Hansard Transcript 1988-Dec-12 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr. R. F. Johnston: In 10 years as a member I have a number of times called for the resignation of a minister, but this is the first time that I have asked a government to seriously consider getting rid of a ministry in its entirety. It seems to me that the time to make the decision to scrap the Ministry of Skills Development is at hand, for a number of reasons.

It is a clearly incoherent ministry which does not know what it is doing. It shows amazing incompetence and it has the highest administrative costs as a percentage of its overall budget of any ministry I have had the privilege to be a critic of for the last number of years. Of their total budget, 10 per cent goes into administration. A number of its functions would much better be handled under other line ministries, like the Ministry of Labour, or the Ministry of Education for literacy.

There is really no need for this ministry to continue, unless the government just wants to spend money on extra public relations, for a minister to be able to go around and make certain announcements that could be made by other ministries.

I have to tell members that it again has underspent its money this year for some of those disadvantaged people in our society who need help. The illiterate, unemployed native people, older workers, laid-off workers and disadvantaged youth have all seen the funding underspent again this year in an enormous fashion while the administration costs grow.

I would urge the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) to speak to the Premier (Mr. Peterson), and to have this ministry ended, have the matters that it deals with sent to other ministries where they could most effectively be handled without the incoherence that we have seen here over the last number of years.

TRANSIT SERVICES

Mr. Cureatz: To the Minister of Transportation (Mr. Fulton): On the ongoing events of the extension of the GO rail system out towards the riding of Durham East and, more particularly, the ending at Whitby, I want to bring to the minister’s attention that he came out a week ago Sunday in great fanfare with a great entourage, taking full credit for the extension of the GO train, forgetting the fact that my own colleague the member for Simcoe West (Mr. McCague), who was Minister of Transportation and Communications at that time, had instituted the extension project.

I will tell members, if the Liberals had been in power, the way the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) handles the purse strings he would never have approved that extension. Lo and behold, the people in Durham give their approval to the extension in two Liberal ridings, while I do not see those Liberal members, the member for Durham Centre (Mr. Furlong) and the member for Durham West (Mrs. Stoner), standing up in the House complaining about lack of parking at those stations.

I visited the stations and, lo and behold, they are crowded. You cannot find a parking space. I say to the minister, he has been complaining about the traffic jams on Highway 401 coming in from east Metro. If he does not get his act together about providing adequate parking space so people out in those communities can start taking the commuter rail system, he is going to be worse off than ever.

I heard, through my colleague the member for Burlington South (Mr. Jackson), a GO Transit person indicated that out in the west end of the commuter rail system they cannot provide parking for people. How in the heck are you supposed to get the people off the roads if you are not encouraging them to use the commuter rail system by providing adequate parking?

PROTECTION OF OZONE LAYER

Mr. Adams: The greenhouse effect on our climate has received a great deal of attention. This follows a major conference in Toronto, a TVOntario documentary, and grass-roots interest in places such as Peterborough, where city and county council, private citizens, and students from Armour Heights school, among others, have expressed concern.

The buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere, resulting from the burning of fossil fuels and other causes, is rapidly warming our climate. This is a worldwide effect which will be felt most in high latitude countries like Canada.

Many Ontarians might be delighted at this news and look forward to a warmer climate, but in fact we should be very concerned about any dramatic change to our environment. Studies show that within a few decades, agricultural production may decline because of drought. Hydroelectric production may fall as levels in the Great Lakes fall, and the ski industry of southern Ontario may well disappear.

The federal government has produced a number of studies but little else. I am pleased that our select committee on energy is pursuing this problem through its investigations of Ontario Hydro’s demand-supply planning strategy. This strategy will determine Hydro’s contributions of greenhouse gases for the next several decades. The province should encourage hydroelectric generation of power and increased energy conservation. It should encourage Ontario Hydro to minimize use of fossil fuels, especially coal.

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

PROPOSED FACILITY FOR YOUNG OFFENDERS

Mr. Laughren: I, along with a lot of other members, am very much aware of what is known as the not-in-my-backyard approach. Just recently, there was proposed, in my constituency, a facility for the treatment of young offenders from the age of 12 to 15, I believe. There was much concern in the community about the location of the facility, and it became an issue during the municipal election. My phone has been ringing at home and in my constituency office, as have those of municipal politicians.

During the furore over this issue, the Ministry of Community and Social Services made not one iota of effort to contact me so that I could be informed and so that I could respond to my constituents in a positive way. My instinct on this matter was to support the facility for the treatment of young offenders, but only because it is my instinct, not because of any information that the Ministry of Community and Social Services bothered to send to me as the local member.

I am not surprised that members in this assembly sometimes find themselves caught up in the campaigns against projects when the ministry which is responsible for implementing them does not seem to give a hoot about whether the members themselves are informed. It is no wonder there is resistance in the community when the members are not kept informed as to why such an option should be implemented.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mrs. Cunningham: With yet another Christmas season in full swing, I rise today to convey to both the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) the never-ending dismay and the outrage that has been unnecessarily kindled by this government’s failure during the past year to enforce the Retail Business Holidays Act, which has resulted in the ongoing Sunday shopping fiasco in our province.

Here in Ontario, we all have the Sunday-shopping blues, which the Premier can add to his bag of unforgettable and unforgivable blunders for one reason and one reason alone: this government refuses to live up to its duty to uphold the present law. It is a sign of good government that the laws, however imperfect they may be, are upheld and sustained.

Unfortunately for the people of Ontario, we instead have a Liberal government intent on flouting the law while ramming through an even more dubious law that the majority of citizens clearly do not want. As a convenient scapegoat, this government claims it is up to the municipalities to enforce the present law. By refusing to deal with the issue of enforcement, this government has taken the route of least responsibility and has exacerbated the current problems by not utilizing the full force of the law within its power.

In the interim, while Ontarians wait on the sidelines for some serious action, the very least this government could do is demonstrate the responsibility which is sorely lacking and enforce the current legislation.

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LIMITATIONS ACT

Mr. D. R. Cooke: Later this afternoon, I will be introducing an act to amend the Limitations Act.

In our society, the tragic occurrence of sexual assault, particularly of children, is a largely hidden and yet pervasive reality that has damaged the lives of far too many. It should not hurt to be a child, yet tens of thousands of children and youths are victims of sexual abuse and incestuous molestation. In fact, Ontario’s child abuse registry reports that 1,345 cases of sexual abuse involving children under the age of 16 were reported to the children’s aid societies in 1987.

We know that this unacceptable level of sexual abuse is actually just the tip of the iceberg. It has been estimated that as many as one in four girls and one in 10 boys are sexually abused as children.

One such victim and her Kitchener-based support group, Survivors and Supporters Against Sexual Abuse, brought to my attention the fact that our Limitations Act limits civil actions by such victims to four years after the age of majority or cause of action. Because of the dynamics of molestation, child sexual abuse and sexual assault, this time line is far too short. Most important in this respect, a four-year limitation period does not take into account the unique injuries that result from the abuse which render the victim unable to pursue an action in court. The amendment to the Limitations Act is intended to extend that limitation period.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I am announcing today the funding levels for the coming fiscal year for major transfer programs. In 1985, the government made a commitment to provide advance notice of funding levels to the major service providers to allow them to plan their budgets effectively.

The support levels I am announcing today comprise more than 40 per cent of the province’s budget and represent Ontario’s financial support for hospitals, universities, colleges, school boards and municipalities.

Before I talk more about the individual grant levels, I would like first to make some brief comments about the economic and fiscal health of Ontario.

The year 1988 is the sixth consecutive year of strong economic growth in Ontario. The real output of the province is forecast to increase by 4.5 per cent in 1988. In the coming year, the economy will enter a period of more moderate growth, expected to be almost three per cent. The unemployment rate is expected to remain near this year’s 14-year low of five per cent, and inflation is expected to remain moderate.

The annual Economic Outlook and Fiscal Review which will be released shortly, will provide a complete forecast for the coming year.

With the economy growing at a more moderate and sustainable level, the rate of growth of the province’s revenue base will not match the pace experienced over the past six years.

The funding I am announcing today is in keeping with the sustainable rates of growth we forecast for the economy. While the rates of increase in grants will be moderate due to the declining rate of increase in economic growth, they will permit universities, colleges, schools, hospitals and municipalities to continue to ensure the efficient delivery of services to the people.

The grant level announcements reflect the priorities accorded health care and education by the government.

The total allocation for the operation of hospitals for 1989-90 will be increased by 8.1 per cent to approximately $6 billion. I would say this is about a $500-million dollar increase compared to the present year.

The Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) is currently undertaking consultations on a new funding arrangement for hospitals with the Ontario Hospital Association. When those discussions are completed, the minister will provide the details on today’s funding announcement. With the new funding arrangements and an increase of 8.1 per cent in provincial support, hospitals will be able to continue meeting health care needs in Ontario’s communities while avoiding operating deficits in the future.

Total funding for the operation of universities in 1989-90 will increase by 7.5 per cent over the level of the current fiscal year. Of the $1.7 billion provided to universities, $88 million is included to fulfil the commitment made in the 1988 budget to improve accessibility to Ontario’s universities.

The 1989-90 operating grants for colleges of applied arts and technology will approach $700 million. Overall funding for the colleges will grow by 5.6 per cent. My colleague the Minister of Colleges and Universities (Mrs. McLeod) will soon announce the details of these increases.

Provincial support for the operation of school boards will increase by 6.1 per cent in 1989-90. This increase will add approximately $240 million in funding for school boards, bringing total operating support to more than $4.1 billion. Included in that amount is approximately $80 million to continue to implement the government’s 1987 throne speech initiatives to reduce class sizes, strengthen student computer skills and improve the teaching of science in schools.

Transfer payments to the municipal sector in 1989-90 will total approximately $4.4 billion, which amounts to an increase of 5.4 per cent. Within the overall allocation, more than $220 million in additional funding will be provided to municipalities for priority areas. In particular, total payments to municipalities for general welfare for individuals and families in need will increase by 10.8 per cent. In addition, the allocation for water and sewer projects will increase by 11.3 per cent, for municipal transit facilities by 11.4 per cent and for child care services provided in day nurseries by 13.9 per cent.

Unconditional grants will be funded at $871 million again this year.

Mr. B. Rae: That would be zero per cent?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: That is correct.

Mr. B. Rae: Zero per cent?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: That is correct; that is what it says.

Mr. B. Rae: It doesn’t say zero per cent, though. I just want to make that clear.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: Anybody with intelligence would know it, and the member knows it.

Municipal road assistance will also be maintained at the $678-million level. Would the member care to comment on that one?

Mr. B. Rae: No.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: The financial position of our municipal sector has strengthened in recent years and I believe that these allocations are realistic and in keeping with changing priorities. To fund local priority activities and projects beyond these levels, many municipalities will choose to raise additional funds from local financing sources.

Today I am tabling a green paper describing approaches of assisting municipalities and school boards with the financing of growth-related capital needs. These approaches create a consistent framework for municipal lot levies, enable school boards to establish education lot levies and explore other innovative means of financing capital expenditures.

I invite briefs regarding possible improvements to these approaches to financing capital expenditures or other alternatives. As the government anticipates introducing legislation on approved approaches early in the next session, municipalities are expected to maintain their lot levies at current levels until that time.

I am confident that these allocations will enable our major partners to continue providing quality health care, essential municipal services and excellence in education at all levels.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would like to announce an increase in operating funds for Ontario hospitals for the fiscal year 1989-90.

Ontario hospitals will receive approximately $6 billion in operating funds for 1989-90, up from about $5.5 billion in 1988-89. This represents an overall increase of 8.1 per cent in operating funds for the next fiscal year.

The increase will allow this government to maintain its commitment to provide quality care with sound fiscal planning. As I have indicated in this House, hospitals are expected to operate within their budget allocations to attain balanced budgets.

It will also support continuing improvement in hospital services in all areas of the province for the coming fiscal year. Specific details of hospital budgets will be available at a later date. As I indicated in my recent speech to the Ontario Hospital Association, we are moving to a fairer hospital funding system.

Recently, a joint committee composed of hospital representatives and the Ministry of Health was established to develop a transitional funding formula for implementation in 1989-90.

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The committee is examining alternative approaches to provide funding to hospitals and will take into consideration economic costs, workload pressures, demographics and case-mix changes.

This committee has made very significant progress to date. I am hoping to have specific recommendations for policy review early next year. This will then provide us with a funding framework for next year’s hospital allocations.

My ministry is looking forward to the implementation of a hospital funding system that will be more responsive to the changing needs of our health care system.

Hon. Mr. Eakins: I would like to take this opportunity to tell my colleagues about the 1989 unconditional grants to municipalities. Once again, I am pleased to be able to announce these as early as possible so that municipalities will be able to plan their budgets accordingly.

The Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) has just announced that total transfer payments to municipalities in 1989 will amount to approximately $4.4 billion. That is an increase over 1988 of 5.4 per cent. As the Treasurer has indicated, it is extremely important that provincial tax dollars are allocated in such a way as to support provincial priorities.

For that reason, increases in funding to municipalities this year have been directed into conditional grant programs to meet specific needs.

Within that context, my ministry has been allocated $871 million to be paid in the form of unconditional grants, the same as was paid last year. Each municipality will receive the same amount it received in 1988.

Let me remind the members exactly what unconditional grants are. They are grants given to municipalities with no strings attached. They are spent by each municipality as it sees fit, according to its own goals and priorities.

Across Ontario, unconditional grants in 1989 will average $239 per household and represent about 8.5 per cent of municipal operating revenue.

In northern Ontario, where municipalities face higher costs than those in the south, unconditional grants will average $556 per household and represent about 20.8 per cent of municipal operating revenues.

Exact details of the unconditional grants will be forwarded to municipalities within the next few days.

EARTHQUAKE IN ARMENIA

Hon. Mr. Phillips: The reports coming from the Soviet Republic of Armenia continue to indicate a worsening situation in the aftermath of last week’s tragic earthquake. As I think we all know, the number of dead and homeless continues to climb.

Once again, the people of Ontario have responded generously to the obvious needs of the people in the affected area.

As the Premier (Mr. Peterson) indicated last week, the province will be contributing to the international relief effort in the Soviet Republic of Armenia. To this end, an immediate grant of $300,000 is being made. Additional assistance will be considered in light of the needs in the area. Furthermore, we will continue to monitor the situation in co-operation with the Armenian community of Ontario.

As well, my ministry is giving a grant of $25,000 to assist in covering the operational cost of the emergency relief centres in the Metropolitan Toronto area, which are being administered currently by the Armenian Relief Committee.

The Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) has appealed to Ontario hospitals for donations of surplus supplies, medical equipment and materials. We also are in touch with the private sector donors to co-ordinate the relief efforts in the areas of medical and pharmaceutical supplies.

Through the Ministry of Government Services, we are facilitating the storage and transportation of donated food, clothing and other supplies. Ontario is also liaising with the federal government to ensure that we take advantage of any relief flights into the stricken area.

I am sure the members join once again in extending their deepest sympathy to the families and friends of the victims of this disaster, and I invite all members to join the government in assisting in the relief efforts

POLICE SHOOTING

Hon. Mrs. Smith: As members are aware, last Thursday evening, officers of the Peel Regional Police shot and killed a black teenager in Mississauga. This incident is currently under investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police at the request of the chief of Peel Regional Police.

I am most concerned about this incident and have asked the Ontario Provincial Police to conduct a prompt investigation of the matter. It is important, in my view, that the matter be thoroughly investigated without delay. I am informed that the investigation will be concluded by December 16, 1988.

This kind of incident does not in any way enhance the relationship between the police and the community. It causes considerable setback to the tremendous work done by community leaders and the police to foster better understanding between the police and the community. The incident in question is being investigated by the OPP, since criminal charges, if they are to be laid, can only be laid after a police investigation. If criminal charges are not laid, there will be an inquest or other form of public hearing to allow all the facts pertaining to this matter to be examined fully.

I am very concerned about the broader question of the relationship between the police and the ethnocultural minorities. Along with the Minister of Citizenship responsible for race relations (Mr. Phillips), I will be meeting with leaders of the ethnocultural community in Ontario tonight. I will seek their views and advice on what needs to be done to improve police-community relations. We need to explore innovative and more effective means of providing better training, better understanding and better appreciation of relations between the police and the minorities in Ontario.

We have worked long and hard to build bridges of understanding between the police and minority communities. Incidents such as the one that occurred last Thursday have the potential of putting into jeopardy the progress made in that area. We need to be vigilant and mindful of the responsibility of our police forces to all residents of Ontario.

MINING

Hon. Mr. Conway: I rise in my capacity as Minister of Mines to release the government’s green paper on minerals policy and legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I say to you and my friends in the Legislature that Ontario’s mining industry makes an enormous contribution to this province, both in terms of its wealth and its employment.

It is estimated that mining activity contributes more than $8 billion each year to the Ontario economy. More than 10 per cent of people working in northern Ontario are employed directly in mining, smelting and refining, and another 30 per cent of that population depends on the mining industry indirectly for its livelihood.

Mining today is both technologically advanced and highly sophisticated. It is also facing some significant pressures, including increased concerns about health and safety and the environment. While the nature of mining in Ontario has changed, the legislation governing it has not.

In our November 1987 throne speech, this government made a commitment to review the Ontario Mining Act. Today, I am pleased to release my ministry’s Green Paper on Ontario’s Mines and Minerals Policy and Legislation, the first step in our effort to prepare our mining legislation for the 21st century.

The green paper contains a discussion of the issues facing mining today, options for change and a series of recommendations. It sets out the policy directions and priorities this government believes are appropriate to the long-term needs of the mining industry.

Our goals in preparing this paper and in revising the Ontario Mining Act are: first, to create the kind of regulatory and legislative environment that will encourage the ongoing development of our mineral resources; and second, to protect the interests of those who are concerned about the impact of mining on the environment and upon their communities.

Our green paper recommends that the new mining legislation should recognize and clearly define both the industry’s rights and its responsibilities.

In chapter I of the paper, we have addressed the question of land tenure and the right to mine, including measures to avoid claim disputes.

In chapter 2, we have made recommendations to help industry comply with government legislation, while at the same time we want to ensure that responsibility is taken for environmentally sound mining operations, from the opening of a mine to its closure.

In chapter 3, we deal with the related issues, such as the inclusion of certain industrial minerals in the Mining Act, the use of regulations and our government’s recommendation that we retain the current provisions with respect to domestic processing.

This green paper and the responses to it will form the basis of a new Ontario Mining Act that will be drafted and presented to this Legislature. Because of our desire and commitment to see this legislation introduced in a timely fashion, we have set March 31, 1989, as the deadline for responses.

I strongly encourage all interested parties in this Legislature and elsewhere to participate in this consultation process. Their views are essential as we move forward with revisions to this most important legislation.

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RESPONSES

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

Mr. Laughren: I wish to respond briefly to the statement by the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon). I am sure that municipal leaders all across Ontario will be lining up to knock on the Treasurer’s door, if not to knock it down, given the fact that he has told them today that he is, in effect, decreasing unconditional grants and road assistance grants to those municipalities. The Treasurer knows full well that municipal costs are not frozen but that, in fact, when he holds their grants at the same level as last year, he is telling them that they are getting a reduction in assistance from the province.

