Hansard Transcript 1989-Jan-17 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr. Speaker: I wish to inform the House that I am today laying upon the table the annual report of the Ontario French Language Services Commission for the year ended March 31, 1988.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

IRRADIATION OF FOOD

Mrs. Grier: Today, I will be introducing a bill that seeks to amend the Health Protection and Promotion Act. The bill’s purpose is to prohibit the sale of irradiated food in this province.

The Ontario Liberal government has never made known its position, if it even has one, on the safety of irradiated food. Irradiation is a means of preserving certain foods by using cobalt 60, a byproduct of Candu nuclear reactors.

In May 1987, the federal parliamentary standing committee on consumer and corporate affairs issued a report that had the support of members of all three federal parties. The report’s major finding was that there is currently not enough evidence to say that irradiated food is safe to eat. But in the fall of 1987, the federal Minister of National Health and Welfare, Mr. Epp, turned his back on the committee report and announced that the government would go ahead with proposed amendments to the food and drug regulations to make irradiation commercially attractive to Canada’s food and nuclear industries.

Since then, there has been a groundswell of public opposition to these regulations across Canada. If any food retailer tried to sell an irradiated food in this country today, a consumer boycott would be a certainty. I think Ontario should give leadership to the other provinces by prohibiting the sale of this potentially unsafe food. Ontario can do so under the Health Protection and Promotion Act. If we did, we would be joining the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the state of Maine.

Ontario should ban the sale of irradiated foods.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mrs. Cunningham: On October 17, this government put forth a motion to add a number of subsections to section 4 of Bill 113. As a result of this motion, each time a municipality considers passing a bylaw that will allow Sunday shopping, it must go through a very long and costly process to do so.

First, a public meeting must be held with respect to the proposed bylaw. Second, a notice of the public meeting must be published in a newspaper having general circulation in the municipality at least 30 days before the meeting is to be held. Any person who attends the public meeting will be permitted an opportunity to make representations in respect of the proposed bylaw.

We all are very concerned about the cost associated with these amendments. It is very expensive to organize, advertise and hold such a public meeting, especially for the smaller communities in this province. This notion is another example of the provincial government neglecting its responsibilities by passing the buck and the costs to the municipal government.

VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION

Mr. Adams: I was pleased to see the new Workers’ Compensation Board strategy to decentralize its medical rehabilitation services to provide community clinics, regional evaluation centres and a medical rehabilitation institute. It appears the board is addressing the problems of rehabilitating injured workers in a creative manner.

I was particularly interested in the concept of community clinics. These will provide physiotherapy and other services to injured workers. In my Peterborough riding, we have a catchment population of some 300,000 people. From the number of contacts made in my constituency office, I know there are significant numbers of injured workers in the area. I am also only too aware of the difficulties that arise when these workers have to travel away from home for treatment or other services offered by the board.

In addition to this, there are significant waiting lists for such outpatient services as physiotherapy and occupational therapy at both our local hospitals. Since Peterborough is a regional centre for many agencies and services, I am hopeful we will soon find a community clinic established in the city.

ONTARIO LOTTERY CORP.

Mr. Farnan: Recently, the Ontario Lottery Corp. announced its decision that it would stop advertising its winning lottery numbers in newspapers across the province. The corporation currently spends $2.4 million a year for advertisements twice a week in 42 daily newspapers to provide the official results for Wintario, Lottario, Lotto 6/49 and the Provincial.

This proposed change is more than just an inconvenience to the consumer of lottery tickets; it is an attempt by the Ontario Lottery Corp. to boost the sales of lottery tickets. Before proceeding with the test withdrawal of newspaper advertising, lottery corporation spokesperson Wendy Horne says, “We want our retailers to be ready to handle any changes before we go ahead.”

Obviously, this new marketing strategy is to force lottery players back to the sales counter where they will purchase additional lottery tickets. While many enjoy playing the lottery games as an occasional flutter, this government should realize that it is the poor who spend the greatest percentage of their income on lotteries and that for many others gambling is a disease, a disease this government will be helping to promote by coercing the addicted lottery gambler to constantly return to the environment of his gambling habit.

I would advise the government to think through its proposed policy of withdrawing newspaper advertising of lottery results, bearing in mind the damage its initiative will cause to many Ontario families.

NATIONAL NONSMOKING WEEK

Mr. Sterling: I would like to take this opportunity to officially recognize National Nonsmoking Week. I was very pleased to note that my colleagues from both the opposition and government benches took the time during this week to offer their support for this initiative. I find this most encouraging.

In light of the apparent support for nonsmoking endeavours from all sides of this House, I have taken the liberty of giving each member of this assembly a sucker to commemorate National Nonsmoking Week and, in particular, Weedless Wednesday tomorrow. I encourage all members who are trying to lick the habit to attempt to do so tomorrow. “Lick the habit -- only suckers smoke,” is an attempt to offer an alternative to the smoking habit and I invite anyone who is trying to break this habit to come to my legislative office for his own tobacco placebo.

The colour-coded treats come equipped with their own calling card reminding members not only of National Nonsmoking Week, but also that this Legislature has two very valuable pieces of smoking legislation, Bill 157, my bill, and Bill 194, the bill of the Minister of Labour (Mr. Sorbara), awaiting passage.

I am confident this Legislature, through its statements of unqualified support, will legislate these initiatives with perhaps a few amendments in the very near future.

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GREG AND GEOFF MCKAY

Mr. Callahan: Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce to you and the other members of the assembly two of my constituents who, through their initiative, have made use of our excellent educational facilities in the province to achieve considerable success, in the field of high tech, I might add.

Greg McKay and his identical twin brother, Geoff, whom I am sure everyone will be able to identify in the gallery, attended York University where they pursued degrees in business. Thereafter, they attended Humber College with the net result that in June 1986 they established their own business to produce and sell computer software. I had the privilege of recently attending the opening of their corporate headquarters and their fully automated manufacturing plant.

I think these two gentlemen certainly are indicative of the excellent educational facilities we have in this province and perhaps reinforce the directions by this government in pursuing high tech and also establishing the Premier’s Council, which will allow entrepreneurs such as these two young men and other young people in our province to achieve equal success.

My congratulations to the dynamic duo, Greg and Geoff McKay.

AIR QUALITY

Mr. Laughren: Many members of the assembly will know of the problems in the Sudbury area concerning the blowing of tailings. Tailings are a necessary byproduct of the nickel industry in Sudbury, but what is not necessary is to have those tailings blowing across the landscape, across the highway, into people’s homes and causing a great deal of concern in the community. As a matter of fact, motorists sometimes have to turn their lights on when those tailings are blowing across the Trans-Canada Highway. That presents some kind of image to tourists who are driving through Sudbury.

I have been after previous ministers of the Environment for about 10 years. When the government changed, nothing changed in terms of the Ministry of the Environment and its approach to Inco and the blowing of tailings. At no point has this Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) ever come out with a statement or ever indicated that he even cares about the blowing of the tailings. I wrote him a letter back on June 7, 1988. He has not yet even responded to that letter to indicate there is any intention to do anything at all about those blowing tailings in the Sudbury area.

The Minister of the Environment keeps making all the right noises, but does absolutely nothing about the problem. I remind the Minister of the Environment that when Inco was given permission to expand its tailings some 15 years ago, it promised it would look after the problem. They never have and neither has the Minister of the Environment.

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

TEACHING HEALTH UNITS

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: Today, I am announcing additional funding of $600,000 to expand the teaching health unit program. Two existing units, in Ottawa-Carleton and Hamilton-Wentworth, will each receive enrichment funding of $85,000 to expand their teaching activities. In addition, two new teaching units will be established, one in East York affiliated with the University of Toronto and one in Sudbury affiliated with the University of Ottawa.

The Sudbury and District Health Unit will receive $70,000, to provide a bilingual northern learning opportunity for University of Ottawa students, and the Borough of East York Health Unit will receive $360,000. East York was chosen because its population size, demographic profile, program content and administration are typical of many across the province.

My ministry took an innovative step three years ago when it provided special funding for two public health units to expand their role in teaching nursing and medical students. These two pilot projects proved highly successful.

Our aim in establishing the special teaching health units was to broaden the focus of university teaching and research in medicine and nursing from traditional institutional settings to include community settings. This shift is essential to foster leadership and professional expertise in health promotion and disease prevention in Ontario.

Under the program, medical students spend time at the health units working alongside nurses, doctors, nutritionists and health inspectors, gaining firsthand exposure to community health practice. Nursing students are paired with health unit nurses and participate in multidisciplinary sessions on community health issues and approaches.

Our objective is to see teaching health units develop into centres of excellence for community health research and teaching. The first two have met our expectations.

The funding I am announcing is in keeping with our government’s commitment to broaden community health programs in Ontario. We recognize the important contribution of our public health units in the area of teaching and research.

RESPONSES

TEACHING HEALTH UNITS

Mr. Reville: Naturally, the New Democratic Party welcomes the announcement today by the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) that existing units in Ottawa-Carleton and Hamilton-Wentworth will have enrichment funding and that two new teaching units will be established in East York and Sudbury. We obviously applaud any measures the government undertakes to improve its effort in respect of community health and particularly in respect of health promotion and disease prevention.

Although this is a large amount of money when compared to something smaller, say our salaries, it still is a very insignificant amount of money when compared to the amount of money the Ministry of Health spends annually. I think this is an appropriate time to continue our oft-repeated call for the government to really get serious about health promotion and disease prevention and community health, and to stop nickeling and diming us to death.

Mr. Eves: It is a pleasure for me to rise and comment on the minister’s statement. We welcome the minister’s statement, but as my colleague the member for Riverdale (Mr. Reville) has rightly pointed out, the amount is rather insignificant when we look at the total health care budget.

I am certainly in support of the initiatives the minister has announced in the Legislature this afternoon. However, I wonder how she can somehow reconcile the position she has enunciated this afternoon in the Legislature with the fact that her ministry has a concerted effort to cut back on residency positions across Ontario.

As we talked about yesterday in the Legislature, I am sure the minister will be interested to note that the Canadian Paediatric Society, the Canadian Medical Association and the Hospital for Sick Children disagree with the minister about the need for and the shortage of paediatricians in Ontario.

ORAL QUESTIONS

NURSING SERVICES

Mr. B. Rae: I have some questions again today for the Minister of Health on the continuing crisis we face in our health care system, with so many patients on waiting lists for many kinds of surgery, but in particular I want to come back to the question of heart surgery.

I want to ask the minister about a case that was drawn to my attention recently concerning George Farrugia, who as I speak is in Toronto General Hospital waiting for an angiogram. I would like to simply tell the minister that Mr. Farrugia began feeling poorly in November. It took him November, December and into January before he could arrange an appointment with a cardiologist. Just before his appointment with the cardiologist he felt poorly, went to the emergency of Etobicoke General Hospital and his heart actually stopped. He then went on a waiting list for an angiogram once he was stabilized. He is now on the waiting list for an angiogram, waiting in Toronto General Hospital. If the angiogram shows he does need surgery, he will then again be put on yet another waiting list.

I want to ask the minister, of all the announcements she has been making day to day in this Legislature, why is it she and this government have yet to announce any particular measures that will deal directly with the nursing shortage, with the cancellation and delay of visits and surgeries as a result of this, and with the fact there is not just one waiting list but several.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As the Leader of the Opposition knows, and we have discussed this a number of times here in this House, the issues he proposes are in fact highly complex issues. We know, for example, that the number of people being recommended for cardiac surgery in this province has increased dramatically.

Shortly after becoming Minister of Health I announced a substantial increase in the capacity to deal with that increase. Some $18 million in direct increase was announced some time ago. I can tell him that the hospitals in downtown Toronto, following the meeting with ministry officials, informed us that they have already begun to address the many issues which this situation has brought forth.

Mount Sinai Hospital, I can tell the Leader of the Opposition, is now up to full complement in the area of critical care nurses and operating nurses. It has responded, I think positively, to some of the recommendations in the reports which have come forward. Further, with the implementation of the registry which the physicians in Toronto worked on to bring forward the kind of co-ordination which is necessary, I believe that in very short order we will see the capacity increase which the hospitals committed to.

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Mr. B. Rae: The critical question is whether the glacial pace at which this government is moving and at which the whole system is moving is going to be fast enough to help Mr. Farrugia. We know it has not been fast enough to help Mr. Coleman and the many, many others who either died waiting or died as a result of the extraordinary delays in the system. I specifically want again to ask the minister: Is she saying, then, that she is satisfied that the hospitals on their own can solve this problem and there is no need for intervention by her government when it comes to dealing with the particular question I asked with respect to the shortage of nurses?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I have been meeting on an ongoing and regular basis with many individuals in the nursing profession, teaching profession, academics, College of Nurses of Ontario, to discuss this very issue and to determine what is appropriate. What I have been informed is that the issues are extremely complex and that one of the most important things I can do is to bring people together to solve those problems. As he knows, I have been very supportive of bringing together the leadership of the Ontario Hospital Association which has been working very co-operatively with the ministry to seek solutions on behalf of the employer and the Ontario Nurses’ Association, the union that negotiates the working conditions and the pay practices under their collective agreement. These issues are extremely complex. However, I believe we are making progress and that these issues are being resolved.

Mr. B. Rae: I think the minister has to understand the real human tragedy which is taking place and the incredible pressure it puts on families as well as on the patients themselves. The minister, I am sure, will have received by now -- she may not have had a chance to read it -- a copy of a letter from Lou Brandes from Barrie, Ontario, who wrote a letter to Matt Maychak of the Toronto Star in which Mr. Brandes outlines the tragic story of his mother who fell ill in St. Catharines in fall of 1987; had to wait until January 1988 to have an angiogram at St. Michael’s Hospital; was scheduled for surgery in March 1988; had her surgery cancelled not once but several times between March and July; even on admission in July had her surgery delayed until July 20; and then suffered a devastating stroke while under surgery on that day and died a month later.

This delay may have contributed to the anxiety which may have contributed to her deteriorating condition. I cannot understand and I wonder if the minister can explain why she has not announced in this Legislature one single initiative with respect to nursing that would deal with this critical problem. Can she explain why, of all of the announcements she has made, not one of them has dealt with the critical question of nursing?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: In fact, there have been a number of announcements and initiatives. When I asked what was the most important thing I could announce as minister to recognize the changing role of nurses in the profession, I was told by nurses belonging to all associations working in all aspects of nursing care that the most important thing this government could do would be to announce the opening of the Public Hospitals Act to recognize the changing role of nurses and to ensure that they have a say in the hospital structure.

I believe that is a very significant and important signal to the nursing profession in this province that in fact we are moving forward to recognize the frustration with working conditions. Many of the recommendations that were brought forward in the reports we have discussed in this House, both from the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario and the Hospital Council of Metropolitan Toronto.

We know that the solutions are often found in the negotiations and discussions between the employers, the hospitals and the union. I am hoping, by bringing them together --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: -- that we will be able to find the solutions together that will resolve the frustration of the working conditions.

PAY EQUITY

Mr. B. Rae: My new question is to the Minister of Labour. He produced a report yesterday from the Pay Equity Commission, which report suggested a delay of some year and a half to two years and a series of pilot projects on a number of possible ways of dealing with the pay equity problem. I want to come back to the minister’s own obligations, things that even this commission has recommended the minister must do in order to deal with this problem.

I wonder if the minister can explain for this House why when he made the announcement yesterday, having had the report on his desk for several days, having had an opportunity to read it and to see what is required, he has not announced any initiatives with respect to changes in the Employment Standards Act, changes in the Labour Relations Act or changes in the minimum wage, which have in fact been specifically proposed by the commission as part of the solution to the problem of those women who are working in occupations dominated by women.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I am really sorry to say that in this case the Leader of the Opposition has really gone to the ridiculous. He is pretending in his opening question that in respect of the Employment Standards Act, in respect of minimum wage and in respect of things like employment equity, the Pay Equity Commission and the report that I tabled yesterday made comprehensive recommendations.

What they did say is that in dealing with the situation of women in low-paying jobs, above and beyond a comprehensive strategy dealing with women in predominately female establishments the government should also consider initiatives in the area of minimum wage, should consider perhaps initiatives in the area of employment equity and should consider possible solutions within the Employment Standards Act.

The commission did no investigation of those areas and made no specific recommendations. I want to tell the Leader of the Opposition that on the suggestion that some of the solutions can be found in minimum wage, employment standards and employment equity initiatives, I agree with the commission that in dealing with the terrible working and wage situation of some women we have to look not only at the Pay Equity Act, not only at the challenges in predominately female establishments, but also those --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Mr. B. Rae: There are three very specific areas of reform which the Pay Equity Commission says the government should be dealing with. The minister will want to have a look at the wording of the Pay Equity Commission when it comes to those questions. But since he has now raised the issue of employment equity, in 1985 his leader, the Premier (Mr. Peterson), signed an agreement with me and indeed with the people of the province saying that employment equity would be a priority for the government in 1985.

Can the minister tell us why there has been no legislated program to deal with employment equity either within the government or in the private sector, no timetables established, no targets, no date set, no clear mandate given for legislation?

The minister has another recommendation here saying that until we have laws in place we will not be able to break down these barriers. Why is it that in over three years, nearly four now, coming up to four years in May since the signature of his leader on that accord, the minister has done nothing to address the legal issue of employment equity, nothing at all?

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Hon. Mr. Sorbara: First of all, a number of very significant initiatives have been brought forward in the area of employment equity, through a variety of incentive programs funded by the dollars of the taxpayers of this province.

Second, in relation to workplace legislation, no government in the history of this province has been so active in bringing about reforms in the workplaces of this province over the past three years. Our record stands out in that area.

Third, when one looks at initiatives affecting women, pay equity initiatives and employment equity initiatives, look at the Pay Equity Act that all of us who were here in the last parliament passed. Compare it, for example, to the Pay Equity Act that the New Democratic Party in Manitoba passed while it was in office. That act did not touch the private sector. That act did not make a commitment to deal with predominantly female establishments. In fact, it dealt exclusively with the public sector.

Ontario’s equity legislation can stand against any jurisdiction in the world and be a leader when that comparison is made.

Mr. B. Rae: It is an embarrassment to think that a minister would take pride in a complacent way in a piece of legislation which, even on the government’s own commission’s evidence, leaves over half the women who are supposed to be covered by that legislation out in the cold and in the dark. The minister announced yesterday not one single specific recommendation to deal with that problem.

I wonder if the minister could do us the favour of telling us whether he agrees with this following statement, not by me, but by the Pay Equity Commission, saying specifically: “Low wages paid in the predominantly female sectors of child care, social and community services, and the health sector...often reflect the public funds that are available” and “A third initiative to address the overall low wage problem, as well as the undervaluation of women’s work in the target sectors, is to increase the levels of government funding.”

Does the minister agree with that statement, yes or no?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I will tell the member what I do agree with. I agree with the suggestion that if we are going to deal with questions that are very complex and require inputs from government -- initiatives in the Legislature and initiatives on a voluntary basis -- and if we see the problems that we are confronting as a complex mix that requires a complex set of solutions, then we are going to make progress.

I know that it is important for the Leader of the Opposition to say that a Minister of Labour, having had a report for a few days, should present to the world a system of complex solutions.

Mr. B. Rae: You have been sitting on this stuff for years.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: The Leader of the Opposition is shouting that I have been sitting on this stuff for years. I received a report a few days ago, which was submitted in a timely fashion, which set out an agenda, in which the commission suggests that, given some time and doing some modelling, a workable and practical solution -- and I am quoting the commissioner -- to a complex methodological problem can be developed.

