Hansard Transcript 1987-Jan-26 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Hon. Mr. Nixon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: You may recall on Thursday last the member for Brantford (Mr. Gillies) on a point of order recounted to the House the situation in which he was involved in the standing committee on public accounts, of which he is a member. He was served with legal papers in circumstances that fly in the face of all the requirements, procedures and precedents of this House and its members.

He indicated, and got agreement on all sides, that whether or not he should be subject to the serving of papers having to do with a civil case, which we in this House feel is not possible under the provisions of the Legislative Assembly Act and our predecents, it was the most heinous thing that he be served in that very committee at the time when it was dealing with matters that in some respects were associated with the papers being served.

An affidavit has been made public through the press gallery -- I am not sure whether it was made available to you, Mr. Speaker -- which I want to bring to the attention of the House because I feel it concerns me personally. After participating in the general discussion and sending the whole smelly matter off to the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly for review, I was asked for comment. I went out and was particularly critical of the process servers and the legal firm -- Stikeman, Elliott -- that had undertaken a procedure that was obviously against our laws and our traditions.

I even indicated as clearly as I could that I thought the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly might very well find that the lawyer who authorized the service might find that his professional services were no longer required by the community of Ontario. I did not use the word "disbarment," although it was in my mind.

I will quote briefly from the affidavit that has been made available, which was signed by the chief of the agency that undertook the service that was discussed:

"I have previously served members of the Legislature at Queen's Park, and my standard practice in such cases is to phone the member in advance to arrange a mutually convenient time for service. Accordingly, on Tuesday, January 20, 1987, I phoned Mr. Gillies's office at Queen's Park and spoke with Ms. Lyn Artmont, whom I understood to be Mr. Gillies's executive assistant. I explained to Ms. Artmont that I had legal documents from the firm of Stikeman, Elliott to serve on Mr. Gillies and herself personally and wished to make arrangements to serve them at a convenient time.

"Ms. Artmont advised me that Mr. Gillies was out of town but would be in the public accounts committee, room 151 at Queen's Park, on Thursday morning and that both of them would be served at that time and at that place.

"I informed Ms. Artmont that I did not wish to interrupt any government proceedings and inquired whether it would be appropriate to serve Mr. Gillies at that time. Ms. Artmont said that it would be quite all right and that I was to go into the committee room and would recognize her because she would be the only woman in the room. She stated that I would recognize Mr.Gillies because he would be sitting at a chair at the committee table behind his nameplate."

The affidavit goes on to describe in detail specifically what occurred. I still maintain that a service under these circumstances is not appropriate. In fact, I do not believe it is legal under the Legislative Assembly Act nor our custom. However, I must say I object to the presentation of the facts associated with the service, which led an easily led person such as myself to go out and offer criticism of an individual based on the facts that had been presented in good faith to all members of the House.

If, in fact, the service had been arranged by the member for Brantford and his employee, then I really feel as a member of this House -- I would not say I was misinformed -- I was seriously inadequately informed on the basis of the information put to the House by the member for Brantford, who was stating that his privileges had been abrogated.

This is the first chance I have been able to have to bring this to your attention, sir. I know members of the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly are present. As for me, I am going to ask our colleagues on the committee to raise this matter when it is reviewed so that the facts of the service and all those matters pertaining to it will be fully aired.

I wanted to get up in the House under these circumstances and express my personal objection both to the way the thing was handled by the honourable member in the House and the fact that the process was served under these circumstances, which I feel is unacceptable.

Mr. Andrewes: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure the Treasurer, the member for Brant-Oxford-Norfolk, has a point of order, but I assume you have granted him the privilege of airing this issue, which he calls "a smelly matter," in front of the House. It appears he is making some degree of assumption relative to the affidavit that was served and the matters that transpired last Thursday during the meeting of the standing committee on public accounts.

I think the appropriate place for this discussion to take place is in the Legislative Assembly committee. I am sure it will consider this document during its deliberations, as it will consider all other matters relevant to this situation. It is very important that we not forget the broader issue and not try to shelter that broader issue by dealing with narrower issues of detail.

Interjection.

Mr. Andrewes: The honourable member laughs.

Perhaps the appropriate time at which these matters can best come forward is in that committee.

Mr. McClellan: I have to confess to sharing many of the same feelings about this matter as my colleague the government House leader. The only thing I would say at this time is that obviously the full circumstances need to be reviewed by the committee on the Legislative Assembly, including whether there was prior knowledge of these documents being served on the member for Brantford and what exactly were the arrangements for the serving of these papers. I have every confidence these matters will be thoroughly pursued by the Legislative Assembly committee.

1340

Mr. Speaker: I have listened very carefully to the comments by the three members who have spoken. Following the discussion that took place last Thursday and the fact that the House sent the matter to the Legislative Assembly committee, I am certain, because it was brought up today and is on record, that the appropriate place it should go, as suggested by one of the people speaking, is to that committee. I hope the members so concerned will make certain it is brought up before that committee.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I should have mentioned in my point of order that I intended to table a copy of the affidavit. It is public and has been circulated to the press gallery, but so that it is officially seized by the Clerk of the House, I ask one of the pages to give it to him to seize.

ARGOSY FINANCIAL GROUP OF CANADA

Mr. Speaker: Today I would like to inform the members that I have tabled the report of the Ombudsman's opinion, reasons therefor and recommendations following his investigation into the complaints concerning Argosy Financial Group of Canada.

Mr. Philip: On a point of privilege, Mr. Speaker: Concerning the report that was tabled, I confirmed with the Ombudsman that no copies of that report were leaked to the press or to anyone else, that it was tabled appropriately with you and with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly. We know the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and Financial Institutions (Mr. Kwinter) would have had that report for at least a month. We know the Office of the Premier has had the report since last Thursday.

We have another example of a report that has been leaked to the media before members of the committee or members of this assembly have had an opportunity to receive it first. I ask that you kindly investigate why such leaks of reports seem to have been coming over and over again since this government took power.

Mr. Speaker: I do not know whether I have the right to conduct such an investigation. To my knowledge, I received the report today and I tabled it today. That is the only information I have.

VISITOR

Mr. Speaker: I ask all members of the Legislative Assembly to join with me in recognizing and welcoming in the Speaker's gallery a member of the House of Lords, the Right Honourable Lord Shaughnessy. Please join me in welcoming Lord Shaughnessy.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

PEEL CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Mr. J. M. Johnson: I would like to bring to the attention of the House the very serious problem pertaining to the amalgamation of the Charlestown Residential School in Caledon with Peel Children's Services, operating under the control of the Ministry of Community and Social Services. This amalgamation has created serious economic and emotional strains on the parents of the children involved in the Charlestown program and has caused considerable anxiety throughout the community of Caledon.

While this transfer took place on April 1, 1986, many of the legal matters pertaining to it have not yet been resolved. The board of directors of Charlestown would like to meet with the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) and members of the board of Peel Children's Services to see whether these unresolved issues can be clarified and decisions made in the best interests of the children who reside at the school. As this situation has been ongoing for several months, let us hope the Minister of Community and Social Services will agree to meet with the principals in the near future.

ALGOMA CENTRAL RAILWAY

Mr. Wildman: I rise to make a statement with regard to the press release issued last Thursday by Algoma Steel Corp. with regard to the Algoma Ore division operations in Wawa. It is most unfortunate that the management of Algoma Steel Corp. decided to release such a statement at this point in very delicate negotiations. As the company itself admitted, the negotiations are ongoing, involving the federal government, the provincial government, Algoma Steel Corp. and the Algoma Central Railway, and progress has been made. If they were going to make any statement, that is the one they should have made and they should have left it at that.

It was most inappropriate to include in such a statement what can only be characterized as a threat to the community of Wawa and the workers at Algoma Ore division. If this government is going to continue negotiations, and I hope it does, it must be prepared to demand job guarantees from both Algoma Steel Corp. and the Algoma Central Railway before any suggestion of subsidization should be completed.

HOSPITAL BEDS

Mr. Andrewes: On January 7, the St. Catharines Standard carried a story about 83-year-old Konrad Michalsky, who had spent the night with 17 other patients on stretchers in the emergency room of St. Catharines General Hospital because no beds were available.

What warrants our concern is that this incident is not an isolated occurrence. Hospital overcrowding has become a chronic problem, not only in the St. Catharines area hospitals but also across the entire province. In order not to tie up beds reserved for surgical patients, patients must wait in the emergency department for an appropriate bed, in some instances for up to a week. The noisy, draughty environment and the total lack of privacy put added stress on patients and doctors alike and do little to enhance the quality of care that can be provided.

Doctors have been coping as best they can, discharging their patients a day or two earlier when possible, and beds are allotted to those who are in greatest need. The problem is that we cannot put sickness on hold. Our rapidly ageing population continues to make increasing demands on our health care system. I think the House will agree that this is not a trend that is likely to reverse itself in the near future.

I hope the government will move rapidly to ensure that Mr. Michalsky and others like him have access to first-class treatment in our hospitals. The current crisis management situation falls far short of such guarantees.

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION

Mr. Cousens: I am pleased to make a presentation to the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Fulton). For some time, he has received formal delegations from our community, from the mayor of Vaughan, the mayor of Markham and the mayor of Richmond Hill, looking for support from the Ontario government for the new highway, Highway 407, that would go north of Highway 401.

We in our community in south York region and north Metro Toronto are experiencing great problems because of the lack of good communication routes. The land has been purchased and set aside. What we are waiting for from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications is a date when it will commit itself to the beginning of this important route. The first place to start is here in the Legislature, through the Minister of Transportation and Communications, the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) and Management Board, with approval of the much-needed money.

Whenever a road is built, approximately 90 cents of every dollar go back into the community. For the long-term future, it generates wealth for the whole community because it allows people not only to get to work but also to ship their goods. It allows the economy and the whole society in which we live to prosper.

To help the minister get a feel for it, I would like to have a bumper banner placed on his car -- it is purely up to him to do so - "407 in `87," a slogan by the mayor of Vaughan, Mrs. Jackson. We hope it will become a slogan for our Minister of Transportation and Communications -"407 in `87.''

1350

LABOUR DISPUTE

Mr. Breaugh: I bring to the attention of the Legislature a rather unfortunate set of facts in the dispute between Atlantic Sugar and Local 222 of the Canadian Auto Workers. There was a rather difficult set of negotiations throughout the fall. Shortly before Christmas, the company decided unilaterally to lock out its work force.

Since that time, Ontario law apparently has absolutely nothing to say about lockouts or justification for lockouts, or even about the company providing to the public, to the community and to its employees some reason that the lockout occurred. The sad fact now remains that we have members of that local locked out of their place of work. The company has been asked repeatedly to give the reasons for the lockout and has declined to comment.

Ontario law apparently has a spot in it where there is no requirement on the part of the company to provide even an indication of how long this lockout might continue, whether this is a permanent closure of a facility, or a temporary closure, or a layoff situation, or whether it intends to bargain again. To our knowledge, the Ministry of Labour has not intervened in any meaningful way to bring those negotiations back on track.

I suggest that the Ontario government has an obligation to review the provisions of Ontario labour law that allow this type of situation to go on.

ADULTS-ONLY APARTMENTS

Mr. Gregory: With regard to the bill dealing with adults-only buildings, that is, Bill 7, I have received a great number of telephone calls and letters and have had many conversations with senior citizens who find themselves very much offended by the actions of the present government with regard to condominiums. In many of these cases, senior citizens have sold their homes with the intention of living in condominiums. They have made offers to purchase, accompanied with deposits, only to find that they are now forced to accept the situation that has been imposed on them by the government; that is, they are no longer adults-only condominiums.

I find this very distressing. I hope someone on the government side -- now that it has made this mess -- is prepared to recompense the people who have made deposits. If they withdraw from those deals, they will be obliged to pay out of their own pockets and lose their deposits. I suggest the government, which has caused this mess, should be prepared to recompense them for that loss.

I believe this is a very unnecessary thing. It could have been avoided had it not been for Liberal intransigence on the amendments that were offered by this party. I suggest that the Minister of Housing (Mr. Curling) take a very close look at this matter, because it has become very serious to some of these senior citizens who intended to buy condominiums.

CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Mr. Andrewes: I have a letter from the Niagara Centre for Youth Care, the provincially licensed children's mental health centre for the Niagara region. It points out a number of concerns relative to its current funding situation, which increasingly prevents young people in the Niagara region from having access to its services.

It says that, critically, 55 per cent of its clients are from the city of St. Catharines because no expansion dollars are being directed towards Niagara children's mental health services to permit the establishment of services outside the immediate vicinity. This is an admission of frustration on the part of the agency but, more specifically, that the $10.80 per capita funding across the province compares very poorly with the $4.25 per capita funding in the Niagara region.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I have an exceptionally pleasant duty to perform at this time. It is to congratulate the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies on the 75th anniversary of its founding, in the year 1912. I am sure that all members of this Legislature will want to join with me in offering their congratulations as well.

Child welfare in Canada can be said to date from 1893, when the Ontario Legislature passed An Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to, and Better Protection of, Children. This act provided for the establishment of children's aid societies. The act gave these societies -- and several of them had already been set up -- legal powers to intervene where there was neglect or cruelty and to arrange foster care for children who were being mistreated at home.

Then in 1912, the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies came into being, the hub of the wheel that had already begun to turn towards providing help for some of the province's youngest and yet most important citizens.

Ontario is proud of the work done by the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies and its constituent members. We are proud to honour those who so diligently continue and enhance the work of John Joseph Kelso, who was the chief architect of measures to provide child welfare in this province.

Through the early years of this century when a large number of immigrants, many of them children, flocked into Ontario; through the Depression years of the 1930s when survival itself was the major concern of many families; through the Second World War, which produced the first latchkey children, members of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies did not shirk their role in helping children and their families. That singleness of purpose has never slackened. It remained evident in the years after the Second World War in what became known as the era of the baby-boomers. In our own time of rapid and ever-increasing changes in mores, family groupings and lifestyles, the role of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies has become increasingly important.

My ministry has particular reason to appreciate the active presence of the association. Our working together has achieved an effective consensus in bringing help to children and their families. Among recent examples of such efforts are the revision of the Child Welfare Act in the 1960s, the consultation around the Child and Family Services Act in the 1980s, the development of the initial child abuse standards and guidelines in 1981, and even more recently, the proposed revisions to legislation dealing with adoption disclosure.

As I look towards the future, I am heartened by the certainty that my ministry and the association will continue to move forward together to help create a climate of society in which our children can develop and move confidently into the world of tomorrow.

I notice representatives of the association in the visitor's gallery and to them I want to say, "Congratulations to you, the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, on your work and on your 75th anniversary."

LIQUOR CONTROL BOARD OF ONTARIO

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I am sure members are aware of the highly critical comments made by a provincial court judge in Toronto last week concerning the operations and management of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. The criticism came out in Judge D. T. Hogg's findings following the trial of a liquor store manager for fraud.

Before I touch briefly on the major areas of Judge Hogg's comments, I want to assure the members that I take such criticism very seriously. The LCBO is a monopoly empowered by law to distribute and sell alcoholic beverages in Ontario. Operating as it does without competition, it has both a moral and legal responsibility to carry out its unique role with the greatest possible efficiency and integrity. To do otherwise is a clear abuse of public trust. We are already aware of some of the problems identified by Judge Hogg. It is not new to say that, in response, changes and improvements are definitely under way. None the less, I still find these criticisms most disturbing and I know LCBO Chairman Jack Ackroyd finds them disturbing as well.

On Friday, I informed Mr. Ackroyd that I expect a full and comprehensive report on the success of the LCBO's ongoing plans to upgrade both its operations and management. In the interim, I have directed Mr. Ackroyd to carry out an immediate review of the LCBO's management capacity. If he finds any shortfall in this regard, I have informed him that he has my full support in taking whatever action is required. To accelerate the improvements already under way and to focus the board's energies on the problem areas referred to by both the recent Provincial Auditor's report and Judge Hogg, I have urged Mr. Ackroyd to retain outside management support and expertise immediately.

I feel it is important that the members have a brief overview of what has been going on at the LCBO in the key areas of Judge Hogg's criticism.

With reference to his statements regarding the management of the board, the chairman had already identified this problem and a firm of business consultants was engaged to review the senior management structure completely. Their recommendation that we create three executive vice-presidents reporting directly to the chairman has been carried out. The key position of executive vice-president of administration was filled by seconding a senior administrator from my ministry just four months ago.

1400

As members will recall, Justice John Osler raised this issue during the royal commission in 1986, and after hearing extensive testimony from the chairman and senior staff, was satisfied that appropriate steps were being taken to rectify problem areas.

Prior to Judge Hogg's criticism the LCBO was reviewing its financial, auditing and accounting systems. A major accounting firm will soon be retained to review the board's accounting and auditing procedures. Its first priority will be an immediate review of financial control and practices. The LCBO has also gone to tender on a computerized cash register system that will address the judge's concern about the need to have a printed record of each liquor sale.

I have previously addressed the matter of the Durham warehouse in this House. Most of the details presented in the case before Judge Hogg occurred during the startup of the facility. While the operation of this warehouse has improved, it is not yet at 100 per cent efficiency. The board had a professional engineering firm audit the system last summer, and its recommendations are now being implemented. It should be remembered that in facilities of this size and sophistication it takes time to become completely operational. I am satisfied that we are making steady progress in this regard.

Judge Hogg criticized the board's security arrangements. About two years ago, the LCBO seconded Sergeant Kevin Balch from the Metropolitan Toronto Police to deal with its security problems. He has carried out several security studies and many improvements have been made, including an increase in security staff and prosecutions.

To put losses to theft and pilferage into perspective, it should be understood that the Retail Business Council of Canada finds that average losses in other large retailers about are about 15 times greater than those at the LCBO.

My comments are not to be seen as a defence against criticism but rather an as effort to put the overall issue in context. I want to assure the Legislature that major improvements in the operation and management of this large and important institution must and will be made. Whatever it takes, we will do. The people of Ontario deserve nothing less.

Mr. Gillies: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I understand that earlier you allowed a point of order by the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) regarding the events of last Thursday. In view of the fact that it was allowed and I was absent, I wonder whether you would allow me the opportunity to speak to the point.