An interesting part of the Treasurer’s statement, of course, was his comment about the green paper that apparently is going to bring us lot levies in Ontario. It is interesting that as late as late last week, the Treasurer was indicating that he did not know anything about lot levies and that he was not talking about that. That leads us to believe that either he did not know anything about it, in which case the bureaucrats are running his ministry, or if he did know something about it he was misleading this place. If he did not know anything about it --

Mr. Speaker: I know you will choose your words very wisely.

Mr. Laughren: After promising the school boards that he would increase provincial assistance to funding education to 60 per cent, by telling them that they now have to raise money through a lot levy, plus the fact that he is cutting back on the proportion of government assistance for the capital costs of construction of schools, the Treasurer is, in effect, telling the school boards that they are not going to get more money from the province, but that they are going to get less.

Mr. B. Rae: This is a kind of budget by striptease. The Treasurer is allowed to appear generous, for example to the hospitals in terms of an 8.1 per cent increase, but I would remind everybody that last year the government of Ontario took in an increase of 11.6 per cent on the revenue side. The Treasurer has not told us how much the increase is going to be for next year, so we have no way of knowing whether the hospitals are getting more or less than what the government of Ontario is going to be taking in on the tax side in the next fiscal year.

Mr. Ballinger: Trust us.

Mr. B. Rae: One of the Liberals says, “Trust us.” I do not think the people of Ontario are about to do that when it comes to what has happened.

There has been, in effect, a cut to the municipalities. The Treasurer told us all the percentage increases with the exception of one percentage increase: the zero percentage increase on the unconditional grants and the zero percentage increase on municipal road assistance. Those are the increases the Treasurer would not present to us in percentage terms.

We are going to have ample opportunity to see that the Liberals, instead of doing what they said they would do and increasing the share of provincial responsibility for education, have in fact said to the municipalities: “You are more responsible now, more than ever before, for what happens. You are going to have to go back to the most regressive tax base there is, the property tax base, plus the lot levies,” which are another regressive increase imposed by the Treasurer, “and take on those additional costs yourselves while the government of Ontario bails out of its responsibilities.”

POLICE SHOOTING

Mr. B. Rae: I also want to say a word to the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) about her announcement. It simply is not good enough to say that she is going to have meetings in order to deal with the tragic shooting which took place on Thursday night.

She will know full well, and I am quite astonished that she did not mention it in her statement today, that the government has had in Orders and Notices since 1986 a bill dealing with the question of civilian complaints. It has not moved on that legislation. It has not pushed forward with that legislation. It has not presented that legislation to the House for second reading.

She will also know the profound dissatisfaction in a great many communities with what has happened, anger in those communities with what has happened. I say to her that her response is simply not adequate.

EARTHQUAKE IN ARMENIA

Mr. B. Rae: Finally, with respect to the Armenian disaster announcement made by the Minister of Citizenship (Mr. Phillips), I will say bluntly to him that I think the number is too low. I have not said this on other occasions with respect to other announcements, but I will say to him today that I think the $300,000 figure is lower than it could be and lower than it is going to need to be in order to allow our government to express the generosity which I know our people feel.

I also call on the minister now to present a policy to this House on this question of disaster and other international relief. We have to have a coherent policy for the House so that we are not simply going from one announcement to the next in terms of what takes place.

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

Mr. Pope: I am pleased to reply to the statement of the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon).

First, this government, of course, is now presiding over a slowing down of the rate of growth of the Ontario economy. The Treasurer did not take the opportunity today to promise Ontario residents there would be no additional tax increases from this Liberal government. We have seen an increase in revenues of over 11 per cent in the current financial year in the hands of the Liberal government, yet the transfer payments to various agencies and public institutions in this province are, of course, much less than that. We had no indication from the Treasurer today of what the impact of these grant and transfer payment allocations are going to be on the operations of these institutions which are very important to the people of Ontario.

For instance, there is an increase in college operating grants of 5.6 per cent. We have received information, as has the Treasurer and the minister involved, that an increase of approximately seven per cent is needed in order to avoid layoffs and cutbacks in courses because of the increase in growth and enrolment, in course options and in costs that the community college system is facing.

With respect to the education system, we do not know from the Treasurer’s statement whether or not the proportion of provincial support to total overall budgets of the boards of education of this province is going to again reduce as a proportion, as it has every year under the Liberal administration.

Others have spoken about the flat-lining of unconditional grants and road subsidies. Of course, that will have the greatest impact on small communities, rural communities across this province that cannot be happy with that kind of performance from this Liberal government. Again, hospital budget increases of 8.1 per cent do not tell us how much will be allocated to new programs that have already been approved by this government and are on the waiting lists to be approved by this government, and how much will go to standard operating budgets for these hospitals.

Really, the Treasurer has not exactly been forthcoming as to what the impact of the increase in these transfer payments is going to be. He has not told us what the impact will be on the tax policy of this government for the coming financial year and he has not assured the people of Ontario that basic services that they have a right to expect out of their government will be maintained.

The only thing we do know is this Treasurer and the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet (Mr. Elston) have been abysmal failures in bringing administrative expenses in Queen’s Park under control, while they are cutting everyone else back comparatively.

MINING

Mr. Harris: I want to talk about the two green papers. First, the mining paper: These changes to the Mining Act were introduced by my colleague the member for Cochrane South (Mr. Pope). Then an election intervened. They were reintroduced by myself. They were circulated in the industry, and in the three years intervening, we have gone from a bill that had wide circulation now back to a green paper. The minister has moved a long way in the last three years.

TRANSFER PAYMENTS

Mr. Harris: The second green paper deals with housing. I am reminded of a statement: “We have a plan to reduce auto insurance. We have a plan to reduce the cost of housing.” We had Assured Housing, and house prices went up. We had Housing First, and house prices went up. We had Homes Now, and house prices went up. Now, we see why the government brought in the Ontario home ownership savings plan, because in one fell swoop it has taken the principal and the interest --

Mr. Speaker: I am just wondering which statement --

Mr. Harris: The Treasurer’s (Mr. R. F. Nixon) statement on the green paper. If you had listened to him, you would have known.

The $10,000 the government wants people to save in capital and interest, it is going to take away in one fell swoop with its plan now on lot levies. Every time the government has come in with anything on housing, it reminds me a little more of the show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, because those are the only people we are going to have housing left for in this province.

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Mr. Cousens: The Treasurer and the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Eakins) have not heard the end of this one yet. The figures look good to those who do not know what they mean, but what this government has done is a shocking disgrace.

The unconditional grants are flat-lined, and that is where local government has an opportunity to serve its community. What they have done is given conditional grants to support the programs they want that will not touch a large number of the people in this province. This government has it all wrong. It is in reverse of what it should be. I am really very disappointed.

Mr. Speaker: That completes the allotted time for ministerial statements and responses.

ORAL QUESTIONS

USE OF LOT LEVIES

Mr. B. Rae: I want to go to the Treasurer on the subject which last week he was completely ignorant about and now apparently he knows something about. That, of course, is the issue of lot levies, which last week he refused to discuss with the House and now he has put forward a very specific proposal from his government.

I wonder if the Treasurer could tell us whatever happened to that age-old, venerable Liberal promise of increasing the share of education expenditure in this province paid for by the province to 60 per cent from the lowly 44 per cent it is now. With this proposal, he is going to be dropping well below 40 per cent. Whatever happened to that Liberal commitment that he made?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I think any reasonable observer would say that we have substantially increased in a fair and equitable way the support for education at all levels and that we have particularly emphasized the need at the post-secondary level. The honourable member, if he wanted to fairly look at the numbers presented, would know that the costs associated with providing pensions for teachers, the cost for providing education for the hard-of-hearing and the people who have sight difficulties, if they were all put together, he would see that we pay almost exactly 60 per cent of the cost of education.

There is nothing unfair about it because they are dollars that come out of the taxpayers’ pockets. He may think they are inadequate, but we think they are appropriate.

Mr. B. Rae: The words of Bette Stephenson have found a new voice. They have thundered forth to us in an unusual presence. I feel like I am watching a kind of horror movie, The Return of the Land Before Time, with this kind of Tory reincarnation. It is like the end of Animal Farm when you look from pig to man and from man to pig and you could not tell the difference any more. That is exactly what has happened to the Liberal Party of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker: The supplementary?

Mr. B. Rae: The question is quite simply this: How does the Treasurer justify imposing an increase on new home buyers -- and he knows full well that the cost of the lot levies will be transferred to new home buyers -- when he knows and his studies show that it is a regressive tax? It is a kind of head tax on new home buyers in this province which is terribly unfair to the people of this province. How does he impose that kind of unfair, regressive increase and justify it in terms of all the range of taxing options that are available to him when it comes to a fair tax system in Ontario?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I am still left back there trying to figure out who is the man and who is the pig. Whatever decision he arrives at it is pejorative and I think perhaps he should withdraw it. I am always amazed at the honourable leader’s capability to get white-lipped and trembling over any issue, even in reading the phone book. We can always count on that.

I think he should be aware that this government has raised its commitment for the capital support of school boards and building new schools from about $80 million when we took office, to $300 million this year. In order to assist the schools boards and the Minister of Education (Mr. Ward) to adequately plan for capital matters, we have indicated that it will be not less than $300 million for the next succeeding three years. Anybody with any modicum of understanding would not be in a position to say that this funding is inadequate, however hard he or she might be trying to impress the innocent.

We do feel, however, that still there are too many portables in rapidly growing communities and that rather than make an allocation away from health or transportation or environmental programs, we feel that rate of growth is appropriate and we are looking for fair and equitable alternatives to expand the availability of that money in creating new school places.

The member will notice when he reads the green paper that was made available to him a bit previous to question period that it is not just lot levies. There are alternatives involving borrowed Canada pension plan funds through the province. There is also an indication that we are prepared to amend legislation so that specific agreements with developers could be a part of it.

My own feeling is that the paper is a stimulating and valuable one and we hope the leader -- who, Mr. Speaker, you permitted to run on about some previous stuff before he got to his question, since you are getting a little anxious about me -- we hope the leader’s generous and liberal soul will lead him to support its concepts.

Mr. Laughren: One of the Treasurer’s proposals is to reduce the provincial share of capital costs of construction to school boards from 75 per cent down to 60 per cent, presumably the difference to be picked up by lot levies that would be imposed by the school boards, as I read his green paper. Can the Treasurer tell us whether it is his plan that school boards in areas where there is not a lot of new construction would still be required to pick up the 40 per cent rather than the 25 per cent which they presently do or whether this is going to be a blanket policy on all school boards?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: It is a proposal only, as the honourable member would be aware, and there is nothing inherent in that which would do anything other than build more schools, because if the lot levies were in place now to extend the $300 million that is available, there would be at least $500 million worth of schools built in the next succeeding year. Our purpose is to build schools and we think it is essential to have a broader funding base for that purpose, and we believe that a reasonable support for the concepts in the green paper can accomplish that.

POLICE SHOOTING

Mr. B. Rae: My new question is to the Solicitor General. She will know that in 1986 her colleague the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) presented for first reading An Act to amend the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force Complaints Act to expand it to become an Ontario-wide system and the act would be renamed the Police Force Complaints Act.

The minister is in receipt now of a letter from Mr. Ruby proposing very directly to her, on behalf of the Lawson family, that the Metropolitan Toronto office of the public complaints commissioner be asked to take charge of an inquiry into the shooting on Thursday night of Michael Wade Lawson.

I wonder if the Solicitor General can tell us, apart from the statement she has made today, which indicates no specific action on her part, just what she is specifically prepared to do to ensure that there is a truly independent and complete review of what took place, together with recommendations to make sure that it simply stops happening in Ontario.

Hon. Mrs. Smith: As a matter of information, I am not as yet in receipt of a specific letter; none the less, I would like to reply to the question in a more general way.

Indeed, we have examined closely the bill before the House --

Mr. D. S. Cooke: You introduced it.

Hon. Mrs. Smith: -- which was introduced by this government and is before the House, with regard to the extension of the complaints bureau. Our concern with this bill and our --

Interjection.

Hon. Mrs. Smith: If the member would care to hear my answer, the concern with this bill is only that it is not general enough. We wish to ensure that throughout Ontario there is a system in place which provides a complaints process for everyone in the province regardless of where they live.

The problem with the present bill is that it is indeed optional and every community would individually have to opt into it. Because of this, we have been studying instead the structure of the Ontario Police Commission and its complaint function. We have completely separated it into a quasi-judicial function and a policing function. That branch of the police commission which is now under Douglas Drinkwalter is completely separate from any police responsibilities so that it can, indeed, be structured as an independent complaint bureau.

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Mr. B. Rae: The minister’s response is completely incoherent, to be polite. There is a civilian complaints bureau that is independent of the police commission here in Metro. If the Solicitor General is telling us that the police commission is her idea of a complaints bureau, she is sadly mistaken, she does not know what she is talking about and she has missed the boat.

The second fact is that this family has nowhere to go right now. They have no legal remedy that they can follow as set out in the statutes of Ontario that will give them satisfaction that they are going to get an inquiry that is independent of the police, independent of the police commission, independent of the powers that be, and answer a fundamental question: Why was their young boy, who was in a car, shot apparently in the back of the head? Why did that happen? They are entitled to an answer to that question. What is the minister going to do to give them that answer?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: As I have already suggested in my remarks, and as the member knows, the OPP is investigating this. If we started another inquiry at this point, it would preclude criminal charges being laid under that OPP investigation. This is something this government does not want to do.

As to the other portions of that question, I would be glad to send the member a structure of the new OPC so he will understand, as I have said before in this House, that indeed we have set up a completely independent group, fully independent of police input, which will be the quasi-judicial portion of the police commission. I would be happy to provide him with the members on that commission. He will see that there is no tie-in whatsoever with police.

Mr. B. Rae: If the minister is seriously arguing that the way for her, as Solicitor General, to gain the confidence of those communities that are deeply disturbed about the relationship between their communities and the police, is to talk about suggesting that they go to the Ontario Police Commission, she is really barking up the wrong tree. She really is, and I say that with the greatest of respect to her.

The question that I have, again, is specifically for the minister. It has been over four months since Lester Donaldson was shot. We still do not have the results of the police inquiry into the possibility of criminal charges being laid. There has been no statement made by the Attorney General in this House in that regard. If she thinks that the communities in this province are going to continue to wait month after month after incidents which make no sense to them -- and I can tell the minister, incidents which make no sense to me or to a great many other people -- then she is sadly mistaken.

I would simply ask her: Why not seize the leadership that is required, understand that independence of the review process is critical, and take advantage of a very sensible suggestion, which is that the head of the Metropolitan Toronto complaints office be given particular authority with regard to this particular event in order to give the family somewhere to go that is independent, somewhere that they can have some confidence in the process and some confidence in the fairness of the result?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: It is significant that the member points out the Donaldson case. Indeed, the Donaldson case is in Metro where the office of the complaints commissioner already does exist and is involved, which only proves the point that can be made, that if the member wishes to imply that there is no place for a complaint to be heard, it can happen even still in Metro. Indeed, I assure the member that we are very deeply concerned about this and we will provide a proper inquiry process for this, as there is in Toronto in the police inquiry and as will come into place in the Donaldson case.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Brandt: My question is for the Premier and it relates to the question that I raised with the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet (Mr. Elston) last week in regard to the Mercer report. The Chairman of Management Board indicated at the time that I raised the question that there would be full and complete hearings from any citizens of the Ontario community who wanted to have input into the review process that had been established by the Ontario Automobile Insurance Board.

I accepted the minister’s response in that particular respect, I say to the Premier, because I wanted to have an opportunity for the people of Ontario to respond to what is now before us, the largest or perhaps one of the largest proposed increases in automobile insurance in the entire history of this province; namely, the 35 per cent to 40 per cent outlined in that report.

My question to the Premier is, does it perhaps surprise him that there has been a total of only six hours allocated for the total review of the proposals contained in the Mercer report, only six hours for the people of Ontario to respond and to indicate their concerns? Does he think that is fair and equitable in light of the tremendous increases proposed in the report?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am not sure how the board has ordered its business in that regard, but I will pass on my friend’s comments to it.

Mr. Runciman: The people designing the rate hearings process apparently think no one lives in Ontario outside Toronto. Not one minute of the public hearings has been scheduled outside Metropolitan Toronto, thereby effectively cutting six million Ontarians out of the process. It seems to be part of an effort to limit public input about rate increases.

Is the Premier prepared to ask the board to hold public hearings in all major centres of the province?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am not in a position to order its business, but as I understand it, the government has assisted a number of the consumers’ groups to make representations. We want to make sure that it is open and fair and that people have a chance to speak.

Mr. Runciman: In my view, I do not think the Consumers’ Association of Canada adequately represents all consumers in this province. I think the timing of the hearings also seems to be part of a plan to limit public input. Such important hearings should not be held in the 10 days before the Christmas holidays. It is passing strange that the board has timed the hearings to be as invisible as possible, with the public interveners as ill-prepared as possible.

Will the Premier commit himself today to ask the board to schedule more public participation hearings in the new year so that this vital issue will get adequate preparation and attention?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I certainly have no trouble discussing with the minister, if he has any ideas, or if the member has any ideas, how to make this open and fair. As he knows, there are a variety of different opinions on this matter. An independent database is being established and they are going to get advice from various people in this regard, and certainly we want it to be fair.

As I understand it, my honourable friend was prepared to accept an increase and his response was, “We’ll phase it in over a long period of time.”

Mr. Brandt: He did not say that at all.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: That is exactly what the member said in this House. He can read Hansard if he does not believe me; the member accepted it.

We do not accept anything as conventional wisdom; we go in there and the board is there to be independent and to scrutinize it from all points of view and make sure we are all looking at the same facts.

POLICE SHOOTING

Mr. Brandt: My question is to the Solicitor General and relates to the same topic raised earlier about the tragic shooting involving Wade Lawson in Mississauga. I, too, am not satisfied with the responses she has given with respect to how this matter is going to be handled.

I understand from her comments earlier today that she will in fact be meeting with the black community this evening to discuss its concerns. It is also my understanding that at this meeting the community will be recommending to her that there be a public inquiry into this matter and that it be open and independent, which is along the lines our party would like to see this matter evolve so that it is not perceived as being a closed-shop kind of review by the police.

In fairness to the police, I think it is in their best interests as well, recognizing that there have been other incidents, that this matter be handled in such a way as to be as open and fair and balanced as possible. What will her response be to the black community when it makes that request of her at this evening’s meeting?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I share with the member for Sarnia the concern that indeed what we do be public, seen to be fair and, indeed, be fair. All of those are most important items in whatever actions are taken by this government.

We will indeed be taking action, as I said in my statement, because we are most anxious, as are all the members of this House, to assure the public that we are aiming for the same goal as everybody else: an open and direct dealing with this individual problem, along with the much broader picture of race relations with the police throughout the whole province of Ontario, rather than in just some portions of the province. We will be working towards that, but will also be dealing with the individual area to set up whatever is necessary to look closely at this particular, individual incident.

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Mr. Brandt: Some months ago, my colleague the member for Parry Sound (Mr. Eves) recommended to the government by way of resolution that the incidents that occurred earlier, with respect to Lester Donaldson and Bernard Bastien of Windsor, be dealt with by way of referral to the standing committee on administration of justice, so that there could be an independent review in which that committee could determine how focused or how widespread should be its review of this kind of incident, so that the public would be assured it was a matter that was being dealt with by all three parties in a public process, which has functioned well in this assembly over a long number of years.