I am looking forward to the commission doing that work and I am looking forward to funding initiatives, legislative initiatives and voluntary initiatives making this province one that we can all be proud of.

HEALTH SERVICES

Mr. Brandt: My question is for the Minister of Health and it relates to the rather unprecedented step that has been taken by the doctors of this province, advertising to the people of this province the difficulties that their patients are having with respect to accessibility to health care.

For some two years now, we have been pointing out that heart surgery in this province takes some six months in order to get on the list to get surgery performed. We have indicated --

Hon Mr. Scott: I learned my lesson very quickly.

Mr. Brandt: I will wait until the Attorney General is finished his comments.

We have been pointing out that hip replacements are taking up to two years, hospital beds are closing and now the doctors are advertising through this medium and through a number of advertisements that the problem is becoming increasingly more serious with respect to getting access to health care in Ontario.

Could the minister indicate, after the comments that she has made in this House in connection with steps that she has taken to alleviate the problem, how long she anticipates it will be before we start seeing a shortening of the waiting period for heart surgery, a reduction of the waiting period for hip replacements and an improvement in the entire system of health care that has now imposed upon us a very lengthy wait for many, many procedures?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As the leader of the third party would know, waiting lists are not new to this province. In fact, this government has made health care a priority and has made a significant commitment of resources over the past three years, from the time when we took office. The budget at that time was some $10 billion; today it stands at $12.7 billion.

The Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) recently announced a transfer payment to the institutional sector, to the hospitals, of some 8.1 per cent, up almost half a billion dollars. We expect that Ontario health insurance plan payments will increase by a quarter of a billion dollars next year.

We know that there are many challenges facing us in health care, but, and I answer specifically in the area of cardiac surgery, in downtown Toronto we expect the capacity, which was announced to be increased, to be up and running very shortly. I can tell him that some 60 critical care nurses are completing their training. It is a highly specialized area of nursing. They will be completing their course at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in very short order, and we expect that downtown Toronto should be up and running at a fully funded capacity within weeks.

Mr. Brandt: What the minister is saying is that more money is being spent and waiting lists are going to get longer. I gather that is the message she is giving to the people of Ontario. Really, that is not the trust that she established with the people of Ontario with respect to the health matter. What she did say was that she would improve accessibility, that she would improve health care; it was not a question of the amount of money that she was going to spend but she in fact had a plan to improve these things.

With respect to the trust question, I have a letter here dated July 11, 1988, addressed to the North Bay Civic Hospital, to the chairman of the board, in which the minister has linked very directly the expansion and the further development of the North Bay Civic Hospital to the whole question of changing the methodology by which doctors are to be paid in this particular facility.

Since both the minister and the Premier (Mr. Peterson) have indicated in their public statements that it is not their intention to put doctors in this province on salaries, why would she in fact link a hospital expansion to a requirement that it change the method of payment to doctors to a salary concept in order for the expansion to be approved by her ministry?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae) knows, as does the leader of the third party, that it has been a long-standing government policy to offer options and choices on a voluntary basis to providers of health services. We have examples of health service organizations, community health centres, sessional fees and many different types of alternative payments already existing within the province. That has been the position.

We have been talking to communities about trying innovative and creative proposals for provision of services.

lnterjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: In a recent throne speech we announced a comprehensive health organization. That planning is taking place and I believe that there are some very good discussions going on in a number of communities in this province that wish to try the delivery of services in innovative and creative ways.

Mr. Brandt: The minister uses creative rhetoric in order to make a point which really misses the question that I have raised: whether she has linked the two. What she has indicated is that these are options and alternatives that are available to the doctors and to this particular facility. The fact of the matter is the minister has indicated that if they do not accept her option, she is going to phase out one of the hospitals -- that is exactly what she said in her letter of July 11, 1988 -- in that region and that the expansion would be directed towards the other hospital.

It is almost like saying, “Let me make you an offer you can’t refuse.” That is the kind of rhetoric the minister has used. Why would she logically link in her mind the expansion of a hospital in North Bay to the requirement that the doctors be put on salary and that there be some form of capitation introduced in order to make this facility a reality for the people who require it in North Bay?

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Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I think the leader of the third party is clearly missing the point. What we have been talking about in a number of communities across this province are alternative approaches for delivering services. We recognize that there are many options and alternatives available in the province today. As I said, there are health service organizations that are of great interest to a number of physicians, community health centres that are supported by communities right across this province, and we are looking at innovative and creative proposals for comprehensive health organizations.

These discussions are ongoing in a number of communities. I believe this is extremely appropriate as we look at a positive shift in the delivery of health care to the kinds of innovative and creative opportunities that trying to deliver services in alternative ways present to us. This has been recommended in every one of the reports we have received over the last number of years and I would think the leader of the third party would be supportive of trying some innovative and creative approaches.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. Eves: I have a question of the Minister of Health as well. Last Monday, I brought to her attention the case of Douglas Porter and his wait for heart surgery. For the minister’s information, Mr. Porter is back in the hospital and has now been moved to the critical list. To quote from the minister’s answer of last Monday, “ in fact our system is designed so that those requiring emergency and urgent care can receive that care first.”

Mr. Porter is indeed now an emergency and urgent case, yet his surgery is not scheduled until the end of February, if it does not get cancelled at the last minute. Obviously, the minister is the one who does not have her facts straight in this matter. What is she going to do about Mr. Porter and the hundreds of other Mr. Porters out there who require heart surgery immediately?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I have said on numerous occasions in this House that we rely on the physicians to use their very best medical judgement to determine who should receive priority. One of the things occurring with the establishment of the cardiac registry in the province is common definitions so that those who are designated as emergency, urgent or elective can be clearly identified on all the different lists the physicians have.

We know that because of the size of downtown Toronto co-ordination is sometimes difficult. That is one of the reasons we are right now looking at the procedures for admission and the co-ordination of that in one of the downtown teaching hospitals, St. Michael’s Hospital, to see if we can be helpful in using the very best procedures available in the province. We have brought in expert advice to help determine how those lists can best be co-ordinated. I tell the member that the hospitals are working together co-operatively, that I have spoken directly with some of the surgeons and that I have been assured this situation is in hand.

Mr. Eves: The minister told us on June 9 when she made her announcement in the House that the problem would be solved almost immediately, that these beds would be up and running almost immediately. We are now in the middle of January, over seven months later.

I have been receiving calls from very concerned patients and their families from across the province in the last few days. If need be, we will raise each one of these cases individually until the minister realizes the seriousness of the situation and takes some action.

Today, I received a call from Mrs. Foster from Lindsay, Ontario, whose 54-year-old husband needs heart surgery. He has not been able to work since September and his condition is worsening, in large part due to the stress of being on the waiting list for surgery. Yet his cardiovascular surgeon, whom I spoke with this morning, cannot even schedule him because he is completely booked for the next six months. Does the minister have any words of wisdom for Mr. Foster and the hundreds of others like him out there?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As I said, I rely on the advice of physicians in this province. I will read to the member a quote from Dr. Keon of the Ottawa Heart Institute, who said:

“I don’t think the demand does exceed our ability to do the operations. In Ottawa, our waiting list currently is 270-some patients or a wait of about 10 weeks, and you have to have a wait of six or eight weeks for the institution to function efficiently. We are turning our volume up slightly, as a matter of fact, within the next few weeks to try to reduce our waiting list, but it is not excessively long and we think that the people are being managed in a pretty safe way. I realize there are waiting lists in Toronto, but also these waiting lists are not out of hand.”

This is Dr. Keon from Ottawa where he says the waiting lists in Toronto are not out of hand.

“I believe that with some relatively minor adjustments, the patients who are at risk and who need coronary surgery could be managed.”

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

[Applause]

Mr. Eves: If the members opposite would like to applaud the fact that they think waiting even 10 weeks for emergency heart surgery is a fine way to run a government --

Hon. R. F. Nixon: Dr. Keon knows about it more than you do. Cheap politics.

lnterjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will recognize the member for Parry Sound for a supplementary.

Mr. Eves: There is no doubt that a long-term solution to this problem will take time. I think everybody agrees with that. But time is running out for hundreds of patients waiting for heart surgery on waiting lists. There is a crisis situation in the province and I think the minister has a responsibility to immediately implement some short-term solutions. I will give the minister a couple of suggestions today.

She could agree to allocate money to hospitals so that they can afford to pay critical care nurses according to what they are worth, when they work, what experience they have and what expertise they have, whether they work for agencies now, whether they work for hospitals now, or elsewhere in North America. She can also bring in much-needed technologists -- she admitted last week there is a shortage of them as well -- from elsewhere; and yes, all of that will cost money.

To answer the comment of the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) of a few short moments ago about playing cheap politics --

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

Mr. Eves: What steps will she immediately take to alleviate the crisis?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would say to the third party’s Health critic and to the people of the province that I have been assured by the downtown hospitals in Metropolitan Toronto that they will be able to bring up the case load to the funded level by the beginning of March.

The increase in the number of critical care nurses is due to the initiative to train additional nurses who will be graduating from the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute program very shortly. We know as well that the first stage of the registry is in operation and we hope that admitting and prioritizing procedures by the hospitals working together will enhance the registry, so that all hospitals and all physicians will know what resources are available.

I believe we will then be able to resolve what has been a very frustrating issue for all of us, as there have been delays in bringing the funded capacity on stream.

PLANT CLOSURE

Mr. Mackenzie: I have a question for the Premier of the province. In a letter to him dated January 13, the steelworkers informed him that on January 9, while in mediation and the day before a new contract was to be ratified, the chief American negotiator for Echlin Canada Inc., 500 Carlingview Drive, Rexdale, informed the workers, members of Local 8257 of the United Steelworkers, that their manufacturing operation was being moved to the southern United States.

With more than 100 of the 125 workers with less than five years’ seniority in that plant going to lose their jobs, there is very little protection. This could well be the tip of the iceberg we are beginning to face in the free trade fiasco, and I am wondering if the Premier is prepared to use his legislative powers to stop the sellout of Canadian workers by the federal government that has obviously occurred.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The Minister of Labour could help the honourable member out.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I simply want to advise the member for Hamilton East and the House that indeed Echlin has announced it will be closing that facility in Etobicoke. A form I has been filed with the Ministry of Labour because the number of employees affected by that layoff comes within the parameters of Bill 85, the notice and severance termination legislation that this House passed in the last parliament.

The Ministry of Labour has been working in co-operation with the steelworkers in that facility on employment adjustment programs that all the workers are involved in. The member has asked whether we would he bringing in legislative initiatives. I want to tell him that I think the interventions we are making there are going to provide effectively for those workers who, regrettably, have been affected by this layoff.

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Mr. Mackenzie: To the minister, or to the Premier through him: Back in May 1985, the Premier of this province signed his name to an accord with this party that stated that one of the things that would be done would be additional protection for workers in terms of plant closures, which was and is a serious problem we are facing in Ontario, and that it would deal with severance, with notice and with justification.

That is four years ago now. Was that never meant to be carried out? Was it another lie or does the government intend to bring in such legislation to protect workers in a situation where it is now obvious?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I listened very carefully and I know most members are very careful with their language.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Sometimes we have to regret the language of the member for Hamilton East.

The member for Hamilton East was in this House when Bill 85 was introduced, debated and passed. Bill 85, which makes very fundamental amendments to the Employment Standards Act, provides for severance pay, provides for notice and provides a requirement that every company involved in a layoff of any size at all must submit to the government the reasons and an explanation why that layoff is taking place. That gives us, among other things, an early warning system so we can intervene with employee adjustment programs.

In other words, what we have done in this parliament is exactly what we said we were going to do. We have the most progressive legislation in this area of any jurisdiction in Canada, and I think in North America as well.

COMMUNITY SAFETY

Mr. Runciman: I have a question to the Minister of Health and it deals with Lieutenant Governor’s warrants. She is well aware of the calls by myself and the member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham) with respect to the attack on a teenage London girl that almost cost her her life some months ago. We called for a public inquiry and we called for a review by the Provincial Auditor. The minister denied those requests and she has, in effect, participated in a whitewash with respect to that situation.

Will the minister tell the House today what she knows about a forensic outpatient at the Brockville Psychiatric Hospital being charged for a knife attack on a Brockville woman last Friday?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The incident the member opposite refers to is under police investigation, and as the matter will likely go before the courts, I cannot comment in this House.

Mr. Runciman: When she comments, she will not say anything meaningful anyway.

Charges have been laid against a man on a loosened Lieutenant Governor’s warrant, a man found responsible for the brutal 1973 sex murder of a nine-year-old Toronto boy. I have been advised by staff at the Brockville hospital that they expressed concerns about this man’s recent behaviour to medical staff and hospital administration and those concerns were ignored.

Is the minister prepared to hold a public inquiry into this very serious incident or is she going to play games with public safety like she has in London?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The member opposite will know and I think will acknowledge that my priority is always public safety and that the implementation of risk management procedures in the psychiatric institutions of this province has been the priority for me. I can tell him that in fact in this case there will be the most important of all public inquiries, and that will be in the courts, where I believe this matter will be fully aired. As it will be before the courts, I cannot comment at this time.

GRAPHITE PRODUCTION

Mr. Campbell: My question is for the Minister of Mines. There have been recent press reports regarding the supply of graphite in Canada. The government of China has announced it will severely curtail the export of graphite. Can the minister advise the House what impact this will have on Ontario’s industrial mineral sector.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I want to thank the honourable member for his ongoing interest in the very important mineral sector in this province. I can tell him that my officials and the officials at the federal Department of Energy, Mines and Resources are monitoring the Chinese situation.

It appears that the current contracts the Chinese have entered into will be maintained. It is still early to tell what the impact is going to be, but certainly it does appear that if the Chinese do withdraw to some extent, it will provide additional opportunities to the Ontario producers of graphite, a number of which are well advanced in some preproduction measures at the present time.

Mr. Campbell: There have been some reports, as the minister alluded in his first answer, of a flake graphite processing plant being established in the Sudbury region. Given the highly strategic nature of the mineral, does the minister know if new developments will advance the opening date of this plant?

Hon. Mr. Conway: The member refers to one of those operations, namely Cal Graphite, which is at the current time preparing to go into production north of Huntsville. They are looking as well at a research facility, a processing facility I believe, in the Walden area of the Sudbury basin. It is too early to say whether or not the news from China will expedite the activities in the Walden area, but I can tell my honourable friend we have a number of very positive developments and activities at the present time.

Certainly, I am very encouraged by what I see taking place in so far as the graphite possibilities in Ontario at the present time are concerned. I am encouraged to know that the Cal Graphite operation near Kearney north of Huntsville is going to go into production. I hope the Walden facility will come along at a very early time, but at the present moment it is just too difficult to know whether or not the decision announced by the Chinese will speed that along.

SCHOOL FUNDING

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I have a question to the Minister of Education. I would like to ask the minister if he was accurately quoted, or if he was serious, when he said last week in the Windsor Star that none of the school boards that have submitted budgets that have a deficit because of the government’s lack of response to a number of issues that arose out of Bill 30 and the lack of funding by his government, will get one cent of capital grants from this government in this coming fiscal year?

Hon. Mr. Ward: In response to that question from the member for Windsor-Riverside, I will indicate to him that I am indeed serious when I say to all boards of education in this province that my ministry will not accept budgets that are presented to the ministry for approval if those budgets contain operational deficits.

Such a practice is clearly not permitted under the statutes and regulations of this province. During the course of my conversations and consultations with boards throughout this province, I have made it quite clear they are obliged to submit balanced budgets to me and to my ministry, and that is indeed my expectation.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: The budgets that were submitted were submitted last year and the ministry has not responded to date.

Specifically, is the minister saying to school boards like the Essex County Roman Catholic Separate School Board, which is applying for schools, for a new elementary school in the town of Tecumseh that has been supported by the member for Essex-Kent (Mr. McGuigan) and myself, or a new high school out in the area of the member for Essex South (Mr. Mancini), that none of those capital grant applications are going to be approved by the ministry, and that the Essex County Roman Catholic Separate School Board will not be considered for capital grants because it submitted a deficit budget last year?

Hon. Mr. Ward: Maybe I can help the member even further by giving him an example of one of the deficit budgets that has been submitted to my ministry, supposedly in a deficit situation because of lack of access to commercial and industrial assessment.

One of the boards submitted a budget showing a very substantial deficit. It claimed the reason was that provincial grants had not kept pace with increases in enrolment as a result of the extension under Bill 30. In that particular example, over the last three years enrolment had increased some 26 per cent and grants from the provincial government had increased by 39 per cent. The amount of deficit was far in excess of any unapproved expenditures that may perhaps be funded in part by additional commercial assessment.

I would make the point to the honourable member that in every capital budget submission put forward by boards of education there is a local share. In making that submission, they have to identify the revenue source for that local share. The point that I make to all boards that submit a deficit budget is simply this: If they are unable to balance their operational budgets as submitted, then surely they do not have the ability to fund the local share of their capital allocations either.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. Perhaps if there is anything further, you could write to the member.

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TRANSIT SERVICES FOR THE DISABLED

Mr. Cureatz: I have a question to the minister responsible for disabled persons. As the minister is well aware, the GO rail system has been newly expanded east of Metro Toronto, terminating at present at the Whitby station on Brock Street. We are of course hoping for further expansion into Oshawa. It has been brought to our attention in the region of Durham that there has been made no availability whatsoever of handicapped access to the GO rail system at its terminus in Whitby. Would the minister be so kind as to explain to the Legislature the reason he and his ministry and the Minister of Transportation (Mr. Fulton) missed this very serious, important aspect of the new extension of the rail system?

Hon. Mr. Mancini: The member for Durham East is correct that the GO rail service has been extended, stations have been constructed at Ajax and Whitby and some modifications made to the Pickering station. I do understand, as has been told to me by the member for Durham Centre (Mr. Furlong), that a group representing a senior citizens’ organization did in fact submit a petition stating that persons with disabilities were having some difficulty accessing these stations. My office has been in contact with the people at GO Transit and the matters are being looked into.

I do agree with the honourable member that it is always cheaper and more advantageous to make these modifications when we are constructing or renewing these stations. However, that was not the case. The people at GO have given some reasons for that not being done, none of which I totally accept in my role as chief advocate for the disabled. However, the matter is being looked into.

Mr. Cureatz: We appreciate the minister’s investigation. Would he be so kind or is he able to advise this House and us in the region of Durham of any anticipated date in terms of reconstruction of the rail station so that accessibility will be available and so that those people who are making inquiries of myself, the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh), the member for Durham West (Mrs. Stoner) and the member for Durham Centre will be able to respond in a quick manner to assure those concerned people and those communities in the region of Durham that they will have access as soon as possible?

Hon. Mr. Mancini: The specific group that the honourable member has referred to is the group we refer to as the ambulatory disabled. Yes, indeed, the lengths of walks and the number of steps have made it very difficult for this group. But I should point out to the member that it is not as if GO Transit has sat back and done nothing. The honourable member and the House should know that one third of all the buses that are used by GO Transit now have special kneeling features, which in fact is increasing accessibility. The people at GO Transit have told me that they have a list of priorities that they wish to address. I and my office wish to be as much help to them as possible.

The interministerial committee on transportation is in fact reviewing accessibility features for the entire transit system here in the province, we are going through the cabinet committee stages in order to discuss the report that will in the near future be made public and we will be calling for more public consultation. I would not want the honourable member to think that I and/or GO are not doing anything.

RETAIL SALES TAX

Mr. Tatham: My question is to the Minister of Revenue. A businessman in my riding lost a sale of a machine by $200. The difference between the price of this man’s machine and the price of a machine purchased in Alberta was provincial sales tax. What arrangements do we have with other provinces as far as reciprocity in matters of provincial sales tax is concerned?