Mr. Speaker: Agreed?

Agreed to.

MEMBERS' PRIVILEGES

Mr. Gillies: The Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) apparently sees his role in this matter to be that of an agent for the law firm of Stikeman, Elliott, which, as I understand it, brought an affidavit into the House that calls into question the events of last week. For the record, I want all members of the House to understand the facts, as I do, facts that are apparently misunderstood by the law firm Stikeman, Elliott.

On Monday last week, when I was on business for my party in Ottawa, the agent for the law firm of Stikeman, Elliott called my office and asked when I would be available that week to receive a hand-delivered letter from that law firm. My schedule for the subsequent four days was given to that agent over the phone. They were told I would be out of town on Monday and on Tuesday morning. They were told where I would be on Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday and Thursday of last week. The implication, either in the affidavit or in the comments of the Treasurer -- and, incidentally, in the comments of the leader of the third party in Brantford on Friday -- was that an appointment had been made between my assistant and the law firm to appear at the standing committee on public accounts and serve me with the writ at that time.

There are two very key points here: (1) No such appointment was made, nor would I have advised any member of my staff to make such an appointment. (2) The implication, which I took from press reports of the leader of the third party's comments in Brantford, that I had any prior knowledge of the incidents that occurred on Thursday morning of last week is completely false and scurrilous. I believe the leader of the third party, if indeed he made the comments referred to in the Brantford Expositor, owes me an apology for calling into question my word on this matter.

I also want to disabuse the Treasurer, the House or anyone else on this point: I had no prior knowledge of the intentions of the law firm Stikeman, Elliott and neither Ms. Artmont nor myself would have counselled them to make such a presentation before the committee.

Mr. Speaker: I am sure the committee will review the matter extensively.

RESPONSES

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES

Mr. Cousens: We celebrate an important anniversary today for the children's aid societies in Ontario. Seventy-five years of service to young people and children within our community is something we should all stop and remember. We should realize it is no accident that the children's aid societies are performing their function in a most professional and careful way, keeping in mind the needs of our children.

People such as George Caldwell, the executive director of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, represent and are typical of the kind of dedication we have seen with children's aid societies for these many years. It starts with professional people with a deep and genuine concern for the welfare and wellbeing of our young people, who are able to give of themselves in a selfless way so that these children will have a chance. Whether it be through counselling, support mechanisms, adoption or a number of different services that the children's aid society offers, it is one place in this province that people know there is a group doing a job that counts.

I share in this day of celebration for the children's aid societies, as do all members of this Legislature, realizing that the key is the quality of the people who are performing these functions. Let us hope the next 75 years are not as fraught with problems the past year has been. We saw two major strikes, one in Metropolitan Toronto and one in Ottawa, each caused in part by a breakdown in the province's providing funding to the societies to provide the services that are essential. Perhaps today on this 75th anniversary the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) can look at his books to see whether there are any additional funds that can be invested, not spent, for the wellbeing and care of our children.

There is a second concern that should be on our minds as we celebrate this anniversary, and that is the important role of the volunteers who run the different children's aid societies in this province. Again, these are people who care about young people and very much want the children's aid societies to reach their goals. I detect an increasing sense of frustration on the part of those volunteer boards with the amount of government interference, regulation and control and with government being late with its funding. Can they continue to be able to make the kind of contribution they want to or are they being more and more controlled by a government that wants to take over?

We would not survive in this province if we did not have strong volunteer boards continuing to make a contribution. In the future we should have an emphasis to continue to build and strengthen those boards so that they will be able to fulfil their jobs in an honourable, complete and satisfactory way. There is now a sense of frustration on these boards that they are being held back and controlled. I hope the next 75 years will see these boards proceed with the fresh vigour and confidence that can be instilled when there is a trusting relationship between the government of Ontario and the local boards. That relationship is deteriorating. It is weakening because of the breakdown between this government and those groups.

There must be an ingredient of trust and a sense of purpose within those boards. That trust is not as prevalent now as it was a couple of years ago. I challenge the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) and the government not to allow these volunteer boards to be destroyed or to disappear. Part of the strength of the children's aid societies is the personal representation by volunteers who care. The combination of the three working together -- the government of Ontario, the professional staff and the volunteer boards -- to serve our young people has to be the way to do it. Our young people are our best and most valuable resource.

1410

As we celebrate this 75th anniversary, may the children's aid societies continue to do their job but with the support mechanisms around them to allow them to do it as well as they have in the past.

Mr. R. F. Johnston: It is a privilege to respond on behalf of the New Democratic Party, to join in the congratulations on the 75th anniversary of the children's aid societies in Ontario and to welcome here prominent members of the provincial association.

The CASs have had an impossible task over the years, which has often been made more impossible by succeeding governments. They have been given the responsibility of protecting the children who are most vulnerable in our society and of intervening in the sacred family unit as an arm of the state in such a way as to look after the best interests of these children. To do that at any time is a difficult thing and often requires the wisdom of Solomon.

There have been many occasions during the 75 years of the children's aid societies when they might have wished they had not been charged with that responsibility in individual cases. I think back to the Kim Anne Popen case and other cases of child abuse and child death in Ontario and to the way the children's aid societies were often left holding the bag for government incompetence, lack of training and lack of funding. Their history has not been an easy one.

In recent years, we have made it even more difficult. We have changed the Child and Family Services Act in such a way as to require of the children's aid societies a major preventive role, a role of trying to slow down and stop the numbers of children who are taken into care and become wards of the state, of trying to intervene with their families beforehand to allow them to maintain themselves as a normal, functioning family.

The CASs have been asked to do this at a time when they have been given decreased amounts of funding. They have been used as a buffer by past governments, and I regret to say by this government, even though its members used to complain when they were in opposition about the way the government of Ontario would restrict increases to the children's aid societies to four per cent or the like and then expect them to produce extra programs to prevent harm coming to our most vulnerable children.

The Minister of Community and Social Services and his colleagues now do exactly the same thing, causing labour unrest in various parts of this province among the children's aid societies, at the same time as they and the past government were willing to intervene in places such as Kenora and take over the agency there when its demands for more money to do its impossible task got too large.

It is perhaps a time, at the 75th anniversary, when we should review the roles of the children's aid societies and the way the local boards are manipulated and used by government and come up with a system which either gives them the real independence we want for them and proper funding to protect children or puts the responsibility back properly with the government, which seems to want to duck that responsibility most of the time.

LIQUOR CONTROL BOARD OF ONTARIO

Mr. Swart: I want to say a few words about the statement made by the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Kwinter). I am sure he would agree and everyone else in this House would agree with me that we have to be concerned about the degree of discredit now taking place with regard to our public institutions and, for that matter, our democratic government.

What is happening in Ottawa, the resignation of three cabinet ministers here, and now this latest report on the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, is certainly making the public more cynical than ever about public institutions. What Judge Hogg has said is a pretty serious condemnation of what has been going on in the LCBO. The changes the minister proposes and the changes that have already taken place seem to deal with establishing a system that will inhibit these practices in the future. I commend him for bringing them in, but the policing has to be effective and ongoing.

The calls that I and many other members have received over the years have implied corruption, and I suggest to the minister that it runs very deep. Those who have been involved in this at every level should be disciplined. I am not sure the minister's statement goes far enough in that regard.

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

Mr. Swart: He has to be prepared to take the necessary disciplinary steps that may be necessary to assure that this political can of worms is finally --

Mr. Speaker: Order. Would the honourable member please take his seat. That completes the allotted time for ministers' statements and responses.

ORAL QUESTIONS

ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME

Mr. Andrewes: My question is to the Minister of Education. Can he tell us what discussions he has undertaken with school boards and the Ministry of Health regarding educational programs in our school system on the AIDS virus?

Hon. Mr. Conway: As the honourable member knows, it was just over a year ago, working with my colleague the Minister of Health (Mr. Elston), that we prepared a fact sheet and other related materials on this matter. We had that material disseminated through the Ontario school system, and we have been working with others in the school community to ensure that there is proper leadership and sensitivity in this area. I assure the member that we in the Ministry of Education will continue to do everything we can to react to the current situation.

Mr. Andrewes: Given the fact that the Ministry of Health's contribution in terms of education and support appears to be around the $200,000 mark -- and that compares to a total budget of that ministry of $10 billion -- given the fact that in Britain alone some $40 million has now been committed to education and publicity to try to acquaint people with the serious problems of the AIDS virus, and given the fact that the Minister of Health's recent response to a question relative to AIDS was that people were best advised to "exercise caution," when might we expect the Minister of Education to take some greater initiatives that would provide a better understanding of the virus and encourage preventive health programs to limit the spread of AIDS?

Hon. Mr. Conway: What we have done to date has been well received and, in our view, positive. There is more to be done, to be sure. Very shortly, we will be publishing our new guidelines for health and physical education, which will deal with AIDS. I recall to the member's attention very wise counsel offered by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Grossman), who, speaking to the subject some time ago, indicated it was a matter where local school authorities had an important role to play and that we had to be very careful we took such action as was sensitive to community situations.

In the coming weeks, we will be working with others in the educational community to ensure that every reasonable action that can be done in the area of health and education will be done.

Ms. Fish: As the minister is aware, the growing concern about the spread of AIDS exists particularly among young people who have been sexually active and sexually experimental. The minister is also aware that the Toronto Board of Education filed a request with his ministry more than a year ago to receive curriculum guidelines on teaching about AIDS and the prevention of the spread of AIDS within Toronto schools. It is still awaiting a reply. Will the minister share with us when he is prepared to issue a full and complete curriculum for teaching about AIDS and its prevention within the public schools?

Hon. Mr. Conway: As I indicated a moment ago, our health and phys-ed guideline is being revised to take this situation, among others, into account. I expect that guideline will be available for distribution in the not-too-distant future. I know of the honourable member's interest. She can rest assured I will keep her fully informed.

1420

NORTHERN HEALTH SERVICES

Mr. Andrewes: My question is to the Minister of Health. On November 13, 1986, I raised with the minister the fact that the community of Elliot Lake was without the necessary anaesthetic services. Now in the depths of winter when emergency transportation becomes an increasing problem, that situation, as we understand it, is unchanged. Can the minister tell us when he is going to resolve this health care accessibility problem?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The honourable member will be pleased to know that the Ministry of Health has been working in concert with the people in the community of Elliot Lake to bring all possible applicants who are interested in Elliot Lake to the attention of the local hospital and facilities. I understand there are people who are interested in practising there. In the meantime, there are locums in place to provide anaesthetic services in Elliot Lake.

Mr. Andrewes: This comes from the spokesman for a government that was going to make health care accessibility a priority.

Let me try another one. Last week in the community of Marathon, Jim Marzolf, a drug store operator and pharmacist operating the Marathon Drug Association Ltd., opted out of the Ontario drug benefit plan. This now leaves some 200 residents, most of them senior citizens, without local access to prescriptions under the ODB plan.

Mr. Marzolf withdrew from the program because of the ministry's failure to compensate him properly for the prescriptions he filled under the plan. Can the minister tell us when he is going to resolve this health care accessibility problem?

Hon. Mr. Elston: Again, the member will be pleased to know that the Ministry of Health has been making arrangements with respect to the people in Marathon. An article I read indicated there were about 150 seniors and people on social assistance programs. Arrangements have now been made for the supply of medications, either through the local pharmacy, which is getting in touch with other pharmacies to have the medications delivered, or through other arrangements that are being put in place.

We are well aware of the Marathon situation and we have taken steps to assist those people to get their medications.

Mr. Pierce: By way of supplementary, I do not think it is a question of the minister not being aware of the problems that are being put forward by the communities in northern Ontario.

As of January 1, 1987, the community of Atikokan, which has a population of 40,000, no longer has an anaesthesiologist and no longer has a surgeon. Mothers of small children who require minor operations for tonsillitis and appendicitis must now travel 200 miles to a doctor. It requires additional time spent in the community waiting for the child to be released from the hospital.

When the minister talks about being aware of the situation, that is all well and good. We are all aware of it. When is the minister going to do something about it? When is he going to make doctors available to the people in northern Ontario who require them?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The honourable member raised a similar question in estimates last week, and I thanked him for his suggestion at that time. He also suggested that, in terms of accessibility to professionals, we should consider the British Columbia situation, where professionals are directed by the government before licensure to take up residence in certain areas.

This government is not using the BC situation, in which the issuance of licences is used to direct people to particular communities. At this stage, we are following the incentive programs that we believe will assist people to be accommodated in the smaller, less urban centres for practice purposes. We are also pursuing actions that will help specialists to travel to smaller centres.

Overall, the accessibility of health care in northern Ontario has been heightened by our determination to improve such services as the ambulance programs and specialist programs. I know the people of northern Ontario have been quite pleased with the increased interest our government has shown, not only in health care but also in all aspects of life and wellbeing in the northern reaches of this province. I am very sure the honourable gentleman would like to indicate that the northern health travel grant is helping.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Rae: I have a question for the Minister of Financial Institutions about a subject I know is near and dear to his heart, the subject of car insurance. Statistics Canada has just come out with a new set of figures for the first three quarters of 1986 with respect to car insurance across Canada. These figures show that, for the first three quarters of 1986, the insurance companies on underwriting alone -- that is, the difference between claims paid out and premiums received -- made $497 million. That is only car insurance companies.

Can the minister indicate his views and the views of the Liberal Party with respect to that kind of difference between money taken in and claims paid out?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I thank the leader of the third party for his question. However, he neglected to break down the figures. I am sure he will admit, if he looks at the figures, that notwithstanding the broad statement about what the profits were, in Ontario in automobile insurance alone, when it comes to underwriting profit, the insurance companies still pay out more in claims than they take in as premiums.

Mr. Rae: That is not the information we have from Statistics Canada. The only statistics we have from the minister and his ministry date back to 1984. If he has some more recent statistics to provide to the House, he has not been giving them for the past two years.

However, in the light of this information from Statistics Canada, how does the minister feel about the most recent set of television ads being run by the Insurance Bureau of Canada? I have the advertising copy supplied to me by the Vickers and Benson advertising company, advertisers for the Insurance Bureau of Canada. They make a series of claims. They say at the end of one ad, which I am sure the minister may have seen, "We want you to know that the cost of your insurance is driven by what it costs to insure you and nothing more."

In the light of the facts I have just given the minister from Statistics Canada, does he feel this is a fair and accurate account of how money works in the insurance business today?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: The member will know, as I have said before and I am certainly prepared to back it up -- and if he takes a look at the Statistics Canada figures, he will see it is true -- in Ontario the insurance company is in a negative position when it comes to underwritng profits.

That having been said, the member should also know this does have a direct relationship. Even before the western provinces got into the insurance business, the underwriting costs in Ontario were always almost double. The loss ratios in Ontario are almost double those of every other jurisdiction in Canada, and that has nothing to do with the companies themselves. It has to do with the fact that we have the largest concentration of drivers. I have told the member this before. In all of Manitoba, there are 600,000 drivers; we have six million.

The member should know, and I am sure he will welcome this information, that in November I stated that the Manitoba automobile insurance plan thought it was going to lose $4 million. In December, it thought it was going to lose $10 million. On January 12, the Winnipeg Free Press stated --

Mr. Speaker: Order. Perhaps the minister would like to --

Mr. Rae: I am fascinated by what the minister has to tell us. We can have an argument in this place and outside about the facts of the case. However, there are now ads taking place across Ontario for a very well-known reason. Those ads have a political purpose. What I am trying to get the minister to say is whether he thinks the ads, which are being placed by his very good friends in the insurance bureau, are a fair and accurate assessment of what is going on in the insurance business in this province, and indeed in Canada.

Is it a fair statement to say, "We want you to know that the cost of your insurance is driven by what it costs to insure you and nothing more"? Is it fair to say that there are no other factors involved, such as a little thing called profit, when it comes to what the car insurance companies in this province are bilking the car drivers of Ontario?

1430

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: Far be it from me to comment on the merits and benefits of advertising. The New Democratic Party has taken it upon itself to enter into an advertising campaign, and no one has asked me whether I think there is any merit in its campaign. I would suggest that when it comes to the industry, it is a free market. It has the opportunity and the privilege of stating its case to the public, and whether the public buy it or not is their business.

Mr. Rae: It is nice to know we have a Minister of Financial Institutions who is out there to protect the consumer.

NIAGARA RIVER WATER QUALITY

Mr. Rae: I have a question for the Minister of the Environment. Can the minister explain the following set of facts? Can he explain why we are now at the 11th hour in our relationship with the state of New York; the Durez site property and the dumping of chemicals by Occidental; the extraordinary information that has not been made available to this House by the minister but that he has apparently shared with his colleague in New York, Hank Williams?

Can the minister explain why all of this has taken place; why we in Ontario are in the dark with respect to the degree of dioxin poisoning, when the minister apparently has information; why the ministry's response has been so utterly ineffectual; and why, at the 11th hour, we still have no guarantee that that site is going to be cleaned up in a way that will preserve, inasmuch as it can now be preserved, the integrity and quality of the Niagara River?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I am glad the member for York South has raised an issue of this kind. He would know that since I have been the Minister of the Environment, one of the issues I have consistently been pressing with our American neighbours has been the situation that exists in Niagara Falls, New York.

One of the reasons we do not have an agreement that has been signed with the Americans -- I have been criticized in many quarters for this -- in terms of an overall accord in this issue is that I have refused to sign such an agreement until such time as we have in such an agreement a specific schedule for the reduction of contaminants and a specific percentage of reduction that would be agreed to by both sides. In addition to this, I have asked for a meaningful reference to the excavation of those sites immediately adjacent to the river.

My ministry and officials of my ministry have communicated to our American neighbours on many occasions our concern about the situation as it relates to contaminants on the other side and our demands that they be cleaned up. We will continue to press this case, as we have in the past, and I would expect that, as a result of the continuing efforts and the support of the member for York South and others in this House, our voice will be added to. However, I assure the member that on very many occasions here in Canada, in the United States and in New York state I have put forward that case.