My colleague the member for Parry Sound made that recommendation to the government in the light of what he felt was the appropriate way to go. Is the minister prepared to take under serious consideration a referral to the justice committee in order that this matter can be dealt with in an appropriate fashion?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I assure the member for Sarnia that we are willing to look at and consider anything, although I think there are many legal and other questions with regard to having a committee of this House sit as a jury on police matters. I know certain protections exist within society in general that do not apply in the same way in committees.

I myself would not want to state at this point whether that would be an appropriate forum. What you generally have is something more closely resembling a jury, such as we have in an inquest or a public inquiry, so the people are truly represented by citizens who hear properly, in a legal context, from the people involved and deal with it as citizens.

This is what our whole jury system is based on. It has proved adequate over many, many moons. I do not see trying to replace that type of jury system with a committee of parliament, but I am certainly willing to look at any suggestions.

Mr. Brandt: The whole question of police procedures, the use of firearms and the whole question of minorities, which is part of this discussion relative to the police relationship with minorities, are, I think, appropriate matters for a committee of this Legislature to be reviewing.

I recognize the good work our police are doing in a number of instances. This past weekend, as an example, it was brought to my attention that in the Jane-Finch area, the Metropolitan Toronto Police held a party for 300 youngsters in an attempt to make that community aware of the fact that the Metro police want to work with it in a co-operative sense.

I am well aware of that and I am not trying to inflame fires here or make the situation worse, but I do believe the Ontario public wants to see something positive develop with respect to three incidents that are causing grave concern in our communities. What they want to see is an open, public inquiry carried out by a committee of this Legislature along the lines suggested by my colleague, who sits at my right-hand side, the member for Parry Sound.

Mr. Speaker: Do you have a question?

Mr. Brandt: My question is, will the minister take under serious consideration the matter of referral to the justice committee so that we can have an appropriate forum to have this matter dealt with in an appropriate fashion?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: As I have said, we will take under consideration anything that is suggested and I appreciate the responsible manner in which the member for Sarnia has addressed this whole concern. I appreciate, with him, that we must recognize the good work that is being done by the police forces as well in trying to overcome any sense of racial prejudice or any racial prejudice that does in fact exist.

However, whether an open, public inquiry done by the members of the justice committee is the forum of open, public inquiry that is best going to serve the need has not yet been established. There are other forums of open, public inquiry.

In fact, I believe tonight I will be much more likely to hear a request for a judicial public inquiry, which as the member knows is not held by members of the Legislature. There are forums of public inquiry that can be used. I can assure the member that whatever forum is used will be open, publicly aired and responsible to the citizens of Ontario.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Kormos: I have a question to the Premier. In April 1987, his government announced a series of initiatives which, in the words of the announcement, were designed “to protect Ontario consumers” of automobile insurance. One of those initiatives was to move “immediately to establish a consumer insurance bureau, headed by an ‘insurance advocate.’” This advocate was to have a number of powers as well as the power to investigate and to publish the results of those investigations.

That advocate as well was spoken of in reference to the then-to-be-formed Ontario Automobile Insurance Board. It was said: “Consumer groups, individuals and the government, through its insurance advocate, will be able to argue their case during public hearings conducted by the board. Premium rates will no longer be determined in isolation by vested business interests.”

Mr. Speaker: And the question?

Mr. Kormos: The Liberal government fact sheet released on April 23 states specifically, “The advocate will have the authority to appear before the...board.”

Mr. Speaker: Do you have a question?

Mr. Kormos: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Is this but another broken promise? Where is the consumer advocate that was indicated in April 1987 to represent consumers before the board?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The superintendent of insurance continues in that role and we are looking at beefing up his responsibilities and other initiatives as well, so I think my honourable friend can rest content.

Mr. Kormos: I spent the morning at the board and I will spend the balance of the afternoon there. I note that the board itself commented on the lack of consumer involvement when it made its comments in the third report. The author of that report indicated it was in all likelihood due to the technical nature. That technical nature persists.

Mr. Justice Osborne, in the 1988 Osborne report, did not just urge but indicated it was essential to adequate proper board hearings that there be funding: “Without the provision of funding, I cannot see how public participation can be meaningful. Those representing the public must have access to actuarial and other experts and to industry data.”

In view of that and in view of the absence of a consumer advocate, can the Premier really continue to indicate that this board is doing anything other than continuing to represent insurance company interests alone without any meaningful participation by the public?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I understand my honourable friend’s desire to characterize the board in the way he is, even though I do not think it is fair and I do not think it is accurate. It is an independent board, there to represent the public interest. Certain consumer groups have been funded, as my honourable friend knows, to make representations. In a sense, it is a quasi-adversarial process where they will develop the database and make determinations thereon.

If the member wants to continue, as he always will, and say it is the tool of the insurance companies or something else, then he has the right to do that. But I do not think my honourable friend, as a lawyer with some experience in the courts, is fair in making that charge.

RENTAL ACCOMMODATION

Mr. Harris: I have a question for the Minister of Housing. Now that we have given up on any hope of home ownership, I would like to talk about the possibility of renting. Last month, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. released figures that show the vacancy rate in almost every municipality in Ontario was down yet again. In Toronto, as well as a number of other major centres, there was effectively a zero vacancy rate. Her own staff admit we have a severe crisis that is getting worse every day, particularly here in Metro Toronto.

There are two specific, complementary things she could have done at no cost to help the vacancy rate problem. What has the minister done to facilitate these two things: (1) home owners who want to add new rental units in their homes, and (2) groups, like single parents and students, who need to double up in groups of two, three or four in order to find affordable accommodation?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Indeed, one of the things our government has, and the ministry has, is a program called convert-to-rent in which we do encourage both home owners and other people to add units to housing, whether it is existing housing or other buildings. We even have a process to help owners to do that.

One of the things we are doing with our land use policy is asking municipalities to indicate, in terms of their official plans, the areas in which home owners will be enabled to do exactly that, to add units to existing housing to make sure they have more choices in terms of the carrying costs associated with the housing they happen to live in and increase the number of units available to people at much lower cost.

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Mr. Harris: Convert-to-rent: I guess that is the one that was brought in by Claude Bennett, and when the minister took over was of great benefit to Huang and Danczkay.

The minister has made a commitment to home owners that she will help facilitate with the impediments they have in converting their homes to have a basement apartment or additional accommodation. The Premier (Mr. Peterson) made a commitment to single mothers and to students a year and a half ago now, I believe, that he would move to make that facilitation. Both the Premier and the minister have commitments out there. Both of those moves would be very complementary. Both would cost the government nothing. Both would make more units available and both would help with the availability of apartments.

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. Harris: I ask the minister when she is going to do something to remove those impediments that exist there today to facilitate those two things.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I do not want to comment on what Claude Bennett did or did not do, but I can tell the member very clearly that he did not release the land use policy statement, which has two goals. One is to increase the supply of affordable housing in brand-new buildings; and the second is to make sure that in all communities in this province there are neighbourhoods designated in which we can better use the resources we already have, in which people can either make basement or attic apartments or do other things with the housing we currently have to increase the housing options for people in the province.

The land use policy was announced in August. We are now working actively with municipalities in the greater Toronto area. By the end of February, we will have clear statements from all the municipalities involved. By the end of March, that will be housing policy. In the interim, the Ontario Municipal Board knows very clearly where the province stands in this area and is able to rule on that basis.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Tatham: My question is to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. Japan is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, and according to the Canada-Japan Trade Council, Canada’s science efforts are organized as if Canada produces a large percentage of the world’s stock of science. Canada produces less than two per cent.

Japan, which is producing a rising share of the world stock of knowledge, organizes its science efforts to use and develop the 96 per cent of world knowledge it imports. Japan’s government helps to organize and subsidize large research and development consortia to develop basic technologies and then lets companies on their own convert the technologies to commercial applications. Should Ontario study and apply this approach?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: I am sure members will know we have established a technology fund and have contributed a fair amount of money to it. As a government, we have taken a stand whereby we are aiming, over the next 10 years, to get to the point where we dedicate 2.5 per cent of our gross domestic product to research and development. That compares with three per cent in the United States, 2.8 per cent in Japan and 1.3 per cent in Canada as a whole.

We are doing that through the centres of excellence. We have seven of them. We have put $204 million into that. We have the industry research program. We have put $90 million into that. We have the university research incentive fund and we have put a total of $21 million into that, for a total of $315 million.

We feel this is the way to go. These various programs involve universities and industries in consortia, so we can get the best input from the academic community plus the industrial community so that we can in fact become world competitive.

Mr. Tatham: Education establishments, schools, universities and our education bureaucrats have few resources devoted to Japan and the Japanese languages. What action should we take?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: That is an area that is going to be of more and more concern to us. One of the things we are doing in the member’s own riding, for example in Oxford county, is that we are having programs to make the people aware of the cultural differences between Japan and Canada, and as these new residents come in from Japan, to allow them to integrate.

There are programs, for example, in the high schools where they have an essay contest and the winner will go to Japan. That of course raises the whole level of knowledge in the community. We also have programs where we send people from Ontario not only to Japan, but to the Pacific Rim where they can learn the language, the customs and the business ethics of those particular communities. We supplement that with trade missions we take all the time. As we become more and more of an international trading partner and we start looking at the Pacific Rim, we will be doing more and more of that.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr. Mackenzie: I have a question for the Premier. On November 29, Mrs. Gisele Beaton wrote to the Premier concerning the deplorable treatment she received both from the Workers’ Compensation Board and her ex-employer, Presstran Industries of St. Thomas, a division of Magna International, whose chairman, Frank Stronach, was an unsuccessful candidate for the Liberal Party federally.

Mrs. Beaton was injured on September 16, 1985. The company initially never reported the injury. After finally getting the WCB benefit, she was told to go back to light duty although her medical condition made that almost impossible. She went back for one shift and the company decided to fire her because her restrictions on doing light work were too great. Is this the message the Premier and his business buddies want to send to Ontario workers, “If you get injured, you will get fired and no benefits”? What is the Premier doing for Mrs. Beaton, who wrote to him?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am sorry I cannot help my friend, but perhaps the Minister of Labour can.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I am not familiar with the specific correspondence or obviously with the case the member for Hamilton East raises, but on a more general matter of principle, the member for Hamilton East suggests that after the employee was reinstated with Magna, she was dismissed within a few days.

Mr. Mackenzie: One day, one shift.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Now he shouts out, “One day, one shift.” I want to tell my friend the member for Hamilton East that within Bill 162 we have made provision that once a worker is reinstated, if in the course of six months the worker is dismissed for any reason, it will be presumed the worker has been dismissed in violation of the Workers’ Compensation Act and then can be further reinstated.

Mr. Mackenzie: In view of the fact nobody seems to be responding to Mrs. Beaton’s letter, I wonder if the minister is aware that just this last week, Mrs. Claudette Roy-Ackers, another employee, one of a long series, lost a finger at that plant on the same line Mrs. Beaton was supposed to go back to. Accidents at the Presstran plant in St. Thomas are a standing joke at the St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital, the joke being whether or not the weekly ambulance run to Presstran has gone out yet.

Is the minister aware this company hired professional cleaners at a cost of thousands to prepare the plant for a media conference on November 26, 1988? Is he aware that if there is going to be an air quality inspection scheduled, all welding machinery is shut down at least 24 hours in advance? Will he give us an assurance that the conditions at this plant of his big business friend Mr. Stronach are made clean and healthy for the workers?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I just want to tell my friend the member for Hamilton East that I will decide who my friends are and who my friends are not.

I want to tell him as well that if he will be kind enough to send me copies of the correspondence from both of those claimants, I will ensure appropriate responses are sent out to them. If he will do me the courtesy of sending me that correspondence tomorrow, I will determine whether answers have been sent out, and if they have not been sent out, I will ensure that happens.

The third thing I ask my friend the member for Hamilton East to do is simply to provide me with information on the facility and I will give him a full report. He should know perfectly well --

Mr. Mackenzie: It all went to the Premier a month ago. Why didn’t you get it?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Perhaps he would just stop shouting for a moment. The member for Hamilton East should know perfectly well that no operator is given notice of inspections. If there are problems of air quality or other health and safety problems in that plant, I want to know about them. Our inspectors will be there, not by notice but when it is appropriate to inspect that plant on an urgent basis.

I look forward to hearing from him.

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PROPOSED HOSPITAL MERGER

Mr. Eves: I have a question of the Minister of Health. Is the minister aware that the first discussions regarding the merger between Wellesley Hospital and Sunnybrook Medical Centre were initiated by the then president and chief executive officer of the Sunnybrook Medical Centre, Dr. Martin Barkin?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I know that the deputy minister joined the government shortly after I became minister, which was September 29, almost 15 months ago now. Prior to that, he was the president of Sunnybrook Medical Centre, and while I am not familiar with what discussions take place at hospitals on an individual basis, I know that there were rumours of some discussions, dating back to several years ago I understand.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Do I detect an innuendo?

Mr. Eves: No, there is no innuendo intended at all. I just want to make a very simple point that back as early as the spring of 1986, Dr. Barkin, when he was the chief executive officer and president of Sunnybrook Medical Centre, initiated discussions with respect to a possible merger of Wellesley and Sunnybrook.

In considering that this merger proposal is going to affect the delivery of health care in the community now served by Wellesley; considering that this merger proposal is going to cost the Ontario taxpayer some $365 million, according to the proposal of the two hospitals, and at the same time will mean a reduction of somewhere in the neighbourhood of 200 beds, not to mention one of the busiest emergency rooms in Metropolitan Toronto; considering the fact that the district health council was not involved to this point in time in the merger proposal; and in view of the fact that the individual who is now the Deputy Minister of Health would not appear to be completely objective or impartial about a merger proposal that he initiated in April 1986, would the minister commit to an independent review of this merger proposal, as officials in her ministry have done previously but she refused to do a couple of weeks ago in the Legislature? Will she now commit to an independent review by the district health council?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The information I have is that the district health council is aware of the discussions that have been ongoing. The proposal, which is a proposal from the hospitals and has been approved by the board of Sunnybrook and the board of Wellesley, as well as by the University of Toronto, is presently under review by the ministry.

It should be noted that there are many questions which must be answered, and for me, one of the most important questions -- and I am assuming that, for the Health critic from the third party, this is also one of the most important questions to be answered -- is will this merger improve the delivery of services for the people of Metropolitan Toronto, and as well for people of the province because provincial resources are tertiary care centres and receive referrals from around the province.

I can assure the member that, as this proposal is reviewed, it will be open to scrutiny; and as decisions are made I will be pleased to report to him in this House.

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY

Mr. Daigeler: My question is to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Some time ago, one of my constituents brought to my attention that there are very few members of visible minorities on staff in Liquor Control Board of Ontario stores. Although I know that these jobs no longer depend on the applicants’ political connections, as they used to under the Tory regime, I am sure the minister is as interested as I am to see employment equity implemented at LCBO.

May I ask the minister whether he has any statistics on this matter and whether there is a policy in place at the LCBO to bring its staff in line with the new face of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I can say to the honourable member that the LCBO is currently working very actively to make employment equity part of the corporate culture at that very large liquor distribution company. In 1987, about the same time as we were doing the I Count survey within the Ontario public survey, the LCBO conducted a similar survey to check out the employment situation within the LCBO. I cannot remember all of the figures, but I can tell the honourable member that in terms of, for example, visible minorities, the figure was slightly above the Ontario average.

That notwithstanding, the LCBO has begun to put together a database so that it can look at and measure the progress of employment equity for visible minorities, for women, for francophones, for the disabled and for native people. It intends to measure that progress in the years to come. It is very committed to making progress in the area of employment equity.

Mr. Daigeler: I thank the minister and I look forward to these reports. I do hope that he will keep the members up to date on these developments.

As I mentioned, there have been changes in the hiring procedures for LCBO jobs. Can the minister inform the people of this province how the hiring process now works, and can he give us an assurance that it is fair and square?

Hon. Mr. Wrye: I can say to the honourable gentleman, because we have reviewed this on a number of occasions, that we do have within the LCBO hiring practices that are in accordance with the collective agreement that is in place at the LCBO; we do have hiring practices which today in that organization are fair and square. We have very carefully looked within that organization at hiring practices and we are now following those which are currently in use within the Ontario government.

Specifically, we now have in place selection panels for all hiring, and we have objective criteria put in place for all job selection. I can assure my friend and I can assure all of those who may be interested in jobs at the LCBO that we do have a fair deal for all of those who want to be hired, and that people are today hired entirely on merit and not for other reasons, as may have been the case in the past.

MUNICIPAL-INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY FOR ABATEMENT

Mrs. Grier: Last week the Minister of the Environment released a report showing that, under the monitoring program of the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement, dioxins and furans have been found in waste water from Shell’s refinery near Sarnia. The minister’s press release goes on to say, “The monitoring program...will be followed by an abatement regulation setting tough, legally enforceable discharge limits for the pollutants we find.”

Can the minister tell the House when that abatement regulation will be in place?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: It should follow the petroleum refining regulation. As far as monitoring is concerned, that is in place. Of course, one of the advantages of it was that the broad scan and the specific instructions that were given -- both of those put together -- in fact identified contaminants that no one in this world seemed to think could possibly be in this particular stream -- that is, the stream of the petroleum refining operations. It certainly points out the benefits.

I expect that the abatement regulation will follow immediately after the full process of the monitoring regulation. That is, of course, that they must identify each and every possible contaminant that comes out of the refining process. When they have identified those, then they must point out those actions they will take.

They may not be direct abatement actions. They may be process changes that will take place. That would be immediately after they have, in effect, identified all of that stream, because you do not want to put the abatement regulation in place until you have identified all of the potential contaminants that exist. Otherwise, you will be doing it on a hodgepodge basis instead of a very appropriate basis.

Mrs. Grier: The minister certainly did not answer my question, but he did confirm my suspicions. I do not think there is a single member on the government side of this House who at some point has not quoted MISA as being the answer to all our environmental woes. Every time there is a spill or toxic contaminants are found, we are told that MISA is going to be the ultimate solution.

When the minister first introduced MISA, his target date for completion was early 1989, when he said the complete abatement program for eight industrial sectors would be in place. By last fall, the target date had moved to November 1989. I am now told that the abatement regulation I asked him about in my first question will not be in place unti1 January 1990, and that will be the first abatement regulation under MISA.

Will the minister finally acknowledge that his MISA program is at least two years behind schedule and that, in the interim, it is business as usual for the polluters of this province?

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Hon. Mr. Bradley: I would not agree with the assessment the member makes. I expect that, as an opposition member, she is going to be suitably critical of the efforts that the government is undertaking.

I do want to indicate to her that virtually every jurisdiction I know of is looking very carefully at the experience that we in Ontario are having. I do not want to overstate the fact, but we are considered to be substantially ahead of most other jurisdictions that exist in North America in terms of the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement.

The member would know, for instance, that many of her friends at the municipal level are being critical of the fact that we do not give sufficient time for response. There are those in environmental groups who I know want to have the opportunity to have their input into the regulations.

To mention the one she did, one year of sampling should be followed immediately by an abatement regulation. The discussions on the abatement begin when we have six months of monitoring data in hand. We want to make sure we know all of the contaminants, not pick out a hodgepodge of this one and that one and the lumps and the colours. We want to know up to 180 contaminants that might be coming out of any particular industrial sector. That goes through the technical advisory committee. It goes through the MISA advisory committee.

