can clarify this if he has the information. To carry on from the comments of the member for Brampton, it was my understanding that when it came to hospital building, the Brampton hospital was slated but that they decided not to go ahead with the money at that time. That is very much part of my recollection. Possibly the member for Northumberland can comment on that.

When it comes to road building, the member for Northumberland had some excellent ideas and the member for Brampton was talking utter nonsense. Possibly the member for Northumberland can clarify something for me if he can recall. I believe the double-laving of the Burlington Bay Skyway was the biggest single contract ever let by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. If I remember correctly, that was not a Tory riding at the time the contract was let.

Lately, we have seen a lot of money spent west of Metro Toronto on highways and so on. Let us take, for example, Highway 403. Maybe the member for Northumberland can point out whether Highway 403 goes through or went through many ridings that were not held by the Tory government at the time. If my memory serves me correctly, the member for Brampton is talking such utter nonsense that it is hardly worth speaking anywhere, let alone in this great Legislature.

Mr. Speaker: I might draw to the member's attention, because I know the new standing orders are very new to the members, that item 20(a) states, "Following the speech of each member, a period not exceeding 10 minutes shall be made available, if required, to allow members to ask questions and comment briefly on matters relevant to the matters before the House...." I take it those are matters that have been placed before the House by the previous speaker. The previous, previous speaker has already had an opportunity to comment on the previous comments, so I am sure all members will want to contain their comments and refer strictly to the comments made by the previous speaker.

Mr. Gillies: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order: I very much appreciate your comments on the new rules. We are wrestling with them and trying to come to grips with the implications of the new standing orders and your guidance is much appreciated. I want your assurance. My colleague and I were surprised that my colleague the member for Northumberland failed to mention the Brampton hospital, so we wanted to get his comments on it.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Thank you for your point of surprise. However, there is no time left for comments or questions. Therefore, the member for Northumberland has up to two minutes.

5 p.m.

Mr. Sheppard: I would like to make a couple of comments on the Campbellford Memorial Hospital. I am sorry I did not mention the Brampton hospital. It was the member for Cochrane South (Mr. Pope) who, when he was Minister of Health, approved the addition and the money for the Campbellford Memorial Hospital. When the Conservative government was in power, we went down and had a sod-turning. I forgot to say it was the second sod-turning.

After the first sod-turning, we had to raise another five per cent of the money. The citizens of Campbellford and the surrounding municipalities had to come up with another $280,000. We had a Liberal chairman of Campbellford Memorial Hospital and he wanted to have another official sod-turning. I went along with that because we could raise a little more money. I am sorry I did not mention that when I was speaking before. I hope the member for Brampton (Mr. Callahan) now realizes why we had to have a second sod-turning.

I forgot to say one other thing to the Minister of Transportation and Communications. In the past 10 months, 18 people have been killed on Highway 401 between Highway 33 and Highway 28. The minister has a copy of the list of the 18 people killed on Highway 401. I bring that up because everybody is phoning and stopping me on the street no matter where I go and asking, "Howard, when are you going to get Highway 401 fixed before we lose more people?" That is why I am bringing it up now. I want to make sure that the minister of highways and communications realizes how desperately we need that road fixed.

The Deputy Speaker: The member's time has expired.

Mr. Sheppard: I would like to make a comment about agriculture.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. No.

Mr. Stevenson: I am pleased to have an opportunity to comment on the budget. In starting, I would like to draw attention to the province's income, the revenues the province gets. Then I wish to make a number of comments about agriculture because it is the area for which I am the critic. Then I will terminate with some comments on how the lack of action in the budget will affect the great riding of Durham-York and the people who live there.

It is interesting to see from the budget that the revenues of Ontario have increased 22 per cent since the time of the last Progressive Conservative budget, the 1984-85 budget. In about two years we have had an increase in revenues of 22 per cent. As we look at ourselves as individuals and as we look at any companies we see around the province, there are not a great many people or companies that have 22 per cent more money to spend today than they did in their personal or company budgets just two years ago. It is interesting that the Treasurer has had such a windfall of money. Any number of us would dearly love to have 22 per cent more money to deal with today than we had in our family budgets, our company budgets, our farm budgets or any sort of budget one can think of in that rather brief time.

It indicates that the Treasurer had relatively few major challenges to face in getting the document together. One looks at the income, the revenue he has, and then one starts to try to decide whether his decisions on how to expend that revenue were wise. As the Ministry of Agriculture and Food critic, I have heard the comments about the 39 per cent increase. One has to realize that is over two budget years and not 11 months. In fact, as we look back over the last three budgets as they relate to agriculture, the budget of the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Grossman) when he was Treasurer gave a 16 per cent increase to agriculture. The first budget by this Treasurer had around 20 per cent, although I do not have --

Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Speaker, I do not think the speech is so bad but it appears to be bad enough to have driven most of the members out of the chamber. Will you check to see whether a quorum is present?

The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.

5:07 p.m.

Mr. Stevenson: I thank the member for Oshawa for drawing to my attention the number that was present.