Mr. Rae: The minister really cannot be allowed to get away with this kind of thing. He has had his knees cut off with respect to Kimberly-Clark. When he was in opposition, he was up every day with respect to what is going on in the Niagara River. Now that he is the minister in a position to do something, we have a minister who is unable to inform this House of what is going on with respect to the poisoning of one of the major international waterways between Ontario and New York state.

When New York state officials have said there is no question that this dump is contributing to the deterioration of the Niagara River and the lawyer for the New York Attorney General has said, "The Love Canal sewers are not as bad as this, in terms of the mountains of chemicals" -- and that is a direct quote from Mr. Washington, who is the lawyer for the New York Attorney General -- can the minister explain why he has made no statement in this House with respect to this source of contamination and with respect to information which he has about how badly poisoned that dump site is and how bad the poisoning of the Niagara River is as a result? Why has he kept those facts from the House? Why has he not made a statement?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I ask the leader of the third party, where has he been in the last while?

Mr. McClellan: You have not been in the House. You have been hiding.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I have. I have been in the House more than the member has and more than his leader has.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The leader of the third party --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the minister take his seat.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind members that interjections are out of order and answering interjections is not in order. If the minister would like to point his finger, maybe he can point it at the Speaker and speak through the Speaker to the member.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Through you, Mr. Speaker, to my friend the member for York South, who is still my friend: obviously, he has read a poll that says environmental issues are important issues, so every day in the House the leader of the third party is going to get up and ask an environmental question. They are important, and I think he has a genuine concern. I do not want to indicate he does not, because I sincerely believe the member has a concern about that.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Does the minister have a response?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: In answer to his question, I have consistently stated the position of the province on this site and on other sites. As the member knows, we have been criticized for being dogmatic on this issue, for having standards that are too high in this issue and for constantly harping at our American friends. That is criticism I am prepared to sustain. But on a consistent basis, I have commented very strongly to American authorities about this site and other sites and indicated that we feel there should be an immediate cleanup. I continue to do so and I will continue to do so beyond this day.

Mr. Rae: The minister has an overdose of Walter Mitty disease. He seems to think everybody around here is saying he is too tough. There is nobody in this Legislature, and certainly nobody in our party, who thinks the minister has been too tough. Our concern is that the minister has not stood up -

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I would not say that.

Mr. Speaker: The question is?

Mr. Rae: When testing shows that the storm sewer is contaminated with 115 parts per billion of dioxin near the plant site to 15 parts per billion near the river and the concentrations of chlorobenzenes are more than two per cent of the sediment -- 23,000 parts per million -- can the minister explain why his ministry has yet to release full analyses of sediment samples and spot-tail shiners, which were allegedly done in November 1985? Why has the House not seen that information? Why has the minister been concealing that information from the House? Why has he been wrapping all his work in a maze of helium and in a maze of hot air rather than taking the kind of action that would make a difference to people?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The leader of the third party is aware that on a very consistent basis, I have drawn this to the attention of our American friends. I have commented in this House; I have commented in public on many occasions; I have said this in Niagara Falls, New York; and I have said this in Buffalo, New York, in Washington and in New York City. On a consistent basis, we have found the information to indicate that the problem that exists on the other side is not satisfactory. That is why I have pressed it in a number of meetings with Hank Williams. I have pressed this in a meeting in Washington with Lee Thomas. My ministry and I have pressed this issue on a consistent basis with a number of officials. For the leader of the third party to suggest that this has not been the case is simply not accurate.

When the leader of the third party talks about the fact that people on his side of the House have never said the Minister of the Environment is too tough, he had better check back with some statements that have been made over the past year.

1440

TEACHERS' QUALIFICATIONS

Mr. Davis: I have a question for the Minister of Education. The teaching profession has always striven to attain high standards and high quality of education for students in Ontario. Why would the minister make recommendations today that threaten to undermine the excellent quality of education provided for students in Ontario by allowing teachers to instruct in courses for which they are not qualified? Can the minister explain the ludicrous position his ministry announced this morning?

Hon. Mr. Conway: I thank the honourable member for his interest and for his question. I will offer a response, regretting the lack of attendance in the assembly this afternoon of the member for York Mills (Miss Stephenson) who while Minister of Education began a process of review of regulation 262 some four and half years ago, some reference to which was made in the papers this morning. I want the member to know that what was spoken of in the morning press in no way represents government policy. It represents, rather, efforts to consult with the education community about ways and means in which we might address a number of the concerns that have been identified.

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I would not want my friends from Burlington and Scarborough to become too exercised about what is a draft regulation that has been put out, I say to my friend the member for Mississauga South (Mrs. Marland), for consultation. Neither she nor her colleagues should conclude that this in any way represents government policy because it does not represent government policy.

Mr. Davis: The minister, as always, is full of wind. One of the problems. and the minister knows it, is that with regulations -- he can put them out all he wants -- he is quite capable of changing them any time he wishes and there does not have to be any consultation nor does there have to be any public discussion. However, that is not my question.

More emphasis in education now is being placed on providing qualified guidance teachers to assist young people in making career choices in the selection of subject areas, and where required on providing personal counselling. By the recommendations today, it appears that his actions in effect say, "I know you are deeply concerned about your child selecting the right courses and finding a job when he or she is finished, but I want you to know that I now am going to allow unqualified teachers to help your child make that important decision."

What does the minister say today to parents and students who because of that article will understand that there now will be unqualified guidance teachers instructing their children in course selections that will affect them for the rest of their lives?

Hon. Mr. Conway: As I look at and listen to the member and think about the preamble to his supplementary, given the choice, I would rather be full of wind.

I want to say to the parents and to others that this is not government policy. This is but a draft regulation that tries to produce, and I think will effectively produce, an important and constructive consultation out of which will come a change in government policy, but only after that consultation.

In conclusion, as the very distinguished former chairman of the Scarborough Board of Education knows from his long and distinguished experience in that responsibility, there are thousands of letters of permission that authorize teachers to instruct in areas for which they do not have the required qualifications. As we move forward, I am sure the consultations will elicit from the member the kind of advice that will help us resolve this interesting situation.

NORTHERN HEALTH SERVICES

Mr. Wildman: I wonder whether the draught was caused by the wind.

I have a question to the Minister of Health. Will he confirm that the locums the ministry has going to Elliot Lake to provide anaesthetic services are not available every day of the week and that if an emergency occurs on a day when they are not present in Elliot Lake, patients have to be transferred a great distance, probably to Sudbury or Sault Ste. Marie, for an emergency operation?

If that is the case, can he also confirm that the locum system does not deal with the question of providing full-time anaesthetist services in Elliot Lake and that the underserviced areas program has not been successful in doing that?

Hon. Mr. Elston: I cannot confirm what the member says, only because I have not heard that suggested. I will look into the circumstances and see whether locums are there on a daily basis. I will then get back to the member.

With respect to the other question, it is my understanding that there are people interested in establishing practices in Elliot Lake. From that standpoint, our underserviced areas program is continuing with the recruitment process in assisting the people at the hospital to accomplish a full-time residence in the community by people trained to deliver anaesthetics.

Mr. Wildman: Can the minister indicate to us how many medical positions, for both specialists and general practitioners, are vacant in communities in the north that are under the underserviced areas program?

Considering that is a considerable number, will the minister follow the lead of New Brunswick? That province has established a program for medical students to attract them back for summer employment to medical institutions, so they can develop some sort of relationship with those medical institutions in those communities as a way of encouraging them to set up practice in those communities when they graduate.

Will the minister consider that in relation to the proposed program announced by his colleague the Minister for Skills Development (Mr. Sorbara) for northern student employment?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The suggestion which has been made by the member about attracting students via the bursary program has been made by a number of his colleagues from northern Ontario with respect to some programs. Last year, I believe at estimates, the same suggestion was made by the member for Lake Nipigon (Mr. Pouliot) and a couple of his colleagues.

I do not have an exact number of placements which are being requested. I do know a very active group of people from northern Ontario underserviced-area communities was here in southern Ontario in late October for a week. They pursued a number of leads with respect to people who would be interested in attending and setting up practice in northern Ontario. The rate of success of that, I understand, has been very encouraging.

There will probably be further decisions to be made very shortly by individuals who have recently graduated from some of the programs. I expect we will be able to assist the community in Elliot Lake, for instance, with some of its difficulties, if the leads continue to be as promising as they already are.

LEGAL AID

Mr. Brandt: My question to the Attorney General, if I can get his attention, concerns the issue of legal aid. Is the minister aware that in connection with the process used for the approval of assistance through legal aid, there has been a directive go out of his ministry indicating that the number of cases that can be processed in the individual areas has been reduced?

Hon. Mr. Scott: I will make inquiries about that. I find it difficult to understand the point the member has made. As he undoubtedly knows, legal aid is run on behalf of the public by the legal aid committee of the Law Society of Upper Canada. Any determinations about the way it should be delivered, apart from the statutory and regulatory framework, are determinations that are made by the Law Society of Upper Canada. However, I will undertake to look into the matter and report to the honourable member.

1450

Mr. Brandt: The Attorney General is aware that the funding for legal aid comes from his ministry, and if the number of cases is going to be reduced, that funding will be reduced as well. My understanding is that the process being used at the moment for approval of these particular cases has resulted in fewer cases being approved. The end result of that means fewer dollars will be provided by his ministry to pay for that service. Therefore, it does have an impact on the Ministry of the Attorney General. I would appreciate his looking into the matter to determine whether this is happening.

Hon. Mr. Scott: I will do so, as I said. As the member perhaps also knows, the requisition for funds comes on a certificate from the legal aid committee of the Law Society of Upper Canada, which simply recites the amount it has contracted to spend over the preceding quarter and invites a cheque from the Treasurer to cover that sum. Therefore, the decision about what services will be provided and to which cases will be made in the first instance by the Law Society of Upper Canada.

TEACHERS' QUALIFICATIONS

Mr. Allen: I would like to return to the question of the deregulation of teachers' qualifications with the Minister of Education. The minister suggested in his response to the member for Scarborough Centre (Mr. Davis) that this was not some ministry policy. Of course, it is not, but it is a proposal and apparently a serious one. The minister, as he has confessed to us, is taking a Tory initiative and bothering the boards of the province with it, but he is apparently trying to distance himself from it at the same time, as he has spoken in this House.

Can he tell us what possible attraction a policy of deregulation of teacher qualifications can have for him and what possible evidence he can give us that the deregulation of teacher qualifications to any significant degree would do anything but undermine the quality of education in this province?

Hon. Mr. Conway: It is important for me to try again to help my honourable friends opposite understand the process.

Mr. McClellan: Yes, please.

Mr. Davis: Teachers love it.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I have a clear understanding, and after the weekend, I have a very clear vision of the future.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Response.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I am trying, Mr. Speaker.

From time to time, we in the Ministry of Education, recognizing that a whole host of regulations flow from the Education Act, try to ensure that we are as contemporary, as relevant, as responsive and as positive as we can be. We have put out a draft regulation that touches on a whole series of questions for consultation and response.

One of the areas that is addressed in the current draft amendment has to do with teacher qualification. I want the honourable member to know this does not represent government policy. We do not work as the old administration worked. We go forward asking for response, and that is what we are seeking to do. On the basis of that consultation, we will take such action as we deem appropriate to meet the current and expected needs.

Mr. Allen: This is astonishing indeed. Is the minister really telling us he is prepared to indulge in process without purpose? Is he telling us --

Mr. Speaker: Is that your question?

Mr. Allen: I am completing that question.

Is he prepared to contemplate through this proposal that there will be teachers without qualification with access not just to two credit courses but to a whole series of credit courses in the fields of business studies, English and French as a second language, classes for the deaf and blind, teaching the trainable retarded? That suggests to me that this is what he is saying. If that is the case, then why is he doing it? Is he caving in to boards that do not wish to retrain or to boards that want to avoid the hiring schedule they are committed to?

Hon. Mr. Conway: Unlike the average democratic socialist, I am not prepared to be indulgent and I am certainly not prepared to indulge in process without purpose.

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Mr. Rowe: I have a question of the Minister of Health. In April 1986, the Simcoe County District Health Council recommended that the government provide the necessary funds to permit the construction of a new hospital in Barrie. In November 1986, a public institution inspection panel, citing crowded hallways, acute storage problems, old and inadequate laundry facilities and a shortage of beds at the Royal Victoria Hospital, also called on this government to provide new funds for a hospital.

Can the minister tell me whether he plans to provide the funds for a new hospital during the 1987-88 fiscal year, or does he intend to treat the residents of Simcoe county as second-class citizens when it comes to health care in this province?

Hon. Mr. Elston: We have more resolve in this party than his obvious predecessors did in theirs. This thing has come to my attention several times at the questioning of this honourable gentleman, who rightfully has raised this question on a couple of occasions. He is impatient with the planning process which we have put in place to look at the facilities and understand in a logical and realistic way the needs of the community of Barrie and accommodate those in thorough planning for that area.

Unlike previous Ministers of Health in this province, I will not announce on a whim, as happened in 1979, that there will be a hospital or, as happened on one occasion in 1983 when a particular person drove through Barrie and happened to stop off at the local radio station, say, "Yes, we will build a hospital," without planning for and understanding what is needed in the area.

We will thoroughly plan and put in place the appropriate services required for the people in Barrie. Like the honourable gentleman, I am very much committed to a first-class health care system for all of the communities right across Ontario. Whether it be Atikokan, St. Catharines, Elliot Lake or whatever, we will expand the opportunities of the people of the province to receive first-class health care.

Mr. Rowe: As evidenced by the minister's firm commitment and flabbergab in this House, I might say that in 1986 he established a new detox centre behind our antiquated Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie to help Simcoe county combat one of the highest drug and alcohol abuse rates in this province; but he has flatly refused to provide the necessary funds to permit the establishment of the much-needed follow-up care and long-term treatment. If the minister does not want to help them build a new hospital in Barrie, why does he not at least provide the funds to permit the detox centre to carry out its essential service?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The member will probably realize that in terms of planning for health care needs we use the resources and facilities of the district health council to help us plan what is required and what should be ranked in priority.

We have made an incursion into the provision of better service for those with alcohol and drug addictions province-wide. It may have been that the member's facility was unfortunately not one of the programs which received funding this past year, but that does not mean in any way we are not committed to the very valuable work done at the community level by alcohol and drug addiction program providers.

We are examining any number of options in terms of the programs that are available province-wide, or community-wide in the Simcoe area, and we must then weigh those competing interests and fund those which appear to have the best chance of providing increased service, in some cases to areas where there was no service before. We can only hope to increase service in those areas where there was some lack of attention in years gone by.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Swart: I have a question for the Minister of Financial Institutions. I want to refer back to the answer he gave to a question last Wednesday in which he attempted to discredit the financial situation with regard to the Manitoba public insurance system. In this regard, I have sent him a letter from the minister in Manitoba.

I wonder whether the minister noted on page 2 the profit and loss year by year for the Manitoba auto insurance plan. Including last year, it shows profits in 11 years and losses in four. The total profits are now $54 million, including this year. There is $321 million in reserve investments against unpaid claims.

1500

In posing my question, I want to use the exact scenario and phraseology used by the minister last Wednesday in translating his $10-million loss in Manitoba last year to a $100-million loss in Ontario if we had the same system. Is it not true that if Ontario had a system such as Manitoba's for the same number of years, the people of Ontario would have total surpluses of $540 million and reserves in investments of $3.21 billion?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I am pleased the member for Welland-Thorold asked that question, because it gives me an opportunity to respond further to the question of his leader, to which I responded earlier today. On Monday, January 12, the Winnipeg Free Press ran a lead editorial, which said, "Bad News for Motorists."

It talks about the number of dollars that have been lost by the auto plan in Manitoba. As I have said, it states that not only is the shortfall this year going to be $17 million -- that is after investment income and underwriting losses -- but they also project at least a $17-million shortfall next year. If the member is going to say, "What if we had done that in the past?" the situation we are dealing with now is that he is advocating that we as a government should get into the insurance business. Before we do that and obligate the people of Ontario to a potential cost of $170 million or more, if we use these figures, we are going to look into it.

We have a group looking at that to make a recommendation to us. If it makes sense, we will certainly look at it, but we are not going to buy the member's pig in a poke just because he thinks it is a great idea.

Mr. Foulds: Who is the group? Is the group from the Winnipeg Free Press?

Mr. Speaker: Does the member for Port Arthur (Mr. Foulds) have a supplementary?

Mr. Swart: I have a supplementary.

Mr. Speaker: I thought the member for Port Arthur had one. The member for Welland-Thorold.

Mr. Swart: It is nice that the minister cannot deny the accuracy of those figures of $54 million in profit over the term of its operation and $321 million in reserve.

Apart from the substantially lower rates of profitability of the Ontario plan compared to the Manitoba plan, does not the Manitoba plan commend its application to Ontario for its investment potential in worthy projects? Is the minister aware that of the $321-million reserve, $23 million has been invested in 35 capital projects for schools, $30 million in 75 municipal projects, $49 million in 100 hospital and health projects and $172 million in provincial projects such as hydro?

Mr. Speaker: Question.

Mr. Swart: Does the minister not think it would be beneficial to have that $3.21 billion to invest in those kinds of worthy projects here? Does he not think that would be better than the public not having a single dollar to show for its massive premiums in this province?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: The member for Welland-Thorold said I did not dispute the figures; as a matter of fact, I do. The reserves in Manitoba at present are $60 million. The member is advocating a system today in which he is saying we should get into the business. In Manitoba right now, the plan is turning into a very expensive drain on the people. Before we as a government subject the people of Ontario to that kind of financial drain, we are going to examine it.

PEEL CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Mr. J. M. Johnson: My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. Will the minister explain to the members of the House why, after assuring me on December 17 that he was willing to meet with the lawyers representing the Charlestown Residential School in Caledon, the chairman of the board and the former principal of the school, along with representatives of the Peel Children's Services, he has now changed his mind and has no interest in doing so?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: My recollection of our discussion is a little different, but I am quite prepared to review that again with the honourable member.

First, I indicated, not only to him but also to the parents themselves, that I would see to it that they had an opportunity on an individual basis to meet with representatives of Peel Children's Services and representatives from my area office to discuss the effectiveness of the programming for their individual children.