SKYDOME

Mr. Cousens: In the absence of the Premier (Mr. Peterson), I will ask this question of the Deputy Premier. Last Thursday, in the estimates for the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, we had as a presenter the Premier’s special adviser on waterfront development.

I was asking him about the problems that will impact drivers of cars to the SkyDome, the 15,000 to 20,000 people who will be trying to gain access to the dome, about the need for better commuter service for those who will be using GO Transit and public transit services, just the whole problem of parking, traffic and commuters. I was asking him who from the province was coordinating the province’s concerns for helping move people in and out of the dome. He did not know who was responsible for these things. Can the Deputy Premier tell us?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I thought when our mutual friend Bill Davis decided the dome would be in that location that he made the right decision. That has been followed up by the construction, which is going along very well indeed. The chairman of the board and the president of the corporation have been leading very capable people -- without mentioning names; the member could name many of them himself -- who have had this as a major concern.

I think if the member read the Toronto Star on Saturday, he would have seen a two-page spread on the decisions associated with the dome. They dealt with parking there. I believe that the Stadium Corp. of Ontario Ltd. understands that one of its major responsibilities is to see that the citizens who are extremely interested in participating in what goes on in the dome are going to be able to get there comfortably and on time and enjoy all of the facilities and recreation that are going to be there established.

Mr. Cousens: I guess the answer is that the honourable Deputy Premier does not know who is responsible. Yet on June 3, when the official opening of the dome takes place, chaos is going to erupt. The president of the SkyDome corporation attended the meeting of the standing committee on public accounts a few weeks ago and, in answer to my questions about parking and traffic, said that parking facilities and the traffic will be extremely limited. The light rail transit will not be operational until the fall. There is no commitment by the province to expand GO Transit services yet. There is no comprehensive plan for transportation in and out of the dome, so those who drive their cars are going to have massive problems.

Where is the leadership on traffic and transportation coming from in the Premier’s office and the Ontario government, especially since the special adviser on waterfront activities does not know who is in charge?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: Obviously, the SkyDome corporation has a vested interest in seeing that its clients and its customers are going to be able to have ready access to the dome. The honourable member, who has obviously been attending all the committee meetings, may not have been absorbing all the information that was available, but it is generally known that there are close to 18,000 parking places within 1,200 metres of the dome. While that may not suit everybody in Markham -- they tend to drive pretty big cars from up there -- my own feeling is that it is going to be reasonably well looked after.

The honourable member is predicting doom and gloom. He may be right. As for me, I am quite optimistic that the services will be well established and that the good people of Toronto and Ontario and North America are going to be well served. As a matter of fact, I should have said “the world,” because it is where the world comes to play.

ROAD SAFETY

Mr. Neumann: My question is for the Minister of Transportation. The minister is well aware that the Highway 403-Highway 401 interchange near Woodstock has now been open for several months following the completion of the western link of Highway 403. The opening of this interchange has led to a noticeable increase in traffic along Highway 2 between Brantford and Ancaster. This particular highway has been experiencing increasingly heavy traffic over the past several years.

My question to the minister is, what can the Ministry of Transportation do to ensure that highway safety does not further deteriorate with increased traffic?

Hon. Mr. Fulton: I welcome the member’s questions. I have been very aware of his interest for many years, both as member and as the former mayor of Brantford. We were only too pleased to attend, along with colleagues from the general area, the opening of the Highway 401-Highway 403 interchange that he indicated in his question.

Of course, the whole subject of Highway 403 goes back to the days when a previous government used to promise highways. It predated this government’s actually building highways. It is only a minor difference; it is a small difference but a very important one.

We are taking a number of steps with respect to highway safety and a number of mechanical things are being put in place, with improved markings, improved raised-pavement markers and improved enforcement.

I have personally driven the section of highway the member refers to and concur with him that there is need for special attention. He certainly has our assurance that it will receive that attention.

Mr. Neumann: My supplementary relates to the construction of the unfinished portion of Highway 403, because the completion of Highway 403 between Brantford and Ancaster is the ultimate solution to eliminating the safety problems on the current Highway 2. This project is presently scheduled to see a start of construction in 1989. In view of the fact that we are approaching the end of 1988, can the minister assure the people of southwestern Ontario, who must travel these roads, that they will actually see the start of construction in 1989, as planned?

Hon. Mr. Fulton: The member is aware of the very high priority this government placed on certain projects when it took office some three years ago, and certainly the extension of Highway 403 from Ancaster to Woodstock and Brampton was one of them. Not only is one of those links completed but I can give the member the assurance that this very high priority will, in fact, start on schedule, as we previously announced, in the spring of 1989.

POLE TRAPPING

Mr. Wildman: I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources regarding illegal pole trapping, specifically at Kortright Waterfowl Park. The minister will recall that during the debate of his estimates on December 1, I asked his officials about this particular problem and asked if they could assure the members that there was no further pole trapping being done at that park. In response, Mr. Christie of his ministry indicated that there were no pole traps set, that pole trapping was contrary to the Game and Fish Act and that charges had been laid.

If that is the case, how can the minister explain that there is still pole trapping being done at Kortright Waterfowl Park and that the charges that were laid were not for illegal pole trapping but simply for trapping without a licence? Why is it there was not a follow-up to the complaint that was made in July to ensure, first, that this pole trapping did not continue; and second, that the waterfowl that were being protected were protected by a covered pen, since their wings were clipped anyway, so that they would then not be subject to attacks by predators?

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: Of course, the member has the information correct. There were in fact charges laid, and it was understood that that would put a stop to the pole trapping. The reason the charges were laid specifically as they were was that there is some question about the ability of our ministry to stop pole trapping in the sense that there are some sections of the act that would allow for those people, where there is a threat to the game that they are protecting, to be able to enter into the kind of charges being laid and convictions subsequent to the charges being laid.

While we were specific about going in the direction we did -- we seized the traps, there were charges laid -- when the member brings forward subsequent involvement, he will understand that we would not, after laying charges and seizing the traps, stand by to see if some individual may go on and do something illegal.

It is too bad that we have run out of time. If I had noticed the clock sooner, I would have given the individual an opportunity for a subsequent question, but I will share with him outside the Legislature the facts of the case.

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PETITIONS

ANIMALS FOR RESEARCH

Mr. Wildman: I have a further petition related to Bill 190, which was debated and passed in the House on Thursday. This petition is signed by 9,000 more residents of Ontario, bringing the total now to approximately 29,000 people who have signed this petition.

“To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:...we, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario to pass into law a bill prohibiting the use of animals in cosmetic and product testing.”

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps we will just wait until the private conversations tone down a little.

LIMITATIONS ACT

Mr. D. R. Cooke: I have a petition with 102 names on it. It is addressed:

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

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

“Whereas our civil law as it currently stands defines sexual molestation as assault, and

“Whereas all assault is subject to a four-year statute of limitations,

“We believe no limitation period should apply in cases of intrafamilial and/or incestuous sexual molestation since it takes an indeterminate number of years for the victim to come to know the impact of the molestation.

“Therefore, we petition the Legislature to:

“Introduce legislation that would guarantee victims of intrafamilial and/or incestuous sexual molestation the right to bring civil action against their perpetrators without time limitations.”

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION FUND

Mr. Hampton: I have a petition.

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

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

“To amend the Teachers’ Superannuation Act, 1983, in order that all teachers who retired prior to May 31, 1982, have their pensions recalculated on the best five years rather than at the present seven or 10 years.

“The proposed amendment would make the five-year criteria applicable to all retired teachers and would eliminate the present inequitable treatment.”

This petition has been signed by 252 teachers who are currently teaching who support the request of the retired teachers.

PUBLIC SECTOR PENSION PLANS

Mr. Reycraft: I have a petition addressed:

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

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

“Our pensions come out of our paycheques and determine our future. We want a say over how our money gets used, so we can get a fair return on our savings and turn extra earnings into improved benefits. We want to keep our pensions indexed. We want the same rights as private sector workers and unions to negotiate our pensions.”

The petition is signed by 115 individuals from Pembroke, Eganville, Golden Lake, Cormac and other points in eastern Ontario, and by me.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr. Laughren: I have a petition to the ruling class in Ontario.

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

“In recognition of the importance of a day of pause in our Canadian society, we ask that the Retail Business Holidays Act be maintained and strengthened, that the act remain under the jurisdiction of the Ontario Legislature rather than be transferred to local municipalities for administration.”

I have signed that petition as well.

REPORT BY COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Neumann from the standing committee on social development reported the following resolution:

That supply in the following amount and to defray the expenses of the Office responsible for Senior Citizens’ Affairs be granted to Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1989:

Office responsible for Senior Citizens’ Affairs program, $9,283,600.

MOTIONS

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: In the temporary absence of the government House leader, I have two motions.

ESTIMATES

Hon. Mr. Sweeney moved that in the committee of supply the estimates of the Management Board of Cabinet be considered before the estimates of the Ministry of Government Services.

Mr. Speaker: You are all aware of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

Some hon. members: No.

Mr. Speaker: All those in favour will say “aye.”

All those opposed will say “nay.”

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Speaker: Do you have a further motion?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I understand there has been concurrence by the two opposition parties for this next motion.

EARTHQUAKE IN ARMENIA

Hon. Mr. Sweeney moved that the Canadian and Ontario flags on the front lawn of the Parliament Building be flown at half-mast for today, Monday, December 12, 1988, in remembrance of those who lost their lives in the Armenian earthquake.

Motion agreed to.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY OF SUDBURY AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Eakins moved first reading of Bill 197, An Act to amend the Regional Municipality of Sudbury Act.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Eakins: This legislation proposes two minor amendments to the Regional Municipality of Sudbury Act. The present legislation requires a reassessment of all properties in 1988 for taxation in 1989. These amendments will permit a one-year deferral of the assessment update to 1989 for taxation in 1990. This one-year delay of the second assessment update has been requested by the council in the regional municipality of Sudbury and by several of the area municipalities.

LIMITATIONS AMENDMENT ACT

Mr. D. R. Cooke moved first reading of Bill 198, An Act to amend the Limitations Act.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. D. R. Cooke: The purpose of this bill is to extend the limitation period for an action arising from sexual abuse or sexual assault to the later of two following time periods: 20 years after the cause of action arose or 10 years after the time the person bringing the action discovers that the injury was caused by the sexual abuse or sexual assault and is no longer rendered unable to bring the action by the injury.

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ORDERS OF THE DAY

House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MANAGEMENT BOARD OF CABINET

Hon. Mr. Elston: Mr. Chairman, if it is all right with everyone here, I wonder if it is okay to have my assistants accompany me here on the floor of the House.

Agreed to.

Mr. Philip: Does that mean that I am allowed to have all of my research staff sitting in front of me as well in order to balance the equation?

Mr. Chairman: Unfortunately, it does not.

Hon. Mr. Elston: With the way that the opposition parties are currently funded for their research staff, they certainly would be able to more than overwhelm the small number of government servants that we have available to assist us I am sure.

Mr. Chairman: Now that we are all comfortably installed where we want to sit, could you tell me how you would like to proceed with the examination of the votes? Separate or a consideration at the end altogether?

Mr. Philip: At the end altogether.

Mr. Chairman: At the end altogether?

Agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Elston: Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for presiding over this set of estimates on short notice, having just had the motion put to move our estimates ahead of those of my colleague the Minister of Government Services (Mr. Patten). I want to extend a thank you to my critics for being ready to take on this role at rather short notice.

I had a brief opening set of remarks, which I am sure will be of interest to set the tone for some questions which will arise in the course of the four hours of estimates time that we have available to examine what my staff and assistants, the Deputy Minister of Human Resources, Elaine Todres, and the secretary of Management Board, John Sloan, have modestly indicated as the most essential function in government these days.

We will be examining, very briefly, the overview of the world as we see it from Management Board and some of the areas in which we think we are providing a high level of performance, but indicating our intention to improve upon our performance levels and move forward to do many other things in a much more efficient and effective manner; in fact, indicating to the public of this province that we are prepared not only to proceed with our usual good management style but also to listen to and incorporate any new ideas that are made available to us which will enhance and heighten our management skills and abilities.

We have for the fiscal year 1988-89 several tasks ahead of us, and for Management Board of Cabinet it is almost a new world in many ways because of the increased level of activity that we find in areas in which we never have participated before, in becoming a catalyst for delivering corporate policies.

As everyone knows, just to set the scene, we have in Management Board three areas of responsibility: the Management Board secretariat, the human resources secretariat and the Civil Service Commission. Of course, all of those report to me as Chairman of the Management Board. The board is given support by the staff of the secretariats under the direction of the deputies whom I named earlier.

The secretariats and commission have a shared responsibility to provide leadership and support both in the application of efficient management practices and in the development and organization of our vital human resources throughout government. Government -- no different from the private sector today -- will see that good management style and technique, coupled with the timely and efficient management of our human resource, is going to be the key to making sure that the government of Ontario performs at a very high level indeed.

There are also a number of areas that the Management Board secretariat manages, which are quite a lot less visible but are vital to the operation of government. I would like to focus on these for the committee for the moment. These include items such as freedom of information, the Advertising Review Board and information technology which, as I am sure all members are aware, is of increasing importance not only to government but also to all parts of our society as we see ourselves moving ahead into a much more modern communication era.

Almost a year ago, the province implemented one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of the province. I am speaking about the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. I believe this act will have a profound effect upon how the government of Ontario serves the people of the province. I might go so far as to say that we have already seen the positive implications of having a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act in the province.

At the same time as we must be seen to be acting in an atmosphere of openness and co-operation, government must also be mindful of the need to protect information that is collected by the government concerning the people who live and work in the province. Since its introduction into the government’s ministries, agencies, boards and commissions on January 1 of this year, the process of implementing this new legislation has gone quite well indeed.

On January 1, 1989, the act will extend its coverage to include district health councils and colleges of applied arts and technology. Further extension to local government is mandated for 1991. It includes not only our municipalities but also local government organizations ranging from school boards and police commissions to transit and utility service and public health boards.

An example of how the public has taken to this act can be reflected in statistics for the first nine months of 1988. Almost 3,800 requests for either general records data or personal information were received by ministry staff. Of the requests for personal information, the vast majority were disclosed to the individual and information was provided within the 30-day time limit. I can assure members that freedom of information and protection of privacy is quickly becoming an integral part of our government’s operation.

As an indication of how much interest has been generated by this legislation, a forum we hosted through the Management Board to deal with the expansion of freedom of information and protection of privacy into the municipal and other related areas was held recently and was oversubscribed to, compared with what we had felt would have been the interest. In addition to that oversubscription, a large number of people were turned away because we had not booked a large enough place to hold the function.

I can tell members that not only at the provincial level but also at the municipal and local levels, freedom of information has become a very interesting concept for the province as a whole. I think that augurs well for the creation of the atmosphere of a very efficient and forward-looking democratic process in the province.

The second area that I would like to take a look at briefly is the Advertising Review Board. As everyone here knows, this is an independent body that encourages the rotation of government advertising business among qualified companies and oversees the public tendering of major contracts.

We are committed to increased fairness and cost-effectiveness in the area of government advertising, and it is in this regard that heightened competition, such as the one going on now for the English-speaking agency of record, has developed into advertising contracts that are more open and more fair. This is a concept of value for money through increased competition.

As a matter of interest, the Advertising Review Board has been approached by other governments, federally and provincially, to learn from our expertise with the view of adapting our process to their particular needs. Ontario has such a diverse cultural heritage that it is essential that communication with people be maintained in a number of languages. That is why the Advertising Review Board also ensures that regular announcements are promoted through the ethnic agency of record.

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I should point out that although the Provincial Auditor, in his report for fiscal year 1987-88, emphasized concern on a number of subjects related to the Advertising Review Board, I can assure you that we have already taken corrective measures. While there are some instances where inadequate records were maintained on file in certain areas and there was no documentation, the auditor did indicate a general acceptance of the process of selection initiated by the Advertising Review Board. We have also met with and encouraged ministries, even assisted them where possible, to expedite their payments in order to take full advantage of media payment discounts.

I would like to turn just briefly now to advances in information technology which have drawn our attention to the need for increased direction and leadership through our information technology division. This year a comprehensive new policy framework requires all ministries of the Ontario government to complete long-range technology plans. Management Board approval for these plans is mandatory. Particular attention is paid to ensuring that the technology solutions documented in the plans are linked to and address prioritized business needs. Deputy ministers are required to ensure that the approved plans are carried out and are required to report back to the board on their achievements annually.

Long before it became an issue in the media, we had been working on improving computer-related security. This year we approved and issued a new information security strategy. The document defines the fundamental principles upon which future security directives will be based. In the meantime, progress with our existing directives have allowed us to avoid significant security problems.

Further improvements in the government’s computer-related security will continue to be a high priority item. We must ensure that the information entrusted to our care is protected from abuse and yet remains available to those who have a right to access or share it. Information has become a powerful resource in the management and delivery of services in the modern world. Managed with foresight and sensitivity, I believe that information technology can help us to deliver significant improvements in program and organizational effectiveness.

An open and fair government also means a government where employment opportunities are available equally to all people. Access for all target groups to positions at all levels in the public service is an objective to which the government is strongly committed.

I now want to talk about some of the initiatives the Civil Service Commission and the human resources secretariat are undertaking concerning the people who work in the Ontario public service. For instance, I have recently announced that smoking will no longer be permitted in the Ontario public service in schedule 1 agency workplaces as of March 31, 1989. This policy reflects our commitment to providing employees with a healthy and pleasant working environment. Achieving a smoke-free workplace will be beneficial for people, but it will not be easy. Therefore, as part of this initiative, we will be offering assistance to those employees who wish to enrol in smoking cessation programs.

The Ontario public service is a diverse and complex organization with more than 80,000 employees working in literally thousands of locations across the province. As an employer and as a government, we know that delivering services to the public in a responsive and responsible manner depends on these individual employees. As a government, we recognize the importance of managing the public service in a way that ensures the responsible delivery of all of these services in a quality fashion to the public.

We believe that the way to achieve this is through maximizing the initiative and creativity of all of our employees. This means ensuring the fair treatment, personal growth and development of each individual within the context of perspectives such as the following: ensuring that opportunities to work in the public service are open and accessible to everyone, and achieving a public service that is more reflective of the public we serve, while keeping in mind our overall goal of the responsible use of public funds.

In short, we are working to be both a prudent and a model employer. To achieve this as a government, we have made a major commitment to our employees and to the public through improved human resources policies and practices in the Ontario public service. This commitment began in 1986 with our reorganization of the responsibilities for human resources management and personnel administration in the public service, responsibilities which had traditionally been undertaken by the Civil Service Commission and which now rest with the human resources secretariat.

As a result of this reorganization, the Civil Service Commission’s mandate now focuses on ensuring the responsible administration of the public service. This includes monitoring and reporting on the performance of the government as an employer, particularly concerning the merit principle and the promotion of corporate values. Continuing our commitment to improve the effectiveness of human resource management in government, a further reorganization of responsibilities occurred in September of this year. The deputy minister of the human resources secretariat now also chairs the Civil Service Commission.