In the last three budgets as they relate to agriculture, we have seen a 16 per cent increase, then last year a 20 per cent increase and now this year a 13 per cent increase. These are fairly significant numbers and I do not argue with them at all. In times of modest stress to that industry, those sorts of increases would have been very thankfully received. They would have met the challenge facing the industry under most circumstances.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves in anything but an ordinary situation. We have excessive production in most of the commodities we produce well in this province, and those commodities are produced in some excess in pretty well all the major agriculture-producing countries around the world. The European Community, Australia and even countries such as China and India are beginning to be in an export position with a few of their crops, which is a relatively new development.

Droughts used to correct some of the production problems, but with agricultural production as broadly based as it is, it now requires some fairly significant disaster somewhere around the world to take some of the spikes out of the production system. We are seeing one of those periods of excess production now. That increase in production is partly due to improved technology, partly due to better trained farmers, partly due to relatively good weather conditions over the past few years and partly due to government programs in various parts of the world. The two jurisdictions that have aggravated excess production in the major producing countries by excessive subsidization, I suppose one could say excessive payments to the producers, are the European Community and the similar thing we see going on in the United States.

Not only do we see the agricultural stage littered with government programs but we also see extremely low prices around the world for most of our commodities. We enter this industry in this production year with an economic situation that I suspect is as bad as it was in the 1930s for many producers. Our farmers look around and see relative prosperity in most other sectors of our economy. Other workers who suffered considerably during the 1981-82 period now are living somewhat more comfortably than they did then. Unfortunately, the agricultural portion of the economy has not pulled out of that recession period; indeed, if anything, the situation has got worse.

In looking at the budget, I want to discuss briefly what other jurisdictions have done with their budgets to try to cope with the situation around the world. It is interesting that no provincial government can idly stand by and watch a disproportionate number of its farmers go out of business simply because the support for farmers in that province is not as good as that in other jurisdictions. We cannot allow an excessive number of Ontario farmers to get into severe financial crisis just because our support system does not match that of the European Community or the United States. We must somehow try to stay in the shadows of those programs to give our producers a fighting chance.

We look at a government that talks about 39 per cent in one year; that is 39 per cent spread over two budgets or basically two years. Let us look at what some of the competition has done in that time. First, let us look across the border briefly to see the impact of the US farm bill. That bill has been in development for several months. It was debated in Washington for several weeks and passed on December 3, 1985. The estimated cost of that farm bill to the US Department of the Treasury at the time of passage was $54 million. With prices staying down the way they are, it now is estimated that the cost of that bill to the US Treasury will be somewhere between $70 billion and $110 billion. We can hardly imagine those numbers here, almost triple the value of the total Ontario budget.

That gives some indication of the funding that is going to US farmers. In all likelihood, they will be selling their crops next year on the world market. Corn, for example, will be sold on the world market at somewhere in the order of C$100 to C$120 per ton. The American farmers will receive a deficiency payment that will give them approximately C$167 per ton. When one looks from corn to soybeans to dairy cattle and through the whole US farm bill, the story is the same.

Let us look at what Canadian governments have attempted to do in the light of low commodity prices, which are being significantly aggravated by the US farm bill. Let us start with Alberta. Alberta has about 46,000 farmers, or about three fifths of the 80,000 farmers in Ontario. Alberta's agricultural budget was increased 75 per cent this year. The agricultural budget in that province is now $434 million for about three fifths the number of farmers we have here. I am not going back two budgets to come up with a figure of 39 per cent, as the minister is. I am looking at just one budget with a 75 per cent increase in funding to agriculture.

That was $214 million last year and $434 million this year. Those figures do not include any money going from the heritage fund to the agricultural industry. Among the programs for the agricultural industry funded out of the heritage fund is one that is in line with the Ontario family farm interest rate reduction program and the farm operating credit assistance program rolled into one. Alberta has a program for its producers that subsidizes interest rates on operating money for this year's production, as well as medium-term capital for buildings and that sort of thing. The interest rate is written down on a total amount of $2 billion.

I am not sure what that interest-rate write-down would work out to, but it would cost many millions of dollars to subsidize $2 billion worth of capital borrowing. That new program was put in place in January of this year on top of a budget for the Alberta Department of Agriculture that was already increased by 75 per cent. This is how that government has reacted to the extreme situation that exists in our agricultural industry today.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: They had an election coming and almost lost.

Mr. Stevenson: There may be a bit of politics mixed up in it. I would not suggest there is not. What is the situation in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Nixon: We do not have any of that here.

5:20 p.m.

Mr. Stevenson: I will get back to a few of the member's comments from just over a year ago and we will see how much politics is involved in the situation in Ontario.

I am not going to go on at great length, but Alberta also has a fertilizer rebate program to write off the energy cost component of the fertilizer going into agriculture. That program is in addition to the $434 million.

Alberta has a feed grain market adjustment program that corrects for the Crow's Nest Pass freight-rate changes to the livestock producers in Alberta, and that is a payment of $21 per ton of feed to the livestock industry out there to adjust for the changes that this Crown's Nest Pass rate change has caused in their livestock sector.

It just adds up and up; I do not have the total figure. However, I come back to the fact that those are all over and above the $434 million in their actual agriculture budget. I repeat that there was a 75 per cent increase in the agriculture budget to the farmers and associated agricultural industry of Alberta.

While our Minister of Agriculture and Food goes around the province patting himself on the back for the changes here in Ontario, let me tell members that, in relation to the farmers of Alberta, those of Ontario have fallen further behind in one year than ever before in the history of agriculture in this country. All we can say to Ontario farmers is "Good luck" when they are trying to compete with the farmers in Alberta.