The second agreement, as I recall it, was that the ongoing legal situation between Charlestown and Peel with respect to the lease or purchase of the property was just that, a legal situation, and that I would ensure that our legal authorities would clearly define to Charlestown what the situation was.

My recollection is that since the Dunsters are no longer associated with this program in any way, there is no valid reason for me to meet with them. I cannot recall making that commitment. I will discuss it further with my honourable friend.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: In our conversation, I suggested he meet with the chainman of the board and the lawyer representing the board, not just Mr. Dunster. There is a legal clarification necessary, but there is also a problem relating to the residence of children in that facility.

I feel the minister is negligent if he refuses to meet with them to try to clarify this very urgent situation.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I am quite prepared to check once again with legal counsel in my ministry to find out exactly the current status of the negotiations. If it appears there is a complete breakdown in that, I will review the best way to proceed.

In recent discussions with the parents, I indicated that I was less concerned -- not unconcerned -- with the legal ramifications of the property than I was with the programming needs of the children, and that my first efforts and energy would be directed to making sure the programming needs of their children were met.

Quite frankly, the legal considerations are a secondary concern to me. I am sure my honourable friend would agree that is the priority they should have.

ARGOSY FINANCIAL GROUP OF CANADA

Mr. Philip: I have a question of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations concerning his abominable response to the Ombudsman's report on Argosy, a matter the Ombudsman has called "one of the largest frauds in Ontario history."

The Ombudsman's report clearly demonstrates that the regulatory actions of the government were wrong and unreasonable and that a majority of the people who lost their money were over 60 years of age, many of them were forced to come out of retirement and start working again at that age and many of them were forced to move in with their children as a result of the financial hardship of losing their life savings. Why has the minister decided to turn his back on these people and refused to accept the report of the Ombudsman of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I agree with the member that the fraud was one of the most abominable in the history of the province. Where we part company and where I do not agree is that there was regulatory failure.

The Ombudsman in his report could not pinpoint the specific regulatory failure. As a matter of fact, he arbitrarily found only 50 per cent regulatory failure -- whatever that means -- and then went on to state that it had been over a period of years. As a result of outside legal consultation, we cannot find any regulatory failure. If we were in any way to contribute government funds to resolve this problem, we would set a very dangerous precedent. We would be in a position whereby we would set a standard of expectation that anybody who invested anything in Ontario and it went bad would have recourse to the government. As a minister responsible to the people of Ontario, I have an obligation to make sure that the funds which are raised from the people of Ontario are used expeditiously and with great care. As a result of that, I have rejected the Ombudsman's claim.

1510

Mr. Philip: I have a question arising from the minister's obvious intent that somehow it is the investors' fault for investing and let the buyer beware. Does the minister not understand that the Ombudsman has tabled documents and has clearly documented in his report that the registrar of mortgage brokers failed abominably, that he knew the principals were people who should not be in the business and yet he did nothing to get them out of the business, that he did not communicate that to the Ontario Securities Commission and that had the Ontario Securities Commission been aware of the information in the other branch of the ministry, this would not have gone on?

Is the minister taking a position which is clearly outlined in the Liberal research paper which says, "One very sad aspect of the Argosy fiasco is the amount of misunderstanding that exists among the media and the general public." It goes on to say, "It is really shameful that the Tories should be so manipulative and so dishonest in spreading that kind of information to the public about the investors." How does the government's position differ from the position taken by the Tories, whom the Liberal Party so greatly condemned in this research paper turned out in 1971 by its research department?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I am sure all members of the House will appreciate I am in a rather unique situation in that I have the opportunity to take a look at this situation and say: "A pox on your house. The former government is at fault and we are going to find that it was at fault." That would be the easiest and the most politically expedient thing to do.

Notwithstanding that, I have had to look at the situation. I have had to get independent advice. I have had to look at it objectively in the best interests of the broad majority of the people of Ontario. As a result of that investigation, I and my colleagues have determined that we are not prepared to compensate those people.

POLICE PURSUITS

Mr. Sterling: I have a question of the Solicitor General. When is the Solicitor General going to take some action on police chases in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Keyes: We answered that in our estimates last week, but for the purpose of the House I will mention that tomorrow I will be reviewing a final cabinet submission on the issue of police pursuits which will then proceed through the cabinet committee on justice. I hope it will be out very shortly. It has been redrafted a number of times and is at the stage that I will be receiving it tomorrow.

Mr. Sterling: Study, study, study; that is what we have heard for some time. There are approximately 150 police forces in Ontario and we have 150 different policies on police chases in Ontario. Two years ago, a special committee presented the minister with a report on police pursuits. Since the minister has been Solicitor General for a year and a half, he has done nothing to date. Why does the minister not at least implement one or two of the 31 recommendations in this report and do it now? Quit studying; let us get on with it.

Hon. Mr. Keyes: I have implemented some of those recommendations in a quiet way. In a process of determining what is the most effective type of policy with police pursuits, we have done a fair amount. We have had very wide consultation with the Police Association of Ontario, the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, the municipal policing authorities and members of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario to come up with a comprehensive set of guidelines which are acceptable to the public and will be effective.

DAY CARE

Ms. Gigantes: My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. Following the report released last week by the day care coalition concerning the quality of day care in Canada and the survey by day care inspectors which indicated that fully 25 per cent of those private profit-operated day cares were either poor or very poor in terms of the quality of program provided, how can the minister justify the proposal to provide public funding in a direct grant to private profit-operated day care centres in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I had an opportunity to meet with the day care coalition on Tuesday morning before that report was publicly released. At that time, they indicated to me that they were going to say that 38 per cent of the growth in the system in the past year was in the commercial area. I told them their figures were wrong, but they released it anyway. The actual figure for growth in the past year was seven per cent in the nonprofit area and four per cent in the commercial area.

Ms. Gigantes: That is irrelevant. It is not what I asked you.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: That is the reality. Those are the real figures.

The second point of the member's question was with respect to the percentage. What they neglected to point out was that in that report it clearly says that while there are more problems in the commercial sector, the main reason is that they get fewer resources and the response is not to abandon them but to improve the resources available to them. That was not made public.

PETITION

PROPERTY ASSESSMENT

Mr. McFadden: I have a petition here, signed by 49 residents of Ontario, addressed to the Legislature and to the government as follows:

"We, the undersigned, are opposed to the imposition of market value assessment on Metro Toronto by the provincial government. The higher property taxes for many north Toronto home owners, as a result of market value assessment, would impose a tremendous financial hardship for many individuals, particularly those on fixed incomes, single-parent families, seniors and low-income workers.

"The people of Ontario are already paying too much in taxes. The increases in property taxes under market value assessment, caused by escalating land prices in Metro Toronto, would not result in a corresponding increase in municipal services. The imposition of market value assessment on Metro Toronto by the provincial government will not only cause financial hardship for many people, but will also have a destabilizing effect on neighbourhoods and families in north Toronto. We urge the provincial government not to impose market value assessment on Metro Toronto home owners."

MOTION

COMMITTEE BUSINESS

Hon. Mr. Nixon moved that Bill 52, An Act to amend the Health Protection and Promotion Act, 1983, be transferred from the select committee on health to the standing committee on social development.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

THIRD READING

The following bill was given third reading on motion:

Bill 165, An Act to amend the Child and Family Services Act, 1984 and certain other Acts in relation to Adoption Disclosure.

Motion agreed to.

1520

House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HOUSING (CONTINUED)

On vote 1904, community housing program; item 1, program administration:

Mr. McClellan: I have some concerns to raise with the minister on this vote and item. I will wait until his officials have ensconced themselves, if they are going to ensconce. I am sure the minister feels more confident now; I certainly feel more confident now.

I have a matter that is causing me a great deal of concern. It has to do with the proposed rent increase for a nonprofit senior citizens' apartment building at 707 St. Clair Avenue West, St. Matthew's Bracondale House. The minister will be aware, because we have raised it since he became minister, that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. sets rents on the basis of what it calls low-end-of-market surveys for the nonprofit programs under subsection 56(1). The so-called low-end-of-market surveys are not conducted in the neighbourhood of the apartment building; they are conducted wherever the whims of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. seem to take them.

In this case, the low-end-of-market survey was not conducted in centre west-end Toronto, which is a reasonably low-rent area, and it was not conducted among older buildings or rent-controlled buildings; it was conducted among decontrolled buildings in the following areas. This is supposed to be a neighbourhood survey. The neighbourhood I am talking about is St. Clair and Christie in the city of Toronto. The buildings surveyed were 2350 Dundas Street West and 2360 Dundas Street West -- I have no idea how far west that is; I am sure it is on the other side of Islington Avenue -- 1750 Lawrence Avenue West, 15 Martha Eaton Way and 250 St. George Street. These are new commercial buildings, far away from centre west-end Toronto; so it is no big surprise that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. discovered that according to the low-end-of-market survey, the rents at St. Matthew's Bracondale House should go up. They are proposing to bring the rents from their present levels to what they call the low-end-of-market level by 1988.

We are finally getting to the nub of my concern. Rents are proposed to rise as follows: from a current rent for a bachelor apartment of $325 a month to a proposed rent of $390 a month; from $389 to $525 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, an increase of $136; from $441 to $645 a month for a two-bedroom apartment; and from $562 to $735 a month for a three-bedroom apartment.

I have a series of questions I would like to pursue with the minister. First, how are people on fixed incomes, who went into this building in 1981 on the understanding that the rent schedule was something they could afford on fixed incomes, supposed to pay increases of 20 to 25 per cent based on current market conditions? Where are they supposed to get the extra money to pay for these massive increases in a supposedly nonprofit program? Can the minister explain why his officials have gone along with this to the extent that they refuse to increase the number of subsidy spaces at Bracondale House until it agrees to accept this new rent schedule? Can he explain why this is happening?

Hon. Mr. Curling: When the honourable member from the third party raises a question, it is always well thought out and of great concern to his constituents. I do not know whether this specific one is in his constituency, but when the member rises it is usually with a well thought out question.

This is a problem about which we are very concerned. I should tell the member at the outset that it is a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. project, and he has said it is a CMHC project. We do not play a role in rent-setting there. He mentioned the low-end-of-market type of assessment and he mentioned it does not help people very much who have these drastic increases. He used one example of an increase from $389 to maybe $525. That is quite an increase for anyone on a fixed income.

CMHC speaks to my staff constantly and I am in consultation with it, but it also realizes this is a very complex problem for it to solve. It is not complex in a way that it moves a $150 or so increase and the individual does not have the money. CMHC wants to resolve the problem these people are faced with in terms of how they should go about it. We are trying to assist CHMC. We hope it will resolve the problem as early as possible and therefore not deplete that kind of fixed income, most of it going into rent.

I do not have any specific solutions to offer my friend as to how this will be resolved. I have stated already that this is a CMHC problem and that I am quite concerned that these people are faced with an exorbitant increase in rent. That is the most I can offer my friend on this matter.

Mr. McClellan: I cannot accept that as a response. I accept the minister's statement of concern, but we are going to have to pursue this a little because he obviously does not understand the involvement of his own ministry in this matter.

I state again that his ministry has refused to increase the number of subsidy spaces at Bracondale House until it adopts the CHMC low-end-of-market rent scale that I outlined to him and which he indicated was unacceptable. Specifically, under the existing formula Bracondale House would be entitled to 64 subsidy spaces in the project. It has only 55 spaces now and it has asked for additional spaces from the ministry. The ministry has refused to give these, as I understand it, until it adopts the new rent schedule, so the minister is involved in this.

1530

So that the minister understands what a terrible situation we have, Bracondale House did a survey of the tenants' incomes in October 1986 and discovered there are a number of tenants who should be getting subsidies already who do not get subsidies; they are paying full rent.

Two tenants whose incomes are below $8,000 a year are paying full rent without subsidy. Three tenants whose incomes are below $9,000 a year, who should be getting subsidies, are paying full rent. There is one tenant whose income is below $10,000. Six tenants whose incomes are below $11,000 are paying full rent with no subsidy. Eight tenants whose incomes are below $12,000 are paying full rent with no subsidies. There are seven tenants below $13,000, five tenants below $14,000 and three tenants below $15,000. Clearly, there are a number of tenants in that building who already should be subsidized but who are paying full rent because of a shortage of subsidy spaces.

The ministry and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. are now proposing to raise the rent schedule to what I can only say is a thoroughly bogus low-end-of-market scale. Apparently, the ministry has been unwilling or unable to recognize the extent of the problem, even to the extent of providing additional subsidy spaces.

There are going to be some real hardships in this building and in other buildings if this is the practice across Metropolitan Toronto. A number of seniors are going to be in a terrible situation. The rents are going up on the basis of market value, and the ministry is not providing sufficient subsidy spaces so that each and every person who would be eligible for a subsidy would be able to get one.

There is another piece of information I want to share with the minister, and then I will have made my presentation to him. The irony of this whole thing is that when CMHC raises the rents to a new market level, I ask members to guess who benefits. None of this money goes to the federal government, as I understand it. All of this money comes back to the government of Ontario and to the Minister of Housing because, under the terms of the agreement, surplus funds at the end of the year are returned to the Ontario community housing assistance program. Right?

Here are the figures. In the first year, the OCHAP subsidy will increase because the rents are going up. During the first year of the proposed rent increase, OCHAP subsidies will increase from $120,000 to $147,000 a year. At the end of the year, there will be a surplus of $80,000 in the account of St. Matthew's Bracondale House. That money will be returned to OCHAP, to the Ontario government and to the Minister of Housing. The profit of the first year of the rent increase will go back to the Minister of Housing.

For the second year the OCHAP subsidy will increase to $183,000. The surplus at the end of the year from the higher rents will increase to $133,000. This too will go into the minister's pocket on behalf of the taxpayers of Ontario.

In year three, the OCHAP subsidy increases to $220,000. Because of the increased rents, the surplus in the third year increases to $200,000. The net effect over the course of the three years is to reduce the government of Ontario's cost to something in the order of $20,000, which is the difference between $220,000 and $200,000, as compared with the difference now of $120,000 to $80,000. This is really crazy.

I ask the minister, first, to sit down with his assistant deputy minister, Mr. Pitura, and with Mr. Cornell and review commitments that were made during the estimates of the Ministry of Housing to try to do something about these CMHC low-end-of-market surveys, which are imposing a highly inflationary rental housing market on pensioners on fixed incomes in nonprofit apartment buildings.

It is a crazy, crazy situation. The minister cannot allow the spiral that has taken place in uncontrolled commercial rental accommodation to be the basis for setting rents for people on fixed incomes. He cannot do it; it is lunacy. He is causing an incredible amount of anxiety and real financial harm to senior citizens who believed that when they entered a senior citizens' building under the auspices of our federal and provincial programs, they had an assurance that for the rest of their lives the rent problem at least would be solved, they would be saved from the terrible spiral that drove them out of the commercial rental market in the first place and they would never be subjected again to these kinds of financial insecurities.

Yet, lo and behold, agencies of the government, with bureaucracies that appear to be completely insensitive, are imposing market values on people with fixed incomes. People who have been in these buildings since 1981 have not had any big increases. Maybe the minister can remember a 25 per cent increase in the old age pension; I cannot remember that. I do not remember a big increase in Canada pension benefits, because it did not take place. People do not have the money to pay for these kinds of increases. The minister does not have enough subsidy spaces to cushion everybody from these kinds of increases. He does not have enough subsidy spaces now to cover all the people who are eligible for subsidy. The October survey proved that.

There are more people who are now eligible for subsidy than get subsidy. The ministry is already short about 10 spaces, and when these rent increases go through, virtually everybody in the building will be entitled to the subsidy. Does the minister not think it would be a lot more sensible to roll the increase back, accept what St. Matthew's has suggested, which is an inflation increase of six per cent, which is matched by what people can expect to get in their pension income, and roll this thing back before it causes the minister, and more especially the people who live in St. Matthew's, a great deal of harm?

I would like the minister, first, to stand and indicate how he can sit down with CMHC to roll back these increases; and second, to address himself to the number of subsidy spaces.

Hon. Mr. Curling: I will state, first, that I will not instruct CMHC to roll back the increase. Let me make that very clear at this time.

Like anything else, some policy changes have repercussions. The increases the tenants are experiencing -- yes, I have thought of this -- have, as the member has so eloquently stated, brought some hardship on those tenants. As he knows, under the Ontario community housing assistance program, as I understand it, only 50 per cent of those units can be supplemented. The member has also spoken in detail about some tenants who, after being assessed, found they needed supplements or subsidies, who found themselves in hardship and required some subsidy to keep them from paying more than 30 per cent of their income in rent.

1540

That is the problem CMHC and we find ourselves in with regard to the tenants in those apartments.

The member also mentioned -- and I will come back and address the three points -- that the surplus that is found there goes back to OCHAP. I understand that any surplus in any program does not go back to a program specifically but goes back to the main coffers. Maybe that is why my honourable friend left, because I would then turn around to ask him for that surplus.

The point the member makes is that, after putting the program into place and realizing there is a surplus and there is a hardship on the tenants who are being tested in paying their rent increases, there is no program designed to assist them. I have said that the maximum number of units that can be rent-supplemented under OCHAP is 50 per cent.

The member asked what I was going to do about that specific case. I think we can sit down as our part of the government with CHMC to work out a way to supplement the rents of those who have been identified as requiring assistance because of those increases. I do not know the process in detail, but we can use some of the money we now have to assist those tenants. I want the member to understand that it is also a CMHC problem because it is its program. I am sure that can be worked out. The staff will be working on it. Even today I gather they were speaking to CMHC on this project.

I am sure we can resolve the problem in that way and make sure the bureaucracy does not get in the way while people are suffering.

Mr. McClellan: I appreciate what the minister has said. I take it the minister is indicating that it may be possible to find more than the maximum number of subsidized units if the need indicates. I wonder whether the minister could be clear. I would like to have an assurance from the minister -- and I do not think it is unfair or unrealistic to ask for this -- that anybody who lives in this building who is eligible for subsidization will be able to obtain subsidization because of what is happening here; and that the minister will take whatever action is necessary to get those extra subsidy spaces into this building.