Hon. Mr. Grandmaître: I would like to thank the member for his good question. This is the first good question today.

I would like to remind the members of this House that the first rule of retail sales tax in all provinces is that the sales tax is paid on products in the province in which the product is consumed. For instance, if an Ontario consumer buys a product in Alberta where no sales tax exists but this product is brought into this province, then Ontario sales tax should be paid. Similarly, if a firm sells a product in Alberta where there is no sales tax, no Ontario sales tax is charged. We do this to protect our retailers and wholesalers so they will not be faced with a competitive disadvantage.

Mr. Tatham: What can be done to assist Ontario business people to compete for business in other provincial jurisdictions with the different provincial sales tax? What can we really do?

Hon. Mr. Grandmaître: Again, we do have exchanges of information and data with all provinces except Alberta, where no sales tax exists. I want to remind the member again that if an Ontario wholesaler sells a product in Alberta or in any other province, if that product is not consumed in Ontario, no sales tax is paid.

IRRADIATION OF FOOD

Mrs. Grier: My question is for the Minister of Health. In a statement at the opening of this afternoon’s sitting, I pointed out that the government has been silent on the subject of food irradiation and on moves by the federal government which could affect the health of Ontario citizens. Can the Minister of Health tell the House whether the government has a policy concerning irradiated food, and if so, what that policy is?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As the member knows, the matter is quite a complex one. The health protection branch of the federal government has jurisdictional responsibility for many of the matters of clearing of foodstuffs that enter this country, and I know it takes that responsibility very seriously.

Mrs. Grier: It is not a question of foodstuffs entering this country. What the federal government appears to want to do is to make sure that foodstuffs produced and processed in this country can be irradiated.

It is now a year and a half since the federal parliamentary committee, with the support of all parties, recommended that the Mulroney government not proceed with new regulations. The report of that committee, which was strongly supported by the federal Liberal caucus, recommends that no action be taken by the federal government and has been ignored by the Minister of National Health and Welfare.

This government did not even respond to the request for comment on the draft regulations when they were published by the federal government. I would like to ask the minister, if she has not yet taken any action in this respect, will she commit herself to taking action to protect the health of Ontario residents?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As the member opposite very clearly explained in her question, this is clearly a matter of federal jurisdiction. The suggestion of federal regulation is one which the question clearly identifies. The Ministry of Health in Ontario, of course, and through the public health initiatives, is always interested in initiatives being taken by the federal government and monitors very closely the proposals which it brings forth, in both legislative form and also in discussions between the federal department and the provincial ministry. But I would say to her that the matter she has raised is one that is clearly within federal jurisdiction and we are monitoring on an ongoing basis the actions of the federal government in this matter.

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FOREST ACCESS ROADS

Mr. Pollock: I have a question for the Minister of Natural Resources. The minister is well aware of the many forest access roads in Ontario. These forest access roads were maintained by his ministry, in some cases for many years. The ministry has now stated that it will not maintain these roads. This in turn leaves many people stranded or inconvenienced.

I cannot speak for all townships, but in some cases they have indicated that they would take over these roads and maintain them if they could be figured into the municipal funding. The main problem is that these roads, if they are taken over by a municipality, have to be brought up to Ministry of Transportation standards.

Would the Minister of Natural Resources work with his colleague the Minister of Transportation (Mr. Fulton) to see if these roads could be turned over to the municipality without being brought up to municipal standards?

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: The honourable member certainly describes the roads very well. The roads are built primarily to access the forests to do our planting; to do, in fact, all of the things that need to be done to protect a very valuable resource. The roads are not built to support the kind of traffic that the Ministry of Transportation would have us support.

There is another question here that bears talking about, and that is the fact that we have 32,000 kilometres of these kinds of roads. It makes it physically impossible and monetarily impossible to support that kind of road structure. I am not at all surprised that we at the Ministry of Natural Resources have more roads than the Ministry of Transportation.

It would be impossible to bring those roads up to the standards my friend has described for the use of the general public so that in fact they would be very safe. It is one that is just a little bit beyond the means of the Ministry of Natural Resources, except for the purpose that the roads are built for initially, for maintaining our forest resource.

Mr. Pollock: I did not ask the minister actually to take over these roads, I wanted him to work with the Minister of Transportation so that the townships could take over these roads, because they do get somewhere between 75 per cent and 80 per cent funding, and also the extra miles are figured into their complicated calculations when they get transfer payments. Would the minister work with his colleague the Minister of Transportation to see if they could be turned over to some of the municipalities that might want them or might be prepared to maintain them?

Hon. Mr. Kerrio: I suppose that in support of any question that is raised where I might ask what another minister would do in this kind of responsibility, I am certainly prepared to do that, but even in my friend’s comments he has made the suggestion that if a municipality would take them over it would be looking at the funding from the Treasurer of Ontario to do the kind of maintenance that needs to be done in the upgrading of the roads. It is very substantial.

I would think that in talking to the Minister of Transportation he may more directly respond to my friend on this question. In keeping with the number of roads out there and the kind of road that the Ministry of Transportation would build in a municipality, there would be some difficulty in the funding; but I will take my friend’s question to the minister and have him respond on the basis of his interest in the municipalities taking over those roads.

NONPROFIT HOUSING

Mr. Adams: My question is for the Minister of Housing. I think she knows I am always pleased to hear about government initiatives to promote the production of housing for people of low and moderate income, but today my question concerns the quality of affordable housing. Are the maximum unit prices allowable under the program sufficient to produce good-quality housing across the province?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The member opposite should know that the maximum unit prices that govern the production of nonprofit housing in the province are actually calculated differently in six different regions, trying to take account of the market conditions and the expenses in every region. I assume he would be pleased to know that in November the maximum unit price in the Peterborough area was increased by about 10 per cent.

We do that because in fact our standard or our goal is to make sure that we build good-quality housing. We take account of the changes in the cost regularly in order to reflect that need and also to reflect the costs of building in a particular area or region of the province.

Mr. Adams: I thank the minister for that reply. I have to say that in the past the government programs have only provided sufficient funds for what you might call at best modest materials, so the houses quite rapidly become dilapidated. Is the minister sure that the maximum unit prices now, the new, increased maximum unit prices, will provide materials which will last?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Obviously, the concern is to build housing of very good quality. I guess I would invite the member to see some of the buildings that have been built under the maximum unit price in various parts of the province and have been around for a number of years and seem to me to be doing extremely well.

Our standard is always above the minimum of both the Ontario building standard and the national building standard. The member will appreciate, of course, that we are building modest housing and not luxury housing, but the quality of the materials is meant to maximize wear and to be definitely above the minimum standards of both the Ontario Building Code and the National Building Code.

OMBUDSMAN’S JURISDICTION

Mr. Philip: I have a question for the Attorney General. Only one province in Canada has dared to limit the power of the Ombudsman so that he does not have the jurisdiction to investigate decisions of administrative tribunals. Even the Vander Zalm government did not go so far as to eliminate that power of the Ombudsman.

I understand that the new Ombudsman Act, which we have now been waiting for so many years, has passed through cabinet. Can the minister assure the House that when this legislation is introduced, it will in no way curtail the Ombudsman’s right to investigate administrative tribunals such as the Workers’ Compensation Board?

Hon. Mr. Scott: I think I am entitled to tell the honourable member that cabinet has made no decision with respect to this provision of the Ombudsman Act or any other, but I will be very glad to have the honourable member’s representations and we will consider them.

Mr. Reville: You mean you are bringing him into the cabinet?

Hon. Mr. Scott: No, no, no.

Mr. Philip: I think I have just been offered a cabinet post, but with the greatest of respect to my nominator, I decline.

Interjections.

Mr. Philip: Of the cases of the Ontario Ombudsman, 38 per cent presently involve investigating complaints against administrative tribunals. This is an extremely important safeguard to the public. Would the minister assure the House that he will not introduce legislation that will curtail the right of the Ombudsman to investigate complaints against administrative tribunals?

Hon. Mr. Scott: As the cabinet has not decided what legislation, if any, should be introduced to amend the Ombudsman Act, I am unable to answer the question one way or the other. I am quite familiar with respect to the point that the honourable member makes, however, and it is much debated.

There are people who think, for example, that the Ombudsman should not be entitled to review decisions of the Ontario Labour Relations Board on the merits, a view that I know the trade union movement in Ontario vigorously supports. There are other people who think that there should be that kind of review by the Ombudsman.

It is a point that is worth considering on both sides, and I am delighted that the honourable member, having turned down my nomination, would bring it to cabinet’s attention in this more indirect way than I planned.

PETITIONS

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr. McLean: I have a petition to the Lieutenant Governor in Council from Carriage Chevrolet Oldsmobile Cadillac Ltd. in St. Thomas, signed by 28 persons, which reads, in part, as follows:

“Whereas we strongly oppose the intention of Bill 113 for Sunday opening, we believe that the Ontario government must act to maintain Sunday as a common pause day.”

That is also signed by myself.

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Mr. Wildman: I have a petition addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

“I the undersigned beg leave to petition the parliament as follows:

“That action be taken to ensure a day of pause for enjoying family and friends.”

It is signed by 14 residents of Ontario, and I have added my name to it.

Mr. Pollock: I have a petition for the Lieutenant Governor in Council, signed by 48 persons from Checkpoint Chrysler in St. Catharines, which reads, in part, as follows:

“Whereas, we strongly oppose the intention of Bill 113 for Sunday opening, we believe that the Ontario government must act to maintain Sunday as a common pause day.”

It is also signed by me.

Mr. Laughren: I have a petition to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“I, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament as follows:

“That action be taken to ensure a day of pause for enjoying family and friends.”

It is signed by one person -- a very important person -- and by myself.

Mr. Brandt: I have a petition to the Lieutenant Governor in Council signed by 209 persons from Sarnia and the immediate area surrounding Sarnia, which reads, in part, as follows:

“We, the undersigned are greatly concerned about the Sunday shopping issue in this province.”

SALE OF CIGARETTES TO MINORS

Mr. Kanter: I have a petition signed by 142 residents of Ontario, including a number affiliated with the University of Toronto. The petition is addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“Whereas tobacco is addictive and harmful and is the leading preventable cause of disease and death in Canada today;

“And whereas the maximum fine of $50 for selling tobacco to minors has not been increased since 1892;

“And whereas preventing young people from starting to smoke will have tremendous health benefits because there is little onset of smoking by adults;

“The undersigned call for new laws to stop tobacco sales to minors including (a) greatly increased fines, (b) a ban on vending machines accessible to minors and (c) the revocation of a tobacco licence for retailers who sell tobacco to minors.”

I am pleased to endorse this petition.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr. Pouliot: I have a petition signed by 14 respected and concerned citizens of this great province. It is addressed, of course, to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“I the undersigned beg leave to petition the parliament as follows:

“That action be taken to ensure a day of pause for enjoying family and friends.”

I have affixed my signature to this petition.

Mr. Pope: I have a petition for the Lieutenant Governor in Council, signed by 23 persons from the Church of St. John the Divine in North Bay, which reads in part as follows:

“We urge Premier Peterson not to proceed with the legislation he has announced, but instead to strengthen protection for all workers who do not want to work on Sundays; to not pass the responsibility back to local governments; and to maintain a common pause day for working people and working families in Ontario.”

I have signed my own name to that petition.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: 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:

“We urge Premier Peterson not to proceed according to the legislation he has announced, but instead to strengthen protection for all workers who do not want to work on Sundays; to not pass the buck to local governments on this issue; and to maintain a common pause day for working people and working families in Ontario.”

It is signed by two people in my riding and myself.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: I have a petition from 22 persons from Autotrend Ltd. in St. Catharines, which 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 we strongly oppose the intention of Bill 113 for Sunday opening, we believe that the Ontario government must act to maintain Sunday as a common pause day.”

I have signed the petition myself.

Mrs. Grier: I have a petition headed Family Day Petition. It is addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“I, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament as follows:

“That action be taken to ensure a day of pause for enjoying family and friends.”

There are 14 of these petitions and I have signed the top one.

Mr. Sterling: I have a petition signed by 23 persons from Viscount Alexander Public School in Ottawa:

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

“We, the undersigned, reject wide-open Sunday shopping in Ontario.”

I have signed that.

Mr. Reville: I have separate petitions, which I will present in a package, which read:

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

“I, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament as follows:

“That action be taken to ensure a day of pause for enjoying family and friends.”

These petitions are from Toronto, Mitchell, London, Thornhill, Barr, Espanola, Prescott, Bowmanville, Elmvale and Kitchener. I have appended my name thereto.

Mrs. Marland: I have a petition for the Lieutenant Governor in Council from Welland Ford Sales Ltd. in Kitchener, signed by 40 persons, which reads, in part, as follows:

“Please, we ask you to exhibit concern for our opposition to Bill 113 Sunday opening. We believe that the Ontario government must maintain Sunday as a day of rest.”

Mr. Mackenzie: I have here 25 individual petitions. I probably owe the people an apology for not letting each one of them be read individually, but I will do them in bunches, because there are so many hundreds of them.

“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:

“We urge Premier Peterson not to proceed according to the legislation he has announced, but instead strengthen protection for all workers who do not want to work on Sundays; to not pass the buck to local governments on this issue; and to maintain a common pause day for working people and working families in Ontario.”

I have affixed my name to it. The 25 signatures are all in my riding of Hamilton East.

Mr. Cureatz: Interestingly enough, I too have a petition from an interesting community in southwestern Ontario called Stratford -- I know those fine people there are very proud of their representative -- 12 persons from Tolton’s Stratford in Stratford, Ontario. It reads as follows:

“Whereas we strongly oppose the intention of Bill 113 for Sunday opening, we believe that the Ontario government must act to maintain Sunday as a common pause day.”

I too have ascribed my name.

Mr. Villeneuve: I too have a petition for the Lieutenant Governor in Council from Brantford Honda in the Liberal-held riding of Brantford, signed by 17 persons, which reads, in part, as follows:

“Whereas we strongly oppose the intention of Bill 113 for Sunday opening, we believe the Ontario government” -- and Premier Peterson -- “must act to maintain Sunday as a common pause day.”

I have signed the petition.

Mr. Mackenzie: I notice that they are not just in bundles of 25; some of them have been signed by three or four people. I may have inadvertently misled the House.

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

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

I have signed my name to the petition.

Mrs. Marland: I have a petition for the Lieutenant Governor in Council signed by 14 persons from St. Catharines Volkswagen Ltd. in St. Catharines. I am sure the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) wished he were here and able to present it on behalf of his constituents. This petition reads in part:

“Whereas we strongly oppose the intention of Bill 113 for Sunday opening, we believe that the Ontario government must act to maintain Sunday as a common pause day.”

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Mr. Pouliot: I have another petition, which has just reached me, addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and reading as follows:

“We urge Premier Peterson not to proceed according to the legislation he has announced, but instead strengthen protection for all workers who do not wish to work on Sundays; to not pass the buck to local governments on this issue; and to maintain a common pause day for working people and working families in the province of Ontario.”

I have, of course, acquiesced by signing the petition myself.

Mr. Speaker: The member did not state that it was addressed to the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.

Mr. Pouliot: I was overtaken by emotion and I apologize.

Mr. Wildman: I have a petition. This is addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It says:

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

“That action be taken to ensure a day of pause for enjoying family and friends.”

It is signed by eight residents of Ontario, one of whose signature is illegible, but I am sure it is genuine, and I have added my name to it.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Reycraft: I have a petition addressed to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It reads:

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

“We, the motorists of Ontario, are strongly opposed to any unreasonable auto insurance premium increase. We feel an increase larger than the average cost-of-living increases would be unjust and unfair.”

The petition is signed by 1,113 residents of the riding of Dufferin-Peel and I have affixed my signature.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr. McCague: I have two petitions to present on behalf of the member for Chatham-Kent (Mr. Bossy). They are both to the Lieutenant Governor in Council, one containing 33 signatures from Waekens Chrysler Plymouth Ltd. and a further one from Merritt Marine Boat Sales and Service, from five persons, in which they say:

“Whereas, we strongly oppose the intention of Bill 113 for Sunday opening, we believe that the Ontario government must act to maintain Sunday as a common pause day.”

I agree with those petitions and I have signed them.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: 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:

“We urge Premier Peterson not to proceed according to the legislation he has announced, but instead to strengthen protection for all workers who do not work on Sundays; to not pass the buck to local governments on this issue; and to maintain a common pause day for working people and working families in Ontario.”

It is signed by several people in my riding.

Mrs. Cunningham: I have a petition to the Lieutenant Governor in Council from the town council of St. Marys, signed by 231 persons from the town of St. Marys and area, which reads in part as follows:

“Over the past year, council has received several petitions and letters from concerned citizens and organizations in St. Marys that oppose the proposed Sunday shopping legislation. Council recognizes and reaffirms their concerns regarding the sanctity of the Lord’s Day.”

I have signed my name to this petition and submit it for your records.

Mr. Allen: I have a petition to the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from concerned Leon’s employees and customers and it is simply stated that they are against Sunday shopping. It contains 33 names from Port Colborne, Welland, St. Catharines and other communities in the Niagara Peninsula. I have affixed my name to it.

Mr. Mackenzie: 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:

“Whereas it is the stated intention of the Liberal government of Ontario to change the legislation governing the conduct of business on Sundays; and

“Whereas the Premier and other members of the Liberal government have stated the government’s intention to repeal the Retail Business Holidays Act and to dump this responsibility in the laps of the municipal governments, who have already indicated they don’t want it; and

“Whereas the Legislature’s select committee on retail store hours, representing all three political parties in the Legislature, reported unanimously to the Legislature in May 1987 as follows: ‘The committee supports the principle of a common pause day in Ontario’; and

“Whereas the first of 17 unanimous recommendations contained in that committee’s report was as follows: ‘The primary responsibility for the administration of the Retail Business Holidays Act, or other legislation related to retailing on holidays, should remain that of the provincial government’; and

“Whereas the report also said, ‘The committee unanimously rejects the notion of wide-open Sunday shopping for Ontario’; and

“Whereas the Association of Municipalities of Ontario has forcefully put forward its view that leaving the regulation of Sunday shopping to municipalities is not what its members desire; and

“Whereas a very broad array of trade unions, religious organizations, small and large retailers, groups concerned about the quality of life in Ontario, families and individuals have publicly indicated their opposition to the government’s intentions, on the basis that it will lead precisely to wide-open Sunday shopping, thereby harming working families and working people; and

“Whereas the government’s stated intentions can only increase existing pressures on working people and working families and result in less fairness for them, by reducing their ability to spend time together;

“We urge the Liberal government not to proceed according to its recent statements of intent, but instead urge it to maintain and strengthen the Retail Business Holidays Act; to retain under provincial jurisdiction legislation regulating Sunday work hours; to not pass the buck to municipal governments on this issue; and to give effect to a common pause day for working people and working families in Ontario.”

It is signed by a resident of Burlington, Ontario, and I sign my name to this petition.

Miss Martel: 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:

“We believe in the importance of keeping Sunday as a common pause day so that all people may have physical, spiritual and social health. We are concerned about the quality of life and the wellbeing of the people of our province and we object to the further commercializing of life through the Liberal government’s proposed Sunday shopping legislation.”

The petition is signed by nine residents of the city of Windsor. I have affixed my signature to it and I agree with them entirely.

Mr. Philip: I have a petition from a number of people in the Hamilton area.

“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:

“We urge Premier Peterson not to proceed according to the legislation he has announced, but instead to strengthen protection for all workers who do not want to work on Sundays; to not pass the buck to local governments on the issue; and to maintain a common pause day for working people and working families in Ontario.”