Next I would like to give some attention to Quebec. Quebec used to get a lot of attention from my colleagues across the aisle when they were on this side of the House and were taking shots at us for not living up to programs that other governments were bringing in at the time. Quebec was usually the province they held out as the one that was leading the parade in government programs.

It is very true that there were a number of programs we did not copy; I certainly agree that this happened. In hindsight I would say that in many ways I am sorry we did not match some of those programs. I am frankly quite surprised that various governments are continuing to exacerbate the supply situation in some of our commodities in the world market. That said, however, we in this province cannot sit idly by and let our farmers go down the drain in disproportionate numbers only because we are not matching the programs of other countries.

Let us look at Quebec. It has considerably fewer farmers than we have -- there are not many more than half the farmers in Quebec that we have in Ontario -- and what is its budget this year? It is $514 million, substantially higher than the $457 million here in this province, for 48,000 farmers. I may add that this year a few programs have dropped off the list in Quebec; a few programs have terminated. Still, there is a $514-million budget in Quebec.

It is interesting to note that the present Treasurer, speaking just before a particular event on May 3 last year, said that we must double the agricultural budget. Here are the Treasurer's own figures from his speech. He said Quebec was spending the equivalent of $8,358 on each farmer in that province. He had it figured out to four significant digits, and who am I to argue with the Treasurer? In Ontario it is just over $5,000, if my memory serves me right. In Alberta, in case the members are interested in knowing, the figure is about $12,000.

When we look at that, all we can say is that our figures were closer together a year ago than they are today because of the substantial increases in those budgets in other jurisdictions. I repeat that Ontario farmers have fallen further behind in the past year than ever before in the history of agriculture in this country, and the figures are all here. The Treasurer does not have to take my word for it. He can phone up and get them for himself.

Just to give members some examples of how responsive some of the other governments have been in a period when the provincial Liberals here are patting themselves on the back, I would again use the example of Quebec. We have a situation of an oversupply of potatoes. We have heard this quite a bit recently in the news and so on. The Quebec government has spent $18.4 million this year alone on support to its potato producers in the province. This was done totally without federal government involvement in that program. It is a Quebec program.

We can also look at Prince Edward Island. It brought in $3 million for stabilization and $3 million for a buy-up program for potatoes, totalling $6 million in provincial input.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Where are the potatoes?

Mr. Stevenson: Yes, I know where the potatoes are now.

It then went to the federal government and asked for its participation in this program. The federal government matched it, for a total of $12 million to the potato sector of Prince Edward Island. In New Brunswick it was $3 million from the province and $3 million from the feds. In every case the provincial government acted first and the federal government came along to match those programs.

In Ontario, we are fortunate in a way that we do not have the same oversupply situation. As I understand it, it appears that the potatoes in storage in this province will probably be sold out by the time the new crop comes out of the fields. However, our farmers have sold their potatoes and will likely sell those in storage on the same depressed market for which the other producers have received very considerable support.

We do not need a buy-up program such as Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick have partially received, but we could use a stabilization payment of some type. Potatoes are one of the designated commodities in the stabilization program, and if the two governments agree to work together on it, there can be a payment in this crop year for potatoes.

So far, our potato producers have received a telegram from Ontario. The telegram said that if Ottawa gets involved, we will too. That is another indication of what Quebec and other provinces have done and of where Ontario sits on that issue. Once again, although Ontario has done a fair bit -- I do not argue with that -- compared to the others, and with the position our producers are in compared to the others, we are unfortunately not in the ball game this year. That is quite different from what we read in the minister's speeches or the press releases that are going out.

I would like to talk very briefly about Saskatchewan, and I happen to have a copy of the Saskatchewan budget here with me. I also have a copy of a little brochure, The Saskatchewan Agriculture Assistance Program. It is a nice little summary of the programs that are available to the farmers in Saskatchewan. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring the one from Alberta with me. I could have spent considerably more time on the Alberta programs than what I have briefly discussed.

5:30 p.m.

I point out that Saskatchewan, which the third party would say has in the recent past been a very enlightened province, and we in this party would like to think is still a very enlightened province, has a total budget of $3.7 billion. The agricultural portion of that budget is $200 million, almost half of what Ontario budgets for agriculture. Its total budget of $3.7 billion compares to $31.5 billion for Ontario. I may be looking at the wrong table and it may be $29.9 billion. No, that is revenue; I think I was right the first time and it is $31.5 billion. We have a budget in Ontario that is about 10 times that of Saskatchewan, but its agriculture budget is half of ours.

They give much greater support to agriculture in Saskatchewan than Ontario does. What sort of budget increase do the members suppose they have had over the past year? It was 100 per cent in one budget. That is a government that realizes the agriculture industry is in trouble and is willing to fund it to keep the industry alive in that province. The agriculture industry possibly provides a greater share of the gross provincial product of Saskatchewan than it does in Ontario. I would have to look up those figures to be sure.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: You mean you are not sure that it is a bit greater.

Mr. Stevenson: I am relatively sure.

The share that agriculture contributes to the gross provincial product of this province is nothing to sneeze at either. My discussion on the relative funding is not out of order at all. When we look at the size of the increases in the provincial budgets, Ontario is being lost in a cloud of dust as these other governments race ahead of us. I am not including anything in the figures I am quoting that comes from various other funding agencies or heritage programs in Saskatchewan.