The commission has been active in recent months in reviewing the Public Service Act with a view to reflecting changes in human resources management and to achieve greater accountability, efficiency and effectiveness throughout the public service. This responsibility has now been assumed by the human resources secretariat. The human resources secretariat is taking the lead in developing strategic human resources policies and practices for the Ontario public service. This, we believe, will foster excellence in the delivery of services to the public throughout Ontario.

In 1987, we established the framework for fulfilling our commitment to improve human resources management in the Ontario public service with the introduction by the human resources secretariat of the strategies for renewal program. The program set in place for the very first time a corporate human resources planning process for the Ontario public service. Strategies for renewal established three strategic directions for the public service: revitalize, reshape and redeploy.

Under this program, each year Management Board sets corporate objectives for human resources management in the public service. Each ministry, in turn, is required to submit an annual action plan to the board describing how it will support the achievement of the corporate objectives.

Having a human resources planning process in the public service benefits both the public and our employees. It helps ensure that our public service has the skills to respond effectively to new and emerging service delivery needs. Better human resources planning also promotes a working environment that maximizes the initiative and the creativity of our employees and supports individual employees’ personal growth and development.

As I have already indicated, we are committed to creating a more open and accessible public service, one that is more reflective of the public it serves. Accordingly, in 1987 we introduced a mandatory employment equity program for the Ontario public service. The program in the Ontario public service is being undertaken in partnership with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. The program covers five designated groups: aboriginal people, racial minorities, francophones, people with disabilities and women. In order to ensure that the employment equity program reflects the needs of all five designated groups, the government as an employer has consulted with more than 70 community groups from across the province.

Employment equity is an integral part of good human resource management whether in the public or private sector. I think all we have to do is look at the number of management and business-type publications which have been stressing the successes achieved by a number of people who have promoted and made use of employment equity programs to achieve new levels of management skill and benefits to the corporation. Therefore, ministries are required to include employment equity initiatives in the annual strategies for renewal action plans which they submit to Management Board.

As a part of its program to eliminate systemic barriers, the human resources secretariat has been developing corporate staffing policies to improve the recruitment and advancement opportunities of designated groups. The human resources secretariat will also be providing orientation and training programs to familiarize public service managers with the requirements of the employment equity program and how to achieve the requirements. Employment equity principles are also being incorporated into our existing training programs.

As one of the largest employers in Ontario, we are among the first organizations to implement pay equity legislation and I am pleased to report that work is well under way. As the members know, the underlying premise of the Pay Equity Act is that systemic discrimination can only be corrected through an action-oriented policy. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union, the major bargaining unit within the public service, and the pay equity section of the human resources secretariat are currently working together to develop the gender-neutral job comparison system which will be used to develop the pay equity plan for bargaining unit employees. Additional plans will cover employees in the non-bargaining-unit job classes.

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In meeting the legislative requirement to negotiate the pay equity plan for bargaining unit employees with the bargaining unit, our operating principle is one of negotiation and partnership in communication. This partnership encompasses the design of information-gathering tools, the content and testing of questionnaires, the implementation phase and the joint communication about our approach to all employees of the Ontario public service. Other communication efforts include use of internal employee publications and consultation with the ministries through a pay equity resource committee comprising senior human resource officers.

I am also pleased to report a great deal of progress in the technical components of the pay equity methology -- methodology. Early in the new year, a questionnaire will be used to gather information about male --

Mr. Breaugh: You were right the first time.

Hon. Mr. Elston: The member means “methodology” was not a correct reading of my material here? I have always been prompted from time to time to admire the timely and corrective interjections of the member for Oshawa who, having been here for a number of years, has seen a number of estimates brought before if not this supply committee, certainly other committees of the Legislative Assembly. Without being too bold, I can probably predict that his influence has been, without variance, of a consistent and long-standing nature.

Mr. Philip: What did you say? Would you like to repeat that?

Hon. Mr. Elston: His impact has been consistent.

Early in the new year, as I said before I was so --

Mr. Breaugh: Boldly interrupted.

Hon. Mr. Elston: “Boldly interrupted” is a very good description.

I was talking about a questionnaire which was proceeding to address the new “methology” -- methodology, yes -- about which I was corrected before. Early in the new year, this questionnaire will address exactly those things about which I just spoke. The questionnaire will be used to gather information about male- and female-predominated job classes. Once completed, a computer-based analysis of this information will be done to determine how the job factors of skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions should be revalued in female-dominated pay classes to achieve pay equity.

Over the past year, we have also moved to strengthen the relationship between the Management Board secretariat and the human resources secretariat and thus ensure a more integrated approach to the advice which the two secretariats provide to Management Board.

In conclusion, I believe we have opened a path which will make government more accessible and fair, more productive and efficient and more responsive and accountable. This will further strengthen the confidence held by the people of Ontario in their government and will give public servants a clearer and more productive working climate.

With the exception of some responses perhaps to the opening remarks by my critics, those are my opening statements. I would like to tell the members that I am looking forward to the opportunity to answer some of the questions in the policy areas which I have not been able to really address in these brief remarks.

I have traditionally been rather brief in my opening and have not attempted, obviously, to cover all the areas in which we have a major role to play in the Management Board secretariat, the human resources secretariat and the Civil Service Commission. That does not speak, in any way, to remove from those areas which I did not highlight the degree of importance with which I approach the carrying out of those functions as well.

Needless to say, the areas in the Management Board secretariat, the human resources secretariat and the Civil Service Commission are much broader than the four hours will probably give us time to get into, but I do look forward to dealing in more detail with the areas which my critic colleagues have decided to approach in the examination of this rather small budget for the important work which we carry out.

Mr. Philip: I hope members will forgive me, because of my cold, if I am not as loud as I usually am or have been in the past. However, I do want to make a few comments on the opening statement and indeed on the whole area of Management Board.

I would like to congratulate the minister on his new portfolio. As has been pointed out by a number of journalists, this portfolio is probably third in importance to the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) and the Premier (Mr. Peterson), since, if it fails, then the whole process of managing the government fails.

As this is my first opportunity to deal with these estimates in my new role as chairman of the standing committee on public accounts, I would like to put on the record a few of my concerns about the trinity or the relationship between the role of public accounts, the role of the Provincial Auditor and the public accounts committee with Management Board or the internal audit function; and, last, with the third set of processes I think we have to be concerned about, namely, the estimates process. I hope we might have some dialogue on the estimates process.

I also want to deal with another area of management which I am very concerned about; that is, the whole problem of the increasing costs of the regulatory system and the lack of control we seem to have and which governments generally seem to have over that process.

I believe the public accounts committee shares a common goal with the internal auditors in the government and with Management Board in this regard. I think both strive to ensure the best possible management and use of the taxpayers’ dollar. I think we also face common challenges of increasing government spending, of greater complexity in our society, and greater complexity and breadth in the scope of activities in the light of financial constraints that are now placed upon us.

I guess this means that Management Board and public accounts and the estimates process have to deal with the problem of increasingly being able to do more with less. In recent years, the Ontario public accounts committee has expanded its role while its procedures and approaches have evolved fairly rapidly.

This evolution is taking place in a context of a series of parliamentary reforms both in Ontario and throughout the world; perhaps later in the estimates I will have an opportunity to suggest that some of the reforms taking place elsewhere might be seriously looked at by the Chairman of Management Board.

A current reform being proposed by both the Ontario public accounts committee and our federal counterpart is the strengthening of the estimates process, and I would like to deal with that sometime during these estimates.

Although these proposals have given rise to some concern, I think it should be noted that other changes, which seem now to be accepted generally or which are at least of interest in different jurisdictions, were seen as radical a few years ago and are now being accepted and/or looked at more closely by a variety of jurisdictions.

Some people have pointed out that the changes I have been advocating shift some power from the executive wing of government to parliament and that this moves us towards a more congressional system similar to that of the United States. I think it can be argued, however, that the reforms we have been suggesting and the public accounts committee has been proposing, which indeed the federal public accounts committee has been proposing, take into account that we must blend some of the best processes of the congressional system with that of the parliamentary system if we are not to simply have the civil service run the whole show.

There are problems, I think, which can be resolved by consensus, by most reasonable people regardless of political party. In a society that is becoming increasingly complex, it makes less and less sense that these problems be resolved in a confrontational manner along party lines.

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I think that political parties of both the left and the right at least give lipservice to the concerns about increasing deficits, about programs that do not meet objectives, and various examples of waste and mismanagement have been attacked by members of all three parties, and indeed, by the government members themselves, in various committees. I think it can be contended that by adopting a less partisan approach to some of the spending matters, we in fact may reach a number of efficiencies and have moneys left to deal with those important things that are so demanding on the public purse.

Most of the advances have taken place in the past decade, if we read the literature, following the reforms of the Audit Act in 1978. These reforms gave the Provincial Auditor the power to audit most crown agencies and thus gave the standing committee on public accounts a means to hold a vast area of government accountable.

Another critical change was the addition of the value-for-money mandate in the Audit Act, allowing Ontario to take its place as the forerunner of comprehensive auditing.

A third change gave the public accounts committee the power to request the Provincial Auditor to undertake special assignments, a power that is still not shared by most jurisdictions. During the past decade, the Ontario public accounts committee has used this broader mandate to break new ground in a number of areas. The power to request the Provincial Auditor to conduct reviews has been particularly valuable in allowing innovative and wide-ranging inquiries -- for example, our recent inquiry into the domed stadium, which I believe has resulted in a considerable saving to the taxpayers of Ontario.

Our committee has also actively sought to make its procedures and approaches more effective, and several features of its recent options have helped to strengthen the effectiveness in closing the loop in the accountability cycle. Our committee, as members know, has developed a number of innovations that I believe do hold this government more accountable. These include excellent research being provided to our committee and proper briefings to the committee before hearings.

The committee is also supported in our work by the Provincial Auditor, who, as an officer of the Legislative Assembly, has the staff, resources and professional expertise to delve into public accounts and a full range of government activities and to point out concerns about financial management and accountability.

Our committee has also moved to a system of immediate reports on most matters, and I would be interested in hearing the opinions of the Chairman of Management Board (Mr. Elston) as to whether he feels that this has been useful to him from an internal audit point of view, since it deals with matters on a timely basis and sets certain time frames in which we would expect that the individual ministry report back and, indeed, time frames in which we would like the individual ministry to implement our recommendations.

During 1988, our committee applied these procedures in a wide range of inquiries arising from the auditor’s 1987 report. In particular, we were concerned about the internal audit system throughout the government. In February 1988, the committee questioned officials of Management Board secretariat regarding the auditor’s concern about the quality of internal audit operations throughout the government, and its findings were set out in the fifth interim report, tabled on September 22, 1988.

In his report, the auditor had found that substantial progress had been made since 1980, but he simply was not satisfied with where we were at this point in time. He found that the actual performance of work still showed scope for improvement. Output was falling well short of plans, working papers were deficient, a systems-based approach was seldom used and weaknesses in the reports were preventing them from achieving their potential impacts. The Provincial Auditor also concluded that his office could rely on the performance of only four out of the 15 ministries.

I say to the Chairman of Management Board that is simply not good enough. I do not accept the statement that was made to me by one fairly highly placed public servant, who, at a comprehensive auditing foundation convention I was addressing in Montreal, said, “Well, the auditor’s standards are too high.”

I say to the members that those standards were accepted by the internal auditors in 1980. They are world standards accepted internationally, and the standards of the auditor are no different from the standards used by other jurisdictions at the present time.

The auditor also noted discrepancies among the ministries in the number and qualifications of the audit staff and deficiencies in the management of audit staff. His report stated that the basic audit skills needed to be upgraded, staff motivation was low, systems to assign, monitor and control staff were deficient and staff evaluations were inadequate.

In our report, our committee mentioned that while progress was being made, we called for various initiatives, and I would like the minister to respond to these. These initiatives included the development and implementation of a directive to transfer payments, a guide to value-for-money auditing and a series of companion audit guides to Management Board directives.

The committee also called for Management Board to give high priority to enhancing and supporting the work of the internal auditor’s counsel. Our committee felt that some of the problems identified by the auditor might have arisen from a lack of information within the ministries on their own on how their resources, activities and performances compared with those of other ministries.

Consequently, to achieve these improvements, the committee recommended that Management Board develop and implement a government-wide annual internal plan, which would include a listing and prioritization of the government’s audit universe, a report on the progress of the previous year’s plan, a comparative analysis of ministries’ performances and an assessment of the government-wide allocation of the audit staff in light of the plan’s priorities.

The committee recognized that the morale and management problems noted by the auditor were not unique in the internal audit field but rather are experienced by most specialized staff functions in government.

We believed, however, that these problems could be changed, or at least helped somewhat, by measures to improve career mobility and to increase opportunities for job enrichment and personal development. The committee felt that this could be best achieved by diversifying career opportunities and by increasing interchanges among the various ministries and other bodies external of the government.

To explore options by which these goals might be achieved, we called for Management Board to report to the committee by March 31, 1989, on the feasibility of a greater degree of centralization of the audit function, including views on the options of a supplementary central unit, a centralized personnel system and a complete centralization of the audit function. As well, our committee called for Management Board to complete its review of the need for additional audit resources.

We also recommended that as part of this review, Management Board should develop an inventory of human resources in the audit area and actively use it to assist ministries to overcome weaknesses in the quality and the qualifications of their audit staff and to provide career development and opportunities for that audit staff.

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I think it is essential that these improvements be achieved, for significant challenges lie ahead for internal audit professionals in government. These challenges have several dimensions. The audit universe is expanding to require a far greater degree of accountability for transfer payments. Tax expenditures will likely be the next major area to receive closer scrutiny. As well, the scope of the internal audit work is increasingly taking in value-for-money matters as well as financial and compliance matters.

Simultaneously with the expansion of the audit universe and the type of review, external bodies such as the Legislature are increasingly interested in accountability requirements. These various developments were subject to the ninth annual conference of the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation, held two weeks ago in Montreal. Their implications for Ontario merit consideration.

Ontario has already been active in the review of transfer payments. A number of special studies of the standing committee on public accounts have involved transfer payments. The SkyDome was an example and Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology was an earlier example, to name only a few. As well, the Provincial Auditor has expanded his activities in this area. It is evident from the 1988 report, tabled last week, that he intends to look further into the area of transfer payments.

The 1988 report that the auditor tabled addresses such matters as the accountability of hospitals to the Ministry of Health, the findings of an inspection audit of Trent University, a review of the system for allocating unconditional grants to municipalities and the regularity of Wintario grants for community improvements. We look forward to hearing the minister’s views on any or all of these issues.

The CCAF’s study on transfer payments is interesting. The Ontario government certainly has expressed some interest in the whole area of transfer payments. I recognize that the Management Board of Cabinet has issued a directive with supporting documents requiring the ministries to improve their accountability framework for recipient transfer payments. I would like to ask the minister to give us an update on what progress, if any, has been noted and researched on this matter.

A number of Ontario ministries audit municipal accounts related to programs through which grants have been given. This work is conducted by a recently formed special unit called the Ontario municipal audit bureau. I would ask the minister to give us his assessment of the success of that municipal audit bureau, since it is serving some 10 ministries.

The Ministry of Community and Social Services conducts operational reviews of the agencies it funds. They have many of the characteristics of a comprehensive audit. One would hope that the Chairman of Management Board will have some views on what progress is being made there and what time frame he sees in terms of objectives.

I guess that in spite of these advances which are taking place both in public accounts and in the internal audit system, I still recognize that it is essential to be sensitive to the principle of local autonomy and to ensure that the audit does not undermine the flexibility and responsiveness that the delegation of responsibility is intended to give. It is also important, especially in the case of the smaller grants, to ensure that the audit does not ultimately cost more than the grant itself or place unreasonable burdens on the recipients, particularly when many of these recipients are volunteer boards and the volunteers are giving of their time freely to the community.

It is this balance that I think we should be looking at. I would hope that, as Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet, the minister may have some views on that.

Although comprehensive auditing has been under way in Ontario for a decade now, it is still an evolving field, making the move to transfer payments all the more challenging. Standards for comprehensive auditing are still being established, and a number of questions remain to be addressed.

First of all, how far should it go in assessing the actual effectiveness of government expenditures? Who should do these assessments, and how can these assessments be given a consistent set of standards and principles? Again, we get back to the problem, which the Provincial Auditor pointed out in his previous report, of the differences in skills within the various ministries.

I think that many of these questions are being addressed, not just by the public accounts committee and by some members of the Legislature, but also by such bodies as the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation. I would certainly commend them on their study Effectiveness: Reporting and Auditing in the Public Sector. I think this study sets out a framework for reporting and assessing the effectiveness that goes far beyond assessing simply whether programs are meeting these objectives. This framework would have proved to be most useful. I would appreciate the minister’s comments on this.

More and more we are getting into the problem that the audit function has to be more than counting heads. It has gone beyond that, and it has to be more than simply saying, “Are there objectives in place and are you somehow trying to measure them?” I think we have to get to the point that the General Accounting Office has managed to reach in the United States in many ways, and indeed, the area in which our Provincial Auditor seems to be trying to move, and that is, is the program effective? How efficient is it, but also is it effective?

Those are questions in which I think the Chairman of Management Board should be taking a lead from his point of view as the chief internal auditor, if I might use that name, or the person chiefly interested in or responsible for the internal audit functions of all of the ministries.

I want to address myself to two reports. I will give up the floor then, because I want to deal with some of those reports in greater detail later. I think it is terribly important that the minister understand that unless changes that will affect areas other than those with which he is now directly dealing are done by his government, a lot of his work is going to be wasted.

I talked earlier about the trinity, of the co-operation that should exist between the internal audit function, the external audit, which would be the Provincial Auditor or the Auditor General in Ottawa; and the public accounts committee. But there is also the estimates process. Quite frankly, any of us who have been around here, and I am now in my fifth term as a member of the Legislature, will tell the minister very, very clearly -- and we have said this openly, so it is no secret -- the estimates process, by and large, is a waste of time. I hope this set of estimates may not be a waste of time, because we will at least be talking about trying to reform the estimates process, and maybe for once this will be a useful set of estimates.

The public accounts committee turned out a special report in June 1988 calling for reforms of the Ontario estimates process. I am sure the minister has read it. We agreed with the procedural problems noted by the auditor. We talked about the delays in review, inconsistencies in the level of scrutiny relative to the expenditures, deviations from the planned schedule and the inability to change items within the estimates. Other problems included deficient information on which to base scrutiny, pressures on the time and resources of the members and the lack of attention and commitment by many people to the whole process.

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We considered these concerns and we endorsed the auditor’s recommendation that a standing committee on estimates be established to conduct annual, in-depth scrutiny of a selected number of ministries. Our committee further called for this proposed committee to be chaired by a member of the opposition and for its membership to include three members of the standing committee on public accounts; not the chairman, by the way, although that is not spelled out. It is certainly not my view that I should sit on both committees.

We recommended that six sets of estimates a year be chosen for review by all three parties, using a cycle of the official opposition, the third party and the government party, and that this be supplemented by a system of written questions to other ministries on matters of specific interest in review of these other ministries.

It should be remembered that our committee consists of a majority of members of the government side at this time as a result of the last election, which resulted in a very large number of members on the government side and even on this side -- the overflow or rump as it is called -- although judging from the quality of some of the members in the rump, I do not know why this would be the rump compared to that side. Some of the more capable members seem to have sat at one time on this side of the House, people such as the member for York Mills (Mr. J. B. Nixon), among others, who has now joined the public accounts committee.