I have signed my name to those.

I also have a petition from 19 residents which reads differently.

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:

“We believe in the importance of keeping Sunday as a common pause day, so that all people may have physical, spiritual and social health. We are concerned about the quality of life and the wellbeing of the people of our province and we object to the further commercializing of life through the Liberal government’s proposed Sunday shopping legislation.”

I have signed all the sheets.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I have five petitions signed by residents of Ontario and all worded the same. They read as follows:

“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:

I have signed each of these petitions and hope the government will act upon them.

Mr. Mackenzie: 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:

“We urge Premier Peterson not to proceed according to the legislation he has announced, but instead to strengthen protection for all workers who do not want to work on Sundays; to not pass the buck to local governments on the issue; and to maintain a common pause day for working people and working families in Ontario.”

There are more than 25 names contained here, and I have signed my name to it.

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Mr. Wildman: I have a petition to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It is written here:

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

“That action be taken to ensure a day of pause for enjoying family and friends.”

It is signed by five residents of Ontario, one of whom crossed out the phrase “a day of pause” and wrote in “Sunday.” I have attached my name to these petitions and I support them.

Mr. Allen: 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:

“We urge Premier Peterson not to proceed according to the legislation he has announced, but instead to strengthen protection for all workers who do not want to work on Sundays, to not pass the buck to local governments on this issue and to maintain a common pause day for working people and working families in Ontario.”

It is signed by 116 persons who live variously in North York, Scarborough, Richmond Hill, Nepean, Islington, etc. I have affixed my name and support their petition.

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

Mr. Philip from the standing committee on public accounts presented the committee’s sixth Interim Report 1988 and moved the adoption of its recommendations.

Mr. Philip: In its sixth Interim Report, tabled on January 17, 1989, our committee noted that the mandate and the objectives of the St. Lawrence Parks Commission lack clarity. We recommended that the St. Lawrence Parks Commission develop a long-term, minimum five-year operating plan based on the findings of its own studies, which it should commission and submit to the public accounts committee for review by October 31, 1989.

The study I referred to above recommended that the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation commission an independent study to determine the commission’s economic and employment impacts on the region and on the province’s tourism, to identify spinoffs, multiplier effects and other benefits which exist in the context of its costs and the commission’s marketing and promotional activities, including recommendations for the improvement of attendance at commission facilities.

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

STANDING COMMITTEE ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Mr. Callahan from the standing committee on administration of justice presented the following report and moved its adoption:

Your committee begs to report the following bill without amendment:

Bill 114, An Act to amend the Employment Standards Act.

Mr. B. Rae: I wanted to take the opportunity, on the presentation of this report, to say a few words about it. Indeed, some other members of my caucus may also want to say something about this legislation.

I want to make it very clear that I think this measure, which has to be seen in the context of the government’s approach to Bill 113 and to Sunday shopping generally, is quite unworkable. It is the most bureaucratic approach one could possibly imagine to the solution of a problem. I want to go through the wording of the act if I can and explain why it flies in the face of common sense in terms of its wording and the way it is intended to work.

Before doing so, I want to remind the House of two previous positions taken by the government of Ontario with respect to this question of Sunday working.

The first is the position that was taken by the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) when the government prosecuted Mr. Magder for opening his store on Sunday and the position that the government of Ontario took in the Supreme Court, both the Supreme Court of Ontario and the Supreme Court of Canada, in its prosecution of Mr. Magder.

In its submission to the Supreme Court of Canada, it was the position of the government of Ontario at that time, and this is not that long ago, that in fact the legislation on Sunday shopping should be seen in good measure as labour legislation, as legislation affecting labour relations within the province that is there as a benefit to employees; and makes it very clear that without that legislation in place, that is to say a general prohibition on store opening and store working in the retail sector, that in fact employees would end up having to work.

The argument of the Attorney General at that time in a factum of law and of argument which he presented to the Supreme Court of Canada was simply this: that there would be all kinds of subtle economic pressures brought to bear on employees which would end with their having to work at a time and in a way they would rather not have to work. That is the issue that is dealt with in Bill 114.

I do not only have to draw on the arguments that were made by the Attorney General when he talked about subtle economic pressures; I can also go to an even higher source than the Attorney General and that is to go to the words of the member for Guelph (Mr. Ferraro). The member for Guelph is quoted in the Guelph Daily Mercury in March of 1988, and I am quoting from that paper words which are attributed directly to him, not to the reporter, not to the publisher of the paper or to anyone else in any editorial aside; this is not in an editorial. This is a reproduction of an accurate kind because there was no letter from the member for Guelph saying that this is not what he said or this is not what he meant. The member for Guelph said:

“‘You have to work when the business is there,’ he stated and went on to declare, ‘Employees are jeopardizing their jobs by refusing to work. An employer will eventually find someone who is willing to work on Sundays.’”

That is the view of the member for Guelph when it comes to his assessment of the real world, of how the economy works, with his street sense of what happens when businesses are open on Sunday and to his understanding of the relationship between employers and employees on Sunday.

Mr. Philip: He did not say that in the standing committee on the administration of justice.

Mr. B. Rae: My colleague the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale says the member did not say that in the justice committee. All I can do is quote to you, Mr. Speaker, and just in case you did not get it the first time I will read it to you again:

“You have to work when the business is there.... Employees are jeopardizing their jobs by refusing to work. An employer will eventually find someone who is willing to work on Sundays.”

Those are the comments which were made not by the Attorney General but by the member for Guelph, who is of course a leading member and -- I do not need to point out to you, Mr. Speaker -- a leading light in the Liberal Party caucus. In fact, if there were to be a shuffle in the period before the opening of the next parliament in April, May or whenever that is, I think many of us have a secret sense, almost a sixth sense that a phone call from the Premier’s (Mr. Peterson) office will be coming to the member for Guelph. Certainly that may well be the explanation of why he has a phone at his side at all times, just waiting eagerly for that call.

Mr. Wildman: Surely he wouldn’t say one thing in Guelph and another thing in Queen’s Park?

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Mr. B. Rae: The member for Guelph would not say something in Guelph that he would not say in this House. That would be quite out of keeping with the frankness and directness that we associate with that member and quite out of keeping with the sense of direction that we associate with that member, so when he says that employees are jeopardizing their jobs by refusing to work and an employer will eventually find someone who is willing to work on Sundays, we have, I think, a commonsense kind of reflection of the wording of the Attorney General of Ontario and the argument that they made to the Supreme Court of Canada when they prosecuted Paul Magder, and that is that the whole purpose of the Retail Business Holidays Act is not only to reflect the general social policy of this province with respect to Sunday as a day of common pause for as many people as is humanly possible, but it is also a piece of labour legislation which is intended to protect employees.

The Minister of Labour (Mr. Sorbara) is I think probably the first Minister of Labour I can think of in recent memory who has produced an amendment to the Employment Standards Act which in fact takes away from the protection that employees have under the existing Retail Business Holidays Act. This minister is the first Minister of Labour who has produced legislation, the effect of which is to take away from the rights of working people when it comes to time off and time away.

I know what the minister will say. He will say, “Look, we are amending the Employment Standards Act and we are in fact giving workers a right which they do not now have.” That is what the minister will say -- to which I will say in reply to the minister that you have to look at the best protection that the members of the working community in this province have when it comes to having to work on Sunday. The best labour legislation you can have with respect to protecting the rights of workers is to say that the places where they are working five or six days a week will be closed on Sunday. That is the best protection you can have for working people, and that is why when I say the minister has taken away from the rights of working people -- and really, it is a historic step backwards.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: But this bill applies to the people who are working now.

Mr. B. Rae: The minister says it applies to people who are working now. I am going to come to that. I am going to come to how this law is expected to work and how the minister seriously argues or seriously believes this law is expected to work.

But I say to him that every trade union that I have talked to, every trade unionist whom I have talked to who has looked at the wording of this, every labour lawyer whom I have talked to who works for employees and looks at the wording of this, has told me the same thing, and that is that there is a loophole in this law that is so large you can drive a truck through it and the effect of it is going to be to take rights away from employees who right now have the protection of having the stores closed and in fact it will mean that a great many people will be having to work who up until the present time have not had to work on a Sunday.

The bill makes it clear that it only applies, first of all, to workers in the retail trades and to employees and employers in such retail business establishments.

It then goes on to establish what is called a general right, but listen to the way the right is phrased, because as always in this question of reading the law you have to read the actual wording that is before you. So let’s read it very carefully.

“39(h) Except as provided in this part” -- there you have the exception -- “an employee may refuse any assignment of Sunday work that the employee considers unreasonable.”

When the minister was originally discussing the approach they would take to this question, the minister said employees who do not want to have to work on a Sunday will not have to work on a Sunday. That was the original position that was taken by the Liberal government. The original position taken by the Liberal government was that if you do not want to work on a Sunday, you do not have to work on a Sunday.

But in fact, when it brought in the law, what did it do? It said, “Except as provided in this part, an employee may refuse any assignment of Sunday work that the employee considers unreasonable.”

What do you have? Do you have the clear expression of a fundamental right expressed in uncategorical terms in Bill 114? Is that what you have? No, that is not what you have. You have the expression of a general wish that is in fact limited, by two particular clauses, to one clause and one word.

The clause is: “Except as provided in this part,” and the word, of course, is the word “unreasonable.”

What is the effect of these two limitations? The effect is: Instead of saying to employees and employers, “Look, you cannot make your employees work on a Sunday,” what does it say? It says, “Well, an employer can always ask his employees if they want to work on a Sunday, and the employee is then given, supposedly, a choice as to whether or not to say yes or no.”

At that point, the employees have that choice. Let’s say they say yes, for all kinds of reasons: they need the money; they do not want to antagonize the employer; they do not want to upset the employer; they want to please the employer; they want to stay with the employer; they want to advance with the employer; they want to get promoted by the employer; all the psychological and other aspects of the power relationship between employees and employers which we all know about and which everybody who thinks about it knows about when you think about it in a commonsense term.

To apply the words, “You have the complete freedom of choice as to what you will or will not do,” in fact is simply not the case. The first reality is -- and it was expressed by the words of the member for Guelph and by the Attorney General in the argument the Attorney General made in the Supreme Court of Ontario on behalf of the citizens of Ontario -- the subtle economic pressures brought to bear anyway.

Regardless of what the law says, you have a power relationship which is not an equal one. Everybody knows that. You have somebody who is working for someone else. You have an employer who is in a position to reward or punish, not always in the most obvious or upfront kind of way but in a whole variety of ways, behaviour by employees that is seen as being acceptable or unacceptable.

Imagine this for a moment, Mr. Speaker -- not in a highly unionized environment, but in a totally nonunionized environment, one in which you have a small store, where you have three or four employees who are working together and you have an employer who, because he is in a mall that is open on a Sunday, feels that he has to stay open on a Sunday. First of all, the employer does not want to be there on a Sunday; and second, his employees do not want to be there on a Sunday. If they want to maintain market share, they have to be there.

What do you have? You have a law that when you think about it is so absurd in terms of the relationship between employers and employees as to be almost laughable, because what you have is an assertion that, in a small store where you are going to have a discussion about whether somebody should come in on a Sunday or not come in on a Sunday, the full panoply of legal rights and obligations will be brought to bear; you will have employment standards officers coming in as some kind of fairy godmothers to attempt to resolve the dispute between the two parties.

Keep in your mind’s eye, Mr. Speaker, a small store where people are working together all the time; where they are getting along; they are joking with each other; they are going to lunch with one another; they are dealing with each other’s problems and so on, and you are asking this employee to say to the employer, “What you are asking is unreasonable and I am now going to take your case to an employment standards officer.”

The employee is being paid the high sum of $6 or $7 or $8 an hour, and the argument from the Liberals is that this person is going to take and have an extended dispute with this employer that could last for weeks. We do not know how long it will last because the first thing that you have to do is you may apply to the director. So you have to find out who the director is. When you find out who the director is, you either write him or phone him. They finally get back to you and appoint “an employment standards officer to inquire into and endeavour to effect a settlement of the matter.”

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Employment standards officers all over the province are dealing with wages that are unpaid, with vacation pay that is unpaid, with bankruptcies that are happening. They have to make an appointment and say: “I may be able to get back to you next week. It may be two weeks. It may be three weeks. I’ve got other cases that are going on. I’ll get to you whenever I can.”

At that point, if that person is unable to effect a resolution in this dispute, the director is informed by a report that is signed by an employment standards officer. We all know how long that process would take. The employment standards officer has to go back to the office, sit down, write out a report and file a report with the director here in Toronto.

That report having been filed with the director in Toronto, the director is then going to approach a panel of referees who will presumably be younger lawyers and law professors all over the province, a panel of people who are appointed by the Liberals in whatever magic process -- we do not know or quite understand. Those people will say: “I’m sorry. I’m going to be in the Dominican Republic for two weeks in the next couple of weeks, but I will be available for a hearing in a few weeks or a month or so.” Then we will have a hearing.

This is sort of like something out of a law student’s nightmare, or perhaps not a nightmare but a dream in terms of future employment opportunities, because we not only have the panel of referees who “shall convene a hearing as soon as is practicable for the purpose of determining the matter”; we then go on to say, “In a hearing under this section, the referee shall determine” --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. One member at a time, please.

Mr. B. Rae: Mr. Speaker, I want you and I want the House to understand that after this has happened, after the employee has been a hero, after he has gone to the employment standards officer and the employment standards officer has come in, after the employment standards officer has said, “I can’t figure, I can’t determine whether your refusal is reasonable or unreasonable,” he applies to the panel, and the panel comes up with the referee and the referee rents a hotel room somewhere and holds a hearing.

The employer will be represented by a lawyer and the employee will be there either on his own or perhaps represented by a lawyer or counsel or whatever. For all I know, we will now have paralegals out there who will specialize in this field, as we have paralegals specializing in other fields.

We then have the process of what is called the determination of unreasonableness, which sets out that, “In a hearing under this section, the referee shall determine whether the disputed Sunday work assignment is or was unreasonable and, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, may take into account,

“(a) the terms of a collective agreement that specifically address Sunday work, if the employee is a member of the bargaining unit;

“(b) the existence of a premium pay arrangement for Sunday work by the employee that is not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of pay of the employee;

“(c) the existence of a policy of the employer to rotate staff to avoid inequitable assignment of Sunday work;

“(d) the history of the work relationship including previous requirements respecting Sunday work assignments;

“(e) the fact that the employer has or has not made reasonable efforts” and so on;

“(f) the fact that the employee was hired on a part-time basis...;

“(g) the existence of an emergency situation.”

I will come back to these points because they are very interesting. You will have witnesses being presented from all sides. You will have fellow employees coming forward and saying, “The employer wasn’t telling the truth,” or, “That’s not what he told me,” or, “That’s not what he said.” You will have employees giving evidence in a process that could take several days. You will have employers who are unhappy taking the case to judicial review because they are not satisfied that whatever technical requirements of the law there are have been maintained. This is absolutely absurd.

You then have a hearing under the section and “a referee,

“(a) may decide what constitutes reasonable assignment of Sunday work in respect of the employee and employer to whom the hearing relates;

“(b) if the referee decides that subsection 391(1) has been contravened, may order what action, if any, the employer or other person shall take.” Blah, blah, blab.

lnterjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. One member at a time.

Mr. B. Rae: What I am suggesting is that this bill is utterly, utterly unworkable. It is not accessible to employees; it is not useful to employees. It is an absolutely absurd result.

I ask those Liberal members who are here to think of the Sunday working situations they can imagine, to think of the decisions that are going to have to be made by store owners across this province as to whether, when and how they will be open on Sunday. Many of those I see in front of me in the House in fact are small businessmen themselves. They should think how practical or practicable this is.

The minister will say that he is a hero, that he is the guy who is protecting due process, that he is the man who is advancing the interests of employees, that this government has done more, as he said today in the House, for the interests of employees than anybody else since the history of time. But I say that if the minister were really interested in protecting the interests of people in the retail trade on Sunday, he would see that stores stayed closed on Sunday. It would be that simple. It would be that basic.

If he were interested in protecting the rights of people who do not want to work on a Sunday and think they should be spending more time with their families, he would be listening to every single major submission that was made on behalf of working people at the hearing process that was held over the last year; that is to say, the best labour legislation he can have is legislation which ensures that retail stores, by and large, stay closed on Sunday. That is the best protection for workers. Anything else is second best and not good enough.

I say to members that this act is quite unworkable. I want to just describe it in terms of the law itself. What I want to say is this: If we look, for example, at what it says, what are the things a referee does -- if we even get to the referee stage, if the worker is stuck in there all this time fighting every week with the employer, having an argument with the employer, accepting the minor harassment that takes place when you have a disagreement with your employer, accepting the breakdown in interpersonal relations that results from bringing in third parties and having a case go to court?

What do we have? What are the things the referee can take into account, even assuming you get to that stage? We have the existence of “a policy of the employer,” not one that is accepted by the employees, but just “a policy of the employer to rotate staff to avoid inequitable assignment of Sunday work.”

What do we have here? We have a situation where all the employer has to do is say: “Look, it is unreasonable for this employee to refuse Sunday work because I have a policy that says everybody has to do his share on a Sunday. If this employee does not like to work on Sunday, well, I am sorry but he has to work on Sunday because I have a rotation in place which means everybody will work on a Sunday.” Once you have set that policy in place, according to the legislation that is in place here, it is unreasonable for employees to refuse to work on a Sunday.

“The history of the work relationship including previous requirements respecting Sunday work assignments” is another factor the referee takes into account when he or she assesses whether or not the work refusal is reasonable or unreasonable. What does that mean? If an employee works on one Sunday and does that voluntarily, that becomes evidence that can be used in any subsequent event to determine the reasonableness or unreasonableness, whether or not you worked on a previous Sunday.

Members should think about the unfairness of that. The government is putting every employee into an impossible situation. It is basically doing what it said it would not do. This government said it would not allow people to work on Sunday who did not want to work on Sunday. This legislation will do just that.

I am not going to repeat the arguments I made last week when we were considering Bill 113, except to say that this bill takes away from the existing protection workers have under the Retail Business Holidays Act that is now the law of Ontario. It takes away from those rights.

I cannot remember a time in my history in this Legislature when a Minister of Labour has brought forward legislation taking rights away from employees and pretending it is an advance on the existing situation. It is not an advance. It takes away from the rights of employees. It is a deterioration of the existing situation. That is why we oppose it. It is unworkable, it is unfair and it will not work. It should not pass and we do not intend to co-operate with this government in seeing that it becomes the law of Ontario.

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Mrs. Cunningham: I would like to offer some remarks with regard to Bill 114 this afternoon. I suppose the three words we would use to describe it would be that it is unworkable, divisive and extremely expensive. I would like to begin by quoting from the minister’s own statement of Thursday, August 4, where he started by saying: “As this committee knows, the government of Ontario has a responsibility to protect the rights of retail workers who may be affected by any widening of Sunday shopping owing to the passage of Bill 113.”

As we expected, the only reason the Minister of Labour feels compelled to bring Bill 114 forward is to protect the retail workers of Ontario from the Solicitor General’s (Mrs. Smith) Bill 113. Without it, we would not need Bill 114.

In the words of the Minister of Labour, “This responsibility will be fully and effectively met by the provisions of Bill 114” -- he is talking about protection here -- “which is being placed before you today.”

I suggest that as I go through this speech, I can only describe it in one word: It is a hoot; it is just a hoot. I really believe the minister is admitting to the domino effect of Bill 113. He feels compelled to come forth with what he believes is a bill to protect workers in this province. The very fact the minister feels compelled to bring forward this bill is proof the government does believe that the “myths” -- we all remember those words of last August -- the Solicitor General referred to are indeed realities. I will not take the time to go through those today.