I draw to the attention of the Treasurer a new program in existence there that is somewhat similar to Alberta's. It assists in the write-down of interest rates from the going rate down to six per cent. That program started in January. It is a new program that is responding to the very serious needs of agriculture at this time in our country. That program will write down the interest rate to six per cent on $1.2 billion of operating money for the farmers of Saskatchewan. When I say $1.2 billion, that was their plan. It now appears it will be closer to $2 billion because, as of a month or more ago, the farmers had already borrowed almost $1 billion. It was clear there was still a lot of money yet to go for this production year.

They also have a livestock cash advance program that is very important to the beef and sheep producers. It is an interest-free program for 12 months. The production loan program is the one I was just talking about that assists them in getting in their crops for this year. There is also a farm purchase program, which is very useful to their farmers.

Once again it is clear that other governments are responding to the current needs of agriculture. They are responding in such a way as to give very extensive increases in agricultural budgets. I repeat that Alberta, Saskatchewan and the United States are our biggest competitors in the grain and red meat areas. Those are the sectors that are being hurt the most in today's agricultural economy. In the light of the 39 per cent in the last two years that this government pats itself on the back about, I can very safely and correctly say that Ontario farmers have fallen farther behind in the last year than in any other year in the history of agriculture in this country.

I want to go just a little bit further on the situation in Saskatchewan. I will go through this book page by page and draw attention to some of the programs that have been in place since roughly 1980 and to some of the programs we were being sniped at for not following during the last four or five years, as government funding to agriculture has tended to increase, and then compare those in value with the programs that have been developed since this Liberal government has been in power.

Just to leaf through this fairly quickly, there is a program here that since 1982 has paid a total of $34 million, about $8 million a year. That is a fairly significant amount of money. I do not complain at all about any program giving any sector $8 million per year. That is one of the programs we did not follow to a great extent. There is another one here that has paid out $7 million since 1982. There we are talking about less than $2 million a year.

Compare those to what we are seeing in the new programs that have been announced in the last year. Quite frankly, the old programs are nickels and dimes compared to the 100 per cent increase in budget to the farmers in Saskatchewan and the 75 per cent increase in budget in Alberta.

If we turn the page back, they say: "You were in power for so long. Why did you not do some of these things?" The few programs we did not match are absolute nickels and dimes compared to the programs that have not been matched by this government in the last year. The differences are so many millions of dollars that it is hardly worth talking about the old programs. They are not even in the same ball game.

5:40 p.m.

Just to put things a little bit into perspective on how Ontario farmers are likely to be able to compete with the three major jurisdictions with which we have to compete, our people are in for a tough period ahead. Concerning what we are likely to see coming out of the funding increase in agriculture in the three major areas, although the announcements have not been made yet, the report of the interministerial task force makes it fairly clear that we are going to see the Ontario family farm interest rate reduction program extended. I hope the percentage equity requirements in that program will be altered somewhat to allow more farmers to participate.

I think we are going to see the farm operating credit assistance program extended and expanded. I imagine FOCAP will be brought down from 9.75 per cent, or whatever it is at now, to eight per cent so that it will be at the same interest rate that OFFIRR is still on. I would applaud that move if it happened.

The beginning farmer assistance program will be altered, and there will be some changes that I can welcome. I am not sure what the government will make on BFAP, but those changes could be helpful to our young farmers in this province.

That is about it for that portion of this budget and how the budget increases here compare with those in other jurisdictions with which we have to compete in a significant way. Again, before I leave it, let me just say that the facts are very different from the rhetoric and, again, good luck to Ontario farmers as they try to compete in the markets here in Canada and around the world in the next year or two.

Tobacco has been mentioned as an area of concern. The Treasurer is from an area where tobacco is grown very extensively in part of the major producing areas in his riding. Tobacco is an industry in which major restructuring is going on, and I am afraid there will continue to be some major restructuring during the next few years. We have a situation where we have a fair bit of tobacco in storage, more than the companies really need, because they buy tobacco ahead of time for ageing, processing, mixing and so on. I believe they like to have about a year's supply in storage, at least several months, and they have considerably more than that at this time. We also have a relatively large crop from 1985 to get rid of, so that the supply side is aggravated a bit on two counts.

Interestingly enough, exports have been relatively good this year and, fortunately, they have been able to get rid of a portion of the tobacco crop. In some ways it moved more easily than some had suspected it might. I understand that a new agreement has been drawn up for this year's tobacco crop, one that is a compromise in this particular crop and one that I suspect is not particularly pleasing to either the producers or the manufacturers.

It is somewhat unfortunate that the Treasurer did not take a little more of a leading role in sorting out this situation. I believe the federal government has taken a positive step in allocating money to the restructuring of that industry. I know the Treasurer would say that by not increasing taxes in a big way he has left money in the industry to help it restructure itself. That move is to be applauded. I am not sure, however, that this alone will get the job done in the way that may be necessary.

I hope the Treasurer is still in a position to guarantee the manufacturers a tax increase of less than the consumer price index in the next year or two or three if, indeed, the Treasurer happens to be in that position that long, and can give reasonable assurance that in the foreseeable future, to whatever extent the Treasurer can view it, the tax situation will be at least moderately stable in order to assist the restructuring of that industry.