I agree with him that the main problem is the approach of CMHC, which is the most difficult and insufferable bureaucracy I have ever encountered in my life. I do not understand how the federal government can allow a bureaucracy to be such a law unto itself with no accountability. There is not a minister whom one can point to who has the kind of accountability and responsibility for this agency that we take for granted with respect to our public service and our ministries here. There is nothing like it in the Ontario public service. It is an insult to the people of this country that CMHC is able to trample on people the way it does with no accountabilities and no consequences.

I appreciate that the minister is just one more person who has enormous difficulty dealing with this particular federal bureaucracy, but I plead again with the ministry to try to negotiate with these characters to get them to stop using the current market inflation and the inflationary spiral in commercial rents as the basis for setting rent in our nonprofit housing program because it is going to destroy the program if rents are tied to the kind of crazy inflationary spiral that exists in communities such as Metropolitan Toronto and some of the other large cities in this province. It will destroy the program. The minister cannot come up with enough subsidy money if the program is tied to a rent-setting policy based on this kind of inflation.

To get back to my main point, which is the minister's responsibility, can I have an assurance that all those who are eligible for subsidy will have the opportunity to apply for and receive subsidies?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I can give the honourable member my assurance about the policy aspect of it, to look at the policy and to make sure it does not deprive anyone of those supplements, but I cannot give him my assurance that they will receive the increased supplements for their rent. This is something I am trying to work out with CMHC. Again, the member has identified a rather complex bureaucracy, a bureaucracy that one has to understand, and I am trying to understand it.

I would like to stand here and give the member my assurance that his people will receive the increased amount of money for their rent, but I cannot do that. I gather from the staff that they met with CMHC as recently as today in working on this complex problem and the hardship these people face. We will have to look at the criteria once again, going back to the policy, and see that we come to a reasonable solution so that we will not have to face this in our estimates or in the future.

Mr. McClellan: I have one more final comment. The person whose total income is $7,611.63 this past year is now paying $389 a month rent with no subsidy and CMHC is proposing to jack that up to $525 over the course of these staged increases. I can go through the list I have here and I can go through the incomes. Here is somebody with a total income of $8,891.95 now paying $389 a month. CMHC is going to be asking for $525 from this person.

I just say to the minister that this train is coming towards his desk. If he thinks somebody with that kind of an income can pay $6,000 a year in rent -- which leaves a grand total of $2,000 for all other necessary expenses -- and there will not be a community outcry about this, then the minister lives in a different community to the one I do. I think the minister realizes how offensive, how insulting, how outrageous what CMHC is doing really is, notwithstanding that CMHC is probably such a law unto itself that it will simply proceed to do this. As I said, the train is heading for the minister's desk and the people whose incomes are going to be decimated to pay the rent are going to be coming to him for assistance.

I appreciate the commitment the minister has given. He is obviously being very cautious. I will be knocking on the door of Mr. Pitura, who is listening attentively, and other officials of the ministry because I think we need to work this out and we need to work it out very quickly before anybody really suffers the kind of damage that is inevitable unless some emergency action is taken.

1550

Mr. Villeneuve: I will express a few concerns regarding community housing and vote 1904 of the ministry. They have to do with some of the great things the minister has told us have happened in the past 18 months.

One of the not-so-great things is that with the changes that have occurred, particularly in municipal nonprofit senior citizens' housing in the past 18 months, it is almost guaranteed that small, rural Ontario municipalities and towns will no longer be eligible for municipal nonprofit housing through the ministry.

Senior citizens living in these small towns find the burden of home ownership somewhat heavy after a certain time, particularly when one of the spouses has passed away. The fact that the ministry has decreed that a 40 per cent needs criterion must be met to satisfy the construction of municipal nonprofit accommodation for senior citizens has almost guaranteed that very few of our small towns qualify. I will cite a few examples.

Senior citizens, be they couples or single individuals, may have modest investment incomes and also would probably have residences in the value range of $25,000 to $40,000. The liquidation of these residences would disqualify them immediately, because the interest income earned on those investments would effectively say they no longer meet the core needs criteria as set out by the ministry.

The village of Avonmore in the municipality in which I live currently has under construction a municipal nonprofit senior citizens' home. The only reason it is currently under construction is that it qualified under the former government's criteria. The changes this government has initiated would have disqualified this community.

It is similar in the village of Lancaster. Under the previous administration, it was granted funds to set up its municipal nonprofit housing corporation; which was done, all criteria were met. The rules of the game were changed, and we now have no allocation for the village of Lancaster. These people met every criteria at the time. They now have a corporation, which obtained funding from the previous government, that has no senior citizens' residence being constructed and no allocation.

In the village of Crysler, we have the same situation; likewise, in the village of Chesterville. These are all situations in small, rural Ontario towns. Unless the minister addresses the needs criteria, he has effectively told these people that they do not and will not qualify.

First, does the minister intend to make any changes in his core needs criteria to accommodate to some degree these senior citizens, who have never asked anyone to hand out any money? Basically, they have done it on their own by living carefully and frugally. They now find that owning a home is difficult if not almost impossible. They do not qualify. We do not have any senior citizens' accommodations to which they can move. Effectively, they are stuck in having either to move to a community that is foreign to them or to make drastic changes in their lives. I do not think it is fair, and I await the minister's reply.

Hon. Mr. Curling: I want to respond to my friend the member for Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry. As I said, all these tidings sound like law firms.

I understand what the member is saying. When the 40 per cent guideline was put in place, it was done so we could target the neediest in those areas. The member made another point, that in some of the areas it may be extremely difficult to find 40 per cent of the project to make up the core need.

I want to go back to the member's question about what we are doing about seniors. In our last total allocation we had 1,515 seniors approved. That is quite an achievement in such a short time. Again, I am not patting myself on the back. It is a dramatic increase in addressing the needs of seniors across Ontario. In the eastern area alone, 125 units in projects for seniors were addressed through the core need; 79 were in the rental market category.

Our program has looked at those who are in the most need. We would like to have a tremendous number of allocations and units to take in others who are not as greatly deprived as those whom we are now addressing. We are looking at other areas, such as the member's, which may not be able to fill those projects with 40 per cent. There are areas that cannot meet that percentage. They still make a presentation to us and the staff will look at it. For my approval I take those things into consideration.

Mr. Villeneuve: Where are these 1,500 senior citizens' units that the minister approved during 1986? Are they primarily in the city and urban areas? I would like to know the breakdown. How many of those were allocated to small rural Ontario towns?

The minister should remember that at present, most of these people live in their own modest homes. Some of them are living in apartments. If municipal nonprofit seniors' housing goes to their town, they will probably liquidate their residence to a young couple who would be looking at that home as a startup home. If it is an apartment, someone would be renting that apartment.

Effectively, some housing accommodation is being created. You would also be helping these small towns, which have a tendency to lose population instead of increasing it at present. Not only would you be stimulating construction on a short-term basis, but you would also be bringing some young blood to some of these communities. I feel that is very important.

I would also like to remind the minister and emphasize that in these small communities, these senior citizens have no place to go when the burden of home ownership is beyond what they feel they can handle comfortably. They have to move to urban areas. It is a sad situation, when they have earned their living and lived in these small towns, that they are forced to pull up roots and go to an area they are unfamiliar with. They probably create a problem in the urban area when they could have continued to live in the milieu which was theirs all their life. Could the minister please address that?

1600

Hon. Mr. Curling: I remind the honourable member that he asked whether I could name all these areas. The point he made that seniors would like to stay in their own communities has been expressed right across Ontario. After living for 30, 40, 50 or 60 years in a community, no one wants to move out and live somewhere that is unfamiliar, where the person would have to be reoriented all over again. The program addresses that need.

Most of the programs for seniors are in small communities. The member asked me to name all the small communities in which senior citizen projects have been allocated. I will not go through them in detail. That would take us the rest of the estimates time, and there are a lot of pertinent questions other people would like to ask in that respect.

I will tell the member where some of the projects are in the eastern area. In Cornwall, we have a project of 40 units; in Gloucester, the eastern Ontario nonprofit group has another project of 50 units; in Kingston, there is another project of 50 units, as a matter of fact 25 market and 25 core; in Ottawa, there is a project of 64 units; and in Trenton there is another project of 50 units. They are located in areas -- I do not know whether the member wants the specific towns -- that show a need by seniors.

It is an agreement between the federal government -- Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. -- and ourselves that we target and have 40 per cent for those in need, so while we are trying to meet the guidelines and criteria of CMHC, we are also sensitive to the points the member made about the times communities cannot find the 40 per cent for those in need.

A member of the third party stated that sometimes it had been difficult to work out policies with other parties. He stated that CMHC has criteria, that we have criteria and that we work out an agreement. We agree with CMHC that we must target mostly those in need. Again, back to the point that there are areas which cannot reach that percentage, we are prepared to look specifically at those cases.

Mr. Villeneuve: With regard to the towns the minister mentioned, Cornwall has a population of 46,000 or 47,000, greater Kingston has a population of well over 100,000 and Gloucester is a suburb of Ottawa. The minister is talking about urban Ontario, as I see it. I express the deep concerns of small-town Ontario. In the area I represent, my metropolis is a town called Alexandria, which has slightly more than 3,000 people. We are getting into small-town Ontario. It is most important that these senior citizens not be classed as second-class citizens because they happen to live in some of these very much smaller communities.

Again, I go back to the Lancaster situation. The minister's staff has been most helpful. We met with representatives of the municipal non-profit seniors' organization in Lancaster a week ago. We had two of the minister's staff members down from Ottawa, two very capable people, but they were handcuffed by this 40 per cent criterion. These people were allocated amounts of money to do the study, the analysis, to establish the need; that money was spent. The needs were established under the old criteria. We now have a situation where under the new criteria this has to be pretty well done over again. Their funds have run out, a most embarrassing situation, because the rules of the game were changed in midstream.

Will these communities have special consideration in the ministry's allocations for 1987?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I named a few small towns, and as I said, I could spend all afternoon naming small towns. It is so unfair that the member stated the towns I named were not small enough.

The point I should make -- and I would like to make it emphatically -- is that none of these programs would have existed if the province had not partaken in them. No program in Fort Boyle, which has 20 units, would have existed. Tillsonburg has 40 units; Tobermory, 14 and 50, a total of 64.

We look after all of Ontario. I am the Minister of Housing for all of Ontario. I could go on all day about the small towns -- I would rather call them intimate towns -- and how we address their needs. Again, we are tied into an agreement with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and the idea is to target those most in need.

To address the other part of this, we did not change policy in midstream. The criteria were there before, as I understand it. It is quite possible that groups started to plan their projects years ago with different criteria. Then when the criteria were changed one or two years ago, they would have had to change their emphasis as to who would be accommodated in these projects. I would not say it was changed in midstream.

The last point I would like to make is that there are other projects that address the needs of seniors, not only municipal nonprofit ones. There are other projects. When I name all this and the member says there are only 50 here or only 20 here, those are the municipal nonprofit ones; there are other projects for seniors in some of those areas.

Mr. Villeneuve: Not many years ago, under a previous administration, the community of Williamsburg had a 32-unit senior citizens' apartment building. That community certainly has fewer than 500 people. A municipal nonprofit seniors' residence has just been completed in the community of Winchester; the community of Winchester has about 2,000 people and there are 45 units there. The community of Finch, which has about 500 people, completed a senior citizens' project in 1986. The community of Avonmore, which has somewhere between 300 and 400 people, is in the process of completing a municipal nonprofit seniors' residence. I remind the minister that this was under a previous administration.

The town of Lancaster did indeed get caught with a change of rules and regulations in midstream. The town of Crysler was caught in the same situation, as was the town of Chesterville. These three small communities in my riding were caught in a situation where they qualified the previous month and the rules were changed. That is all I can tell the minister. That is what I have been told by people in his ministry. I was quite close to the scene in all this. It did make them ineligible and that is of grave concern to me.

Hon. Mr. Curling: Of course the rules were changed, but the member should remember who changed the rules. Our federal counterpart changed the rules and we are going along with it. It is not that just we changed the rules. As I said, we agree that we must target those most in need.

I must remind the member that he asked me a direct question about municipal nonprofit and then started to speak about how many units were done by the previous government. I could stand here and defend our record, with the tremendous number of projects we have put on stream since we have been here, but I know the member's question came from concern and not from competition. I have stood in the House many times and spoken about the number of units approved so far. We continue to approve them. We continue to look at those needs.

I had hoped I could address all the needs so that today the member could stand in the committee and say not only that 95 per cent of the program is good and that he is concerned about five per cent but also that 100 per cent of our housing initiatives are good.

1610

Mr. Villeneuve: I will not belabour the point, but there is a minister within the government who is in charge of senior citizens' affairs. I have expressed my concerns to him and to Ivy St. Lawrence, chairman of the Ontario Advisory Council on Senior Citizens. I believe they, in concert with the ministry, are attempting to rectify some of the inequities.

We must remember that the vast majority of our senior citizens has never asked for any handouts. They are not asking for handouts now. They are simply asking that the burden of home ownership, which they find rather heavy after they get to a certain age, the looking after the grass, the snow, the maintenance -- they would like to be able to stay in the community where they have lived the majority of their lives and have a residence. It would not matter if it were privately owned, so be it, but they want to have a place where the burden of ownership and all the things that go with it can be lifted from their shoulders.

Also, the minister should remember we have Meals on Wheels in these communities, which asks volunteers to cover many miles at lunchtime to try to deliver these meals. If we were able to put these senior citizens in residences -- municipal, nonprofit seniors' residences -- Meals on Wheels could very effectively deliver those meals on a daily basis to 28, 30 or 32 units, which would make everything so much easier. We could probably keep our senior citizens in their own place of residence a lot longer as opposed to having them in nursing homes where it would be very expensive.

This must be addressed by this minister as well as by the Minister of Health (Mr. Elston), the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) and the Minister without Portfolio responsible for senior citizens' affairs (Mr. Van Horne). They should all work in concert and bear these things in mind. These people are not asking for a handout; they are simply saying, "Give us a chance to maintain our own independence in our own apartments in the communities we know best." That is all they are asking.

Hon. Mr. Curling: I totally agree with the honourable member that these people are not asking for handouts; they just want to be treated fairly and that we have a sensitive government, which we do have. Economic situations change as soon as life changes, in a way, and they approach life in a different way.

Of course, from time to time we will assess our program to see whether it is targeted properly. I emphasize again that our federal counterpart insists on this kind of procedure, but in the meantime, we as a province have to fight about the area in which we sometimes feel policies are not effective enough to reach those in need or a specific need itself.

There are those seniors who are a little more affluent -- and that word becomes so loose these days -- who do not require as much as some of the ones who are hard to house and for whom assistance from the government is necessary. We will be looking at that; we will be constantly monitoring that. The needs and the desires of those seniors that the member has expressed are the same things we are hearing out there, and that is the direction in which we are going.

Mr. Philip: I want to raise with the minister his new policy, for which we in this party had been asking for a number of years, concerning the possibility of a person applying, while being a tenant of Ontario Housing Corp., for an OHC unit. The circumstances arise that perhaps a family suddenly discovers that a son or daughter is out on the street. They do not wish to jeopardize their lease, which says they cannot have any boarders, but at the same time they are not going to leave a family member out on the street. The same thing can apply to a brother or sister or even a half-brother or half-sister.

In particular, I think of an instance I referred to John Sewell only last week. One of the companies working as the management of a Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority project is still advising tenants that unless the relatives leave, they will be evicted for having illegal tenants on the premises. The minister's officials downtown were still telling people as late as last month that they could not accept their applications because they were temporarily staying with a relative occupying a Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority unit. Why is the minister not advising his staff of the new policies and correcting this problem?

Hon. Mr. Curling: As the member knows, since we have taken the reins and control of government here in changing policies, I presume that certain decisions we have made and certain directions we have given have sometimes not been readily adhered to.

The member asked why I was not telling the personnel to carry out our directions. First, those have been changed. He indicated in his comments that this policy had changed. If an individual is living at a residence with his parents and he applies, previously he was not able to be qualified; now he is. The member is saying the staff are still giving information that the person is not qualified. We will again emphasize to the staff, in whatever communicated way, that this is the new law, the new rule, the new procedure, and those people should be considered and should not be put back by stating that they do not qualify under this new policy.

Mr. Philip: The minister should advise not only his staff but also some of the companies that are hired under contract to manage his buildings. Some of these private companies are simply not getting the message. If they are going to receive a government contract, the least they can do is to make sure their staff understand what the rules and regulations are for working under that contract.

What are the minister's views on the fairness -- or lack of fairness, as I would call it -- of the point rating system? One must recognize it is reasonable that a point rating system be based on need. However, what we have under the point system now is a system that virtually penalizes someone who, because he is afraid of not having enough food for the table, may move in with a relative or may move into substandard conditions.

I can give the minister a very concrete example. I have a woman and her children who are living in the basement of a building that has been condemned in North York. Whenever it rains, both she and the other neighbour, who is occupying the first floor -- maybe it is vice versa; I forget which -- literally have to get out of bed because the bed floods from rain dripping through the ceiling and down through the walls. It is that bad.

The city of North York has told the landlord he has to either repair or demolish the building. There are work orders outstanding on it. Because she is living in a place such as that, her rent is very small in relation to what the market rent would be in that neighbourhood. Yet despite the fact that she is living in unhealthy, abominable conditions, because she is paying a smaller percentage of her income for rent than someone who goes out and rents an apartment in the area for $500, she is stuck with her children in these very unhealthy conditions. I suggest to the minister that the point system has to be looked at so there is some fairness in it.

I will give another example of where someone is put at a disadvantage because of the point system, and that is the person who is already living in some kind of geared-to-income housing but who wishes to apply for Metro Toronto housing. For example, he may be living with Metro Toronto housing company. He wants to apply for a Metro Toronto Housing Authority building because there may be psychological or cultural reasons.