We are talking now about a group of people in this Liberal government that in its own pathetic defence believes the dictum that misery loves company. They tell us that many people already work on Sunday and therefore it is okay to ask more people to work on Sunday.

I would like to go on looking at the speech of the Minister of Labour. After admitting to the domino effect and the reason for Bill 114, he then goes on to say, “This legislation makes it possible for people working in retail establishments to refuse to work on Sundays when they consider that work to be unreasonable, and to do so without fear of reprisal.”

I just think that is so extremely presumptuous. Did the minister consult with the workers of this province who are working in the real world? I think this “without fear of reprisal” can probably be measured in the same way the Liberal members can be measured when they stand up and take their free vote on Bill 113 and Bill 114. We will see what “reprisal” means in this particular Legislative Assembly, and we can then measure what it probably would mean in the workplace in Ontario.

The minister then goes on to say, “In addition to protecting the rights of those who may be affected by Bill 113” -- admitting they may be affected -- “Bill 114 also provides protection, for the first time, to employees who are already required to work on Sundays.”

This truly is a joke. Can you imagine promising to protect all these people who are working in retail business right now on Sundays without adding staff to the employment standards branch? What a laugh. If anyone has any question before the employment standards branch now, he knows exactly how long it takes to get a response. From some of the letters we have, people have been waiting literally years.

The minister then goes on to say, “A key provision” -- if this is a key provision, we can imagine what the other provisions are like -- “is that Sunday work may be refused” -- these are the minister’s words; I wish I had understood it as clearly on August 4 as the public has made me understand it over the hearings -- “where an employee considers the request...to be unreasonable.” This is the key provision -- unreasonable.

The definition of “unreasonable” is the key provision. “This test of reasonableness is essential.” A profound statement on the part of the minister. “It provides for flexibility in the application of the legislation, encouraging employers and employees to arrive at working arrangements which take into account the individual nature of the establishment and the individual nature of the employee’s circumstances.”

Because the minister has such confidence in the people being able to come up with those kinds of, shall I say, compromises and understandings, he then goes on with section 39k of the legislation, so that if you cannot decide, you can go to 39k and have a hearing by a referee. I wonder what the Ontario Federation of Labour says about this particular bill, with special reference of course to the hearings by the referee and the criteria for determination of unreasonableness, which was a joke the minute we opened it.

The Ontario Federation of Labour states, “Bill 114 is bad legislation by almost every conceivable standard.” They go on to say: “The protection which the Minister of Labour claims his bill will extend to workers in the retail sector is both illusory and discriminatory. Bill 114 is a hoax.” I thought the minister’s statements were a hoot, but the bill is a hoax. “The minister’s defence of his bill is patently dishonest.”

They go on to say: “The Minister of Labour claims that Bill 114 will protect workers in the retail sector from unreasonable Sunday work assignments. In fact, the bill will do nothing of the sort.” I think those kinds of presumptions and promises are just that, raising expectations of employees who, by the way, have not been bought by this one at all. It just gives you a clear understanding of where this government is coming from when it is trying to relate to people who are working in the real world and people who will be forced to work on Sundays in the retail sector, most of whom will be women and many of whom will be single parents. We are talking about the Ontario Federation of Labour statement on the effects of Bill 114.

According to the minister, retail workers can refuse what they regard as unreasonable Sunday work assignments. Some days, I wonder if the people who put this kind of legislation together have ever, even during their young years as students, been asked to contribute to their family by way of part-time work. Sometimes that work is on Sundays.

The employer is supposedly constrained from using discipline or other coercion, just as the Premier will not be using any discipline around the free vote on Bill 113 and Bill 114. On that, we know every municipality in this province has placed petitions before us, and we know the members from those municipalities, who should be associated with those petitions against Bill 113 and Bill 114.

The Minister of Labour goes on to say that if the employees’ employer judges the work assignments reasonable, then he must apply to the employment standards branch for an investigation by an officer and ultimately adjudication by a referee. If your employer thinks your assignment is reasonable, in other words, you should work on Sunday because he or she says so. Then you go before this employment standards branch and you have a referee within the existing staff complement.

This will be the first time since I have been at Queen’s Park in almost a year now that I have seen anything done within the existing complement. I have to be very specific about my criticism and say that I have only been involved in some four or five sets of estimates, and within the existing complement is not the practice of this government. I should say some 8,000 new employees of the government is in fact the practice of this government within the last two years.

The worker’s initial refusal to work supposedly stands, unless and until it is overturned by a referee. What a beautiful intention. You have an argument with your boss and say, “I don’t want to work on Sundays.” The boss says, “Oh, but we want you to work on Sundays.” Then you go to work for the next year and a half and everybody is happy, because people normally are very patient. They are not too upset. They certainly are not going to rock the boat while this process is in place because, quite frankly, the kind of people who are subjected to this kind of legislation are the very people who need their jobs. They would not be working on Sundays in retail if they did not need their jobs.

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The question is, will it work -- this again is the labour statement -- “especially in the 90-plus per cent of establishments that are nonunion”? Can members imagine a labour group making these comments? They really do care about employees whether they are part of organized labour or unorganized labour nonunion.

“An instructive benchmark is the ‘right to refuse,’ which has now existed for more than 10 years in the workers’ health and safety act. In that act a worker can refuse to perform work that he or she judges to be unsafe. To what extent has that right been exercised by nonunion workers?” I notice the minister is not in the House right now because this truly is embarrassing.

Mr. Pouliot: He is embarrassed.

Mrs. Cunningham: I do not blame him.

I really wondered, as I was making this presentation this afternoon, if I could remain serious because this legislation is such a joke except for the poor people who are going to be subjected to it down the road.

It is a joke that this bureaucracy, this government, this huge majority government with the resources it has, could come up with a piece of legislation that is so insensitive to the needs of workers. You just wonder some days who has input from the grassroots. For a party that went out across Ontario and said it was going to listen to Ontarians, it certainly is showing what it means in the way of its nonpromise.

First of all, it never even talked about this legislation during the election; and secondly it has not listened to anybody who has come here to tell it about it. I know, because I was there.

“To what extent has that right been exercised by nonunion workers? In the past year, that right to refuse” -- this is the Occupational Health and Safety Act; we are talking about workers who refuse to perform work -- “was exercised on some 450 occasions Do members know who exercised it? More than 90 per cent of those cases were in unionized establishments.

Obviously, for people out there who are watching this debate this afternoon where we are trying to bring their points of view to this House, by the way should know that if they are in a shop that has some three or four employees, they really ought to be thinking seriously about getting themselves a collective agreement, because if a mediator were to come in and try to solve a problem in their establishment of three or four employees, the first thing he would look at would be whether the employer and the employees had a collective agreement. That is the first thing.

We asked the minister if he would put down a letter of agreement or if he would put down anything where someone had come to some agreement as the very first criterion for judgement, if he had to go through with this legislation and push it through the way he is. He obviously did not take our advice, and I should tell members the reason we did not put any amendments forth is that this piece of legislation is so bad it cannot be fixed. Why should we be party to something that is so bad it cannot be fixed?

We were hoping, of course, that the Liberal government would withdraw both Bill 113 and Bill 114 and listen to the people who put their trust in it.

Secondly, if you are the owner of a retail business establishment that has just a few employees, you should seriously be thinking about whether you have a premium pay arrangement for Sundays. That is time and a half. It is more than regular time. Because if you do not, that one will be held against you as well.

We could go on with some other seven or eight criteria that the referee will look at, but just in closing on that whole issue, the Ontario Federation of Labour statement, made, I think, a very important observation.

“The reality is that workers in the retail sector, especially where they are unorganized, are far too vulnerable to employer pressure to make their supposed protection under Bill 114 anything except a cruel illusion. The right to refuse unreasonable Sunday work will be as illusory a protection for unorganized workers as is the right to refuse unsafe work.”

We appreciated those kinds of statements that were made during the hearings and we tried in vain, obviously, to influence the Liberal members on the standing committee on administration of justice. We are very sorry that we feel we have to stand here today and even make statements on this bill, which we thought would have been withdrawn perhaps even at the committee level.

What we have in Bill 114 is a piece of legislation that creates even more new problems for workers who do not want to work on Sundays. Workers came before us and advised us repeatedly that they were opposed to extended Sunday shopping because it interrupted their family life and it was an unneeded burden on their working hours. Workers need a common day of rest, a common day of pause. All families need a common day of pause. Literally thousands of people have made their voices heard in this debate across the province since this legislation was introduced a year ago.

Whereas Bill 113 pits municipalities against municipalities, communities against communities, businesses against businesses, Bill 114 unfortunately pits employers against employees and employees against employers.

In New Brunswick there were extensive hearings because in fact they did have a piece of legislation which very much resembles the intent of Bill 113 and Bill 114. They listened in their public hearings and they are very serious in their intent right now to withdraw a piece of legislation that does not work. In that instance, the government did listen and acted upon the wishes of the public.

This debate is about a day of pause for families and a day of rest for workers as opposed to the Liberal government’s intentions in Bill 113 and Bill 114, where they are really more concerned about customers and large retailers who want another day of commerce and convenience. That is what this Liberal government is all about.

We have no idea where the push is for this piece of legislation. We tried in vain to listen to just two briefs that would support this legislation and that made any sense at all. The only push we saw in reality was a brief from Cadillac Fairview, which came forth and talked about this legislation -- both Bill 113 and Bill 114 -- as being a necessity for them in their business world. That was the only specific brief that spoke in favour of both bills in the world of business. I think this Liberal government should be very much concerned about that.

These bills, Bill 113 and Bill 114, are legislation about working on Sundays. They are not legislation about shopping on Sundays.

As the Minister of Labour warned in his very opening statements, on which I would like to end, “The government of Ontario has a responsibility to protect the rights of retail workers who may be affected by any widening of Sunday shopping owing to the passage of Bill 113.” On the words of the Minister of Labour, we rest our case.

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Mr. Pouliot: I certainly take no pleasure in rising, although I welcome the opportunity to join my voice of very strong dissent with the many across the great province of Ontario that have been heard and unfortunately fallen on the deaf ears of a very arrogant and determined government, which has chosen under the mask of this ill-thought legislation to forgo traditional values. I come from a background, like many of my associates, in the riding of Lake Nipigon where Sunday as a tradition was set aside for families, for workers to prepare themselves both physically and mentally for the week and the task ahead.

It is one of the problems that we have with representation in this House. As I look around me, I see many lawyers, maybe one or two doctors, a score of business people and some so-called philanthropists, but I fail to see too many who have really “worked for a living.” I fail to see many people who have belonged, with their brothers and sisters, to a union. I see many who have belonged to other syndicates but not to a labour movement.

I ask myself about this when I see the spirit and the intent behind Bill 114, which will force people to work on a Sunday if the employer, the entrepreneur, for a fistful of dollars, for a few dollars more, chooses to dictate to the less fortunate, to the workers making a small or very low salary, that they shall do so. I see this kind of legislation and I ask myself, “What has happened to traditional values?”

The common pause day was the day we would go and watch a ball game, the day the family unit would be enhanced; we would go on a picnic or a walk. It is gone because some people made a touch on the government. Some powerful elements in this society convinced the government that six days of shopping and six days of working were not enough. The government, in its lack of courage and wisdom and because it could not really make up its mind, said: “Are we going to acquiesce to this powerful element in our society, to the strong lobbying group that has turned lobbying from a vulgar trade into an honourable profession? Are we going to say yes to that minority imposing its will on the majority of people, or are we going to listen to the voice of reason and say: ‘No. This time enough is enough. You have gone too far. Sunday indeed shall remain a common pause day’?”

The government came up with what it thought was a better mousetrap. It passed the buck. Unable to stand up and be counted, unable to show vision, unable to put forth leadership, the government cowardly chose to pass the buck to municipalities and said: “Yes, we can have it more than one way. This is the art of the possible. It is a very touchy, very emotional issue. People are up in arms. People are shocked and appalled; they don’t want us to say yes to the ‘free enterprisers’ this time for Sunday. We’ll make the municipalities responsible.”

Then there was an unprecedented match of ping-pong between the some 850 townships and municipalities, small cities, villages and hamlets in Ontario saying: “We don’t want that can of worms. It’s not our decision. What’s wrong with you, government? When the going gets rough, you don’t want to make the decision; you want to pass the buck to municipalities.”

Mr. Philip: A bag of snakes is what they said.

Mr. Pouliot: I am reminded by some friends that not only was it the proverbial can of worms, but it was bigger than that; it was a bag of snakes. It represented government at its worst, not only a mistake. I have talked privately to many members, and they are all over -- “We are under siege” -- there are 94 of them. I said: “Tell me honestly -- there are only the two of us here -- if you had to do the same thing again, would you be in favour of Sunday shopping?”

“Well, I am not quite sure.”

I said: “I won’t tell anyone. Trust me. Or would you present it in the same way?”

They said, “I’m not opposed to Sunday shopping, but I would present it in a different way.”

I said, “Aren’t your constituents calling you? Aren’t they saying that what is being done here is wrong, that you have gone too far?”

It may not cost them too much, but politically it may affect five or six or seven. I do not know.

We are all trying to stay alive. We are trying to put our best foot forward in representing the interests of the people of our constituencies. But almost every individual has said: “Gilles, my constituents don’t like it. Not only do they dislike the spirit and the intent, but the fashion, the method, the approach, the passing the buck to municipalities, the lack of courage, the lack of vision.” They go on and on.

I have to say: “Don’t get emotional. Try to emulate me when you make a presentation. Keep your cool. Stick to the subject matter being addressed. No need to get excited.” I agree that some people, I can assure members, have a right to get excited for far less; but I said: “Let’s stick with what is being done here. Let’s stick to the real world.”

Again, in the real world, where it is really happening, outside this bubble here, outside the House -- because this is not the real world -- the minister stands up; he has never done a day’s work in his life.

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: How can you say that?

Mr. Pouliot: Not the way I understand work. These are the hands of a miner of 20 years; I am legitimate. When I speak on behalf, for and with the workers, I know what I am talking about. The Minister of Labour owes an apology to the workers. He tells them, “You don’t have to work on a Sunday unless you want to.” He is certainly shying away from the truth, to say the least. The truth does not become him.

Mr. Smith: You’re hitting the fine line here.

Mr. Pouliot: Oh, the fine line, my friend. The Speaker is an educated person. He knows who is telling the truth around here. I do not have to fear the standing orders.

There is no such thing as not having to work when your boss tells you that you have to go to work. You will get the cold shoulder treatment. You will not get a cost-of-living adjustment. What are you going to do if you are told: “You either show up tomorrow, Sunday, so that people in the Ottawa Valley and other parts of the province can make a supplementary dollar, or you stay home. That is the choice you have. You show up for work. It is my way or the highway, the doorway; you do not have a job”?

You are left without a job, but you have recourse, because the day of judgement is not what will fix your dilemma or your impasse. You go to a referee. Imagine. You come home, you cannot meet the bills, there is no food on the table, but you go to a referee, who may be a political hack -- you know, the future can last a long time -- a mover and a shaker; someone from the consortium of the SkyDome; I don’t know. Certainly, you will not see many workers being appointed.

That person, a year and a half or two years down the line, will decide if you had a right and if you had a case when you worked a year and a half ago for $6.50, $7, $7.50 an hour. Bring back Kenneth Carter.

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I do not have to tell you the kind of attention that the working poor have been receiving when it comes to social justice, not only in this province but in this country of ours. I do not have to start naming one by one the kinds of fundamentals that should be addressed and should be redressed. Nobody will even talk about them. But I have to believe the Minister of Labour and the present government: when it comes to Sunday shopping the workers will be given unprecedented protection; when we know very well that the more fortunate -- many people in this House -- pay lower taxes on a percentage basis than some of the people whom I represent and who are making $6.50, $7, $7.50 an hour.

Mr. Philip: That is disgraceful.

Mr. Pouliot: It is a disgrace. We do not have a progressive system of taxation. Perhaps it was intended that way. We do not have the kind of protection and representation for the poor that we should have. The fundamentals do not make any sense. But I must forget about all the past performances, the subject matter, the proof that is presented to us on a daily basis and say that when it comes to protection at the workplace, if I choose to go to church on a Sunday instead of working, if I get penalized in the process, that man will take care of me; a year and a half, two, two and a half years later, the referee, the hack who will head the commission, will hear my case.

I can just see them, the proverbial cap in hand, going up the steps of the commission or the -- board, being subjected to the kind of formalities two years after the fact. It does not work; let’s face facts.

It takes courage to resist the representation, the appetite of the more fortunate in our society, the big lobby groups, the people who can impose their will at will, simply because they have more. They are more educated. They can buy the best of representation. They do those things with words. They are very convincing. At times they are good actors and they are very credible.

They have all those attributes, all those qualities. They have access to government offices. They know people. It is not a boys’ club, but it is selective. It could be a boys’ club, but you know it is not for our people; it is not for the people who are working at $6.50 and $7 an hour and who keep the family unit alive in society. An important component of solidarity and unity is Sunday. Sunday is not the only chance they have left, but it represents that one day in the course of the week where the family can get together: the essence of society.

I do not believe for one minute that if someone has to work Sunday it will be the collapse of that family unit; but on the other hand I believe very strongly that every component, every opportunity that is not being enhanced is a missed opportunity.

Hon. Mr. Conway: Look at all those bingos I stayed through.

Mr. Pouliot: I want to tell the minister that when it comes to Sunday shopping -- and I see him seem very convinced -- nothing will get to the minister. Church groups have tried to say:

“Minister, things really will not work. Listen to us. We speak from the heart and we don’t want our parishioners to work on Sunday.” Labour has tried on several occasions to make a dent, to tell that man that what has been talked about here has not got the proverbial chance in hell of being applied or respected.

But no, he is determined, like a soldier at his post, representing the people who stand metres tall in the economic parade. I do not envy him. Life is short. When I look at the Minister of Labour, I do not have one bit of envy. He has a chance in the position that he occupies to do what is right here. I am not embarrassed, but what I find very, very sad is that he is convinced he is doing the right thing. There is no hope of penetrating.

Mr. Philip: I think you may be misleading the House.

Mr. Pouliot: I would not even dream of misleading the House.

Hon. Mr. Conway: Well, let’s hear it.

Mr. Pouliot: The rules are such that I would be taken to task, and I would be the first one to take up arms if someone should question the integrity of the House.

One thing I can do while I have immunity in this House is to remind the minister of the need for the mind, for the body and the soul to do a good day’s work. It does not have to be in the mine, where his disguise might not be sufficient that the workers will not recognize him.

While I represent the people not only of the riding of Lake Nipigon, where Sunday shopping is not as much an issue as it is elsewhere in the province -- although it is an issue --

Hon. Mr. Conway: It’s one thing for Jim and Tammy Faye to be back, but this is getting next to incredible.

Mr. Pouliot: I do not think the government House leader, who represents at times a court jester, a personnage, and prides himself in being the best theatre in town -- by virtue of being a free theatre, maybe he is -- has any lesson for or should point the finger at anyone else. It is a disgusting performance.

The day that Bill 114 becomes law, that very day will be another nail in the aspirations of the workers of Ontario, the very people who have always paid their taxes, who provide the most essential of services in our society and who quite often do the jobs that other people who have a choice will not do. They do not rebel. They really are our best soldiers in what is a system that is quite fragile. We see it as very strong. It is strong by virtue, but it is also fragile at the same time.