Clearly, there will be people in Ontario who will continue to smoke and there will be continuing exports. It appears there is a domestic market of 80 million to 90 million pounds. It looks as though it may stabilize at that level. A few pessimists say it is likely to stabilize at as low as 70 million pounds. There appears to be an export market that could stabilize at 50 million to 60 million pounds. One would therefore think we could in the future have a viable tobacco production industry and a reasonable economy in the communities that exist in that area if we could get the industry from where it is today to the restructured position of the future.

I believe the Treasurer is going to have to take a somewhat more progressive, and maybe aggressive, position in getting that restructuring to occur. It will not be easy to reach a consensus on how that should be done, but I am not sure that just walking away and washing his hands of the situation will get it accomplished. The more quickly we get the industry restructured and in reasonable stability, the better the message that will be sent out to the international tobacco markets and the more quickly we will be able to get our position stabilized in that export market.

We have lost some markets over the years that we will be able to reclaim. We have a degree of political stability in this province. I would not like to say how much, but certainly more than Zimbabwe, possibly Brazil and some of our other major competitors. For that reason and because of the good quality of Ontario-grown tobacco, we should be able to hold our current markets and expand somewhat into some of our former markets. The more quickly we send out that message to the world tobacco markets, the better the producers in the tobacco belt will be.

In the budget area, we are putting a fair bit of money into stabilization. I must express my disappointment at the way the 1985 stabilization payment has been made to the farmers of Ontario. The minister rushed into signing that agreement the week of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture's annual meeting last November so that he could walk in to great applause. Some six months later we have the tripartite stabilization forms for hogs in the mail. Many of last year's pork payments and some of the beef payments have been made.

It was the opinion of most farmers that if last year's payments had been made in last year's fiscal year, that money would have been in their pockets in time to assist with getting this year's crops in the ground. Unfortunately, for most of the beef producers, that has not happened and some of them are hurting a little more than would have been expected because of the tremendous delays in that payment.

5:50 p.m.

It is interesting that last year's beef stabilization payment was made on a pounds-gained basis and that, at least to start, the tripartite stabilization program is on a per head basis. The minister admitted before the cheques were in the mail that last year's program was a total disaster, that they could not repeat that type of payment system and that they had to go with something else. They were not able to develop a new system quickly enough to put it into tripartite stabilization, so they have gone with the same program as Alberta.

It is interesting that our minister signed in November, their minister signed in January and Alberta's concept for tripartite stabilization went to the printer one month ahead of that of Ontario. The Manitoba minister was able to get his act in order three months quicker than the Minister of Agriculture and Food for Ontario. I do not know why that has not been brought to the attention of more people. The disorder in the minister's office on Bay Street is quite evident in his inability to deal with these issues with the same degree of haste and expertise that his competitors in other provinces are able to deal with them.

Because of contaminants in food, we have recently heard a fair bit about food imports. This government has made promises to try to reduce the portion of the consumer's budget that goes to buying imported foods. This past winter, a carrot promotion program was paid for by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. At that time, one of the major packing companies and one of the major food chains were using imported carrots, with Ontario-produced carrots sitting in storage. The week the provincial government was funding the carrot promotion, a good chunk of Ontario consumers was buying imported carrots and the provincial promotion was promoting the purchase of a considerable percentage of imported carrots.

That is not the process our producers had hoped this government would carry out. As they promote Ontario-grown produce in the future, I hope they will try to assure themselves that Ontario produce has full access to the market at the time of their promotions and that they will be promoting our products and not those of other countries.

I now would like to make a few comments on how the budget relates to the riding of Durham-York. I am not going to mention many areas. My riding is totally small-town Ontario. The biggest communities are Keswick, Uxbridge and Port Perry. From those we go to smaller communities such as Sutton. A few members have cottages around Lake Simcoe and they keep reminding me that they spend some very lovely days of the season, particularly the summer season, along Lake Simcoe. I have in my riding the south shoreline of Lake Simcoe and the south shoreline of Lake Scugog. Tourism, agriculture and small business are the economic heartbeat of the riding.

I have talked previously about some of the agricultural issues and so I will not mention them in specific reference to the riding, but every issue I have talked about, with the exception of tobacco, has obvious implications for the great riding of Durham-York.

I want to state my concern about the way the tourism budget has been handled in the last two budgets. We have a growing industry that is going to be even more important to our economy by the year 2000 than it is today. In order of importance it is now second or third, depending on who is arguing the case. We would like to see that industry promoted as much as possible, particularly in a period when there is some concern about safety in overseas travel and when our Canadian dollar is valued lower than that of the United States.

We are likely to see an increase in the number of tourists from our neighbour to the south over the next year or two. Ontario would like to have its fair share, and if possible more than its fair share, of that tourism dollar. I find it of some concern that this government is not giving tourism the high profile it used to have. That will have a major impact on my riding.

We have an excellent five-star motel-hotel complex, the Briars, on the south shore of Lake Simcoe. Many in this Legislature will know of that facility. It benefited from previous Ontario government programs. I would be sorry to see those types of initiatives minimized by this government so that resorts such as the Briars cannot continue to enjoy them.

The cut that has most hurt the riding of Durham-York has been the termination of the marinas program, particularly the very popular small marinas program, of the Ministry of Natural Resources. Seven marinas in my riding had picked up the forms to make application for that program; unfortunately, it was terminated.