An hon. member: What makes you think he is more capable?

Mr. Philip: I just got in trouble with one of my own members, who thinks the person I complimented did not deserve the compliment, so I will stop there or the next thing you know I will be saying something good about the future judge from -- where is it? -- Woodstock who is facing me. I gave her a compliment and then she voted against me in committee the other day.

Our committee expressed great dissatisfaction with the quality of the estimates process. I point out to the Chairman of Management Board that the committee’s report is not all that different from another all-party committee’s report, namely, that of the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly, and is not all that dissimilar from the federal estimates committee report on a similar matter. All three have concluded essentially the same thing.

I say to this minister, who is responsible for trying to ensure that this government operates in the most efficient way possible, that I ask him to exercise his leadership role in cabinet to ensure that this committee report and the one of the Legislative Assembly committee is properly debated, passed and implemented. If he does not do that, it will not be him who is worrying about government inefficiency; it will simply be that government will get away from all of us. People will be making decisions who really are not elected and the whole accountability process will simply fly out the window. We are talking about increasing government bureaucracy and increasing waste of money, unless he does something to bring accountability back into parliament.

I also refer the minister -- then I will sit down because I want to deal with a number of matters during this set of estimates -- to the standing committee on regulations and private bills, which turned out an excellent report dealing with the whole regulatory system. It has a number of recommendations that I believe the Chairman of Management Board should be particularly interested in, because if these recommendations are implemented, we will start to get a handle on the whole regulatory process.

Right at the moment, if you were a small businessman in this province and you went into the legislative library or the business library at the University of Toronto and said: “I am in business X. Can you give me all the regulations that affect my business? I want to be a law-abiding citizen. I want to obey the law of the land and the law of the province,” it could not supply that to you. We do not even have a cross-indexing of regulations here.

In a computerized age, we have complete anarchy in the regulatory process. It is very difficult. In fact, it is very much suspected there are regulations that from time to time are violations of government policy. Without using too much imagination, there are regulations that probably breach the intent of government legislation, and there is no real system for a citizen who is opposed to a regulation, first, to know about it, unless he subscribes to the Ontario Gazette or some legal subscription system, and second, to comment on it before it is implemented.

It seems to me we have to come to grips with the fact that at some time, if we are going to run government efficiently, we are going to have to deal with the whole area of sunsetting. There are regulations that from time to time simply have to be looked at and that we have to say no longer make sense.

I think the Chairman of Management Board also has to develop an objective system of looking at programs, and in an all-party committee kind of setting, we have to say that these programs are no longer meeting the objectives of the ministry, are no longer relevant to this decade we are living in, and need to be changed or their objectives need to be changed in order for us to deal with them.

If we do not come to grips with a nonpartisan way of dealing with sunsetting, then I think what you have is an increasingly larger bureaucracy and an increasingly larger number of programs that may meet someone’s personal needs, but do not meet society’s needs or indeed the needs of the original group of people the programs were allegedly targeted for.

Later in the estimates with the minister, I want to deal with the whole problem of pensions in the public service and his role in an advisory capacity on the right of public servants to have a say in the decision-making on how their pensions are being spent. I say that to give the minister notice I intend to go through that argument point by point. He may want to prepare for it.

I will also be suggesting to him that some of the rather glib technocratic and bureaucratic responses that are being made to people like the Ombudsman and the standing committee on the Ombudsman are simply unacceptable. I will be dealing with a particular case. I will be suggesting to him that he has procedures that are not being implemented and that he could implement to meet the Ombudsman’s request. Stonewalling behind bureaucratic red tape and excuses simply is unacceptable when it comes to the Ombudsman.

Those are a few introductory remarks, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for your attention and the attention of other members.

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Mr. McCague: It is a pleasure to join in the consideration of the estimates for the Management Board of Cabinet. I note that quite a few of the minister’s staff were there a few years ago when I had the pleasure of occupying his chair. I was just thinking that with the amount of money he has now, compared with what I had to deal with, they must think the minister is Santa Claus over there. Sometimes he does act a little like that, but I cannot recall which day it was.

The minister wanted to tell anybody who was watching that he had a very small budget, but just to set the record straight, in my book it says that the estimates are $243,776,523. I know the answer I am going to get from the minister, but they are fairly sizeable and I am quoting what is printed here.

The minister has a very important position in government with the Premier being the chief executive officer and the Treasurer the chief financial officer; I guess the chairman could affectionately, or whatever, be referred to as the general manager.

It will be no secret to the minister that we in this party have taken exception to some of the management practices of the government, that we have had some problem with the way in which some of these responsibilities have been discharged in the past three years.

For example, it has been and remains our view that expenditure controls in the Ontario government have eroded, as evidenced by the consistent pattern of overspending of the budget plan which emerged over the 1985-87 fiscal year period. The substantial in-year revenue windfalls over that period were spent as quickly as they were collected.

We have also pointed to some rather dramatic increases in the cost of ministry administration and main office activities, and to the substantial increase in the size of the Ontario public service. We have had occasion to discuss these matters with the minister in the House, so I know he is aware of them and I suspect shares them to some degree.

Certainly, we were encouraged by the Management Board decision to implement a two per cent payroll reduction and a six per cent reduction in other direct operating expenditures of the ministries. We flatter ourselves on this side by thinking that this decision may in part have been taken in response to concerns raised in this House by my party. Whatever the reason, it is a welcome first step towards restoring some measure of sanity to the management of government spending.

The financial resources of the government of Ontario are vast, but they are not limitless and it is high time this administration focused on providing the people of this province with a government they can afford.

We have then had some problem with this government’s management record. I will not, however, review them again here today; rather, I want to discuss with the minister in a nonpartisan way some of the major challenges facing the government, and his ministry in particular, with regard to the future of effective and efficient management and administration of the government’s spending and programs.

When the Management Board was first established back in 1971, the annual expenditures of the government were about $6.6 billion. Today, they are almost six times as large and the government will spend more than $37.8 billion in the current fiscal year. In fact, the Ministry of Health will this year spend almost double what the entire government spent some 17 years ago.

This tremendous growth in the size and cost of government has amplified the importance of Management Board functions and I am sure the minister would agree that the job of Chairman of Management Board is not going to get any easier in the foreseeable future. If anything, the reverse is true, that the chairman is going to find himself in the hot seat because of growing pressures on revenues and expenditures.

Nowhere, in my opinion, are pressures on the expenditure side more acute and the management challenge more pressing than with regard to transfer payments. I am sure the minister, having just imposed a settlement on the province’s doctors, will be particularly sensitive to some of the problems in this field.

Last year, about 72 per cent of this government’s total expenditure was allocated through transfer payments. In the current fiscal year, I would estimate that the government is going to spend about $28 billion through transfer payments of one kind or another. In fact, just this afternoon, $17 billion in payments were announced for 1989. Yet neither this government, the members of this House, nor the Chairman of Management Board for that matter, can say with certainty what part of these transfers is being ultimately expended with due regard to economy and efficiency and in compliance with the provincial program objectives.

If the statement we heard today from the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Eakins) is any indication, this matter is of concern to the government. In announcing the transfer payments for next year, the Minister of Municipal Affairs emphasized that “it is extremely important that provincial tax dollars are allocated in such a way as to support provincial priorities,” and gave that as an excuse for flat-lining unconditional transfers.

In addition, we have the 1988 auditor’s report which underlines some of the deficiencies in our oversight functions related to transfer payments. Of particular concern, given the spending pressures in the health care field, was the auditor’s finding that a number of hospitals that had received deficit funding in the 1987 fiscal year had on several occasions transferred funds from the hospital to a foundation, without first obtaining ministry approval as required under a December 1981 policy statement.

This is but one aspect of a broader problem the auditor found, namely, that formal lines of accountability do not exist between hospital boards and the Ministry of Health.

I appreciate that efforts have been under way for some time now to improve the accountability framework for transfer payments. In point of fact, it was almost seven years ago that Management Board first established an interministerial task force to deal with the question of auditing transfer payment recipients.

I also understand the Management Board secretariat has been able to obtain a directive on transfer payment accountability and was working to develop a guideline to assist the ministries with the implementation of the directive. I hope the minister will be able to tell us today if the guideline has been completed and update us as to the implementation of the directive.

I would also be interested in hearing from the minister what further steps he is contemplating to improve accountability in this area and how his government is going to strike a balance between accountability and economy.

In particular, I would appreciate hearing the minister’s thoughts on an expansion of the audit function with regard to transfers. For instance, ministries of this government have long exercised the right to audit municipal accounts relating to grant programs, a practice that led to the establishment of the municipal audit bureau. Is any thought being given to expanding this type of service into other transfer fields?

There may also be some value in looking at the Manitoba practice, which requires auditors of municipalities, school boards and hospitals to perform a supplementary audit at the same time as they prepare the financial attest audit.

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The purpose of the supplementary audit is to report on compliance with appropriate authorities, the management of assets and any other matter which the auditor feels should be reported to the minister.

I understand that this requirement is fairly easily met and has not imposed additional compliance costs on transfer payment recipients. Also, the Manitoba Health Services Commission has reported that it had a substantial increase in its comfort level regarding hospital spending once the requirement of the supplementary audit was introduced.

I would also look to the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet to take a lead role in improving the process we are involved in today, that being the annual review of the spending estimates.

The minister will appreciate more than most the amount of time, money and effort invested in the preparation of the estimates. Yet in spite of that substantial investment of resources, what we have ended up with is a deficient, ineffective and frustrating process which is hardly giving us value for the time and money spent on it. This is not a new problem, but complaints about the process and calls for reform have now become a standard part of our proceedings.

Some members may recall that back in 1980 the standing committee on procedural affairs was complaining about the estimates process, complaints which were repeated by the committee again in 1985. The standing committee on public accounts in 1982 reported that: “The current practice of estimates consideration in the Ontario Legislature is all but a total failure so far as examining projected government expenditures and evaluating the spending decisions underlying policy....

For the most part, the estimates are little more than an enormous yet pointless drain on the time of the members of the assembly, ministers and ministry staff.”

There has been no shortage of recommendations for improving the process to make it a more worthwhile and meaningful exercise. The most recent contribution was made by the public accounts committee in its special report to the estimates process of last June in which it called for, among other things, the establishment of a standing committee on the estimates to conduct an annual in-depth scrutiny of selected ministry estimates.

I would be interested in learning if the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet would agree with the conclusion that the estimates process needs to be reformed and if he would be supportive of the recommendations made by the public accounts committee.

The minister may have read in the weekend press an editorial in the Toronto Star claiming quite accurately that, “Ontario Liberals have lost their way.” There are a number of items which appear to have dropped off the agenda which fall within the purview of the minister in each of his incarnations.

For example, we have yet to see legislation from him as Minister of Financial Institutions establishing some form of inflation protection under the Pension Benefits Act. There has been some talk that our colleague across the way did not want to bring in a formula that would be laughed at by Bob White. If that is the case, then I suggest to him that now might not be a bad time to bring in the bill because Mr. White’s attention seems to be diverted at the moment, involved as he is in trying to find a scapegoat for the federal New Democratic Party showing in the recent federal election campaign.

In his incarnation as Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet, the minister also faces the problem of what to do about financing public sector pensions. I do not think I exaggerate when I say that we have an $8.5-billion time bomb ticking away on that front which, if not defused, could blow up in our faces at a cost to the province of some $575 million annually for the next 15 years. I do not know how the government intends to do any meaningful long-term planning when it is looking at a potential liability of that magnitude.

The minister and the Treasurer have had the benefit of advice from the Rowan, Coward and Slater reports on this matter, and I hope the minister will take this opportunity to bring us up to date on any progress which has been made and what his preferred option is with regard to resolving the serious financial deficiency in the superannuation adjustment fund.

I asked the minister a little earlier if he could provide us with a table that would show the number of civil servants government-wide. I stand to be corrected, but I understand that not too many years ago that chart was asked for and provided in the estimates book. I hope that he will feel free to do it again today.

There are a number of other issues that I hope to cover in the time allotted for the minister’s estimates, and we will await that opportunity.

Hon. Mr. Elston: I have some reply with respect to a number of the issues which have been outlined here. On the item which the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale (Mr. Philip) brought up about the Ombudsman, we will be waiting to hear more. The details, of course, were not provided to us, but there are a series of things which I think are worth while taking a look at as we start into the overall assessment of the estimates being provided to Management Board as outlined.

First of all, though, might I just take a minute to thank the two critics for their opening remarks and for their acknowledgement of the role that Management Board plays, in a positive way, in influencing good management practices. I think that when we take a look at the Provincial Auditor’s report, the general summation made there was that there had been increasing improvement over the last three years with respect to management.

Although there were several areas pointed out that required further improvement, a good number of those areas pointed out in terms of management examples of difficulties have already been addressed, either by management implementation of new directives and guidelines which have been taken up by the line managers or by the ministries involved on their own in strengthening internal activities.

I would also like to acknowledge the member for Simcoe West (Mr. McCague) in his indication of knowledge about the Financial Institutions sector of which I am the proud participant in policy-setting and otherwise. I can tell the honourable gentleman that my desire to do a thorough job in relation to the pension indexing issue is one which is merely bound to determine a fair and practical implementation of the indexing of pensions and is in no way tied to what any particular personality might say about the indexing formula which ultimately is brought forward.

I can tell the honourable member, although this is not the estimates of the Ministry of Financial Institutions, that we are working diligently. I know that he probably would like, at some point, to provide us with the endorsement of the formula he and his leader, the member for Sarnia (Mr. Brandt), will be promoting throughout the province to assist in the indexing issue. At an appropriate time perhaps, we will see that formula come forth from the third party as it struggles to overcome the domination of the official opposition, which to this point largely, I would say, has carried even further than the Conservative Party of Ontario the pension issue for the folks here.

But enough of the issues which affect MFI. The people, I am sure, are quite interested in that, as all of us here are. I think one probably could say that in no place could there be found any group of people in Ontario who have a higher interest in pensions than the members of this Legislative Assembly. From my point of view, having come here only in 1981 and followed the development over the period of years of people who have come into the members’ roll and out of the members’ roll, I can recall on several occasions being brought into quite considerable discussion of the pension issue as it affected the population of Ontario. Members particularly were interested in where that took us and others.

That does steer us into the issue of the public sector pensions and both the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale and the member for Simcoe West did bring to my attention that they preferred to take a rather in-depth look at pensions and the issue of pensions from the point of view of my role as the nominal employer of the public service.

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I think it is important for us to understand that even as we speak, the meetings continue with respect to addressing the issues between the Ontario government, the employer, and its workforce as represented by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.

It is not fair to say that we have not been working with the union to try to examine further the opportunities that are available in addressing the issues which not only face us, although that is the particular forum in which we are involved, but which, it seems to me, affect all employers and employees with respect to the management of their pension packages.

It is not fair to say that we have not attempted from time to time to include the union in the decision-making process as it affects the promotion of the management of those funds in a joint way, in one form or another. We are quite eager to examine a number of options that are available to examine the new way of handling pensions, and have indicated that through our meetings.

We, as a model and prudent employer, I think would be mistaken if we did not extend again a new hand of co-operation to the union. Whether or not, as in the past, that will be rejected is up to the union’s leadership, of course.

I can tell the members here who, no doubt, have received the types of letters and correspondence that I have received from members of OPSEU, that contrary to the text of those notes -- which I think probably have been promoted from the union’s central offices -- we are not, for instance, refusing to discuss pension issues with the union. We have been and are continuing to discuss those issues as they arise.

I can tell the honourable member for Simcoe West, who raised the spectre of the $575-million, 15-year amortized cost with respect to the unfunded liability of pensions as a result of the superannuation fund, that in his former role as minister of the crown during another administration -- whose name escapes me now because of its remote historical relationship to the matters -- he certainly was not offended by the fact that there was an unfunded liability reflected in the legislation which he, probably in his first days, would help to have passed, I presume.

The member for Simcoe West was elected in 1975 and came in on the coattails of the passage of the legislation in 1975 which established the superannuation adjustment fund, at which point, on the basis of some very quick manoeuvring before there was a call to the polls, the teachers of the province and the public servants of the province found they had a fully indexed secondary fund or a fund set up to index their pension secondary to their main fund.

The only question that was brought to my attention by the Treasurer and others who have talked from time to time about the pensions, the only person who actually raised the question of the matter of the funding of the liability, was a member of the New Democratic Party at the time who, in the late days, just as the lights were going out in that particular parliament, raised a voice in the wilderness saying, “Is it funded all right?” Somebody scoffingly said, “Don’t worry about that,” and of course, they did not worry about it and that administration continued not to worry about it. We now are making movements ahead to deal with that issue, but we are doing so in a rather co-operative manner as opposed to forgetting about it altogether.

That deals with the pensions issue. Just to cover off the final part to the pensions as it applies to the public service, the numbers of employees now, I am not aware of whether or not there was a table with the full number of people who were employed in the previous estimates or not, but I do not think that there are any of us who have any reason for not having it available.

I can just read down the material because I did get a table that reflects the number of people who have been in the civil service from time to time. I will start with the fiscal year 1984-85 and go to the projections for the fiscal year 1988-89 which we have not yet finished.

I will give you three columns of indicators. I will give you a 12-month average, because everybody knows the public service of Ontario is made up of components of classified and unclassified, and people come into the public service on a seasonal basis at higher levels than they are full-year.

I will give you a 12-month average as a result of that, and I will also give you the number of people who are on the payroll as of March 31 each year, bearing in mind that March 31 each year has been used as a bit of a target in which people sometimes used to reduce the numbers to get a favourable-looking statistic, and then on April 1 and 2 following the end of the fiscal year perhaps there would have been an increase in the number of people who appeared.

The head-count game, which I think has gone on, perhaps does not measure effectively the way we would want to measure the performance of our public service. There are a good number of points which should be explored from a human resources development point of view which would tell us that we should not be worried so much about head count, that is, the number of different people working, but should be worried about providing service to the public and measuring our service rather than the number of people.

We would like, in the Ontario public service, to be a modern and model employer able to offer a modern-day family the opportunities in work which would allow flexibility of hours and otherwise, which would get the best out of people. For instance, we would like to look at job sharing and other types of interesting activities.

Anyway, we are where we are at. I will not stray any further into that area of discussion unless my critics would like to get into it. I certainly would be interested in doing that because I think it speaks highly of people who are creatively using the talents of the population and making the workplace reflect the time that is available from members of the public to put into it.

The 1984-85 fiscal year 12-month average is 84,566; on March 31, 80,371. Perhaps for the members I will make a photocopy of this so they will not have to write it all down and I can go through it quickly. The fiscal year 1985-86: 85,290, a change of 724 over the previous year; the March 31 head count was 81,592. In 1986-87 it was 87,235, a 12-month average change of 1,945; March 31, 84,787. In 1987-88, it was 89,863, a change of 2,628; on March 31, 87,255. The projection is about 91,000 with a change of about 1,100 people. The projected figure for the end of March 1989 is 87,390 people.

In that, a number of things are included. In addition to the fact that we have moved to increase the staffing of certain programs which were already in existence and which we felt were understaffed, there were, of course, new programs introduced which have come at a very fast rate indeed under this administration.

As well, there has been a rerating of people between the full-time and unclassified positions, which is not reflected in the overall numbers, but which I think people would be interested in, in terms of the way government expresses its intentions to tell people who work for a good number of years that they deserve to participate in the benefits which go along with a long-time participation in the government.