This kind of important component not only literally takes away not from all, but from many people the right to have a day -- traditionally Sunday has been the day when the family unit is enhanced by virtue of being together to do things that do not involve work. What that kind of component does for some is it takes away, but it tells others, it tells all of us, that nothing is sacred.

What do you do? Sure, I run out of money. I am frugal; spartan, perhaps; a person of moderate means also. Sunday is the only day. I have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, up to 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock sometimes. I have all day Saturday. I have catalogues.

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I look forward to Sunday. I have Sunday. I worked 20 years of Sundays. I know what it is like. I worked Sunday on what they call the graveyard shift, the night shift: 20 years. It leaves scars. I worked in a mine for 20 years. Twice I suffered from cyanide poisoning. It is not an easy task.

I really believed when I listened to the government. I said, “These people sound sincere. They perspire sincerity,” and in some cases you could see the perspiration. Then I come today and I see the very opposite. I am shocked. When I read the bill, I could not believe it.

We had meetings, the party of the social conscience, the New Democrats, and we said: “Let’s move some amendments. Surely it is just a draft. The government does not mean what it says. It is just testing the water.” We proposed some amendments, and as I look at the final draft, it is the same thing. They have chosen not to listen. We were robbed.

I recall in 1985 that we had a minority government. The word “minority” should always appear on ballots. The chips do not quite fall that way, but it is the only way to go. When I see this kind of legislation, which only a huge majority will permit, I say, “Caution yourself, Gilles.” If ever a politician comes to me and says, “I need a strong mandate,” almost automatically I would vote against that person, because I know -- and we have seen them back to back -- that with a minority government, fear is a motivator. They will do anything to get in power. They need your support. They will do almost everything to stay in power. Those are facts of life.

In conclusion, there is so much to be said against this kind of endeavour, this bill. I could go on and on, explaining in every detail the logical and reasonable grievances expressed by the people of Ontario. I will not do so. Suffice it that the minister and this legislation will be judged very harshly. In the 11th hour, the minister still has a chance to do what is right, to stand up at his post on behalf of the workers in Ontario and say, “What is being done here is wrong, and I withdraw the bill, with apologies.” It takes quite a person to do that.

Mr. Laughren: It takes a real soldier.

Mr. Pouliot: It takes a soldier, indeed. I am just wondering if the minister has it in him. I know that if any one member of our party had the privilege to serve the province in that capacity, every day would be Christmas for the workers of Ontario. That day will come, I can assure the members, but we will be busy trying to rectify what has been put forth. There is no excuse or justification for what has been done.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: Before I start, I wonder if the Minister of Labour would give any consideration to withdrawing Bill 114 due to the very excellent presentations that have been made today and over the past several months. Surely a reasonable, intelligent individual such as himself should recognize that many arguments have been put forward as to why Bill 114 is flawed. Any consideration? No?

Mr. Chiarelli: I guess you have to speak.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: Yes. Having failed to convince the minister, I will try. The problem is that the minister was --

Mr. Laughren: Did you see what he did to injured workers? Why are you trying to screw healthy workers too?

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray): Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Jack, you’ll have to wait a second. The Speaker has a word for us.

The Acting Speaker: The atmosphere is developing an unparliamentary informality. The member for Wellington would like to be heard. I hope that members will allow him to address the assembly and that some will listen.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: I was trying to make the point that the minister drafted Bill 114 to cover up the mistakes made in Bill 113. Having done so, he has created the false impression that workers will be protected when, indeed, he knows that it is extremely difficult to draft legislation that can do what he intends. It is fine to say that retail workers do not have to work on Sundays, but when the employer tells them they are now forced to stay open because of Bill 113, then they really do not have any choice.

Many of the small retail stores in this province have only one or two employees, so really the result, even in a fair situation, is that both owners and employees will have to work their fair share of Sundays. Even if this can be divided equally, they both will end up working approximately 25 Sundays in a year. That in itself is a hardship for the employees, employers and their families. When we have asked people if they would like to work Sundays, in most cases they have indicated that they do not want to do so. If they are given the choice of working or not and if they jeopardize their jobs by refusing to work, then they really do not have a choice and Bill 114 becomes a farce.

There are approximately 400,000 retail businesses in this province that are not open Sundays. If many of them do open because of the implementation of Bill 113, then the minister will have created a problem because many of these people will have to work. He has drafted legislation that he thinks will protect them, but it is really quite unreasonable to think it can do so in most cases. Granted, if the store is large enough and there are enough employees, then maybe there is some accommodation that can be worked out. But in the small retail outlets -- and they make up the majority of the retail stores in this province -- if there are only two employees, how can he protect them when one or the other will have to work?

The store does not really have a choice, because if a competitor is open on Sunday, it is then forced to comply and to also open for business on Sunday. If it does this, it then requires the work of its employees or, as I mentioned earlier, they have to work themselves. Is anyone listening?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I am transfixed, Jack.

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Mr. J. M. Johnson: I was trying to make the point that the legislation is unrealistic, especially in the case of small retail stores. The minister has placed an extremely heavy burden on the employee to tell his employer that he will not take part and share in the operation of the business. It really places them in a position where they cannot refuse.

If the employer is very determined, he can find ways and means of dismissing that employee without conflicting with the legislation that has been drafted.

For that reason I state that in my opinion it will not work. I think it will create a lot of problems, a lot of animosity between the small retailer and his employees. I think the minister has created a situation that leads to unnecessary confrontation between the two groups, and unexpected problems could arise through the use of the clauses that state that they can be exempt from working, such as the religious clause.

It is my feeling that Bill 114 is discriminatory because it includes the premise that retail operations must declare religion within their corporate bylaw, which we can only suppose will be a determining factor in an employee’s decision to refuse Sunday work. If I am incorrect on that, I can be corrected after, but it is my understanding from reading the legislation that this, indeed, must be incorporated into the bylaws of the businesses. It is not at the present time. In fact, it is my understanding that it is illegal for employers to ask potential employees their religious preference. Then how can they claim an exemption to work Sundays if they do not disclose their religion and the religious reason for not working.

When it says that they have to have a test of reasonableness, does that not also include the religious reason? If we are asking employees why they refuse to work on Sundays and they claim it is because of religion, does that not contradict the very point that your legislation is bringing forward?

I would not mind, when the minister’s turn comes, if he would address that, because it is a problem that we are dealing with during this session, the issue of the problem relating to the Lord’s Prayer in the school system and the Supreme Court ruling that it is no longer permitted as we have been using it in the past. If this is the case, does this not fly in the face and go in the opposite direction. Where before employees were able to keep their religious beliefs to themselves, now they are going to have to use it as one reason why they should not work Sundays. I will leave that to the minister to correct.

It is my contention that what an employer considers reasonable is very different from what an employee considers reasonable, and what the mediator for the ministry may consider reasonable may be different again. Who is going to have the wisdom to make these decisions?

We are dealing with a very specific issue that does not require major consideration with the exception that in the mind of the individual, what the employer considers reasonable may very well not be considered reasonable by the employee. It can be just as simply that the employee does not want to work and the employer has no choice but to keep his store open. He requires that employee and if one refuses, then he has really no choice but to dismiss him for whatever reason, and to hire someone who will fulfil the function, or he has the choice to work 50-some weeks himself.

As I mentioned earlier, I think the problem goes back to Bill 113. It was a mistake that has been compounded by Bill 114. The government tried to bring in some protection and failed to so do. A problem has been created for many hundreds of thousands of retailers in this province and really for no benefit.

The minister would be far better to say that Bill 114 is not workable; bring Bill 113 in and have it defeated by the reasonable, intelligent members of his party who will vote with us and put an end to this charade.

I have presented many petitions on behalf of my constituents opposing this legislation -- both Bill 113 and Bill 114 -- I stand in support of these people at this time and request this government to give consideration to not bringing forward the bill and indeed to withdrawing it.

Mr. Mackenzie: I am more than happy for the minister to leave. Just before he goes, I think I understand from his comments today why he had those long, wavy locks of his cut back and why he has the new style that he came into the House with. Most of us did not recognize him the first couple of days. It was then he said that he liked that idea of a soldier; I guess he was girding for battle to take on the workers in terms of labour legislation and Sunday shopping -- a call to battle, I guess. That must have been what was influencing the Minister of Labour.

I have some difficulty knowing just what I want to say or where to start this afternoon on Bill 114. I do want to ask the question that I think I heard my Tory colleague the member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham) mention and that is: what is the reason for the government’s position on this legislation?

They certainly cannot point to the vast majority of the labour movement; to the vast majority of religion, organized or otherwise; to small business people; to any of the antipoverty groups or any of the social groups, welfare groups or those who are genuinely concerned with the pause day.

In other words, the vast majority of ordinary people in this country, if not against the bill certainly are not for it, and very many of them are against it. So what is the incentive? Where are the Liberals coming from in this particular legislation?

I know the Attorney General got tired of fighting with Paul Magder when he could not win the battle, in terms of not being willing to go ahead with the charges, but I am wondering if I cannot give a little bit of credit, once more, to one of my Tory colleagues, which I do not often do. That is the member for London North, once again.

She said, “Why and where is the pressure coming from for the government to move on this bill?” A bill, incidentally, which is a patent piece of garbage, and we will go into that in a minute. But where is it coming from?

Mr. Chiarelli: What about the rest of the act?

Mr. Mackenzie: The member will get his chance if he wants to. If he wants to take the floor now for a moment, I will sit down and let him have his say.

Let me raise again the point that was made by my colleague the member for London North for a minute. She said she had only been able to discover one group of people who were in favour of this legislation -- it showed in their petitions before the committee -- that is Bill 114, and that was Cadillac Fairview.

The minute you stop to think and look at the big malls, the growth of malls and the proliferation of large and small malls in Ontario, you understand that the biggest driving forces for this legislation have been the Cadillac Fairviews of this country. Why? Because they do have clout. They can say to the small stores that operate in the malls: “Hey, we can get the big boys to open. We can open Sunday in this mall. It is much more economic and much more of a revenue producer if we can get all the small operators in as well.” Of course a condition of holding your licence in many of the malls -- not all, but many of them -- is that you go by the rules of the mall owners.

Is it possible that because it is good for the Cadillac Fairviews and the mall owners, that maybe if we took a look at election contributions, they probably give more to the Liberals than they do to anybody else? I suspect anybody who wants to go and research the files will find that the donations from the Cadillac Fairviews of this country to the Liberal Party are pretty hefty.

Is it possible that this bill is good for Ontario only because it is good for the Cadillac Fairviews? And that is darned good for the pockets of the Liberal Party. Certainly it is a valid question to be asked, and I find it interesting.

Mr. Reycraft: Where does your campaign money come from?

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Mr. Mackenzie: We can go into that too, quite easily.

I would find it very interesting to have some honest answers here. Maybe this government would fund a little research that tells us how much money came to their party from the major owners of the malls in Ontario.

If I can raise another small matter, my colleague the member for Lake Nipigon (Mr. Pouliot), in his own inimitable way, said that he felt many of the Liberal members had maybe not had as much of a background in the labour movement as some others. There were immediate calls from the left here. I do not know where all the Liberal members came from, but I can tell the House that not too many of them had 20 years in the mines as he did. Some of us -- not all of us -- have worked at the shop floor level too, but that is not a criterion alone. I have done it in automobile plants and shovelling coal on the lakes and a number of other things. If these members were right, if many of them in this Liberal caucus had that kind of workers’ background, they sure as blazes have forgotten where their roots are when they come in with legislation like this, and that is pretty obvious.

I am in a good humour. I am not going to get angry at anybody this afternoon. When you listen to the kind of garbage you occasionally get and when you see legislation like this bill, you have to be able to laugh a little bit, including at yourself, or you would probably blow your cork and have a heart attack or a stroke or something when you see the kinds of things that are being done.

I want to read out of Hansard, so I am not misleading anybody, the words of our Minister of Labour himself when he talks about Bill 114. I am asking the Liberals in the House to give me the reasons, the answers and the justification for what he says, because it is not reality. That is coming, as I say, from everybody but the Cadillac Fairviews and the Liberal members of the House. He says:

“When we announced that we were going to be bringing about changes to the Retail Business Holidays Act, we said that we would at the same time introduce amendments to the Employment Standards Act to afford an appropriate protection to retail workers who may be called upon to work on Sundays. Bill 114 achieves that objective. I do not think its importance can be overestimated because for the first time in history we have provided meaningful, workable and enforceable protection for all employees in the retail sector.

“For the first time, workers will be able to refuse assignments of Sunday work that they consider unreasonable.”

That is what he said in this House. Could he be any clearer? Defend it. How can he justify it?

Let me start with a little episode that took place when we were dealing with this bill in committee. It was raised again in the estimates of the Ministry of Labour just this past Thursday, at some length, I might say. I questioned the fact that any employee who tried to take advantage of his right to refuse under this bill -- and in a few minutes we will deal with how many are likely to, and it is very few -- was going to have to go to the employment standards branch. The minister has made no provision in the bill or the regulations, nor has he indicated there will be any more employment standards officers.

I suspect most members in this House, if they are honest and straightforward with all of us, have problems coming into their constituency in terms of workers being unfairly treated or not getting all their pay in a closure or having some severance pay or vacation pay held back. There are a thousand and one reasons why you have to go to an employment standards officer. All members will know that today the waiting list is months sometimes even to get a case heard.

Mr. Chiarelli: So employees actually use it.

Mr. Mackenzie: Oh, yes, some employees use it, but the member should be a little careful before he gets his legs cut out from under him.

If you go to employment standards, what are you going to do? To begin with, you are going to wait weeks, maybe months, before your case will be investigated, and then there is the investigation itself. I have had relatively straightforward cases that have waited four and five months before they get to employment standards and then I have had as much as three months in process. Then I have ended up calling employment standards or the director and raising heck because we have been waiting six or seven months and have not had an answer back on what I thought was a relatively straightforward case.

I raise this as a concern. How can the minister say we are protecting these workers when it is going to take so darned long and many of them are poor people who cannot afford it? There are many reasons why they will not take advantage of it when it takes so long to get your case heard and to get justice if you are unfairly dealt with.

Do members know what the minister’s first answer was? He has been having difficulty with it ever since. He was saying, “That has no bearing.” I hope there are some members who sat on that committee last week. “That really has no bearing on it, what the member is saying, because the worker is protected against the right to refuse. The law says that he cannot be fired.”

If there was ever -- and I will phrase my words carefully -- a misleading defence of this bill, that was it. Just like it says you cannot speed, you cannot hold back somebody’s wages or you can go to employment standards or you name it, you are not supposed to break the law in any one of 100 different ways in this province, that does not mean the law will not be broken. Where you have no union -- and that is 90 per cent of the workers who will be covered under this legislation, so you are on your own, a little retail worker in a situation like this -- you go to that employer and say: “No, Mr. Employer, I am not going to work on Sunday. I do not want to. I do not think I should be forced to.” He is a very nice employer; he says, “Please do.” There are all kinds of other pressures he can use too. He may very well say: “Okay. You do not have to work Sunday.” A week later, instead of working 34 hours or 30 hours, and quite often it is short time in the retail trade, you find that you are only called in for 24 hours, 18 hours or 16 hours: something that I mentioned to the minister I am already having problems with in some of the chain retail stores in my own community, and I know it is happening here in Toronto as well. There is that kind of pressure.

There are all kinds of scenarios we can lay out, but if that does not influence the employee himself and he still says: “No. I am going to live with the short hours even though I am the one who hurts as a result,” the employer then says: “I am sorry. I need a workforce that works on Sunday. I am going to fire you.” He may not even be that brutal. He may just say: “Because you do not want to work on Sunday, we are going to have to find somebody who will. I am sorry. Your employment is terminated.”

That employee then has to go to the employment standards branch. He may or may not be able to prove his case -- and with the clause “reasonable” in there, it is going to be extremely difficult at any time -- but if he does prove his case, they go through this procedure: the employment standards officers take a look at it; they spend several months before they come down with a decision; they finally come down with a decision; and if the employee is not long gone or has finally found something else, probably at the minimum wage too or very close to it, he wins his case and he is taken back with back pay.

Supposing he gets that far: he wins his case and he does come back with back pay. Not only has he gone through the pressure and the problem and the nerve-wracking time he has in deciding whether or not he wants to take on this employer and say, “No, I am not going to” and whether it is quick treatment or whether it is the slow, painful kind of a treatment trying to convince him he should work and he finally is fired, the bill specifically states or talks about the right to reinstatement. That is why I make the point and why my friend the member for London North should understand. When the minister said, “The law says you cannot do it, so it is not really relevant,” he was totally misleading in that particular argument, because there is nothing that says the employer cannot or will not and that will not be what we face. I am simply saying, let’s not play games with people in terms of “because the law says you should not do it, that is not going to happen.” That has not been the proof up until now.

We purposely read the brief of the Ontario Federation of Labour into the Ministry of Labour estimates because I thought it was worth putting there; but I think it made two or three points that have been alluded to and I want to reinforce them. We have only one area where we have any expertise in this particular field, the right to refuse, in Ontario, and that is under safety and health legislation. There were some 450 occasions in the last year where the right to refuse was used, but in excess of 90 per cent of them were in unionized establishments. I think it is important to understand the percentages. That covers about one third of the workforce in Ontario.

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If you are lucky enough to have a union, to have the backing -- and usually they give classes and there is some training; some are better than others, but there is some background, some training -- you know you have a steward, you know who the local union president is and if you follow or are active in the local at all, you know who the staff person is or who the national or international rep is and it is not difficult to reach them. You have some backing.

So where a third of the workers in Ontario, only one in three, are organized, 90-plus percent took advantage of the rights to refuse on safety and health only when they were organized into a trade union, and that is where your life may even be at stake. It may be a lesser problem, but it is serious.

Let us take a look at the retail trade, which this most affects. I do hope that members opposite at least hear what I am saying -- even though I know not one of them is going to keep it in his head; it will go in one ear and out the other. In this business, 90 per cent of the workers are not organized; only about 10 per cent are. You have a lot fewer organized in this retail business than you have in the labour force in Ontario generally. They tend to be poorer-paid workers and, while there have been some real advancements in some of the bigger locals, they tend not to have the bigger unions.

When the experience in the much stronger, general labour picture has shown that where their own lives may even be at stake it took a unionized workforce before they took advantage of the right to refuse, how many people do members think are going to defy the owner where only 10 per cent of the workers or thereabouts are organized, where they are lower paid and do not have nearly the background or training? I will tell members right now the real answer, as the Ontario Federation of Labour says in its brief, is that the right will not be used and the legislation really is illusory in terms of any protection for workers.

Let’s take it a step further. Let’s suppose that somebody had some extra fight, the guts and gumption to take an employer on, and there are not going to be a lot of them, but supposing somebody does in this case; once again, what is weighing against him? At least in terms of the health-and-safety right to refusal, you are up against your physical health; in this case, you are competing only with your job. It is not a question that something may happen to you in terms of your health or your physical wellbeing or your mental wellbeing -- maybe a little bit the mental wellbeing.

You are dealing with a number of workers who have to make a decision as to whether or not they want to refuse a job because of the job, a lower-paying one to begin with. How many are going to take advantage of that? If they do, how many can afford, particularly in that occupation, the months that may be involved in dealing through the bureaucracy and through the employment standards area if the employer says, “No, I don’t agree with you and I don’t give you the right to refuse”?

I am telling members opposite right now that they may be committed to the bill because their government says they have to be, but it is not reality at all -- and that is why it is so dishonest -- in terms of any kind of adequate protection of workers in Ontario. I think that message has to get through to people. I am not sure how we do it, but it simply has to get through to people. We are being fed, as I said, a piece of garbage. That is being a little nastier than I intended to be. We are being fed a bill that has no merit whatsoever.