Small marinas are costly to set up and to maintain. For instance, the retainer walls in the slip areas are costly to put in, but are important to minimize the erosion problems and the silting associated with many marinas. These retainer walls do not help with cash flow or with the revenue position of the marina. Even though they are a very worthwhile addition to a marina, they hurt the revenue position because of the high capital cost of putting them in place. It is unfortunate this program was taken away from those small marinas.

6 p.m.

It was also intended to help with improved pump-out facilities for waste water on boats. For environmental reasons, that was an important aspect. The Minister of Natural Resources is in the House at the moment. I hope he will carry my words back to his ministry, to his policy development people and to the Treasurer and come up with a program somewhat along the lines of that small marinas program. I do not expect him to bring it in under the same name or with exactly the same thrust. The minister can put his own label on it and redesign it as he will, but he should not go through his term as minister without bringing something along that line back in.

Pleasure boating is growing substantially every year. One just has to look at the number of boats that use the Rideau and the Trent-Severn waterways, and those numbers are increasing substantially. We might as well capitalize on that growth area in tourism. If we can get boats in from our neighbours across the Great Lakes, by all means let us do it.

With that I move to a concern I have about a Board of Industrial Leadership and Development funding allocation to a marina in Keswick. I have heard some statements that all of that money may not flow. I hope the Treasurer will check into that. Undoubtedly, I will be talking to him in the future.

There is a marina out there, one of several on Lake Simcoe that are moving forward with very significant capital development. This particular one has arranged for boats to come in from the United States -- large boats that spend the winters in Florida and are running out of St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and all over the south side of the Great Lakes. They are running through Ontario waterways in the summertime and in the southern waterways in the winter.

When these people come to one's area, they do not buy just ice-cream cones and cans of pop; they spend big dollars. Just to pull one of those boats in for service alone is a major economic boost to a marina operator. We have a few on the lake. Dawson's Marina in particular serves all the boating traffic, but it particularly serves some of the big pleasure boats. It would be unfortunate to lose the thrust of that development. We can certainly serve them in the Great Lakes marinas and ports, but let us not just keep them there. Let us get them through our system. Let them see more of this beautiful province of ours. For the sake of a few thousand bucks, let us not shut it off to the important lake, Lake Simcoe. I will leave it at that.

While we are talking very briefly about Lake Simcoe, I would like to say to the Minister of Natural Resources that I am pleased the ministry is going to increase the stocking level, as had been planned previously, of the whitefish population in Lake Simcoe. I was a little disenchanted, as the minister will recall, that he was not going to go ahead with the fish culture station along that lake. We would prefer to see those whitefish produced on its shores so that they would be less likely to be trucked to some other lake to share the stocking. However, if it cannot be where we would like to see it, at least we are glad to see that they are being brought in from elsewhere.

I trust the minister will not forget there is an option to put a future fish culture station on the shoreline of Lake Simcoe, which, by the way, I understand is the most intensively fished lake in Ontario on a per area basis. Sport fishing in both winter and summer is a major item in the local economy, with 25 per cent of all the licensed ice-hut operators in the province operating on Lake Simcoe alone. I trust the Treasurer will continue to support the stocking of that lake, and with the significant increase in revenue he will have now for the sport fishing industry, I hope Lake Simcoe will get its fair share of that money.

We have a task force under way studying Lake Scugog. The Minister of Natural Resources may be aware that Lake Scugog is a relatively shallow lake with significant weed growth in it. Milfoil got in there in the mid-1970s and has grown at an epidemic rate. It now interferes with pleasure boating. Lake Scugog is also a very important sport fishing lake with excellent pickerel and bass fishing. It is relatively close, as is Lake Simcoe, to the Metro Toronto and Golden Horseshoe areas and, hence, also gets very heavy fishing. That task force may well be bringing proposals to the provincial government to assist with dealing with the weed situation in that lake. I trust the minister will give it a favourable hearing if those proposals come forward.

I want to mention the situation of Highway 89. Unfortunately, the Minister of Transportation and Communications has left. Most of the extension of that highway would have gone through the riding of Durham-York. The portion of that extension from Keswick to Sunderland has received environmental approval and can go ahead. The portion that was under significant environmental examination was the portion through the Keswick Marsh, across the Holland River and through the property of the Ministry of Natural Resources on the other side of the Holland River south of Cook Bay.

We had an environmental hearing in 1981 or early 1982 that dealt very extensively with that road. It was in that hearing that the previously mentioned portion was approved, and MTC was then sent back to get two more years of data on the marsh and river crossings. A thorough analysis was done and there was no consensus on whether the road should proceed. That report was given to the Minister of Transportation and Communications and then to the Minister of the Environment, with several ministries commenting on the idea of whether that road should be built across Keswick Marsh and the Holland River.

Most of the agencies approved of the road's construction, as I understand it from what I have read. Environment Canada had significant concerns. As I recall, Environment Canada did not comment on the first environmental assessment, but I could be wrong on that. I do not recall it taking a major position on the roadway.

6:10 p.m.

Unfortunately, the decision appears to have been made largely for political reasons. The people in that area know the lake must survive. The lake is the most significant economic factor in that portion of the province, and it must be healthy or the whole economy in that area would collapse significantly. Clearly, the lake comes first and the road second.