1620

I have a constituent who is living at West Acres, which is a Metro Toronto housing company unit in Rexdale. While the gentleman himself speaks English, his wife speaks very limited English. They come from the High Park area where they can get doctor's service, friends, cultural clubs and shopping in their own language, and yet they have been waiting for a very long time to move into the High Park area. When one asks, they say they score very low on the point system because they are in geared-to-income housing in some form and they are not paying a large percentage of their income in rent. It is a situation where they are almost tempted to be irresponsible, move out, rent an apartment for $600 for a few months and then, when they apply from outside, the ministry will give them the type of unit they want because they will get a higher rating on the point system.

Those are two examples where the point system, when it is based primarily on percentage of income being spent, acts as a disadvantage to certain people. Can the minister comment on that?

Hon. Mr. Curling: The honourable member touched on a very difficult process, the point system. The point system was amended in 1985, and yet there are still stories of incidents or cases one can bring forth that indicate it deprives certain people from living in the areas they wish, whether culture or convenience would dictate it. It comes down to a matter of supply. There is not enough to go around. There are people on the waiting list who have greater need when it comes to the income aspect of it, who are not in any one of our projects or do not have a rent-geared-to-income supplement given to them, while there are others in the project who would like to move to certain areas.

In my riding on Saturdays I see 10 or 12 people who would like a transfer. I have instructed them to cast their net a little wider. They say, "I would like to live in that area because my people are there and I feel more comfortable." The problem is that only when a vacancy comes up in that area are they able to be transferred. In giving a wider option, they again will be moving to an area that they are not comfortable with culturally or perhaps where their children have grown up or have been in that area for some time.

I understand what the member is saying. It is a very difficult problem. Again, I can address that only from the point of view that it is supply. In each case, as the workers sit down with that individual, they are sensitive to that and able to accommodate them accordingly.

Mr. Philip: It is not a matter of supply. If a person moves from one unit, there is a vacant unit there for someone else who may want to live in that unit; it is not depriving someone else of a unit. The ministry is being insensitive to cultural differences and to some people who cannot speak the language. Just because they are poor, they should not be forced to live in communities where they feel alienated and where it contributes, in one case I know of, to mental health problems as a result of the frustration and alienation.

Concerning applications, is it still a policy of some housing authorities not to grant an application to people who have physical possession of children but not actual court orders allowing them final custody? In the past, it has been the practice of certain housing authorities to say, "If you have physical possession of children, then we assume you have a right to them until proven otherwise by a court." In other municipalities, other housing authorities simply say, "No; unless you have a court order giving you custody of the children, we cannot accept that application."

Is it now true across the board in Ontario that if a person has physical custody of children, an application will be accepted? Or do we still have this discrepancy from the Peel Regional Housing Authority to the Metro Toronto Housing Authority to the Hamilton-Wentworth Housing Authority?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I have just confirmed that the policy right across the province is that they should have a court authority for the jurisdiction over that child. However, there are housing authorities that can use their own discretion in accepting an individual as a child within that unit.

While you may hear that in one region there are cases where people have accepted those cases, in some cases they go exactly by the book and do not accept those individuals. I presume it is my old cliché, that says sometimes rules are not binding but we should use them for guiding. I presume some regions use them that way to guide themselves in regard to their projects, while others use them all as a binding process.

Let me quickly comment on the first part of the member's question. He asked whether if one moves, it makes a vacancy. I presume it is like musical chairs, if the supply is very short and one moves out, there is another one coming in to backfill all that. It is not a matter of whether someone moves. That person moves into somewhere if someone else was there, and that someone has to be moving into that place. If we had a tremendous supply and had a lot of vacancies, then we could have said it is a vacant place. As soon as we increase the supply with the tremendous amount of activity that we will see in our supply program, gradually we will address those problems where people are waiting so long to get into subsidized housing.

Mr. Philip: The minister's answer is as circular as the musical chairs he is talking about. The point I was making, and I thought it was a fairly simple point that anybody should be able to understand, was that the argument he makes that he cannot transfer somebody to a unit because there is short supply is completely spurious. The moment a person moves out of the unit he is occupying, you have the same number of vacancies as you had before. It does not take a unit off the market; it simply transfers it from one locality to another. Thus, it is a completely erroneous argument to make.

On the other statement, I find the minister's answer completely incredible. It can take you three years, sometimes longer, to get custody of a child if it is appealed, or worse still if the child happens to be taken to another province temporarily and you have to get orders to bring it back and so forth. I wonder why it is that someone in Peel can apply by simply saying: "I have this child. There is a divorce case pending, and the family court will decide. In the meantime, my husband is contesting it, but I have two children." Why can the minister supply that person with housing in Peel, but he cannot supply the same person with housing in North York or in Etobicoke?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I thought I answered the honourable gentleman. I do not want to be circular, as he said, in my answer. I was explaining to him that, because of the shortage of supply, this is what is happening. I will not attempt to go back into the debate about whether my answer was circular or quite incredible.

Again, as I said earlier on, the member raises a very important point about our transfer policy. It is something that the Ontario Housing Corp. is looking at. It is reviewing it and looking at situations such as those.

1630

The time it takes to obtain custody of a child is something I cannot dictate; I have no control over that. There are procedures we follow. It is a much easier process to follow when the person has custody of the child before we regard that individual as responsible for the child. One could have two or three children in custody and it is a three-bedroom unit and then it is all changed; immediately we would have to move that individual from a three-bedroom to a one-bedroom unit. It becomes rather complex. I think having custody of the child is a better procedure to follow.

Mr. Philip: The minister's answer is fairly clear. He is saying that bureaucratic considerations are more important than children being out on the street in Metropolitan Toronto. That is what he is saying; that is the insensitivity he is showing. Why is it the same family can move to Peel, make an application to the Peel Regional Housing Authority and get housing in Peel whereas it cannot in Metropolitan Toronto? Is a child out on the street in Metropolitan Toronto any different from a child in Peel? If Peel can give them housing, why cannot Metro Toronto Housing Authority?

Why does the minister not have some consistency and fairness across the province that says the important thing is not the legal status of a child, but that there is a child and his mother or father who need housing, and that regardless of what the courts want to do and regardless of how long they want to drag it out, there will be housing until such time as it is proven the child is not living with the parent?

So be it if in a couple of year's time the courts rule otherwise. It may upset his bureaucratic applecart if it has to transfer them from a three-bedroom to a two-bedroom unit or transfer them out completely because they do not have any children. Until that time, why not give them accommodation and give consideration to the children rather than to his stupid bureaucracy?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I presume it is all in the process of debate that the honourable member can stand there and talk about my sensitivity. His sensitivity is so great that he makes these wild statements about no policy and no process; then everyone feels he is quite sensitive. That is not the way we operate and that is not the way I operate.

Again, I tell him that we are dealing with different regions and that we have a policy in place. Each person looks at each case and some people may be a little more compassionate than others. Some people will follow the rules to every line; some may be more flexible. I cannot answer why Peel is more sensitive than some other area. I cannot tell the member why I am more sensitive than he is. He has indicated I have no sensitivity. I do not know who gave him the authority to feel he has this right to find who is sensitive and who is not sensitive. I try to conduct my work in a very sensitive and compassionate way. For the member to stand and say that does not take anything from me. I will continue to do my work in a very sensitive manner. I hope to look at all the cases he brings before me and see that it is done in a very humane way.

Mr. Philip: The minister is not only insensitive, but he is also unknowledgeable. If he had read Hansard, the statements and reports of the standing committee on administration of justice on Ontario Housing, he would know there are policies that have been advocated by this party for a number of years, which if he adopted them would mean people in Toronto would be treated with the same fairness as people in Peel.

What kind of policy does the minister have when it is so wishy-washy, so incomprehensible, that it is interpreted one way in one municipality and another way in another? Does he call that a policy? That is not a policy. Why does he blame Peel or the local authorities for his ineptness in having a clear policy that will give fairness to everyone across the province? It is the minister who is insensitive, who is unknowledgeable and who has no policy. Why does he not get off his butt and do something about it?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I am very surprised at that member from a very reputable party, a party that considers itself the party of the people. As soon as we take the reins, immediately I become insensitive; he has the authority to find out who is insensitive or not. I could challenge the member any time with the amount of sensitivity I have. We can debate this all day. I do not even intend to compare myself with the gentleman; not at all.

We will continue to be a sensitive government. As a matter of fact, members have seen that ever since the sun rose on that day in 1985. Members have seen a very sensitive government. The gentleman does not have to walk far. He can just walk out on the street -- Mr. Chairman, you know that -- and ask the people how they feel about Ontario. They feel confident. They feel there is a government that is responding to their needs at last. This honourable gentleman is telling me that I am not sensitive. I do not intend to stand here to defend myself or to say that this party or this government has been very sensitive. Perhaps we look extremely sensitive because of the lack of sensitivity, good opposition and good government in the past.

Mr. Philip: Since the minister is so sensitive, the next time I have a family whose application is refused by the Metro Toronto Housing Authority because the parent does not have legal custody of a child and it may take two to three years for the courts to decide, instead of sending those people to apply in Peel, Hamilton or one of the other housing authorities that seems to have some sensitivity or at least seems to bend rules that are not completely comprehensible, I will send them to the minister's house. He can put them up instead of the Peel Regional Housing Authority, and we will see just how sensitive the minister is.

Mr. Gordon: I have been listening very attentively to everything that has been said. I am afraid to use that new word that the minister has taken possession of in the House. It starts with "S." Are we soon going to have an encounter session in this House? Perhaps we should all get together and have some touchy-feely talks with each other down on the broadloom, take off our shoes and our boots and just sort of get together. After all, the minister is telling us what a sensitive place this has become. I think he used the word "sensitive" about 50 times in the past five minutes.

I know the minister is as sensitive as the member for Etobicoke (Mr. Philip). I would not suggest for one moment that he is an insensitive person, but talking about encounter groups rather than housing does not do any of us any good. However, we will not talk about that now. Let us talk about something else for a change.

Can the minister tell us whether, with his much-vaunted Renterprise program and his convert-to-rent program -- I have asked about two programs -- these programs are really going to provide housing for those people who are in need of affordable housing in this province or are they programs that are just going to turn out more and more housing for people who can well afford it?

Hon. Mr. Curling: The programs we put in place will definitely bring about housing for those in need. As the member knows, the Renterprise program has been quite successful. The last time I responded to the honourable gentleman about the Renterprise program, he asked me to be kind when I made reference to one of his colleagues, the shadow cabinet minister for Citizenship and Culture. I call the member for Don Mills (Mr. Timbrell) the shadow minister or the shadow. He never comes in here. He felt the private sector would not build in that program.

We as a government made our program in such a way that the private sector participates, and there are other programs in which the government assists fully. The Renterprise program is one that has been extremely successful. As a matter of fact, as I said when the honourable member stated that no one would build, we had applications coming to us that we could not handle. We reached our target of 5,000 very quickly on our first call, and we had a second call on that program.

1640

The convert-to-rent program is highly successful. I responded to the member's previous question in estimates. As the member will recall, I made reference to one of the programs in his own area, in Sudbury, where we converted one of the schools into a senior citizens' home. Forty per cent of those Renterprise programs are geared to core need, to the people in need. The convert-to-rent program targets 25 per cent of the units to those in need. If I can anticipate the critic's question, market rents play a very important role in this because of community acceptance and the type of program we can put within certain communities.

Mr. Gordon: I think the minister has answered my question. What he has told me is that his program has failed. He has told me that of the 5,000 that have been taken up, 40 per cent of those in the Renterprise program and 25 per cent of those in the convert-to-rent program go to those in need; in other words, to those who require subsidized housing.

First, I am sure the minister is aware that there are 40,000 families in Ontario in need of subsidized housing and that through his advertising and so forth he found another 28,000 families. He is telling me that this year, with his proposals so far, he has had 5,000 taken up as far as those people who have proposed to build them are concerned. Whether all of them will be built is a moot point because we know already that some of the people who said they would go into Renterprise are beginning to back out for various reasons, which we could go into in great depth in this House. With 40 per cent of 5, 000 that are not really built yet, or 25 per cent of 5,000 where some of the developers are backing out, how can he tell us this is providing for those who are most in need of affordable housing when we know that 40,000 families right now are waiting? In fact, there are more than 40,000. There are 40,000 plus 28,000.

The minister has answered the question: he has failed.

Hon. Mr. Curling: Although I have answered the question, I think the member did not understand the answer. The Renterprise program is an extremely successful program. The member spoke of some who have backed out. I am not aware of anyone who has backed out, as the member for Sudbury (Mr. Gordon) put it, because they feel the program is no good. There could be cases in which the land may not have gone through or they have had some other problems, but I am not aware of those. However, if he has any specific cases of people who are backing out because they feel the program will not work, he should let me know. My staff will be right there to assist and to show them what the programs are. In fact, many people are waiting who, if there should be any who fall away from the Renterprise program, would be glad to take up the program.

The convert-to-rent program is also very successful. I want to make one thing very clear: we never said that low-income people would be accommodated there. People of various incomes would be located within those projects.

Mr. Gordon: We will move on to the next question now because it is obvious the minister does not have a successful program, a program that is providing sufficient housing for the people who need it most. I will ask him another question. Is the add-a-unit program still operating, and if so, does the minister plan to carry on with it or to do away with it?

Hon. Mr. Curling: No, that program is not operating any more.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I have just a couple of brief questions for the minister. Can he outline the policy of his ministry on the provision of emergency housing?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I presume the question is whether the Ministry of Housing carries emergency housing. It is only for battered women that we have a project. In our 3,000 units, we accommodate applications for emergency housing in regard to battered women. My colleague the Minister of Community and Social Services is the minister who is responsible for emergency shelter.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Is the ministry planning any proposals to correct the problem that exists in many of our communities? I point out to the minister that our community in Windsor has had extensive meetings with members of Parliament, MPPs, the mayor and members of city council, and we have looked at the problem of emergency housing.

Proposals had been put forward to the ministry by a group called the Windsor Coalition for Development, which is recognized as a group in Windsor that has provided a substantial contribution in the whole area of housing for low-income families and has in many ways been the conscience of the housing problem in our community, putting forward the problems and some practical solutions.

It is not good enough for the minister to say it is the responsibility of the Minister of Community and Social Services when low-income earners are one of the groups that are experiencing substantial problems in being able to find housing, and emergency housing in particular; that is, short-term housing when they move into a community or get a notice from their landlord or when a conversion is taking place and there is no place for them to live. They are working and so they do not qualify for emergency housing assistance through the welfare office. They do not get any assistance from the Ministry of Community and Social Services if they are working poor because they do not qualify. They have to try to find a motel on a short-term basis on their own, and try to pay those costs and still continue to provide for their families. They do not qualify for subsidies unless they qualify under the General Welfare Assistance Act.

What do those people do? What do low-income people do who are above the line to qualify under the General Welfare Assistance Act? Where do they get assistance for emergency housing?

Hon. Mr. Curling: The member for Windsor-Riverside raised this point very explicitly in a letter to me, I think twice. My response to the member, as I recall -- I stated this in reply to the first question -- was that it falls under the Ministry of Community and Social Services. The member states that this is not good enough. I know he would wish me to carry a responsibility beyond my jurisdiction, but my colleague the Minister of Community and Social Services does a very effective job on emergency shelter. It is unfortunate how the process has gone in his area. At one stage it was stated that emergency shelter would fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Housing. I was able to get some support, and then the staff got back to them and indicated that it fell within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Community and Social Services and that they should pursue their project under that ministry.

I cannot assist him any further in that regard. This is something on which we could work hand in hand. I state this because all the projects I have require the Ministry of Community and Social Services or the Ministry of Health to work closely with us to make sure those people do not fall between the cracks. In that specific program we are still pursuing and working out with the Ministry of Community and Social Services any way we can help.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: The minister has not answered my question. My question was, what do people do who do not qualify for general welfare assistance? How do the working poor get assistance for emergency housing in Ontario? They do not qualify under the Ministry of Community and Social Services, because their income is such that they are above the guidelines for general welfare assistance.

Maybe the minister does not really understand what emergency housing is now provided by his colleague. He says his colleague does a good job of providing emergency housing. Does the minister understand? Maybe he can outline for the House his idea of what emergency housing is provided right now by the Ministry of Community and Social Services in Ontario. What emergency housing is the minister aware of that the Ministry of Community and Social Services provides right now?

1650

Hon. Mr. Curling: I can get back to the member about the emergency housing supplied by the Ministry of Community and Social Services. I can get back to him and tell him about all the emergency housing and the initiatives that ministry is taking.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: The minister said a few minutes ago that his colleague is doing a great job of providing emergency housing in Ontario, but he does not know how he provides it.

Let me tell him how he provides it in the city of Windsor. We have a Salvation Army hostel for men in which there are a bunch of cots in a room. I am not criticizing the Salvation Army. It has done a good job during the years, but it is inadequate to have as emergency housing in 1987 a hostel with just cots set up. That is not the type of facility that should be available. There should be more available.

There is a youth hostel that is available, which is also run by the Salvation Army. For families that would like to stay together, all they can do, if they qualify under the General Welfare Assistance Act, is to apply through welfare for assistance and the welfare department will put them up in a motel. If they do not qualify for welfare, if they are working poor or they have just come into the community for a job and have a bit of cash that would come in handy when they move into a home or try to find a facility in the community to live in, they qualify for no assistance at all under the General Welfare Assistance Act.

Maybe the minister can tell me how a working family on low income qualifies for any type of emergency housing supplied by either his ministry or the Ministry of Community and Social Services. Where do they go for help in Ontario now?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I explained to the member that the only type of emergency shelter that falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Housing is that for battered women, and the criteria under which they can apply are laid out there. However, the member is not addressing his statement to that issue. He is asking how they apply under the Ministry of Community and Social Services. I do not stand here pretending that I know the criteria and how they apply to the Ministry of Community and Social Services.

At one stage, the member seemed to indicate that he knew the process. I am telling him that I can get back to him and tell him how they apply for emergency shelter through the municipality or through the Ministry of Community and Social Services.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Maybe the solution to the problem is that the minister be made to understand that the only available emergency housing in Ontario is either hostels or, if one qualifies for general welfare assistance being put up in a motel for a short time; and if the minister agrees with me that that is inadequate, that it does not meet the needs of either the people who qualify for general welfare assistance or the working poor in this province who do not qualify for general welfare and therefore cannot get help for emergency housing, can he explain to me what plans are in place or what studies are taking place to look at the role his ministry can play in solving the problem of emergency housing?