That talks to the numbers and a little about some of the policies we hope to deal with in regard to people in that area, when we talk about head count.

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I have several other areas that I would like to talk about, one of them, of course, the internal audit, which was brought to my attention basically by both of my critics. For that I thank them, because we spent a bit of time looking at our internal audit, and we are always interested in dealing with the issues that surround the ability of our managers, our deputy heads who report to us in terms of their corporate responsibilities of good management, to try to make things work much better.

It was not that long ago that we were a fairly centralized internal audit organization, so in relation to what the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale has brought to our attention -- i.e., maybe we should be more centralized -- we have decentralized to assist the people who are at the head of each of our ministry organizations and secretariats to try to get firsthand information right away. Now we are being asked to perhaps draw back again and see whether or not we should recentralize.

Mr. Philip: The centralization we are recommending is quite different from what existed in the past.

Hon. Mr. Elston: Of course, everything that is recommended to us is going to be acknowledged to be in some ways different, but in many ways, what we want to see happening is that the people who are responsible at the ministry levels in each case are in fact going to be getting the first series of information pieces which let them, as managers, make the changes.

There is no question in my mind that, for some people, the internal audits can be improved. In fact, when we have met with some of the ministries, the deputies and others have been told that we would like to see them strengthened and I am advised that they even had made some of the suggestions to the auditor themselves that they were willing to see the audit function strengthened.

At all times we are quite willing to consider that, and I think you will find that the performance of the internal auditors in the ministries, even at this stage, has probably improved from the time at which the snapshot which is reflected in the auditor’s report was made, because we have been pursuing that.

As a person who, like the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale, was the chairman of the standing committee on public accounts, the position which the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale now occupies, I am not only quite interested in making sure that people have the opportunity to be effective managers, but from my point of view, we like to make sure at this stage that they make the changes which take away from us the necessity of examining the whole process of public accounts.

From a purely political point of view, there is a good headline or two to be obtained out of the examination of any organization in public accounts, but as individual members of the Legislative Assembly, we would prefer not to get into any of that at all, because if we are into it, there is a problem someplace that has been brought to our attention as members. We would far sooner get away from having to deal with those sorts of problems, and I think that from my perspective, the interests of both of the critics who spoke and mine are at one on that and in fact reflect the desire of the Management Board as well to tighten up those so that we will not have those problems to deal with. If we do not have those types of problems to deal with, we can get on with examining other areas of activity and the measurement of programming by the auditors.

I have just a couple of interesting points to show that we have moved forward on the audit. Our education services branch has indicated that we already have established a partnership with the Ontario Public Service Internal Auditors Council. In connection with this council, we have developed a workshop on Auditing in the Contemporary Computer Environment. That is the name of the program. Clarkson Gordon also has developed a training program called Value-for-Money Auditing for senior auditors and managers. Both of these workshops were delivered in September 1988, which reflects the degree to which we take very seriously the internal audit function. That is not to say, obviously, that we cannot do better, but the fact for the public in this province is to know that we have not stood still, that we are making those strides in co-operation with a number of the same organizations which have been mentioned by my colleagues.

Both critics mentioned the municipal audit bureau, which was designed to co-ordinate the government auditing of municipalities so that we would not have somebody from the Ministry of Community and Social Services one day, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs the next, the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation the next and a whole series of people going down.

From my point of view, that particular way of handling it and managing the program has been effective. I guess it comes down to now finding out, because we were urged by the member for Simcoe West to consider the fact of whether or not we are expanding it -- I would prefer at this point to make sure that the thing is working full well because it is really just a full year into its mandate.

The first reports have been positive. I understand the people who are visited by this group are in fact pleased by the results in the sense of its being more efficient of their time and getting everything wrapped up at one time. That seems to be a positive implication, but I do not think at this stage I am prepared to commit to moving beyond that into other areas until we know exactly how well that is settled. There are some questions about the number of people required to do that and how we can put a staff together as well. That is always on our mind.

The transfer payment agency audit question is one that has been of real concern. I was previously in the Ministry of Health, and of course we put a lot of money through our transfer payment agencies. It was one of those things which was of abiding interest, but the interest in transfer payment agency accountability is something that obviously preceded me.

We have been working at Management Board for some time now and I am advised that by April 1, 1989, we will have a new program in place with respect to the accountability. The ministries now are working to provide a framework to measure the accountability and I think that everyone in the province will be happy to know that the results and the performance of those transfer payment agencies have now gone beyond just being of interest and will actually be measured.

On the question of measuring transfer payment agencies, hospitals, which were pointed out as part of the report of the auditor by the member for Simcoe West, are an important one because it really does underscore one of those interesting balances about which the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale spoke during his opening remarks: the whole question of balancing the local autonomy issue against the need for the central agency or authority accountability. The degree of independence with which the boards at the local level function is always of interest to all of us as individual members.

Perhaps the member for Simcoe West and I, in my capacity as the member for Bruce, have a fair number more of those boards to relate to than the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale does. In terms of hospitals in the ridings of Simcoe West and Bruce, we have a number. I think probably the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale has a couple or so, perhaps much larger, but in any event we all have that same issue. We all have school boards with which to deal. The decision level or at least the type of decision they take with respect to our dollars makes for interesting reading in the local newspapers.

The member for Etobicoke-Rexdale in particular will be well aware of a couple of the financial decisions made by the council in Etobicoke just prior to the last election. That type of decision-making having been taken or made reflects on the type of accountability which I hope we will be getting from the newly elected and more highly remunerated members of the council out in Etobicoke. That having been said, however, we will be proceeding to put the transfer payment agency measurement process in place as indicated.

Estimates was also a very interesting concern of both of the members. For me as well, it has been and continues to be a concern with respect to how the members of the Legislative Assembly measure performance. The manner in which we do that, it seems to me, will strike at the heart of where we wish to take the type of political system we have in Ontario. We have an interesting system right now. In some ways we are more British than the British system from which we originally sprung, in some ways we have gone further than the American system.

For example, the request to have the committee system set the fiscal framework of the government of Ontario might very well be seen to be moving much further towards the congressional style of government than what we are now at.

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Mr. Philip: That is not what the report says.

Hon. Mr. Elston: It is not what the report says, the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale indicates. That is a fair comment, but a change in style may be measured in that manner, in any event. From my point of view, the estimates process, even though it took place when I was in what I now fondly refer to as pregovernment training, or what the members across commonly call opposition these days, was a very good grounding in how government performs.

In fact, I felt at the time as a new member, and even now as a member who is on the government side of things, that it is a very good way of putting the case and the point in a public forum -- although the other committees outside this House may not be quite as public as we would like them to be -- and in fact moving the administration to deal with the issues which are particularly hotly disputed for the next allocations process.

I think the members probably underestimate the effect of their questions, if those questions are well reasoned and put together in a very reasonable fashion and in a very hard-hitting way. There is no better evidence than the estimates for the following year of the rigour with which the estimates were pursued in this Legislative Assembly. I think the members probably for a good number of reasons do not know fully the positive input they have with respect to the numbers that ultimately come out the following year.

We have a whole series of other items we talked about, administration. Perhaps I will go into a couple of items that deal with the cost of administration for the member for Simcoe West, because he has talked to me or at least he has asked questions here and there have been questions from others in here about the increase in the cost of administration.

I would like to enumerate just for the purposes of the people who are watching and listening today the types of things included in the increases which have gone with the costs of government in Ontario. We have done several things, including the setting up and the splitting of several ministries. We no longer have a Ministry of Citizenship and Culture. It is now the Ministry of Culture and Communications. We have a separate Ministry of Citizenship, because we want to reflect the fact that this government has a very high priority with respect to that area of operation. The appointment of the member for Scarborough-Agincourt (Mr. Phillips) is to promote in the very best fashion the fact that this government believes there is an initiative required to represent all of the people of the province.

We have as a result of the creation, for instance, of just those two examples of new ministries, the creation then of offices to support parliamentary assistants and ministers.

There are initiatives required as well to support new things, like the development of the technology fund and the Premier’s Council on Health Strategy and others which will be reflected in the overall administration, because they in fact are included as numbers in the main office expense areas.

We have as well considerable amounts of investments with respect to information technology systems, computer services which are going into the main offices. Some of our ministries reflect the fact that there was underuse of modern technology for communication purposes and for management skills. We have made a commitment to move on that area as well.

We have, in addition to that, new programs which have been adopted by inclusions in the administrative areas for the initial setting up of some of these programs. Those are reflected as well.

I can tell the honourable gentleman as well that some of the things reflected in increased costs of administration are as small, even, as the increases in the cost of pencils. The increase in the cost for instance, between November of 1986 and April of 1988, of a pencil from a $1.65 to $2.43 is one example of that type of thing. That is a substantial cost for people that is not always acknowledged but it is a contributing factor as well; not to say that it is the only one. It is the same thing with tape for instance, which is often used. The cost of transparent tape ranged from $1 in March 1987 to $2.03 in April 1988.

The member can see the fact that the government is not, of course, immune to those types of cost escalations as well. So, while he talks about the cost of administration, I can tell him that we are a much more active and aggressive administrative organization but not, as would be argued and contended by the member for Simcoe West, a group of people who throw money around without looking for results. That in fact is what we are mandated to do and that in fact is what we are doing.

I want to respond just ever so briefly to a couple of things. Regulations were raised by the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale, who I think actually got as close as any person to expressing, although that is not his general habit, the difficulty which faces modern day government, and that is, how do you make sure that you get the best results of the regulation of the marketplace without it becoming so overcrowded with needless reports and pieces of material which the small entrepreneur, the business example that was raised, would have to deal with?

We have taken very seriously at Management Board the need to make sure that our regulation style is simple and straightforward. That is not to say that the report which was sent from one of the legislative committees has been fully adopted but, I can tell the members that the report, or at least the reaction to that, will soon be working its way through our policy committee structure so we can make a formal response to the committee’s report.

In addition to that, we have found ways to address some of the concerns about complexity which the member would be suggesting, by making sure, in reviewing the number of boards and agencies which are out in the field, that there are no overlaps, to the greatest possible extent, so the people do not have to deal with the multiple reportings. That is not to say that we have been fully successful but to say that we are on that road.

That gets into sunsetting and I can tell the honourable gentleman that we are, in fact, moving to put in place for any agency or otherwise, to be graded, the required measurement criteria which would be used or put in place before that board or agency starts its mandate; rather than coming up with a measurement capability towards the end of its mandate, which might very well reflect more of what has been accomplished than what would have been thought should have been accomplished at the outset of its life. That being the case, I think we will get a much more accurate measurement of the results which we hope to have and our responsibility will be much better carried out. Those things would allow us to tighten up the regulation of our marketplace and would allow us to perform much better and more efficiently with respect to our agencies.

Just a couple of other points on government spending and that is with respect to the points made by the member for Simcoe West who had indicated, in the context of the importance of both Management Board secretariat and human resources secretariat, and also the Civil Service Commission, that because of the $38 billion for which we in Ontario are required to be accountable, that we have a heightened responsibility. That is absolutely true, but I want to indicate that that responsibility has been a joint responsibility not only of Management Board in its broadest sense but also that of the executive council, the parliamentary assistants and the members of the Liberal caucus, who have shown in many ways a responsibility towards analysing what we could do better, making suggestions about how we could spend the money much better and even in a more timely fashion.

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I can say that my colleagues from the executive council have been very good indeed in providing for me the support which is required, for instance, to introduce something like the two per cent constraint on salaries and wages. It is a very difficult task indeed, but the accountability which goes with the expenditure of $38 billion requires very tough management activities. I can tell the member for Simcoe West that my fellow members of the executive council met the test and passed with flying colours when it came to implementing that particularly difficult constraint activity.

That having been said, I think that overall the expansion of government spending to the $38-billion plateau has seen with it an increasing and heightened awareness of the introduction of new and more stringent management control activities. I have been well impressed with the level of measurement of new program applications which come through to the Management Board of Cabinet.

The measurement both by the officers who work in the Management Board secretariat and the review of the personnel needs and the executive structure which is needed by human resources secretariat personnel has been first-class. I think it has provided Management Board of Cabinet with the type of information which has allowed it to be much more thorough and more aggressive in some ways in examining what it expects to come out of our programs.

I think that is reflected in a much more active Ontario economy which has responded to the positive influences of the policies of the Treasurer and of the directions of the Premier when he set in place the technology fund and other sorts of activities.

Mr. McCague: Smile when you say that.

Hon. Mr. Elston: The member for Simcoe West invites me to smile at the prospect of having a positive economic situation here in Ontario. I can tell him that along with other political parties in power in some other locations in Canada, the Ontario Liberal Party, of course, takes pleasure at seeing the high degree of activity which has allowed us to respond to the areas of need to which previous administrations felt they should not respond.

We are moving further to assist people in need of housing, in need of extra assistance in meeting daily costs, to help industry locate in northern Ontario and to set a strategy which allows eastern Ontario to participate on an equal footing with the rest of Ontario. I can tell members that it is increased expenditure levels which now have allowed us to aggressively pursue a vision of a new, active and internationally competitive Ontario. Of course, as general manager, as I was so fondly described by the member for Simcoe West, I am pleased to have a hand.

It seems to me that as I have addressed these issues, in providing ourselves with some accountability with respect to where we are moving, I have given you just a very brief overview of some of the positive things we have done. I do not want to be too provocative, to indicate that we have everything solved, because of course that is not true.

We do have some way to go in bringing tighter reins on some of these areas, but we have moved to do that. We have some way to go in providing more programs and more services for those people who are less fortunate than we ourselves. We have some way to go in providing, I think, the sense that everyone has a full opportunity of becoming involved in the public service of Ontario, but we are moving in that direction. We are responding to fairly long-standing needs, but we are doing it in a way which is very sensitive to the skills that are required and to the taxpayers’ needs for accountable and effective expenditure of their dollars.

Those being my few points of response, I would be pleased now to go further into examining some of the other issues which the honourable critics have in mind at this time.

Mr. Philip: At the risk of being somewhat provocative, I can say that if I were transferred back into the estimates of another Chairman of Management Board, who will remain anonymous unless I provoke him, I would have heard the same kind of general statements, the same kind of generalizations, the same lack of specifics that I have heard today. I guess one has to say the government changes but Management Board goes on and on and on.

It is unfortunate that the minister perhaps did not read the report of the standing committee on public accounts very carefully or he would not have been able to generalize that somehow what we were recommending was a return to the old, centralized audit system.

In fairness to the public accounts committee, what we recommended was something very different. We talked about Management Board developing and implementing a government-wide annual internal plan which would include a listing of prioritization of the government’s audit universe, a report on the progress of the previous year’s plan and the comparative analysis of ministry performance and an assessment of the government-wide allocation of the audit staff in light of the plan’s priorities.

I suggest to the minister that is quite different than what the previous Conservative government was doing when it had a so-called internal audit or, as I used to refer to it, a head count of some sort that was very useful to very many people, including the individual ministries.

I say this in as moderate a tone as I can muster: I am really sorry that the minister has chosen to be an apologist for the inadequate estimates process that we now have. His examples of things that may have happened as a result of the estimates process are unfortunate because there is nothing in those examples -- he could not come up with one example -- of any progress that was made through an estimates process that could not have been done in this House through another process.

To simply rationalize it because something has happened as a result of an inadequate process -- I can walk to Vancouver, but it may not be a very good way of getting there; I may eventually get there. Some things did happen in the estimates process. I suspect that a lot of those things could have happened just as quickly through press releases, through letters to the minister, through the use of the 90-second statement before question period, through the use of emergency debates and a wide variety of other things, and that it was not necessary to spend the amount of time dealing with those as the estimates process has.

The proposal of the standing committee on public accounts does not remove ministerial responsibility, as the minister has implied or suggested. It does not set up a bold new system in which ministers are no longer responsible and committees of Congress or committees of the House are somehow taking over all the responsibilities. The proposal is fairly specific. It says that within votes, within items, a committee could reallocate or suggest reallocation of funds. That is quite different from going and telling the Treasurer --

Hon. Mr. Elston: It is the responsibility of the minister, that he set out the manner in which his priorities are set. That seems to me to be a bit of a change.

Mr. Philip: The responsibility of the minister is setting up his budget and setting up his major priorities and all that the public --

Hon. Mr. Elston: But you would move all the money around. You say that you guys as a committee want to move the money around.

Mr. Philip: If the minister wants to speak then I will sit down and let him give another speech. Mr. Chairman, I thought I had the floor.

Mr. Chairman: You do. One member at a time, please.

Hon. Mr. Elston: My apologies.

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Mr. Philip: I do not know why the minister is being so overly defensive when I am trying to explain exactly what the committee members, a majority of whom were made up of members of his party, were advocating. He seems to be so intent on defending the status quo instead of seriously looking at the proposals.

The proposals are fairly clear. The ministerial responsibility is there. All that it proposes is that there be an opportunity for a committee to advocate the reallocation of those funds when, through the result of an intensive study, there is an obvious need for a reallocation of some funds within that vote. The minister is still responsible. Indeed, in the case of the present parliament, the minister would have a majority of members of his party on that committee. He can follow the traditional Conservative role, if he wishes, and advocate the status quo. He is free to do so, but I think that what he has to understand is that he is advocating a system that invariably will lead not to the ministers and the cabinet controlling, but to the bureaucracy controlling.

I suggest to him that unless he seriously looks at the proposals of the federal public accounts committee, Ontario’s public accounts committee, the standing committee on the Legislative Assembly, the Provincial Auditor of Ontario, the procedural affairs committee and the auditor before the present auditor of Ontario, he is seriously missing the boat. He is not keeping power for himself; he is keeping power for the large bureaucracy that seems to operate under cabinet and that a lot of cabinet ministers do not seem to have very much control over.

I was interested in his response to the report of the standing committee on regulations and private bills, in which he says he is going to make a response. I would ask the minister when that response, which he says is a formal government response, will be forthcoming. I would like to know when that government response is likely to be expected, since I think that is an excellent report. It was chaired by one of his own colleagues and I think it makes some very concrete proposals that he has to deal with.

I will end right now by dealing with the one question which the minister asked me rather than vice versa, and that is to what I was referring in the particular item in which I said that there was a problem with the Public Service Superannuation Act where bureaucrats were using a legalistic approach and not following a proposal by the Ombudsman and by the standing committee on the Ombudsman. Let me take one step back, because I think that is a financial matter or a Management Board matter -- I am stopping because the minister is getting some advice from his deputy and I appreciate that it is fine.

First of all, let me take a step backwards. It is not purely the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) who has to deal with it in terms of the Ombudsman. As Chairman of Management Board, he has to come to grips. Management Board has to come to grips. There has to be a process whereby, when an injustice is pointed out by the Ombudsman and by the Ombudsman’s committee and that injustice involves the need to repay someone or some company for something and where the regulations do not provide for that, but that on the justice or the merits of the case there is a need for the government to make retribution, those payments can be made.

I think the Chairman of Management Board can start grappling with that. That is the general policy statement which I think the minister has to look at. I think there are ways of doing that, and one way of doing it is to perhaps pass a general act that would allow an ex gratia payment by any ministry on the recommendation of the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman’s committee.