People who know the area and the lake, and most of the agencies that commented on the environmental assessment, thought the road could have been built without serious environmental impact. I do not pretend to be an expert on the issue and I was prepared to go along with the final decision, but I had hoped the final decision would be made on the scientific findings of that extensive study. To my disappointment, I am not at all sure that is the way the final decision was made. Anyway, that crossing has been cancelled. I suspect that part of the issue is dead. We must therefore go ahead and look at some other way of handling east-west traffic through that part of the province.

Anyone who has tried to travel from Barrie to Lindsay or from Barrie to Sutton knows it is almost impossible to give anybody directions on how to get across the south end of Lake Simcoe.

Unless you know the area, you get lost unless you go a long way south to find a road across. With Highway 404 going north we are soon -- I hope it will be soon -- going to have excessive traffic on Davis Drive at Newmarket.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Davis Drive?

Mr. Stevenson: Davis does have a familiar ring to it. It is a very positive name in the history of Ontario.

That traffic will be hitting that section of central Ontario and will put a tremendous burden on the regional and municipal roads going through there. Somehow we must have a major east-west road that will link Highways 7 and 12, and Highways 48 and 404 to help disperse that north-south traffic.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: What happened to the 15-minute Tory speeches we usually get?

Mr. Stevenson: I was not aware of any -- the issues I am talking about are very important.

Mr. Breaugh: He wants you to build a new Peterson Parkway.

Mr. Stevenson: If the government will put it in, I will be happy to have it called the Peterson Parkway.

Just building the easterly section of that road would be a major benefit to the area.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: It is $160 million extra in the estimate. Why does the member not talk to the minister?

Mr. Stevenson: The amount of money we are asking for is peanuts compared to what the government is spending in the budget. We just require a modest amount of money, a relatively few million dollars. I trust the Treasurer will look at that part of the province and its obvious need for a road. There just is not one now that can be followed by any person who does not know the area well.

The last item I wish to discuss is the area of small business. In small-town Ontario, which the riding of Durham-York is -- many other members have similar ridings -- I hope the small business initiatives this government has taken in the budget turn out to be real and not just a shuffling of programs and a shuffling of budgets.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: The member can rely on it.

Mr. Stevenson: I know what the Treasurer means when he says we can rely on it. I will wait and see. I hope I am pleasantly surprised as those programs are announced in the future. I hope the developing business community in those towns can look forward to some government participation in getting some of their businesses expanded and initiated.

With that I will terminate my discussion. If any other members have any comments or questions, I will be quite happy to address them.

Mr. Speaker: Does any member have any comments or questions for the member for Durham-York?

Mr. Treleaven: I am glad the Treasurer is here. As the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk, he has knowledge of the tobacco area. He represents many tobacco farmers who are suffering so badly at the present time. Perhaps the member for Durham-York omitted or just forgot to mention the Redux program that the tobacco farmers need so badly.

From the tobacco belt, we have heard the member for Elgin (Mr. McNeil), the member for Haldimand-Norfolk (Mr. G. I. Miller), the Treasurer and so on. We certainly have heard from the tobacco farmers, who have asked that if taxes were going to be put up on cigarettes, some of this money be used in the Redux program to go back to the tobacco farmers to take some of the quota out of existence to try to stabilize the market. I invite the Treasurer to take his two minutes to comment on that and I invite the member for Durham-York to comment on that in his response.

Another thing is that the agreement to which the member for Durham-York referred, which has been placed in front of the tobacco board, calls for, I believe, 94.5 million pounds. The tobacco farmers are somewhat in shock at that. It is estimated this will mean that between 800 and 1,000 tobacco farm families are going to go out of agriculture this year; they are going to have to leave their farms. Again, I ask the Treasurer to comment on these 800 to 1,000 farm families that will have to leave the farm as a result of this. Perhaps the government could increase it to 115 million pounds for this year and give some kind of guarantee. The Treasurer might reflect on that.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: The member for Oxford (Mr. Treleaven) makes a number of good points that were somehow omitted from the speech we are commenting on. I know you brought that to our attention in your interpretation of the rules, Mr. Speaker. Obviously, we share a concern for the tobacco farmers, and I think this concern is shared by four or five other members of the House. Unfortunately, it does not extend far beyond that, and that is quite a serious matter.

The honourable member is aware that if the tax level that had been established by the previous Conservative government had been continued, an additional $140 million would have come into the coffers of the Treasury of Ontario. Instead of that, we have twice raised the tobacco tax, but only by the cost-of-living measurement. For example, in this budget it was raised by 0.13 cents per cigarette. In the federal budget -- that is, the Progressive Conservative government of Canada's federal budget in February -- the tax then was raised by 5.3 cents per package of 25 cigarettes. If it has some money for special programs, of course, it could be based on that very large increase in revenue that has resulted, according to the tobacco marketing board, in a substantial loss in sales.

The loss in sales has not been that large in Ontario. The sales this year have been relatively level -- in fact, a bit higher. Some of the honourable members opposite have commented on that in the past, particularly the member for Carleton-Grenville (Mr. Sterling), who wants us to raise the taxes on tobacco substantially.

The other thing is that the federal government promised in the most recent election that there would be national marketing powers. It might have given these at one stage even when the former Liberal government was in office, but this was stopped by federal Conservative members, as the member for Oxford well knows. Then, when the Conservatives took office, although they promised to bring in legislation, it was never proceeded with.