Hon. Mr. Curling: That was rather specific. Yes, I agree with the member that it is inadequate and that people are not able to get the type of accommodation they need. That is why the Ministry of Community and Social Services is working with the Social Assistance Review in looking at the issue of parity of treatment for those who are on welfare and for the working poor. The member has identified many situations of people who do not qualify, and the Social Assistance Review is looking at that situation at this moment.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Can the minister tell me whether he has ever heard of a group called the supportive community living committee and what the terms of reference for that committee are?

Hon. Mr. Curling: Yes, I do know.

Mr. McClellan: They told you to say that.

Hon. Mr. Curling: No. Of course I know of the supportive community living committee.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Will the minister confirm that one the terms of reference for that committee is to study a possible solution to the emergency housing problem in Ontario? His bureaucrats told me last week when I was talking to them that this committee had been set up and was studying the problem of emergency housing, yet we have been going through this for 10 minutes and the minister never once told me about this committee. Mr. Lucas in the London office told me that he had spoken to the housing policy and program development branch and that this committee had been set up. It is an interministerial committee with the ministry playing the lead role, and one of its terms of reference is to look at a solution to emergency housing problems in Ontario. Can the minister tell me a bit about the committee?

Hon. Mr. Curling: We could go into all the names of committees and all that I have mentioned. Without naming the committee, I work very closely with my colleague the Minister of Health and my colleague the Minister of Community and Social Services. All three ministers work together in resolving some of the problems we see, especially in emergency shelter and all the other inadequacies we find in the system with regard to housing and how we deal with those falling between the cracks.

I was of course going to mention the supportive community living committee. I mentioned the committee we worked together with, that it had been struck and chaired by the Ministry of Housing. I am aware of that. Those matters the member raised are the matters we are looking into and will be addressing.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I am never quite clear when I hear this minister answer a question. Is the minister saying that one of the terms of reference for this committee is the whole problem of emergency housing? Since the minister admitted a few minutes ago that he agreed with me that hostels and motel arrangements for those who qualify for general welfare assistance are not an adequate response from this government for emergency housing, is it safe to say that this committee is looking at a more substantial response to the problems of emergency needs in the province? When can we expect a report from this committee on the emergency housing problem?

Hon. Mr. Curling: Each ministry plays a specific role in the sense of what is called for emergency shelter. The committee has got together to address all the issues the member has raised. If he is asking whether we are looking at emergency shelter, of course we are looking at emergency shelter; we have many studies. The one I just released on roomers, boarders and lodgers will also be one they will be looking at.

Each ministry plays its own role. Many times when a ministry carries out its jurisdiction, be it the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Community and Social Services, it does not come together properly. The supportive community living committee will be looking at where they fall between the cracks in qualification or what criteria should be used to spread the net to include everyone in this process.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I am not quite sure what the minister just said. Can he tell me whether he, as Minister of Housing, is prepared to accept the lead role for the provision of emergency housing in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I do not know whether the member is asking me to take the lead in emergency housing. I am not in a position to say I will be doing that. We are working together to determine where best these things can be addressed. I cannot stand here and tell the member I will take the lead role for emergency housing.

1700

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Can the minister tell me, and make it very clear, that the supportive community living committee has it in its terms of reference to examine the problem of emergency housing and make recommendations to his ministry? If so, when does he expect a report on this issue?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I feel a good time would be about May 1987.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Will the minister and his staff take a second look at the proposal that was put forward to the regional office in London from the Windsor Coalition for Development, which is a unique proposal to provide emergency housing for families, with the provision of dignity and some privacy through the separation of families? First, it could be used as a pilot project to see whether it is one of the solutions to the short-term housing needs of families. Second, the crisis that exists in our community for housing right now is not something he can turn his back on.

There has been the provision of a few units this year in the nonprofit sector through the federal and provincial program for nonprofit housing, but the number of units is not substantial enough to meet the needs of the problem. I think our vacancy rate is down to 0.4 per cent. One of the problems we have is families that, for whatever reason, lose their housing, whether it is because of a financial problem that comes upon the family, whether they are moving into the community and have not been able to establish themselves yet or whether there is the demolition of a building. Whatever the reason, there is a loss of housing and an emergency situation.

Because the vacancy rate is so incredibly low, families do not know how to go about looking for housing. We do not have support systems in the community. Many people have lived in my community all their lives and have never seen a housing crisis such as we have now. There have always been affordable units available for families to move into. Now we have documented cases of something in the neighbourhood of 55 to 65 over a five-month period from the Windsor Coalition for Development, plus cases that were put forward by my office and by the MPs' offices.

There have been two trilevel meetings on this issue. Herb Gray has been one of the most outspoken. He demanded that the Ministry of Housing play a role in the provision of emergency housing. If the minister will review his correspondence or telephone calls over the past few weeks, he will find that he received a few telephone calls and/or letters from Mr. Gray suggesting that it might be wise to take a second look at the proposal from the Windsor coalition because of the crisis that exists in our community.

Will the minister look at that proposal and perhaps use it as a pilot project and try to work something out with the nonprofit group, which has an excellent record of providing housing in our community for low-income families? It is supported by the Minister of Labour (Mr. Wrye) and myself, and by Mr. Gray, Mr. McCurdy and Mr. Langdon. All of us supported the proposal. Perhaps he can look at it and use it as a pilot project to see what different types of emergency housing for families can be provided so that we can provide decent accommodation on an emergency basis, with support services to help people make the transition from emergency facilities to long-term housing.

Hon. Mr. Curling: The member has made a good point. I will bring the matter of the emergency shelter he spoke about to the attention of my colleague the Minister of Community and Social Services. I cannot promise the member that I am the one to lead off on emergency shelter and have it in my ministry. It falls under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Community and Social Services, and I will bring it to his attention.

In his statement and questions, the member identified the magnitude of the need for supportive housing. As well, improved strategies are needed for gaining community acceptance of these projects. The other part is the solutions to the regulations and legislative obstacles that are in the way and hinder these projects from going forward.

The mandate of the supportive community living committee that was struck is to look specifically at those three areas. By May, the report will address many of the member's concerns and the concerns not only of Windsor-Riverside but also of those across Ontario.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I was not going to carry this on any further, but the minister said he would refer the matter to his colleague the Minister of Community and Social Services. Does the minister not realize that the Ministry of Community and Social Services has no capital whatsoever to provide emergency housing? It provides the per diems for emergency housing.

This is the ministry responsible for participating in the building of housing, and we are looking at a different type of emergency housing. We are not looking at hostels; we are not looking at motels. We are looking at providing a permanent facility with individual units that families can use on an emergency basis. The Ministry of Community and Social Services will not provide the funding for that, because capital is required.

I am asking the minister whether he will take a second look at it and consider it as a pilot project instead of referring it to the Ministry of Community and Social Services, which is a useless referral.

Hon. Mr. Curling: I do not know how to comment on that remark. All I am saying is that the matter of emergency shelter comes under the Ministry of Community and Social Services. The member feels there is enough capital within my budget to do that. It is not a matter of where the money is, it is where the jurisdiction falls.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: They do not have capital.

Hon. Mr. Curling: Regardless of whether it has capital, that program falls under the Ministry of Community and Social Services. I will raise the matter with the minister. The supportive community living committee will look at situations such as these, and I hope we will be able to resolve those problems.

I received many letters and telephone calls from the member's area, and I would like to confirm that. The Honourable Herb Gray wrote to me on two occasions and indicated his interest. I do not want to stand here pretending, if the member feels I am pretending. I am not quite aware of the situation in Windsor-Riverside and the kind of support shown by the members in that area. Again, I will refer that specific program to the minister who is responsible for emergency shelter.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I want to make one final point. The minister says he has to refer it to the Ministry of Community and Social Services because it is the ministry responsible. The only reason the minister has to refer it to that ministry is that he and his government will not take responsibility for emergency housing under the appropriate ministry, the Ministry of Housing.

There is nothing written in stone that says the minister has to have the Ministry of Community and Social Services deal with this. If the minister wanted to show some leadership and if his ministry wanted to solve this problem, he would look at a pilot project such as this and consider funding it. However, because the minister has received the word from his bureaucrats that it is written in Liberal stone that this has to be sent to the Ministry of Community and Social Services, he is not prepared to take a second look at it.

What is there that says the Minister of Housing cannot look at a proposal for emergency housing? The only one who says that is the minister. If he wanted to do so, he could. He does not want to do that, so he is going to leave families out in the street.

1710

Hon. Mr. Curling: When I said I would refer it to the minister, it was not because he is not aware of it; I am quite sure he is. Since the member raised the matter in estimates, I thought I would make that comment to the minister. Supportive community living will be looking at these types of things. It is there to say of problems like these: "How do we deal with it? Are they falling between the cracks?"

I can promise the member I will look at this project again, but it does not fall within the criteria of the Ministry of Housing to deal with it. Supportive community living looks at how we will set up new criteria. I have said that over and over again, but I presume he wants this program to be approved today. We are looking at policy, at more than this one project.

Mr. McFadden: I would like to direct some questions to the minister with regard to rent review. We are dealing with both votes together, as I understand it.

Hon. Mr. Curling: That is the next vote.

Mr. McFadden: I was told by the chairman we were dealing with both votes at the same time.

Hon. Mr. Curling: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman: What procedure would you like?

The Deputy Chairman: The original procedure was that we would discuss each vote.

Hon. Mr. Curling: If you want me to move to a vote other than 1904, we can proceed.

Mr. McClellan: Carried.

Mrs. Marland: Not unless we are going to go back.

Hon. Mr. Curling: No jumping back and forth.

The Deputy Chairman: Does the member have questions on vote 1904?

Mr. McFadden: Perhaps I received some erroneous information from the Chairman. I spoke to him and was led to believe the two votes were being dealt with together.

The Deputy Chairman: The original understanding was that we would discuss each vote and then vote on it.

Mr. Gordon: Mr. Chairman, I beg to inform you that the minister agreed the other day that we would discuss these two votes together. It was agreed last week that since certain members wished to participate in the debate on Thursday but due to constituency business could not be here, we would deal with community housing and this business of the last vote together today. That was the understanding. I point that out to you and to the minister.

Hon. Mr. Curling: Let me bring you up to date, Mr. Chairman. I am sure you read Hansard and see what I say. In the last estimates meeting in committee of supply, the honourable member stated that his members would not be here on that date and I stated that if we completed vote 1904 on that day, then I would go back to it today. We can do vote 1904 now, complete it and move to vote 1905. I am not saying we must flip-flop from 1905 to 1904 to 1905. We only have a few moments. I know the member is excited about getting to vote 1905.

Mr. Gordon: In that case, to make things easier for the chair, I have a few points I would like to raise on vote 1904. Then I understand the member for Eglinton (Mr. McFadden) would like to talk about vote 1905. The member for Mississauga South (Mrs. Marland) also wishes to address vote 1904 for a few moments. Then we can move on to vote 1905.

The Deputy Chairman: We will continue on vote 1904.

Mr. Gordon: Perhaps the minister is not conversant with the real problem of people in this province who lack affordable housing. Perhaps he is not aware of what it means to be among the 40,000 families in Ontario right now -- as a matter of fact, there are more than 40,000 families, as I pointed out to him earlier this afternoon, who require decent housing. I would like to outline some of the cases I have dealt with in Sudbury in the past year. These are some representative cases. I will leave out the names or change the names of the people my office has dealt with. I will not read the letters I wrote, but I will give the minister the basic facts.

These cases are repeated innumerable times across this province. When I point out to the minister, who has his Renterprise and convert-to-rent programs, that only 40 per cent of the units developed under Renterprise are going to these people who need them most and that only 25 per cent of those people who require affordable housing -- good social housing -- are going to live in convert-to-rent, these are the people I am talking about. I would like to put this on the record so he will at least know what we are talking about in this House, because I am not sure he does know. That is why I want to raise these cases with him at this time.

We will start first with the case of a woman we will call Ms. Jones. This is not her real name. She moved to Sudbury in July with a two-year-old and was expecting a child. The only apartment they could afford is on Spruce Street; again, this is not the correct street. The landlord has given notice to vacate for February 1. The second child has arrived. The husband cannot find a job. The young child had asthma. Ventilation is very important for this child because the asthma is so bad, and it is very important that this child have a window; there is no window. The doctor has even submitted a note to the Sudbury Housing Authority, yet the apartment is so small that it could be classed as having one bedroom. This family needs two bedrooms.

What does the local housing authority say? Sudbury housing says it cannot help and the family will have to find something else. It just does not have the units to deal with this person because the waiting list in Sudbury is so long. Attached to this is a letter I wrote at that time to Mr. Condon, the senior property manager. I pointed out at that time, "I urge you to do everything possible to have this family placed at the earliest possible date."

That is one example. I will give the minister another case; I could bring him a file like that. We will call this person Mary Smith. She has three children and a baby. She has letters, which would go to the Sudbury Housing Authority, from two physicians -- not one but two -- supporting her need for better housing. The baby, who was premature, is under the care of specialists in Toronto.

I want to tell the minister about the kind of apartment this family is living in now in Sudbury. The smoke detectors do not work, the roof leaks, the doors do not close properly and there are no locks. Someone broke in while the family was out one evening. There are fleas in the apartment and the baby, who was premature, suffers from bites all over its legs. As well, the apartment is cold. When it was called, the housing authority said it would put this family on the waiting list for a two-bedroom apartment, but it had no idea when one would be available.

Here is another example. This describes the kind of conditions some people are forced to live in because there is not an adequate supply of affordable housing in Ontario. There was another call to us in September. The person, who has a 14-month-old child, indicated the apartment was infested with roaches and the shower did not work. We again talked to the housing authority. The comeback was that it could not provide housing at that time. There is just not enough rent-geared-to-income or subsidized housing in Sudbury.

I will give the minister another example. This couple requires a two-bedroom apartment. Most of their family is grown. They have worked hard but always at a minimum wage, barely scraping by. They are what we call the working poor in this province, and they are penalized for it. When we checked in June, they had 110 points, and there were 50 to 60 families ahead of them. Very few move out, and always they are bumped by others whose cases are more urgent.

1720

Here is another one: This family has two children, a girl and an infant boy. They live in a small two-bedroom apartment. The infant sleeps with the parents in their room. His crib is so close to a hot radiator that they live in fear he will touch it and be burned, but they cannot move the crib elsewhere because of the size and configuration of the bedroom. This person has been on the list for a year and has 125 points. As well, the temperature of the apartment is irregular. The father in this family is more fortunate than some of those others who are waiting for subsidized housing in the community because he is going to school and receiving some funding, so the family gets more money than others.

These are the kinds of conditions these people are faced with. These are the kinds of conditions these people live in. I could go on and on. I have a whole stack of these right here.

I am saying that in the minister's subsidized housing in this province, he is playing a little bit of a game with the people out there. I will tell him what the game is. The game is that he goes out with these proposals for Renterprise and convert-to-rent and he comes back into this House and says, "Oh, we have 5,000 that have been taken up already," meaning he is trying to tell us that 5,000 units are going to be built.

First of all, we know that all 5,000 are not going to be built. But even if the 5,000 are built, we know he plays another game with the people who need housing out there in this great province of ours. Do members know what he does? He does not give the local housing authorities enough rent supplement funding in order for the housing authority to take up the new units that are coming on stream. That is what he is doing.

While he tells us he is going to build 1,000 units in any city one wants to name, or let us say he is going to build 500 units, the facts of the matter are that when the time comes for those units to be turned over for those people who really need them, for those people who have a subsidized rent when they take a unit, the local housing authority says to the developer, "We would like to take 40 per cent of those units, we would like to take 25 per cent of the convert-to-rent units and we would like to have people who need subsidy living in those units; but the local housing authority does not have the funding to make it possible." It does not have the funding because the province does not give it to them.

I urge the minister, when he gets up to make a reply to these points, to be very careful, because we will have on record exactly what he is going to say about this today. All we have to do is to go out and find a number of cases, and the minister knows who is going to have to answer: He is going to have to answer.

I am telling him to quit this charade whereby he is forcing the poor in this province to have less. Sure, right now the government is helping the developers. They are doing very well. They are building these apartment buildings. But when the time comes for them to be rented, they will all be rented out to people who can well afford those apartments, and the people who really need them will not get them. There are too many cases like that in this province, and we want it to stop.

I want to be told. I want him to get up in this House and tell us right now that with regard to every one of those Renterprise units that are built in this province, and every one of those convert-to-rent units that are built in this province and that are finished by the year 1986-87, when they come on stream, we will not be told in this Legislature or in those communities across this province that people who really need those units are not getting them. In other words, for the 40 per cent he promised in Renterprise, the money is going to be there; for the 25 per cent in convert-to-rent, the money is going to be there.

We want to hear him say that in this House today, and if he cannot say it in this House today, this is all smoke and mirrors, a bloody charade.

Hon. Mr. Curling: I hope the honourable member's blood pressure did not rise too high. The charade was over on June 26, 1985. When members bait me by responding like that, sometimes I am even ashamed of myself. The job of this government is to address the causes and the needs, not to go back to find blame and come into the committee with a long list of people who were neglected for years. Should I presume they all developed that need since June 26, 1985? If affordable buildings were available to those people, they would not be at the doorstep now asking for these needs to be addressed. I hope the people see through the little acting my dear critic put on a little while ago and see that the need did not come about overnight; it has been there for a long time.

In these estimates, I have heard people talking about sensitivity and stopping the charade and what have you. We are all born human beings and then some of us spend a long time trying to be sensitive. The Renterprise program that the member described is just for that. We address not only those people who are paying 30 per cent of their income in rent but also all the various levels of low income to a certain degree.

Talking about charades and smokescreens, I could talk about puffing and blowing at the same time or whatever the expression is. The member's colleagues stood up - I am sure the member was here -- not long ago, a couple of hours or so ago, and said: "Forty per cent is too much. Why is the minister targeting the needy? Why is he doing that?" Then the member stands up and says to me that 40 per cent is not enough. I cannot understand that. We knew we were sensitive to the community. Some communities are much more affluent than others and do not need 40 per cent for rental accommodation.

