Hansard Transcript 1989-Jan-26 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

That, in the opinion of this House, recognizing the ever-increasing costs associated with the hospital care and the alternative of community-based health services, the government of Ontario should encourage the formation of community-based health centres similar to the health centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, whereby the corporate sector and the labour movement, along with local health boards and community groups as well as the Ministry of Health work together to establish such community-based facilities.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Mississauga West has up to 20 minutes to make his presentation and may reserve any portion of that for the windup.

Mr. Mahoney: I am delighted to rise in support of this resolution and to bring this concept before my colleagues in the Legislature. It is not necessarily a new idea, but it is an idea that has worked so well, particularly in the community of Sault Ste. Marie, which happens to be my home town, that I think it is time the provincial government looked seriously at duplicating as much as possible the same type of facility that is available in Sault Ste. Marie.

The issue in health care is really alternatives. We must think of new ways to deliver services in our communities and of more direct community involvement in delivering those services.

There are a couple of different types of community facilities in the delivery of health care. One is called a community health centre. Just to read the definition very briefly, it says: “The community health centres are facilities which offer a range of co-ordinated primary health care in related services to one or more priority groups. The services are provided in a multidisciplinary manner and are specifically designed to meet the health needs of the priority group or priority groups.”

The operation in Sault Ste. Marie is technically not a community health centre. Although it is referred to as a community health centre, it is really known in proper health definitions as a health service organization. I would like to share with the members the full definition of a health service organization, because in talking to people in the community about this concept the question comes up, what actually is it you are talking about? So it is important we understand the concept. Whether we call it a community health centre or a health service organization is somewhat incidental, in my view.

A health service organization’s objectives are to create an environment which is supportive of physicians and other health care personnel and which allows flexibility in responding to the health care needs of the population served; to develop a co-ordinated system of health care delivery which makes the most appropriate use of health care resources and which is accessible, efficient and economical; to provide special attention to health maintenance and illness prevention measures which will enhance the health status of the population served, and finally and very important, to decrease institutional care by giving emphasis to ambulatory care, self-care and home care, all of which are philosophies this government has espoused both in past throne speeches and in statements by the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan).

The resolution refers to community-based health services similar to the one in the Sault. I would like to share some of the history of the operation in Sault Ste. Marie. I had the pleasure of flying up to the Sault last Friday for a tour of the facility with Fred Griffith, the general manager of the facility. I was extremely impressed not only with the quality of the actual plant involved in this operation, but with the attitude of the people and the obvious caring that goes on throughout the entire facility, and the feeling of community members that it is their facility, that it belongs to them.

The United Steelworkers of America opened the group health centre in Sault Ste. Marie in 1958. At the time, the centre was funded by consumer premiums as an alternative to private insurance indemnity and organized as a group practice as an alternative to solo practice. When the universal provincial health care scheme was introduced in Ontario in 1969, the group health centre negotiated with the Ministry of Health to pay a set amount to the health centre based on the number of members of that centre, and this is known today as capitation.

The centre is managed by a board of directors from the community consisting of doctors and local citizens as well as members of the United Steelworkers of America, and the capitation formula established at that time pays for each person on the roster. I should point out there are 43,000 rostered patients at the health centre out of a population in the Sault -- I think the member for Sault Ste. Marie (Mr. Morin-Strom) will correct me later if am wrong -- of approximately 85,000 or 86,000 people. Almost 50 per cent of the entire population of that city is rostered on the health centre registry.

There is also an ambulatory care incentive payment, known as ACIP, which is paid when the health centre shows decreased hospitalization compared to the surrounding region. Members would be interested to know that in the surrounding region they have in fact reduced in-hospital care by almost 28 per cent as a result of the latest figures, and at times it rises to as high as 32 or 33 per cent. The centre has consistently demonstrated reduced hospital use over its term.

Just to give members some information about its makeup, the Algoma Medical Group consists of 33 physicians representing 13 medical specialities. The centre operates five departments: optometry, physiotherapy, counselling, laboratory and chiropody. In addition to all Ontario health insurance plan benefits, the centre offers roster members four non-OHIP-covered services as well, which is an incentive to remain on the roster. Those four include counselling, nutrition consultation, communicative disorders therapy and a back pain clinic that could be very helpful in dealing with concerns related to workers’ compensation.

The health centre has spread its wings a little recently and has opened a satellite health centre in another part of the Sault and a women’s health centre, also on the same site but in a separate building.

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The important thing here is that no additional funding was required for either of these centres, and indeed the entire facility right from the late 1950s to the present day has been funded entirely by the local community. In the late 1950s there was a charge, I believe, of $135 per family that was worked out as a checkoff with the Algoma Steel Corp. in an effort to raise the funds.

On my tour, I was presented with a book that is very interesting. I recommend it to all members for some very insightful history of what took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s in that community. It is entitled First and Foremost in Community Health Centres and it is about the centre in Sault Ste. Marie and the community health centre alternative.