6:20 p.m.

Mr. Breaugh: I wanted to get in a couple of other points that were omitted from the member's speech, I am sure by accident. He talked a great deal about transportation and yet he did not have very much to say about the extension of the GO train east to Oshawa. I know he would have wanted to do that because his riding is just north of mine and a lot of his constituents would be able to use that facility. It is an important service that was promised by a previous government on a number of occasions. It then scrapped the program entirely.

I had an interesting conversation with the minister the other day. He assures me that in this budget is some money for GO train facilities and extending them to Oshawa. That is one point the member for Durham-York would want to mention.

There were a couple of others things he skirted around a little bit. He would also have wanted to mention that there is a crying need to diversify the industrial base throughout the region of Durham. Many of his constituents in Durham-York work in the industrial base located in Ajax, Pickering, Whitby and in the fine community of Oshawa.

I am sure he would want to use the last couple of minutes he will have as an opportunity to put some substance into his speech and to address himself to those matters.

Mr. Sterling: I could not let the opportunity go by without commenting in some way on tobacco tax as introduced by this budget. I believe I will have the opportunity to speak in the debate, but it should be made in the context of what has been said by the member for Oxford and the Treasurer. There is a difference in what the two men are suggesting.

The member for Oxford realizes there is a problem in the tobacco industry, particularly in the agricultural end of the tobacco industry. He wants to help out those tobacco farmers with the Redux program. I think he is correct, but it takes some gutsy action on the part of the Treasurer to implement such a program.

With each one-cent raise on a package of cigarettes, $7 million flows into the Treasury and cigarette consumption is cut down in this province. That is good for the health of our people in Ontario since more than 10,000 of them die each year because of smoking.

If the Treasurer had the guts to raise the tax to raise $100 million, which would mean about 14 or 15 cents more a pack, he could take that money and really address the situation which our tobacco farmers are facing. The consumption would be cut down to a degree where the farmers would suffer only a $1-million loss. He would therefore have $99 million which he could use to benefit the farmers and get them on to another vocation.

Mr. Speaker: The member's time has expired. I find it somewhat difficult to listen to the debate by many of the members informing the member for Durham-York of things he left out of his speech. By doing that, I am afraid they probably disallowed him time to reply because he is not replying to their comments on what he said earlier. Is that the wrong interpretation? The member for Durham-York has two minutes.

Mr. Stevenson: There were a few things I did leave out because I was watching the time very carefully and I did not want to go on at great length. Therefore, I did leave out a few items that were out of my riding.

I thank the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) for pointing out things such as the GO train and the industrial development in the south end of Durham-York because they are very important to the people who live in my area.

I also thank the member for Oxford for his comments. He did remind me of the impending cancellation of the farmers in transition program which was in the budget just a few months ago. The FIT program was to assist farmers in transition and was primarily set up to help the tobacco growers. That program has been a total embarrassment to the government. Fortunately, the federal government came along with a program that would do some of the same work and --

Interjection.

Mr. Stevenson: The one this government copied from Alberta; so it is not new at all. Anyway, the feds are now going to take over. There is ample room to use the $6 million for restructuring in that area. Unfortunately, the government did not see fit to rename it, re-address it or put it along with the federal program to try to come up with something that would really help the tobacco belt of Ontario.

The member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk knows very well of the severe stress on the communities and families in that area. He has worked hard over the past few years to assist those people with the changes they are going through, and I know he will continue to do so to the maximum extent possible.

Mr. Sterling: I have a number of topics I want to talk about, in particular my concern about the lack of concern of this government for eastern Ontario. My remarks are going to be longer than the three or four minutes that remain.

On motion by Mr. Sterling, the debate was adjourned.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Nixon: I want to indicate the business of the House for the coming week.

On Monday, May 26, we will deal with third reading of Bill 65, the Labour Relations Amendment Act, followed by the budget debate. On Tuesday, May 27, we will continue with the budget debate.

On Wednesday, May 28, we will deal with the interim supply motion, followed by legislation in the following order as time permits: second reading of and committee of the whole House, if needed, on Bill 40, Ontario Loan Act; Bill 98, Foreign Arbitral Awards Act; Bill 79, Municipal Amendment Act; Bill 13, Regional Municipality of Sudbury Statute Law Amendment Act; Bill 11, Rental Housing Protection Act; and in committee of the whole House, Bill 54, Ontario Drug Benefit Act, and Bill 55, Prescription Drug Cost Regulation Act. That should leave quite a bit of the day remaining.

On Thursday, May 29, in the morning we will deal with private members' public business standing in the names of the member for Scarborough-Ellesmere (Mr. Warner) and the member for Halton-Burlington (Mr. Knight). In the afternoon we will continue with legislation not completed on Wednesday.

I am informed that the standing committee on social development made a motion this afternoon that would refer Bill 94, Health Care Accessibility Act, back to the House for consideration. If this is referred to committee of the whole House, it would appear in Orders and Notices later next week. Although the House leaders have not had an opportunity to discuss this eventuality, the government is anxious to bring this forward for continuing discussion on a clause-by-clause basis at the earliest possible time. That might be as early as next Wednesday.

The House adjourned at 6:28 p.m.