Let me deal with it in the specific case. In its 15th report, the Ombudsman committee’s recommended “that the Ministry of Government Services and/or the Public Service Superannuation Board pay to” a particular complainant -- as the minister knows, with the Ombudsman’s committee we deal with complainants by letter, so I do not know the name of the particular individual; we simply dealt with the arguments for and against this case -- “pay to the claimant the sum of $2,239.91 plus interest at 6.5 per cent calculated annually from November 30, 1967, to the date the payment is made, as compensation for lost pension benefits occasioned by the failure of the director of the pension funds branch to properly advise the complainant of the consequences of transferring his pension credits from the public service superannuation fund to the Ontario municipal employees retirement system.”

Representatives of the Public Service Superannuation Board attended our committee meeting at the time in March 1988. They stated that they had been unable to implement the committee’s recommendations because they had no authority in their statute to authorize such a payment. After considering the matter, the committee accepted the arguments put forward by the board on the motion and recommended that the committee delay action on the case until amendments to the Public Service Superannuation Act are introduced in the House. We could wait for a very long time for that.

The committee also was advised that after discussing amendments with representatives of Management Board for the purpose of what we could do next to expedite a long overdue settlement in the dispute, we were advised by the Public Service Superannuation Board that the responsible minister is not the Minister of Government Services, but rather the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet.

What I am going to suggest to the minister is this: I am going to suggest that he can either continue to see that injustice is done in this particular case by waiting until the good Lord and perhaps the Premier only know when -- maybe he knows -- when the appropriate amendments to the Public Service Superannuation Act might be forthcoming, or -- and I hope he will seriously consider this -- he could propose a separate item under standing order 15 under this set of estimates or next year’s set of estimates for payment of this small amount that is owed to this person.

I suggest to him that if he really believes that the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman’s committee are of importance and that their recommendations are of importance, then he would seriously consider introducing a one-line item under his estimates, be it this year’s or next, for payment. It is a one-time payment. This particular person has been unjustly denied payment that is owed to him, that the Ombudsman has agreed is owed to him and that the Ombudsman’s committee has agreed is owed to him.

I suggest to him that he might like to see that justice is done and also that it be removed from the books, that we not waste more of the taxpayers’ money, not just on the interest that is accumulating until eventually he will be paid or his estate is paid -- I do not know how old the person is -- and that it not be another problem that is going to take up the time of his officials, the Ombudsman’s committee and 12 members of the Legislature in the Ombudsman’s committee who will have to deal with it again, and that the Ombudsman not have to keep it on his books or possibly have the complainant go back to him with a different line of complaint on the matter.

What we are dealing with is really peanuts in terms of his total budget. He could see that justice is done by simply introducing a one-line item in dealing with it at this point in time.

I want to go into considerable detail with some of the complaints by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and by individual public servants and deal in a very specific way, but I do not feel that it is fair, considering that I am taking up the time of the Conservative critic who may want to also respond to the minister’s responses.

I would like to raise that, though, as my next item on the agenda whenever we have an opportunity to deal with the pensions issue.

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Hon. Mr. Elston: I thank the member for Simcoe West for letting me respond right at the moment. One of the problems with the estimates process is exactly the exchange that took place here before. I was left with no opportunity in this forum to engage in debate about the issue. I am left able to stand up and make a speech about our interests with respect to any particular points.

I rather liked the other committee setting, where I thought the flow of discussion was much better. This is a forum that I think really inflicts an even less flexible manner of discussion on the debate on estimates than what we are already aware of. I think we could do much better if we had a much better exchange of issues, if we were able to talk about the item I interjected on.

That the committee be allowed in some ways to move money around within vote areas and to apply its priorities with respect to where it sees the need, but leaving the minister fully responsible, seems to me to be a bit of a hard thing to manage. To have explored that in front of the people of the province would have been a meaningful exchange, but we cannot do that in this forum. We can do it an awful lot better in a much more informal setting, as the other committees do, but that is a complaint with which we will have to deal in another estimates opportunity, because we are meeting here.

All I want to indicate is that when you have a committee making an allocation of money, whether it is within the regime of a full budget as set out or otherwise, the minister is left with the responsibility. The committee members can say: “It is not our responsibility. All we did was move money from X in line 7 in the votes to Y.” The difficulty is that the minister is left to manage that. There are people who are attached to providing the program in line X who have to be then reallocated to line Y.

All I am saying is that it is much more difficult to do than just have a committee vote on it. I am not dismissing the idea; I was just reminding people that it is a substantial departure from where we have gone. Far from being an apologist for the current system, I was merely trying to point out that there has been benefit in the current estimates situation, that in fact it is not without benefit. I just want to make sure the people of the province know that as well.

The number of dollars spent on preparing for estimates varies greatly from ministry to ministry. There is a lot more money and time consumed for the Ministry of Community and Social Services than there is for Management Board, or for the Ministry of Health than there is for the Office for Senior Citizens’ Affairs. It goes without saying that it takes a lot of time, but I think in most cases that money is not spent without benefit.

I will leave it at that. I will just say that I do not dismiss any attempt to make the estimates process better for everybody involved, but I do not want people to think it is totally without value.

The regulations report: At least with respect to the standing committee on regulations and private bills, it is not for me to respond on behalf of the government. There is a response coming through the auspices of the Attorney General and that is working its way through the policy programs. I suspect that some time next year you will have it in terms of an official response, but I do not wish to commit a member of the executive council, other than myself, to timetables or otherwise.

I know I am interested in the report. It was a report that was taken with a considerable amount of thought and interest. In fact, I was quite interested in the recommendations, which went so far as to suggest that we consider Management Board part of the process at a different level than it now is.

Regarding the example from the Ombudsman and the standing committee on the Ombudsman with respect to Mr. S, we are looking at a manner in which we might make payment. We are seeing exactly what authority we can have. I suspect the answer is not, as the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale suggests, that we move to make payment as a result of an introduction of an amendment to that piece of legislation.

This government is concerned that we treat people fairly, and where there is a problem that has resulted from government administration or whatever, then we move in the best manner possible to make it right. In this case, we are looking at how this might be accommodated so that it can come off both his agenda and our agenda.

But amendments being processed from time to time, bearing in mind the speed at which legislation is being passed and how quickly we get to various initiatives, would not appear to me to be a satisfactory way of addressing this issue either. On that point, I am agreeing with the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale, and we will look at other options that are available to me as Chairman of Management Board.

Mr. Philip: What about the option I just proposed?

The Deputy Chairman: The member for Etobicoke-Rexdale, did you wish to --

Mr. Philip: I just want to ask the minister, what about the option I just proposed? All he needs is a one-line item for the $2,000 in either this set of estimates or the next set of estimates and the problem is removed from him, from the standing committee on the Ombudsman, from the Ombudsman, from Management Board and from the pension plan; it is dealt with, recognizing that he is only doing it at this time because the legislation is not yet there to deal with it in a general way.

Hon. Mr. Elston: I thank the honourable gentleman for his suggestion. We are probably going to have a recommendation made to us, but that is one option and we will consider that with other activities.

Mr. McCague: The minister went on at quite some length about all the good things his government is doing. He did not mention at all the ones of another nature. He started off by inviting me to talk to my leader and combine to make some recommendations to him about how the pensions solution should be designed.

I point out to him that our critic for the Ministry of Financial Institutions is the member for Leeds-Grenville (Mr. Runciman), not myself. But I think it is about time the minister realized they really are the government over there. Whether they are good or not so good will be up to the electorate to decide next time around, but why do they not realize that they are the government and do the governing; not toss their awkward problems back to one of the opposition parties for a resolution, but do it themselves.

I was interested in his remark about unclassified staff not being included.

Hon. Mr. Elston: No, they are.

Mr. McCague: The record may show that the comment was that they were not included, but we will see. Anyway, the minister might want to clarify that.

As far as the internal audit is concerned, I think that is a very valuable function. I happened to be at Management Board at the time that was introduced. It was done in co-operation with Management Board secretariat and the Provincial Auditor. It was very difficult to do. It was resisted to a great degree by the staff of various ministries who thought of it as interference rather than being helpful.

I am personally pleased the minister has seen fit to extend that function. The point I was trying to make to him was that he may have to do something similar in the area of transfer payment recipients.

We have several times raised the issue of the increased staff in ministers’ offices. Each time we do that, it does not matter whether it is the Premier, the Treasurer, the Chairman of Management Board or whoever of their 30 cabinet ministers, everybody throws back the fact that the government got rid of the secretariats. They cannot all take credit for having got rid of the secretariats and that this is the reason the ministers have all increased their staff. It just does not add up, and they know that. The secretariats were got rid of, but the sum total of things is higher than previously.

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The minister tried to persuade us that the reason for his $243-million-plus budget was that pencils and tape had gone up in price. Dear, dear; I am so sorry about that. I am not even sure how many pencils he uses. Maybe a pencil is an answer to some of the questions I have raised with him.

I wonder how the minister is making out with the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) and the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) in bringing together two programs in particular, the administration of the nursing homes program and the homes for the aged. I had some experience with that. Yes, it was open for the previous government to do something about it. We tried and we were not successful. In our time, it was not the political will that was lacking; it was the problem the civil service saw with it -- the bureaucracy, in other words. I am just wondering how he is making out. It would be interesting to know that.

As far as the rumour mill and the things you hear when talking to civil servants are concerned, I have heard the complaint that it is very hard, if not impossible, to get before the board to present a case for more money, more staff or whatever problem a particular ministry staff seems to have. Maybe he would comment on that. Has he limited the number of people he can talk to in a given day, or just what would his answer be to that problem?

Hon. Mr. Elston: I have several comments. We start out with pensions again. All I did was invite the honourable member and his leader to participate. I did not expect them to solve a problem they had no intention of dealing with when they were in government. I did not expect them to even want to be interested in it, but he said he wanted some answers. He seemed to be interested in indexing and I merely invited him to provide me with his thoughts. The fact that he thinks they do not have a role to play is their problem. We are prepared to move on the issue, as I indicated in my earlier remarks. In fact, we are moving ahead for the consultation, and their input is very welcome.

I want to indicate as well that he is very selective with respect to the information I put forward to him about the administrative costs. I merely indicated that even things as minor as pencils, tape and otherwise have gone up in cost and that those have to be accounted for, but in fact those were not the only materials that have gone up in cost; they were not the only reasons the administration costs have gone up.

Neither are they, as he tries to lead the public to believe in error, the reason that there has been an increase in the ministers’ staff. That is the most specious of all the types of arguments I have ever heard, and the fact he would lead the public down a wrong path with respect to their attempt to get at the truth of the matter is highly unbecoming.

I want to indicate as well that we have gone much further in the ability to discuss with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services in any number of ways, to deal in a better fashion with the delivery of programs for all the people of the province.

The issue of increased activity at the community level between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services is well known by now. The commitment to delivery of community services is a fine indication that in concert with our ministries, we are moving to provide service in a much more sensitive and better co-ordinated fashion.

I can tell the honourable gentleman that the issue of nursing homes and homes for the aged, which are divergent in terms of management and administration, is an interesting one for which the member for Simcoe West says there was a political will to find a solution. There ought to have been. It was the same political will that obviously caused the problem. They were there when the divergences occurred.

Homes for the aged have been around for a long time, but the introduction of the nursing homes and the funding which went with those were obviously the result of a more modern administration’s effort, not from a political will point of view, to deal in a very management-efficient way with the delivery of programming to the seniors who needed it. We have a commitment in that area and we are looking at ways of moving forward.

We have a number of people who are responding. Not only the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services, but also the Minister without Portfolio responsible for senior citizens’ affairs (Mrs. Wilson) are involved in addressing the issue in a long-term fashion and looking forward to dealing with the extended care act, which a number of the members here already are familiar with.

Not only are they familiar with that particular initiative, but they found here earlier in the day that the report from the standing committee on social development endorsed the role of the minister responsible for senior citizens’ affairs by reporting and voting her estimates to her, so she could continue that very important work to undo some of the difficulties with which this administration has been harnessed as a result of previous inabilities to provide good programming.

I want to turn finally to the suggestion made by the honourable member for Simcoe West that people in the bureaucracy were unable to appear before Management Board. In fact, we are operating in Management Board, I think, this time with a policy that says when people wish to appear in front of us, they are particularly able to appear.

The interesting thing is that people who wish to bring forward new programming and new initiatives must do so on the basis of an endorsement through the MB 20 process, as the honourable gentleman is aware. For the public of the province, which may not be as familiar with it as we are, the MB 20 is an application for new money or movement of money around or the implementation of new programming which goes to Management Board for approval, because that approval invariably means the movement of money from one line of expenditure to another, as determined by allocations, or may require new money altogether or new staffing, or a new type of management structure to deliver the service. That entire MB 20 process is followed to get an item before us and is endorsed by both the minister and the deputy minister of each ministry responsible for those applications.

Upon being requested to bring those things forward, after analysis, we will consider them at Management Board. We also, where there is an expressed interest on the part of the ministry, invite those people responsible to come before us. I have indicated that if at any time people wish to appear in front of us, they do so. If there is a particular problem, I am always very much available to see people and I do not have any restriction on the number of people I see during a day except the physical limitations of the clock.

We are going to be spending about two and a half hours in this House this afternoon dealing with the discussion of policy issues which are of importance to the public of the province. Since I am here, I am obviously restricted from meeting members of the public service who would wish to bring forward new initiatives, although I can tell members that the criticism which has generally been put on us, as an administration, is that we have been too open to expanding the new program horizon of the public service of Ontario.

They say that we are spending money too fast, that there is too much going out, that there are too many services being delivered. As regards the initiative we have undertaken in expanding the service levels for those people who have been underprivileged, for those people who were underrepresented by a previous administration, for those people who were unable to have access to providing a new sense of direction for the province -- we have been criticized for helping those people too much.

But if there are people who have new initiatives who would wish to have them considered as a part of any ministry’s movement towards a brave new world, then obviously it is up to the administration of that ministry to bring them forward and Management Board will address them in its usual thorough manner. I can tell the honourable gentleman, though, that just because an issue comes forward, it does not mean that we approve every issue that comes forward as written.

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Before issues are approved by this Management Board of Cabinet, I have indicated quite clearly that the business plans must be sound and must include an indication that those people will have measurement criteria for new programs, as I had earlier set out: they must include a way in which they address the corporate initiatives of providing service to the public in languages other than English, as required; they are required to reflect in hiring of new staff the employment equity corporate strategies which we have; they must be sensitive to the overall corporate need to efficiently and effectively change the construction of the public service so it reflects Ontario in general.

I cannot say to the member for Simcoe West that because a plan comes forward we will say, “Go ahead and do it.” In fact, we at all times will be looking for efficiencies. I appreciate that the gentleman is shaking his head and saying, “No, I didn’t say that.” But I want to be absolutely sure he understands that we would not necessarily say yes to everything that came forward.

We have prided ourselves in keeping a very open forum; if people wish to see us, they are certainly well able to come in and talk to us. In fact, on occasion I have extended the invitation to people who might well have not chosen to come and see us in the first place, because I had felt there was a deficiency in the manner in which the programs were fully put down on paper. I think that has been healthy.

I extend in the most public fashion possible an invitation to those other people to come forward if they wish to appear in front of us. I extend the invitation at all times, of course, to any of my colleagues in executive council to discuss and promote the programs which they wish to have approved by Management Board.

In addition to that, by the way, so the members know we at Management Board are not just dollars-and-cents oriented, we have taken to being able to examine policy in a slightly broader nature. I know the member for Simcoe West will appreciate what I am saying, because in the early days it became more dollars and cents and I think it is evolving. He mentioned, for instance, during his time the introduction of the internal audit, which helps to do certain things. Like him, I have taken to moving Management Board discussions just a little further on so that we have as a board a policy consideration opportunity every once in a while so we can keep perspective on where the management of our human resources and our fiscal resources is directed.

I think that is probably a good and positive initiative as well. It certainly is from my point of view, as I am able to get a much broader input. Then from time to time I will invite people from other ministries in conjunction with human resources and Management Board secretariat to provide us with some interesting insight into some of those new areas.

If the impression is, and I know the member is reporting what has been brought to him, that some members of the civil service cannot get in front of Management Board, the invitation is generally one of a very open nature so that people can come and make their representations; not necessarily a stamping of approval of their applications but to explain if they wish.

Mr. McCague: The minister seems to be particularly sensitive about how many ministry staff people there are in all the ministries in government. He is very sensitive about that and rather accused me of being irresponsible in even having raised it. I will just tell the minister what I will do with him. Add up the previous, add up what it is now, and if I am wrong, I will apologize publicly to him.

Hon. Mr. Elston: I thank the honourable gentleman for that pledge. I know he wants people to know that his administration was very creative in the manner in which it brought people on as the ministers’ direct personal staff, or the manner in which it brought people in on contracts as consultants to write speeches for people like the former member from London South, not the current member.

I want the honourable member to know that I was not suggesting that he was wrong in raising the question of ministers’ staffs having large numbers. That, in fact, is a very important issue and it is one about which I am quite concerned because I, like him, want to make sure that people are efficiently proceeding to do their business, that they are not just using positions as ministers to hand out jobs and get no performance out of them.

What I did say was that I felt it was not responsible for him, as he has tried to do now on three separate occasions, to isolate the increase in the administrative costs of the head office of each of our ministries to solely the staff.

Mr. McCague: Answer the question that I asked.

Hon. Mr. Elston: Now he is indicating that he was not trying to do that, so I want to put clearly on the record that the sole reason for the administrative costs increasing is not the number of ministers’ staff people and it is not the cost of ministers’ staff people. That is extremely important.

I will tell the honourable member that when it comes right down to the fact, we are hiring people to assist us, but we are not doing the creative stuff that his organization used to do. That is what this is partly about. When I went through the number of people who were hired for the civil service of Ontario, part of that issue was again the creative way in which there was head count. That reflected the old style of management, the old style of administration, which talked about the number of individuals available but did not talk about the way in which those people performed and responded to the task.

I very much want the people in Ontario to know that the number of people is important, without question, but the way in which they perform in the public service for an employer, for the money they are paid, is of primary importance to us. The manner in which we treat those people in a sensitive and caring fashion so that they can not only carry on their jobs as civil servants in Ontario but also as parents, as children of ageing parents, as volunteers in the community, is equally important to us, and it is something for which I have a real feeling. I hope that we can respond as a model employer on those lines as well.

Mr. Philip: I wish we had more than two hours left in this set of estimates, because we have barely started into them. I do want to deal with pensions, but I do not want to start at this hour, because we simply cannot get into the detail in which I want to deal with them.

Let me, in the last two minutes that we have, put on the record a series of two or three questions which I hope the minister would like to think about. I guess we will not be dealing with this set of estimates again until the House is recalled on January 3 or some time around there, but he may want to think about them and prepare a written response that he can table and we can all look at.

The Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation concept of management representations is one that I think is drawing a lot of interest in the public service across the country, and probably around the world. I guess I have a three-part question that the minister might want to think about.

What are the issues which he feels a deputy minister should be addressing in his or her annual review? Are these linked to specific performance targets?

How are they verified, in his opinion? Does Management Board see a role for his internal auditors in this, or who specifically has this role in examining these?

Last, is Management Board or the minister familiar with the federal government’s involvement in the municipal administration initiative, and what does Management Board think of it? Will he be implementing something similar, or in which direction does he intend to go?

I see that my time has run out.

On motion by Mr. Philip, the committee of supply reported progress.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.