Once again, other than the Cadillac Fairviews -- how many times have members seen a Cadillac Fairview worry about a worker’s health and safety and how much more is it going to worry about a worker’s right to refuse on Sunday when it is trying to get the income coming in from seven-day instead of six-day use of all of those malls around Ontario? -- and the Liberal Party, it seems, where is the pressure coming from and who wants the legislation, as I started with earlier?

An hon. member: Travel agents.

Mr. Mackenzie: Maybe, but who is saying no? Why do they have no credibility with this government? Obviously, the government figures it can ride out the storm from the churches. I think that may be a misjudgement on their part, because the understanding and pressure can be there and I think members opposite are not just going to hear about it today or next week or next month or whenever this bill goes through, but are going to be on the edge of controversy as the various municipalities have to deal with this issue right through to the next election.

I think they are making a mistake and they are going to hear about it. I think they will hear from the churches as well. They have the churches not on side. As I say, they do not have most of the social agencies on side. They certainly do not have most of the small merchants on side. They certainly do not have the vast majority of the retail workers on side.

I know this does not mean too much to Liberals; some of them make it obvious. Some of the comments I have heard really disturb me, because they are coming from Liberals and not from the Tories; I know where they stand when it comes to unions.

But the unions do not count either. I picked out some of the briefs. I think there are 17 of them here which were before your committee from various union groups. I want to take just the umbrella group, if you like, the OFL group, when it made its presentation. I do not know whether the minister was smart enough to have one of his staff at that presentation, and I do not know whether any other Liberals sat in at that press conference of theirs, but it was well attended by the media and they answered questions very well, including critical questions from one reporter for one of the stations. There was only one critical reporter there, and I think he was well dealt with when one of the female news people said, “Just because you’re miserable doesn’t mean everybody else should be,” so we did not have to answer the one critical reporter at that press conference.

But take a look at who was at the press conference. It does not make them the only answers, but who was there? The executive vice-president of the OFL. The first convention, I believe, at which they took a firm stand on this issue was probably 1969. He was there, as the executive vice-president of the OFL.

Bob McKay was there. Some of you know him. He has been a long-time top officer of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. He probably represents most of the workers in this field who are organized, the small percentage who are organized. He certainly knows what they are saying and thinking.

Tom Kukovica was there from the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Tom certainly has been around a while and knows what his members are saying, what his workers are saying.

Keith Oleksiuk was there. I know people who would not mind having him on their legal staff rather than where he is with the United Steelworkers of America. He very carefully went into some of the legal problems with this legislation and how it was an absolute joy for lawyers: reasonable or unreasonable? What the government has handed the lawyers, if it is used, is a real gold mine in trying to make a ruling as to whether a right to refuse is reasonable. He is a very good and very sharp lawyer with one of the major unions.

You had four people. I do not mean to zero in on them as individuals, but I do it only to point out that what you had talking there was the heart and guts of the representation that retail workers have in the trade union movement.

As I said, the government does not listen to the churches, it does not listen to the merchants themselves, it obviously does not listen to the workers or their representatives, so it begs the question once again: Who is calling the shots and why is this Liberal Party so hard to understand in the position it has taken on this issue? It simply does not make any sense.

There was a brief before the committee which I think is worth mentioning. This is not the press conference I am talking about. Incidentally, it should be put on record that the opposition to the previous Bill 113, which is not yet dealt with, and the opposition to Bill 114 was well stated, and I want to deal with their opposition to Bill 114 before the committee.

The press conference I have quoted and that the member for London North quoted at some length in her comments was -- I hate putting it in these terms -- I suppose a desperate last effort by the workers themselves and all of their representatives to make it absolutely clear to the minister and to this government that this bill was no good, it did not do what it was supposed to do in terms of protecting workers; but even more than that, a clear message which I think is getting out to the people of Ontario that this government has brought in a bill about which the Minister of Labour says: “How great is this legislation. The protection is all there. We have solved all the problems.” They even said to us, “Your arguments about the employment standards officer don’t hold water, because the law says you can’t fire them.” It does not exist. It is not true. Why should it be presented that way?

They were trying to say to the people of Ontario that we are being sold a bill of goods that is not going to do what it says and, in fact, is being misrepresented to the people of Ontario.

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That is what that press conference was. But let’s go back a step or two, before the press conference, to the hearings. The labour movement, backed, as I say, by all of the individual delegations, said: “We have serious concerns over the proposed amendments to the Employment Standards Act to ‘protect’ retail workers who do not wish to work on Sunday, We do not believe that they will be effective.”

“The intent of the amendments is found in the statement to the Legislative Assembly on April 14, 1988, by the Minister of Labour Gregory Sorbara. To quote from the relevant sections of the statement:

“‘...Employers will be encouraged to work out co-operative arrangements for Sunday work that take into account the interests of those individuals who wish either not to work on Sunday or to keep Sunday work to a minimum. This will be accomplished through the establishment of a right for all retail workers to refuse Sunday work which is, in their view,’” underlined in the original for emphasis, “‘unreasonable. The bill will protect workers against reprisals for such refusals.

“‘The new law will also provide a process to help employers and employees resolve disputes over what constitutes unreasonable Sunday work or over allegations of reprisals against employers.

“‘If no settlement is reached through mediation, the matter will be referred to an independent referee appointed under the Employment Standards Act.

“‘ ... Referees hearing disputes in these matters will be able to weigh a number of factors in reaching a decision about the reasonableness of an employer’s approach to scheduling Sunday work. These factors will be set out in the bill and will include such criteria as:

“‘the existence of premium pay arrangement for Sunday work, and

“‘the recent history of employment, including any previous requirement to work on Sunday.’”

The word “any” alone, knowing a little bit about grievances in the labour movement, gives a very wide picture. You could get an argument over that, even if you were just called in for inventory on a Sunday.

“‘An employee will have the right to refuse Sunday work unless and until a referee decides that the assignment of work is reasonable.’”

They go on to say:

“It will be very difficult for unorganized workers to protect their rights under this legislation. “Their only protection will be management goodwill. Is the procedure to be proactive or reactive? If an employer does not wish to have a ‘co-operative arrangement,’ what do the workers do? To protect their jobs, workers will work on Sunday, even if, ‘in their view,’ it is unreasonable. If a worker complains, what protection do they have from an employer’s reprisal? How many independent referees will be hired, and what will be their background and experience?” None, as we know. “What resources will be available from the Ministry of Labour to deal with this problem? Will there be a waiting list of cases? Will there be any kind of appeal of the referee’s decision?”

We do not even know with this legislation and that would not correct it. I do not want to go out on a limb here and have somebody say, “Hey, you’re suggesting amendments,” because this bill is just not amendable. But they are asking, “Will there be a waiting list or will there be any kind of appeal of a referee’s decision?”

Even that is not written into this particular bill that we have. You do not have to be an expert. I do not claim to be an expert. It has been most of my life’s work, but I have never claimed to be an expert on labour matters. You do not need to be an expert to know that this is literally a pile of garbage in terms of protection to workers in Ontario. I think most people understand that.

I think, as well, that it is useful once again to restate some of the arguments of the Coalition Against Open Sunday Shopping. I will start out with two or three paragraphs that I think are useful out of their brief to the committee when it was dealing with Bill 113 and Bill 114.

“Ever since Attorney General Ian Scott first announced the government’s intention to bring in legislation eliminating the common pause day, the government’s position has been that the final draft of the legislation would meet the concerns expressed by the Coalition Against Open Sunday Shopping, labour, retailers, churches, quality-of-life groups, AMO and individual municipalities -- as well as fix the government’s problems with the existing Retail Business Holidays Act.

“The government has maintained over the last four months that any expression of concern, request for consultation, public debate or public action was premature. They said, ‘Wait and see.’”

Some members remember the arguments we made in this House and the fight we had -- whether we won the argument or not, which we would say we did -- to get this sent for hearings. The government said it was prepared to send it out for hearings. I did not sit on the committee but before my colleague leaves maybe he can tell me how many amendments actually were moved. I know there were two or three, but none of them added any protection or changed any of the arguments that were made in this bill.

What I am simply saying is underlined by the comments of the Coalition Against Open Sunday Shopping in its brief. What CAOSS saw on April 25, when the Act to amend the Retail Business Holidays Act and its companion piece, the Act to amend the Employment Standards Act, were finally introduced did not dispel our concerns -- quite the contrary -- nor did they solve any of the government’s problems with the old acts.

First there is the comment, “Wait and see,” from the government and “We are sending it out. We are listening to you.” Then it goes out and the government obviously did not listen to one per cent of what was presented to it. It did not plug any of the loopholes that are there -- loopholes that you can drive the proverbial Mack truck through. It did absolutely nothing to tighten up or toughen up this bill, and there is no protection for workers and indeed -- I hate saying it, but probably that does not really matter, because the bill is so poor -- you are not going to find workers using it, period.

This government did not respond in that respect either, just as it has not responded to a lot of other commitments it made. Let me then go on, because I think CAOSS’s points are well made to the arguments that it raised over labour protection. This is since they have had a chance to look at the bill.

“The government has not realistically addressed the concerns of workers about having to work Sundays and holidays. The Minister of Labour introduced the Employment Standards Amendment Act to ‘create new protections for employees of retail business establishments that open Sunday.’

“CAOSS, as the representative of employers and union and nonunion employees, knows that the complaint system used under the Employment Standards Act is unworkable for the Sunday shopping issue.

“In Ontario there are approximately 250,000 retail workers, full- and part-time, of which” -- at any time -- “20 per cent are unionized.” I can tell members that figure is inaccurate, but I will even accept it. “The 50,000 who belong to unions are mainly employed by large retailers. The other 200,000 largely work in retail outlets” -- smaller ones -- “that have one to 20 employees.

“CAOSS’s membership comprises groups that have had a lifetime of experience in dealing with each other as employer or employee. Their experience tells us that for nonunion small retailer employees the complaint mechanism is unlikely to be used and that for the unionized employee it is unlikely to be successful.”

I think that is exactly on.

Mr. Chiarelli: What protection do retail workers have now on Sundays?

Mr. Mackenzie: You want to give them the illusion that they have something under this.

I think that point is dead on; it is not likely to be used by the unorganized workers, who are the vast majority of workers in this category, and it is not likely to be successful, as I think the lawyer for the Ontario Federation of Labour pointed out very effectively, given the kind of conditions that you have to meet for the few who are organized.

I think this is important too. “Many employees who work for small retailers have a relationship between themselves and their boss that is personal as well as business oriented, particularly in the smaller centres. Often there is a long history of mutual loyalty and an established working relationship. One doesn’t have to look for the rotten apples -- unfair employers or unreasonable employees -- to see the failure of this ‘protective’ legislation.

“If, in the normal course of business, an employee is asked to give up Sunday for work in spite of a preference for being at home, either the employee will feel he is obligated to accept and resentment will poison the personal part of their relationship, or he will refuse, causing equal feelings on the part of the employer.”

It is difficult enough. I am one who believes in having a union to represent me, and I have worked both union and nonunion. Let me tell members, union is a heck of a lot better. Where workers do not have a union and rely, as almost 200,000 do, on this personal relationship, and where the employers, as a result of the legislation this government is bringing in, are going to them and saying -- and you can understand it from the employers’ position -- “Hey, we have to keep open an extra day. The rent in this mall operation goes up. The Liberal Party needs a little more. We have to have you work.”

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Mr. Chiarelli: What is the NDP position for steelworkers on Sunday?

Mr. Mackenzie: One of the areas where I think it is essential to build up what we call good labour-management relationships is the smaller employee operations where you do not have a union. Hopefully, if it is a good relationship, they will not only treat their employees better, but they may even pay them a little better. Occasionally, that does happen.

Mr. Chiarelli: Do you want to abolish Sunday work in the steel mills?

Mr. Mackenzie: But what we are doing with this legislation is starting to drive wedges between the employers and the employees in these establishments, because they will feel that on a personal basis they have to comply with the employer’s request. I think that in itself is a possible sick side effect of this bit of legislation we have before us.

“If in the normal course of business an employee is asked to give up their Sunday for work in spite of their preference for being at home, either the employee will feel he is obligated to accept and resentment will poison the personal part of their relationship, or they will refuse, causing equal feelings on the part of the employer. In either case the work atmosphere will be damaged. Other decisions will be interpreted by employee and employer in light of the question of Sunday work. Was a decision not to promote based on a refusal to work Sundays or on performance? Can a trusted employee now be included in business confidences? Or, will the workplace simply become an unpleasant place to go every day?

“Anyone,” as they state here, “with a modicum of understanding of human relationships would not expect an employee in these circumstances to invoke their right to refuse Sunday work or to use the complaint mechanism, but instead simply agree to requests that they work Sundays.

“For those faced with an unfair employer, one who actively plans on subverting the intention of Bill 114, the situation is even more difficult.

Mr. Chiarelli: Let’s extend Bill 114 to steelworkers.

Mr. Mackenzie: “The burden of proof is on the employee that an action or threat on the part of the employer is a direct retaliation for a refusal to work. This is not a small burden.”

I could go on from there, but I think it makes the case I was trying to make, that the government is adding an additional abrasive sore point between owners and employees.

My colleague from the far side keeps asking, and I have not been listening to him, something about steelworkers and the right to refuse. One of the things I am proud of in my union -- I have had experience in two, most of my time with the steelworkers, although almost as long with the auto workers in the Ford plant in Windsor, and one of my prides in both of those local unions is that, understanding that occasionally they are not interpreting what might be the most convenient interest of their workers, they have been willing to be part of the fight and even take a lead in terms of the social issues that are addressed by the umbrella labour bodies and indeed by steelworkers generally.

Mr. Chiarelli: They work on Sunday.

Mr. Mackenzie: Delegates from the steelworkers have invariably voted almost overwhelmingly at conventions in support of the position of the retail workers against shopping. I guess that is the best answer I can give.

Sure, it might be more convenient for shift workers, and they will have discussions on this in the plant, but I am telling the member he does not know what he is talking about when he tries to carve out and get workers fighting against each other. In fact, the workers who have some understanding in their local union organizations and who have taken a tough role or have been the leaders in terms of social progress -- many of them have -- are perfectly willing to take up tough issues that are not necessarily just their issues, but have a definite benefit for others.

That is why we see them in the lead in the fight for human rights, why we see them in the lead in the fights on many of the social issues, why we see them helping to fund and support poverty groups in this community, and why I do not know a delegate -- there are undoubtedly a few when you have probably 300 steelworker delegates and as many auto worker delegates at an OFL convention -- and I know a good many of them, who has ever voted against protecting the rights of the retail workers as well. I am simply saying that the minister is flying against just about everybody who, as far as I am concerned, really counts.

I guess he can make a criticism that the Cadillac Fairviews do not count. That is not quite true. I understand there is a place for these people in our society as well, but they sure have all the spokesmen they need from this Liberal Party. If I am going to have to take a position that benefits ordinary workers or Cadillac Fairview, it is going to be the ordinary workers and not Cadillac Fairview, because I do not know who else it is supporting with this kind of legislation.

We obviously cannot change their minds and they obviously were not listening to any of the presentations. I suggest to the members of this House that one of the things they should at least tell us, to give us a bit of a light moment or a laugh, if you will, is who is pushing them for the legislation. Does the financing from the Cadillac Fairviews have something to do with the Liberal position on this? If they want to say no, they should get up and say it. I would like to hear it, but I would also like to see the figures on donations from across Ontario.

Why will they not stop and rethink their position? What have they got to lose? I said in the very first debate -- on Bill 113, not Bill 114 -- that if the Liberal Party wanted to win some Brownie points in Ontario, if it wanted to make people believe that maybe it had not forgotten this progressive bent it started with -- forgive me if we take a little bit of credit for that, but even if we do not take all of it -- and if it really wanted to win some kudos with a lot of people in Ontario, it should stick this darned bill on the back burner. Why push it through? Who are they really going to hurt, and is there that much money at stake, I ask you?

I am pleased to have had an opportunity to speak on this bill. I do not expect it, but I sincerely hope this government will have rational second thoughts that it has not indicated up until now on this piece of legislation. If nothing else, if they say, “Okay, we are going to go ahead with it; we do not care what you are saying; we do not intend to back off; we intend to pass this legislation,” then they should not lie to workers and to the people of Ontario and say, “This bill is going to give you the kind of protection the minister said,” because that is not factual. They are not telling the truth if they tell them that.

Mr. Runciman: I appreciate the opportunity to make a brief contribution to this debate. I want to say that we share --

Mr. Fleet: The briefer the better, Bob.

Mr. Runciman: He is probably right.

We share the view of the New Democratic Party, the official opposition, with respect to this legislation being something of a mess, to be polite. As a result, we have concluded that as a party we do not wish to take part in suggesting any amendments to this legislation. As well, we do not want in any way, shape or form, to be associated with this bill in its final definition as it passes through this House, supported by the bleating sheep on the back benches of the governing party.

Mr. Fleet: There is a lot of wool around your ears. There is a lot of wool inside and outside your ears.

Mr. Runciman: The member for Hamilton East (Mr. Mackenzie) was wondering who is calling the shots with respect to this legislation. He was suggesting that perhaps it is some of the larger real estate companies in Ontario. They may indeed have some influence with respect to this decision; I do not know. I know the Premier made a promise during the election campaign in 1987, another one of his infamous promises. He decided, at some point since the Liberal Party’s enormous success in the provincial election, to conveniently forget that he made such a promise, or numerous promises to the people of Ontario.

Mr. Fleet: What do they say in Leeds-Grenville about your being in bed with the socialists?

Mr. Runciman: Who is calling the shots? I do not know who has the Premier’s ear in respect of this. We do know he made this decision without consulting his executive council, his cabinet colleagues, and more important, without consulting the Solicitor General who was caught cold with respect to this announcement.

Mr. Fleet: You know nothing, as usual.

Mr. Runciman: She herself only two weeks previously -- we have all heard this one -- was saying the municipal option was the chicken way out. This particular piece of legislation, this initiative on the part of the government obviously caught her by surprise, caught the cabinet by surprise, caught the Liberal caucus by surprise, as well as caught all of those trusting Ontario voters by surprise who had believed the promises of the leader of the Liberal Party when he was running during the campaign.

Mr. Fleet: What is surprising is your being in bed with the socialists. What do they think in Leeds-Grenville about your being in bed with the socialists?

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Mr. Runciman: Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that I have one of these bleating sheep on my left, supporting the Liberal Party, who is not providing me an opportunity to express the views of my constituents in this House by his almost constant interruptions and heckling. I think you should recognize that effort on the part of this Liberal backbencher, who does not have the intestinal fortitude to stand up on this issue and speak for the interests of his own constituents.

He is one of the gutless many on the government side. He is one of the gutless many who does not have the guts to stand up in this House and speak on this issue. We do not hear any Liberal members participating in this debate, yet he wants to interfere with the members who do want to express their views.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: The chair recognizes one member at a time. Order, please. The current member being recognized is the member for Leeds-Grenville and only the member for Leeds-Grenville.

Hon. Mr. Conway: He is not a man to be provoked, either.

Mr. Runciman: Right on. I am constantly checking my blood pressure, for the information of the government House leader. He is certainly one who can easily agitate me. There is no question about that.

In any event, the member for High Park-Swansea (Mr. Fleet), in one of his infrequent contributions, if you want to classify it as a contribution, gave me an opportunity to once again put on the record that the government backbenchers certainly have been noticeable by their absence in this debate and in terms of this whole issue of Sunday shopping.