He says to me, "Stop the charade." Does he mean to stop those thousands of units I have approved to address the needy? Is he saying to put more there? Has he spoken to his cousins in Ottawa about giving us more subsidies to address the needy? He has not done that. I do not think he wants to kiss them any more; they are just cousins now. They are trying to dissociate from them. Has he told the federal government that in coming into this program as a government to address the neglect, we now are paying 40 per cent of the subsidy to support more housing projects? Is he telling them that when we tried to address the need for 3,000 units to house those who are hard to house, there was no sharing and the province came up with 100 per cent of the money? What charade? Where?

The program we have in place will not solve all the problems. It will not solve the situation we have now. I tell the member for Sudbury (Mr. Gordon) that of course I feel for the people in his constituency who are spending so much money for rent and may have no funds to spend on food or other survival items they need to carry on their daily lives. He may tell his constituents that I hope within a very short time, perhaps five years, we can look back and say we attacked this aggressively for the hard-to-house. As I said, we direct our program towards those who are having extreme difficulty in finding affordable accommodation.

I will continue to work with my dear colleague as he brings forward all these problems, and we will continue to help in any specific way that we can. However, those programs I have approved in the past two years will not solve the entire problem. We have to do more and we know it. Therefore, let us put our heads together in the demonstration, the action and the approach that we take and solve that kind of problem.

1730

Mr. Gordon: Let the record show that the minister refused to promise in this House that the subsidy dollars would be available for the various local housing authorities for those units that are built in Ontario under the Renterprise and convert-to-rent programs. Note very carefully that he refused to promise that all the units that would normally be taken up by those who require subsidized housing -- that is, the 40 per cent and the 25 per cent -- would be available with subsidy dollars for those who need those units.

Let the record show that, and then the next time you pick up a paper or listen to the radio and hear this government bragging about its assured housing program, keep in mind that it is hot air and smoke and mirrors. It knows very well that those units are not going to be occupied by the people who most need them. In many cases, they are going to be occupied by people who can very well afford to live in them. They are going to be filled with people who can afford to pay $650 to $850 a month in rent. Just remember that the poor in this province, the families about whom I just read to you in this House, are not going to be living there. Those people are still going to be living in terrible conditions. They are going to be living where the roof leaks and there are cockroaches and fleas crawling over the baby, because this minister absolutely refuses to see that the subsidy dollars are there.

I am sure he is going to get up now; he has to. He has to get up and try to say something. Do you know what they are going to whisper in his ear? They are going to whisper, "Say it is the federal government's fault; talk about the cousins," and all this malarkey.

Do you want to know the truth about this government? The first budget the Treasurer (Mr. Nixon) came through with right in this House -- I can remember his getting up and doing it, socking it to the people of Ontario, jacking up their personal income tax from 48 per cent to 50 per cent provincially and adding on all kinds of other ways to raise money.

Do you know what he got out of that? More than $1 billion. Since the last budget he brought in, he already has more than $400 million in surplus that he has taken out of the pockets of the people of Ontario. This government refuses to take that money and help the poor, those people who really need affordable housing -- the Minister of Housing refuses to go to the cabinet table and get that money from the Treasurer.

This is the so-called sensitive government we listened to a little while ago. Not more than half an hour ago, we had to listen to a charade between the member for Etobicoke (Mr. Philip) and the minister talking about sensitivity. The minister used the word "sensitivity" about 50 times. The minister and his ministry do not know anything about sensitivity; they are crass. The way they are spending money right now on advertising is almost criminal. For shame; they are not helping those people out there. We have caught on to them.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Mississauga South was on her feet first; sorry.

Mr. Taylor: I was on your list, though.

Mrs. Marland: Last Thursday I was asking the Minister of Housing about the accommodation of a special group of people within our province, namely, the victims of domestic violence, in terms of emergency shelters. An example is Interim Place, which is in my riding.

At that time, in response to some of my questions, the minister referred to his 3,000 units for the hard-to-house. At the time, I tried to indicate to the minister that I was not asking about long-term accommodation; I was asking about interim emergency shelters. Since we dealt with that and since the minister is very gung-ho about his provision of these 3,000 units for the hard-to-house -- I recognize it is difficult for the minister to listen to his staff and to my question, but maybe he is multitalented.

In dealing with the 3,000 units for the hard-to-house, as he describes them, I suggest that probably the kinds of people who fall into the hard-to-house category would be people who are mentally, physically or emotionally disabled. They are people who may currently be housed in unsuitable hostels, they may be people who are in some form of interim housing or, indeed, they may be people who are well enough to be released from other formal institutions, even hospitals, if we could find the appropriate housing for them.

If we agree that those are the descriptions of people who are categorized and eligible as the hard-to-house groups, I wonder what commitment the minister has from the other ministries to provide the special support packages for those particular groups of people. I would suggest that for many of them, whether they have a physical or mental disability or whether they are former psychiatric patients who simply require some monitoring or supervision, the solution will not be just purely to give them the physical plant, the physical roof over their heads.

When I see the needs at the local level in Mississauga and in the region of Peel -- in Peel we have a group called PAHA, which is the Peel Association of Handicapped Adults; we also have Mississauga Community Living, which formerly was MAMR, the Mississauga Association for the Mentally Retarded, and some other groups that are dealing with these difficulties -- I would suggest to the minister that to provide the physical plant will not be the solution.

Therefore, I wonder what commitments he has had today from the Minister of Health (Mr. Elston), the Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Keyes) and possibly the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney). What commitment does he have from these other ministries that he will have, for these hard-to-house groups, the kind of support staff and support packages that will be needed for them to survive in their own accommodation? What is the answer to that in 1987?

Hon. Mr. Curling: As the member knows, the way this government works is that before we put projects in place, we make sure they are well thought out and that all parties involved are consulted. The program is then put in place, and then the announcement is made.

The member asked quite a few questions there that I thought I had addressed previously, but I will say it again; I presume that emphasis makes the points much better. I will instruct my staff immediately to send a couple of copies to her constituency office, because many people will be asking about this and it will be very helpful.

The groups to be served will be homeless individuals; battered spouses; physically, developmentally and psychiatrically handicapped adults; and low-income singles on a demonstration basis. The one the member zeroed in on was the one about battered spouses; our special provincial initiative of 3,000 units specifically addresses emergency shelter for battered spouses.

1740

The other part of the member's question was about the well thought out processes. Consultation went on with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services. I will read the press release that was sent out: "Most of the groups in today's allocation require support care funding, and final approval will be given when this funding is secured and other criteria are met."

The 3,000 units are special, and they have complete provincial funding. The Ministry of Health is quite aware of some of the projects before they are approved. Consultation goes on if a project affects Community and Social Services. If the support funds are there, then we can carry out these projects.

If the member asks about the commitment we have, then, as I said, we have a committee inasmuch as Community and Social Services is quite aware of all the projects that are before me and have been approved. This press release indicates those units have been approved; so there are commitments from the ministries to carry out these projects, and support funding is there.

Mrs. Marland: The first part of the minister's answer dealt with the victims of domestic violence. I purposely set that aside today because we did not get very far with it last Thursday. Today, I was asking the minister about the physically disabled, the emotionally disabled, the former psychiatric patients and the former residents of other institutions, including those who would come under the Ministry of Correctional Services.

The minister said through his press release that these other ministries are aware of his 3,000 units; I should say they are our 3,000 units, as we globally as taxpayers of Ontario will be funding these 3,000 units. My emphasis is that it will be of no benefit to those groups to provide those physical units -- those housing units -- without the support packages.

Can the minister tell me today that he has a commitment of dollars from the Minister of Health, the Minister Correctional Services and the Minister of Community and Social Services to provide the staff and to provide for the special needs in the support package for those people, along with his own program? The minister said the other ministries are aware of it; I want to know the dollar commitment he has from those three ministers.

Hon. Mr. Curling: I stated that I am working very closely with the other ministers. If the honourable member wants a specific amount of dollars, projects vary from one to the other, and I would not be able to give her a specific sum of money now. However, I am telling her we are committed, as are the Ministry of Community and Social Services and the Ministry of Health. We are working very closely, and I do not think that after any program is approved it will go unsupported because of the support services required from Community and Social Services or from Health.

The member talked about putting aside battered spouses today. I read the list of groups that will be served. That list addresses physically, developmentally and psychiatrically handicapped adults. I thought I mentioned that when I stood up. I did that to address the concerns that the member expressed previously and also to address the specific area the member addressed today.

Mrs. Marland: Would the minister say that if I were to ask those other three ministers, depending on the client group, whether they are ready within their own budgetary plans to provide the support staff and the total package for their client group as it integrates with the minister's program, I would have an affirmative answer from them? Are they fully agreed?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I thought I had made absolutely clear how closely we worked with each other. It is difficult that in the past this was not the case. I am not making any criticism. I gather that many of the ministries were not working together, so many people have fallen between the cracks.

What the member has identified is a very important point. It is the goal to say that we may have a program, and the Ministry of Housing has come through with certain amounts of capital funding. But if the support service is not there, because no one consulted with the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Community and Social Services -- to carry on this program -- so be it.

We have worked very closely, and when the project has been approved, when we say "go," the member will hear from both ministries, if it requires both, or the one ministry that is involved within that specific program. They are committed to that program, because we work as one government. We work in concert to get the project going, and no one will fall between the cracks.

Mrs. Marland: In fairness, a final comment is that the minister is suggesting that similar programs have never existed before in this province. Fortunately, we have many examples of where we have multiministerial agreements where housing and other needed support services have been provided. If we want to talk about Interim Place, that is a perfect example within my own riding.

As well, we have other programs. Certainly, Peel Non-Profit Housing Corp., with its 2,200-odd units in the region of Peel, has worked very closely with other ministries, particularly in the provision of disabled suites that have worked out very successfully. We have housing for seniors where there are some supervisory programs integrated as part of the accommodation.

It is absolutely unfair - I was going to say "false," but I understand I would not be allowed to say that -- for the minister to suggest these people have not been looked after in the past. It is simply that their numbers continue to increase and their needs always exist.

My questions were directed at ensuring that their needs continue to be addressed and that remedial help is available to those people who need it most. Generally, they are people who are least able to ask for it themselves.

Mr. Chairman: Does the minister have any response before the member for Prince Edward-Lennox begins?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I have a quick response. I hope I did not give the member the impression that ministries never worked together in the past. This is a special program where the money is solely provincial. I presume most of the programs the member spoke about in the municipal nonprofit sector received federal funding. That sort of co-ordination did not make it as effective as we could have made it. It is now provincial funding. I presume it is much easier to work with everyone and not have to hear from the people from Ottawa on how we should carry on the project.

Mr. Taylor: I am never difficult, as the minister knows.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Here is a strong proponent of rent controls.

Mr. Taylor: That is the next vote. In any event, in fairness to the minister, he cannot be responsible for all the problems of the province, whether they are housing or whatever. I do not think a government should be responsible for all the housing problems of the province.

Mr. Foulds: Certainly not yours.

Mr. Taylor: Some of us believe there is a market system or a semblance of some free enterprise in Ontario that is going to generate the housing that people need. If he likes, one can accuse the minister of not having enough affordable housing for the weak, the oppressed and the downtrodden. I have heard that today. I have heard that from my colleagues. We have very sensitive colleagues here as well.

Mr. Breaugh: Who would make such a wishy-washy argument as that?

1750

Mr. Taylor: I am not going to respond to members of the New Democratic Party who want the minister to be the biggest landlord on the North American continent.

Mr. Breaugh: He is, as a matter of fact. Your party made him that.

Mr. Taylor: He is second now. The member's party would make him that. We know that party would make him that because of its political socialist dogma, which would rather see government be the owner. Talk about state capitalism. I am not going to respond to the member today because he had his turn and we know what he stands for.

I am going to say this to elicit a response from the minister. When it comes to affordable housing -- and we can talk about affordable housing for all social strata -- we are not just talking about people who are victims of circumstance momentarily or who, on a more permanent basis, are deprived of the type of housing they would like to have. We would all like something better. Members should not think I am not sensitive to the needs of the people in Ontario who are struggling to put a roof over their heads and to try to make ends meet. It is becoming more difficult every day. We all know that.

The minister has not said it, but I do not think he is running a crisis centre in the Ministry of Housing to address the immediate needs that are often addressed at the local level through welfare offices, the Ministry of Community and Social Services and others. There are other programs. The minister has a mandate -- and he should correct me if I am wrong -- to ensure an environment in Ontario that will be conducive to the development of decent housing for everyone.

It is the minister's contribution to that economic and political environment that is very important. I do not look to the minister for all the answers. I have witnessed the political softshoes and heard about the smoke and mirrors and the charades. Politics is made up of a lot of that.

Mr. Foulds: You are attacking your own colleague.

Mr. Taylor: I am not attacking my own colleague. I never attack a colleague. I am just saying to the minister that there is --

Mr. Foulds: Who said "smoke and mirrors"? Who used the word "charade"? It was the Tory Housing critic.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Mr. Taylor: I am not going to respond to these interjections. I would be happy to debate with the member in any forum, even in a more rarefied atmosphere than this, if the member wants to some time.

In any event, this is a historical problem in Ontario. We have seen it. There is a lack of affordable housing, and the problem is becoming more critical. It is not that houses are not being built. We have travelled and have seen in my colleague's riding of Mississauga hundreds of acres of new housing being built. On the weekend, as I travel home to my riding, I see hundreds of acres of new housing going up in the Pickering, Ajax, Whitby and Oshawa areas.

The problem is that the affordable housing is not there. At one time, the head of the family was always looked upon as the breadwinner. We have to have two breadwinners now in a family in order to purchase and finance a home. Homes are going beyond the grasp of the two persons per family who are working and making a contribution.

I put to the minister and seriously request that he respond as best he can in terms of his views or in terms of what he thinks he can do to make housing more affordable. I am talking now about the ordinary man in the street, the little man, the person most of us represent, who is working hard and striving to buy a home, pay off the mortgage, put the rug on the floor, finance the appliances and so on.

It is the input costs in these houses. We have a number of economic factors that come into play, as the minister knows, factors such as mortgage rates and the availability of mortgage money. We have other factors that have played and are playing a bigger role, and those factors now are the whole process: the time frame within which a piece of land can be subdivided, serviced and put on the market -- that whole area.

We reviewed the Planning Act. As the minister knows, it probably took the better part of a decade to review and revise the Planning Act. The new Planning Act came out in 1983. It was passed by this House. I wonder whether the minister has some views about some way of streamlining the process so that the lead times in putting serviced land on the market can be shorter, and whether he has looked at the conditions that are imposed at all levels of government; in other words, the process itself. In terms of such things as imposts, it is all right for municipalities to argue that they need so many thousands of dollars per lot. I do not know what it is now; I have heard astronomical sums. At one time I was closer to this type of thing.

When we look at all of those costs being factored into the price of a home and then financed by a mortgage, it takes a couple, two earners in a family earning very high salaries, in order to carry that home. I put the question to the minister about whether he will pursue or has been pursuing that area.

There are other factors. We have very high input costs for materials. Has he pursued the input costs? The object of the exercise, of course, is to try to cut down all of the input costs into housing so that the finished product can be marketed at a much more reasonable sum so that the general population can afford to buy that home.

I know the Treasurer and government House leader is anxious to announce what the order of business will be for tomorrow. If is appropriate, I will stand down now.

Hon. Mr. Curling: Very briefly, the honourable member knows, as he went around the province with me, that we looked into all those aspects of trying to get affordable housing to all the people of Ontario. It is a very difficult task. I think that in a short time we did well enough to come up with a policy in Bill 51 that addresses that concern. We are quite mindful of those factors that affect the high cost of bringing affordable housing to the people of Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Mr. Chairman, just before moving that the committee rise, may I check with you, sir, my understanding that this would complete the Housing estimates after 23.5 hours of continuous discussion and that it is generally agreed by any reasonable participant that we have had enough?

Mr. Chairman: Actually, it is not quite 12 hours, approximately, but I had no indication from the committee that it wished to wrap it up today. What is the committee's wish?

Mr. Gordon: Mr. Chairman, I have two members who wish to speak further on this matter; but given the kind of discussion we have had to date, if it is the wish of the majority of the members in this House that we finish these estimates now, I guess we can do so.

Hon. Mr. Nixon: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the views expressed by the member for Sudbury as the principal Housing critic for the official opposition. With that in mind, I move that the committee rise and report. No; I ask the members to wait a minute. We have a minute to carry these votes.

Mr. Breaugh: Mr. Chairman, the minister should move the votes before we rise and report. That would be helpful if we want to end the estimates.

Mr. Chairman: I am advised that this was the agreement. We have carried up to vote 1904.

Vote 1904 agreed to.

Vote 1905 agreed to.

On motion by Hon. Mr. Nixon, the committee of supply reported certain resolutions.

The House adjourned at 6:02 p.m.

January 26, 1987

MEMBERS' PRIVILEGES

ARGOSY FINANCIAL GROUP OF CANADA

VISITOR

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

PEEL CHILDREN'S SERVICES

ALGOMA CENTRAL RAILWAY

HOSPITAL BEDS

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION

LABOUR DISPUTE

ADULTS-ONLY APARTMENTS

CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES

LIQUOR CONTROL BOARD OF ONTARIO

MEMBERS' PRIVILEGES

RESPONSES

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES

LIQUOR CONTROL BOARD OF ONTARIO

ORAL QUESTIONS

ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME

NORTHERN HEALTH SERVICES

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

NIAGARA RIVER WATER QUALITY

TEACHERS' QUALIFICATIONS

NORTHERN HEALTH SERVICES

LEGAL AID

TEACHERS' QUALIFICATIONS

HOSPITAL FUNDING

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

PEEL CHILDREN'S SERVICES

ARGOSY FINANCIAL GROUP OF CANADA

POLICE PURSUITS

DAY CARE

PETITION

PROPERTY ASSESSMENT

MOTION

COMMITTEE BUSINESS

ORDERS OF THE DAY

THIRD READING

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HOUSING (CONTINUED)