They have not been adequately representing the wishes of many of their constituents. I know that CAOSS and some of the groups that have opposed this initiative have indicated there are something like 40 backbench members of the Liberal Party who are opposed to this legislation. They have not at this stage been prepared to release the names of those members. Hopefully, they will at some point in the future.

When I look around the House at the rather meagre number of government members in attendance: the member for Grey (Mr. Lipsett) for example; the member for Elgin (Miss Roberts), who was just here recently; an old -- I should not say old; let’s put it this way, a veteran of this Legislature -- the member for Essex-Kent (Mr. McGuigan), someone I have a great deal of respect for. I am sure that if he has touched base with his constituents on this issue, as I am sure he has, he is very much appreciative of the concerns that are out there.

The member for Lake Nipigon, from the official opposition, was talking about the loss of traditional family values, the continual erosion of traditional family values in society. Certainly, this is an issue that goes to the heart of that question.

I want to make an appeal to the members of the governing party, to those of them who represent some of the more traditional ridings in Ontario, rural Ontario to a significant extent. This legislation is obviously going to come back to haunt them a year and a half to two years from now. More important, just putting that aside, I think they should be pausing and thinking about their relationship with the people who elected them.

I know that when I came into this House back in 1981, one of the things I wanted to do was more honestly and accurately represent the feelings of people in my riding. I think there is a great deal of frustration out there. The frustration continues to be there about people being elected to this House who stand up and say, “Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full,” when it comes to the government saying, “This is the way we’re going to vote.”

Members who have been around here for some time will recall the position I took in respect to the government’s decision to involve itself in the purchase of an oil company. I opposed that basically because I certainly did not believe in it. I did not believe in the way it was handled by the government of the day, comparable to the way this initiative was handled by the Premier. He does not learn from the lessons of history. I took a stand on that and I have always felt comfortable about the stand I took on that particular issue.

Mr. Villeneuve: And you are still here.

Mr. Runciman: And I am still here; that is right. The member mentions I am still here.

I want to point out that we have a member in the House who has taken an independent stand in respect to issues like this. I do not want to embarrass him. I am just looking for his riding here. The member for Etobicoke-Humber (Mr. Henderson) has taken some very strong, well-thought-out positions of conscience on issues that I am sure gave him a great deal of difficulty. I know the difficult time I went through within the party when I opposed an initiative of the government, and I am sure he has had that same kind of struggle, the same kinds of pressures exerted on him.

If we are talking about a large number of members of the government party who are having a high level of discomfort with this piece of legislation, they should step back and reflect upon why they wanted to become members of this House in the first place, what they wanted to accomplish as members. Are they here for personal gain? I do not think too many of us are. Are they here to do a job on behalf of the people who elected them to represent them? If they are, they should sit back and think about this piece of legislation.

When we think about the way the Premier handled this, the fact is the executive council was not consulted and the Liberal members were not consulted. They were not given an option whether or not this was an appropriate initiative on the part of their government. They did not have any decision whatsoever on this. I know the feeling. It is a feeling of frustration.

I think they have an opportunity now. If they want to do it in the secrecy of caucus, fine, but they should get together, stand up and say, “We do not think this is an appropriate way to go and we are not prepared to support the government.” It may mean not coming in here for the vote. It may mean absenting themselves from the vote. That is one course of action. Or perhaps the more courageous way is standing up and being counted in this House.

That is really what I wanted to say. It is an experience I have been through personally.

Mr. Neumann: I know what I am going to do.

Mr. Runciman: We will be interested in seeing how the member for Brantford votes on this issue.

Mr. Neumann: I have already said.

Mr. Runciman: We know where he is going to stand on this issue. He is going to support his Premier. He is going to play it safe.

Too frequently, ambition rules the day on the governing side. In many instances that obscures good sense, common sense and the commitment all of us have made to our individual ridings. I hope those members who are legitimately concerned will give this very serious thought over the next few days and will, I hope, take a stand that they can feel comfortable with and that the people of this province will be proud of.

Mr. Allen: I rise to participate in this debate on the motion to receive the report of the standing committee on administration of justice with respect to Bill 114, An Act to amend the Employment Standards Act, in order to accommodate the legislation that precedes it, namely Bill 113 with respect to Sunday shopping.

May I begin on a very simple note, as someone who stands to speak for the members of his own constituency and his own community. If I were to see myself simply as their delegate and not speak or give any other reason as to why I support or oppose this legislation, I would have to say that I would be not only honour bound, but ironclad in voting to oppose this legislation.

I doubt very much that the wisdom of this government stands up with any credibility against the wisdom of the community I speak for, which is made up so heavily of working people who have had lifetimes of experience in the labour force, working for employers and knowing what it means to be protected and not protected.

I want to say in all honesty that in all the length of time this issue has been before this province, I have not received one single letter urging me to support either of these pieces of legislation. I have a fairly hefty file of the letters I have received and they are unanimous. I would have to say that probably does not mean there are not a few people in my community who may support the legislation.

In order to find out a little more exactly, I used, as many members do, a householder to get some feedback. One of the biggest responses I have ever received from a mailout, it came back with over 4,000 replies. I just want to give the proportions here of those who are for and opposed to various aspects of the legislation that is being proposed in Bills 113 and 114.

The first question: “Do you believe the claim made by grocery store owners and their employees that Sunday shopping will increase the cost of food since it is more expensive to be open seven days a week than six?” Yes: 2,794. No: 931, and 324 had no opinion.

Two: “Do you feel that the Peterson Liberals were dishonest in stating their opposition to Sunday shopping during the recent election campaign and then reversing their position shortly after the election?”

Members opposite should listen to this. These are admittedly --

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Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Allen: These are admittedly questions that have some leading element, but the leading element is quite simply this: if they are concerned about how people are reading their position on this legislation, they will listen to the following statistic --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Allen: -- because the people who feel that way tell me that 2,700 people are in agreement with that proposition and only 500 are against it, even though a good many of the people who are responding here undoubtedly are Liberal in their vote.

Mr. Mahoney: And will be again.

Mr. Allen: I would hope for your sake that they are.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Allen: There is nothing in the information that any of us is getting in our constituency offices that would lead us to think that is the case on this particular issue.

There was another question: “At present, most shopping malls have lease arrangements requiring storekeepers to remain open during the hours of business set by mall owners. If Sunday shopping is allowed, this will mean that merchants will be forced to stay open on Sunday, whether or not they wish to. Do you believe this is fair?” Again, those who think it is unfair are 3,500; and on the order of three hundred and some think it would be fair.

“Has the provincial government shirked its responsibility in transferring to municipal politicians the contentious issue of whether or not large department and grocery stores should remain open on Sundays?” Over 3,000 say they have shirked their responsibilities. Some 500 say they have not shirked their responsibilities.

“Are you in favour or against the proposed legislation which will permit large department and grocery stores to remain open on Sunday, i.e., seven days a week?” For: 792. Against: 3,257.

Admittedly, it is not a scientific poll and I would not claim it was, but I think the numbers do say something. I think it would be very foolish for the members opposite to disregard numbers of that kind, because they do have a story to tell and they tell it very much with respect to the government members’ own interests in their constituencies in the next election.

Let me say this. If this government has concluded that it does not really have a compact with the electorate on this question, notwithstanding the fact that the Premier in the last election declared that the government in fact would not be moving in this direction, that it would be maintaining the position that the legislative committee had adopted in the previous session, that it would in fact be supporting the common pause day with standard universal legislation in Ontario; notwithstanding that, this government, for whatever reason, has decided it does not have a compact with the people of Ontario on that issue.

I think that is most unwise for a government. It may well be very easy to think, with 94 members: “We’re the government. We can make those decisions and we have a responsibility to govern.” They can say in response to us when we raise questions or oppose them on this legislation: “We are the government. We have the right to govern.” Nobody is questioning that. Of course they have the right to govern. That is the task they were given. Nobody disputes it, but the question is not exhausted at that point.

The issue becomes: On what terms did the government enter into an agreement with the people of Ontario in the last election? What general direction did it say it would move in? What was the sense of the proportions of legislation and the legislation in specifics and what were the contents of some of the issues?

Those things do at least formulate a kind of obligation, not necessarily an ironclad agreement that the government will never do anything differently from what it said it would during the election or that it would not do things that were not talked about in the election. Obviously, times change, circumstances change, new issues arise and a lot has to be done by a government that is not in fact comprehended in the context of a debate or a discussion that takes place in an election.

None the less, some things were said about the common pause day, some things were said to the people of Ontario as to the way in which the government planned to act and move and take responsibility with respect to this particular issue. That is not the way in which the government has acted, not the way in which it has taken responsibility; and I suggest that something, at least in the form of an obligation it has, has been put to one side and is being treated with an excess of lightheartedness and inattention. I think the government would be very, very wise to think again about its situation in that respect.

I want to say that it is not just a compact with the present electorate that a government has, it is not just with respect to a present community of people in Ontario that the Legislature has a kind of compact; it also has a compact -- and here I would acknowledge my own personal indebtedness in my own political thinking to some of the great Conservative theorists of political thought like Edmund Burke -- with generations past, it has a compact with people who have gone before.

Why does one say that? Because generations in Ontario have tried to build a certain kind of society. They have contributed to the forming of institutions, whether commercial, political, educational or otherwise. They have devoted their lives and their best thought, they have sweated, they have organized and they have laboured hard to produce an Ontario that we live in and of which we are in fact deeply proud, on this particular issue, no less than on others. The organization of labour, the organization of work, the pattern of holiday and of family life did not just happen overnight in Ontario, did not happen by accident. It happened because there were people in our communities who believed that a certain quality of life was essential to this province, to their own personal lives.

If members go back into the latter years of the 19th century, an industrial urban society was beginning to take shape and large industries were being established and displacing the small ones. Urban centres were growing, sometimes two, three, four or five times in a decade. New problems and social issues that had to be confronted were arising and were slowly overturning an agrarian-dominated society that had another set of rules that were simpler and easier, more amenable, someone has said, to the human spirit, but none the less overturned in the course of time. As that new society developed, people had to wrestle with the problems that arose, had to work out new patterns of relationships at work and elsewhere.

If members go back into the 1880s, they will see the struggle that small retailers had in order to find uniform closing hours, not just for Sunday but for the rest of the week. It was not easy and they had to begin their little early-closing clubs in this community and that community and another community. They had to establish it here, work it out there, develop larger organizations, campaign for province-wide legislation. Gradually they were successful, because they knew that if each one of them wanted to regulate his own hours, it was a hopeless cause; they would each be competing with each other down the block and in the neighbouring block and in the neighbouring community. They would be pushing each other to work endless hours and their staff to work endless hours, and in the course of doing that, doing no one a good service, not least of all their families and communities, and probably not their business either, because they could not give it their best attention when they were all so exhausted at the end of their workdays and then having to repeat it over and work for 12, 14 or 16 hours the next day just because the neighbouring stores were open.

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Precisely the same thing happened in the same decade with respect to working hours on the labour side in the issue of Sunday opening and Sunday closing. It is not surprising that this began in that decade, because it was the decade during which the major thrust of industrialization in Ontario took place. In that decade, as labour unions began to form and develop their local organizations, and as church leaders who worked with their constituencies, with their own people, saw the kind of effects that it had on their personal lives and on their families’ lives to work the inordinate hours that they had to do and to work often six or seven days a week, they began to form organizations like the Lord’s Day Alliance.

Many today who do not have a very strong religious connection will say there was a vested religious interest and it was the promotion of a single religious perspective and all that kind of thing; but however much religious investment there was in the notion of Sunday in Canada or in the Christian tradition, the arguments went back to a universal recognition that preceded those organizations for hundreds and thousands of years, simply that people need to have some regular rhythm of life, a cessation from labour, not just as individuals but as a community so that community organizations and community life can exist.

In the course of centuries, that common human understanding became invested with religious significance, but it is wrong in the latter days of this whole argument to suggest that the people who were promoting that argument were only acting out of so-called religious motives. Those people in our common religious organizations, principally Catholic and Protestant but certainly sometimes Jewish, worked with the labour movement in order to find that common pause day, they formed their organizations and then they began to lobby and organize. It took them 20 years to get a common framework piece of legislation in Canada, which was passed in 1908, in order to regulate industrial labour on Sunday.

What I want to say to members opposite is that it has been the sense that was formulated in that generation of struggle that has dominated Ontario life in subsequent years with respect to this issue. While we have moved a little bit this way and that way, and while we have had to accommodate the fact that industrial processes arose which would require continuous labour and transportation systems that did not cease to operate because you changed from Saturday to Sunday at 12 o’clock midnight and so on, notwithstanding all that shifting and changing, the central proposition of Ontario society -- and certainly of Canada in general -- has been that an organized common pause day has been a healthy and valuable thing for Canadians and is something that we ought not to put to one side and certainly not to put to one side lightly.

If I were to ask one central question about the government’s proposals at this point in time with respect to Bill 114, it would be, “Why would you want to overturn so dramatically that tradition?” I think it cannot really be well argued that Bill 114 provides significant protections. As the leader of this party indicated a little earlier, there is finally only one protection that is significant and relatively complete for working people with respect to Sunday labour in the retailing business -- because that is what we are talking about right now, but any other business that is not continuous and governed by other legislation as well -- and that is a complete cessation under the existing --

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. I am not accustomed to interrupting.

Mr. Allen: You interrupt me quite regularly, as a matter of fact, sir.

Mr. Speaker: I would like to inform the member, as well as all members of the House, that looking over Votes and Proceedings dated Thursday, January 12, I note there was unanimous consent that a division would take place at 5:45 p.m. on Tuesday, January 17. Unanimous consent has been given to defer the division, as the members will recall, on second reading of Bill 4. Therefore, pursuant to the order of the House of last Thursday, I must interrupt these proceedings and call in the members.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: Because this has not happened before, and I have been trying to understand by reviewing the rules how you are suspending a debate, I would like to know under what rule you are suspending a debate. Also am I under the right impression that, upon completion of the vote we are going to take at 5:45, the same procedure would follow as if we had been accepting a motion to adjourn the debate? If that is the case, Mr. Speaker, in order not to follow a procedure that has not been followed, I would request that the cleaner process to follow right now would be unanimous consent to adjourn the debate on this report and then to proceed with the vote.

Mr. Speaker: Certainly I can inform the House, if members so desire; however, there has been a request for unanimous consent. If the members would like me to respond to the question of the member, I certainly would be glad to respond as I see it. The House decided that it wished to interrupt the proceedings at 5:45 today to take the vote, and following the vote, which of course would be taken on a bell of a maximum of 30 minutes, then the business that was interrupted would continue.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: Because I think it would be a more appropriate procedure to follow, and also considering the time and the fact that when we finish this vote it will be six o’clock, could I ask that the question be put to the House that there be unanimous consent to adjourn the debate on the report from the standing committee on administration of justice on Bill 114.

Hon. Mr. Conway: Mr. Speaker, I think we should proceed by the order that would see us take this vote along the lines that your ruling would suggest.

Mr. Speaker: I understand the request was made and there is not unanimous consent. Therefore, pursuant to the order of the House of Thursday last, I will continue to interrupt the proceedings and call in the members to vote on the motion for second reading of Bill 4.

I would remind all members that this bell will be a maximum of 30 minutes.

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METROPOLITAN TORONTO POLICE COMPLAINTS AMENDMENT ACT

The House divided on second reading of Bill 4, which was agreed to on the following vote:

Ayes

Adams, Beer, Black, Brandt, Callahan, Campbell, Caplan, Carrothers, Chiarelli, Collins, Conway, Cooke, D. R., Cordiano, Cousens, Cureatz, Dietsch, Eakins, Elliot, Epp, Eves, Faubert, Fawcett, Ferraro, Fleet, Grandmaître, Hart, Henderson, Hošek, Johnson, J. M., Kanter, Kerrio, Kozyra, Kwinter, Lipsett, Lupusella;

Mahoney, Mancini, Marland, McCague, McClelland, McGuigan, McLean, McLeod, Morin, Neumann, Nixon, J. B., Nixon, R. F., Oddie Munro, Offer, O’Neil, H., O’Neill, Y., Patten, Phillips, Pollock, Poole, Reycraft, Riddell, Roberts, Ruprecht, Smith, D. W., Sola, Sterling, Stoner, Sweeney, Tatham, Velshi, Villeneuve, Wilson, Wong.

Nays

Allen, Bryden, Cooke, D. S., Hampton, Laughren, Mackenzie, Martel, Morin-Strom, Philip, Pouliot, Reville, Wildman.

Bill ordered for standing committee on administration of justice.

REPORT BY COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED)

Mr. Allen: Mr. Speaker, I have some further remarks I want to make. I was only partway through the speech I had prepared. Given the hour, I beg unanimous consent to adjourn the debate on this question and to return to it another time.

Hon. Mr. Conway: If I might, Mr. Speaker, my colleagues, as you can see, are gathered here to listen to our friends in the second or the third party debate this issue or, having the debate concluded, to take the vote. That is our view. If the honourable member wishes to continue, we are here to listen.

Mr. Speaker: According to the standing order, the member requested unanimous consent. There is not unanimous consent. I will listen to the member for Hamilton West.

Mr. Allen: It is quite clear that this issue is an issue that has seized the entire public of Ontario. It is an issue we have clearly taken the measure of across the province in very careful hearings. We now have a report coming back to the House. This is our first opportunity to debate that report in its generality before we move into the details in committee of the whole.

It does not make any sense to us to enter into a situation in which we would find ourselves speaking all night simply for the sake of a majority government that feels it will use its 94 members in order to put us through a punishing all-night debate that could, of course, go on and on.

We want to come to the committee of the whole, but we want to have our say first. We feel this government is using its majority to ram through a piece of legislation that it knows is unpopular and that it cannot get public support for. Under those circumstances, we are going to have to stand and call for a division on the report itself.

Mr. Speaker: Do any other members wish to participate in the debate?

The member for Brampton South (Mr. Callahan) previously put the question “Shall the report be received and adopted?”

As there is no further debate, is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour will say “aye.”

All those opposed will say “nay.”

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Call in the members.

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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1989

1750

The House divided on Mr. Callahan’s motion for adoption of the report of the standing committee on administration of justice on Bill 114, which was agreed to on the following vote:

Ayes

Ballinger, Black, Brown, Callahan, Campbell, Carrothers, Collins, Conway, Cooke, D.R., Curling, Dietsch, Eakins, Elliot, Elston, Epp, Faubert, Fawcett, Fleet, Fontaine, Furlong, Grandmaître, Haggerty, Henderson, Kanter, Kerrio, Keyes, LeBourdais, Leone, Lipsett;

Mahoney, Matrundola, McClelland, McGuigan, McGuinty, McLeod, Miclash, Miller, Morin, Nicholas. Nixon, J. B., Offer, O’Neil, H., O’Neill, Y., Owen, Patten, Phillips, G., Polsinelli, Poole, Ray, M. C., Reycraft, Riddell, Roberts, Ruprecht, Smith, D. W., Smith, E. J., Sola, Sorbara, South, Stoner, Sullivan, Tatham, Velshi, Ward, Wong, Wrye.

Nays

Allen, Brandt, Breaugh, Bryden, Cooke, D.S., Cousens, Cunningham, Eves, Farnan, Grier, Hampton, Johnson, J. M., Kormos, Laughren, Mackenzie, Martel, McCague, McLean, Morin-Strom, Philip, E., Pollock, Pope, Pouliot, Rae, B., Reville, Runciman, Sterling, Villeneuve, Wildman.

Ayes 65; nays 29.

Bill ordered for committee of the whole House.

The House adjourned at 5:55 p.m.