I would just like to share a couple of things in the book. The book is dedicated to the memory of John George Barker. John Barker passed away in 1982 but he left a legacy in this health centre. John was a great trade unionist, a strong socialist in many ways, a good personal friend of mine and my family and a man who really led the charge to develop the health centre in the Sault.

To give members an idea, I will just read from the book a short quote by Glenn Wilson, one of the consultants, hired from the United States actually, to come and help in establishing this health centre. Glenn Wilson said, “Give me John Barker and I can build a health centre in the Sahara Desert.”

I am sure the Barker family, particularly Carole, Mr. Barker’s daughter, whom I met at the health centre, and all the members of the local of the United Steelworkers of America, are very proud of the work John Barker did.

It goes on to say in the book that health services are generally organized according to the dictates of the physician rather than according to the desires of the community in which he or she practises. I do not think that is an outrageous statement. I think it is a statement of fact that a doctor will establish a practice based on how he or she feels he or she can best serve his or her particular clientele.

The book goes on, however, to say -- it is interesting that it is referring to the era in the late 1950s and early 1960s because much of what is said in this book actually could apply, very clearly, to 1989 -- “At a time when the cost of health care and its contribution to our overall level of wellness are increasingly being called into question” -- as they are, I would point out, in this very Legislature from time to time -- “discussion of alternative methods is more important than ever.

“The account of the Sault Ste. Marie achievement from the late 1950s to 1980 offers a unique opportunity to view developments in health care delivery from a position of practical experience. As policymakers” -- which clearly we all are in this Legislature -- “come to view alternatives such as this as a possible future direction for a health service, then a comprehensive exploration of the issues and events in the association’s growth may help in better formulating the exact nature of that future.”

Finally, it goes on to say: “The group health centre in Sault Ste. Marie was born from a trade union’s desire for a better community not just for its members but for all the inhabitants.” I point out that although the centre was indeed funded by the United Steelworkers and the concept began with the dream of John Barker and many of his compatriots, that health centre is open to all residents of Sault Ste. Marie.

I speak of the health centre in the Sault because I think it is the type of facility we can bring to communities like mine in Mississauga, in the greater Peel area, and indeed in the greater Metropolitan Toronto area.

There was a crisis in the late 1950s in Sault Ste. Marie. There were too few doctors. There was overcrowding of hospitals. Interestingly, it seems that the more things change, the more they remain the same. The two general hospitals, one Catholic and one Protestant, operating side by side in downtown Sault Ste. Marie, were overcrowded. The beds were jammed and there was a waiting list.

There was a lack of alternatives due to the isolation of this rugged, almost frontier-like community in the 1950s, but because of Mr. Barker and some of his compatriots they saw an opportunity out of this particular problem. I can tell members that from the account in this book and from information I have received, both from my father who was the national director of the steelworkers at the time and from talking to Mr. Barker and to people at the health centre last week, there was a tremendous amount of opposition to this new, somewhat revolutionary idea at that time. They were opposed at the time by the hospitals, by the Ontario Medical Association and by the local chapter of the doctors in Sault Ste. Marie.

The opposition was based on the fact that this idea was social medicine, that it was socialism. They were actually even fighting among themselves and fighting the forerunner of the Ontario health insurance plan, which was known as Physicians’ Services Inc. or PSI. The doctors in the Sault opted out because they did not like the level of fees that were established under PSI and decided to go on their own, at which time I guess you could call it extra-billing. It was extra-billing over and above the fee schedule that was provided in the PSI arrangement.

We had a problem, but many people who had great foresight saw this problem as an opportunity, and with that farsighted thinking a new alternative was born. The rest is history and I commend not only the book but also the concept and the idea to all members of this House to take back to their communities.

Can we do it today? We obviously have a different structure today in that we have what people think is free medical care for everyone. We all know nothing comes free at any time in life, so there is a real cost, but can we do it today? Can we in fact motivate a community group or number of groups or a particular community to establish its own community health centre or health service organization such as the Sault’s?

Some people would say we are already doing it. For example, I understand we have as many as 11 clinics in the city of Hamilton. They are all operated by doctors and in fact they are charging their fees based on the capitation system, for the most part, with some additional fee-for-service arrangements being paid through OHIP. St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton is currently planning and negotiating to build a separate centre that would operate under the capitation system.

Cities like the Sault and Hamilton, however, may have an advantage over cities like Mississauga or Scarborough or other parts of the greater Toronto area in that they tend to have a major industry, in the case of both the Sault and Hamilton a major steel industry, and a client group that they can clearly identify and pull together to help fund this concept.

However, the example in Don Mills, the riding of my colleague the member for Don Mills (Mr. Velshi), would indicate that indeed it can be done in the more urban, less organized areas of this province. There is the Flemingdon Health Centre in Don Mills which functions very similarly to the Sault Ste. Marie Group Health Centre in that it is run by a board of community directors. It is very similar in operation, although the initial capitalization was substantially different.

The key to my resolution, I submit to this Legislature, is that the province should encourage the activation of other groups to get involved, to take some leadership.

My colleague the member for Mississauga North (Mr. Offer) and I met with the labour council representative in our community to talk about how we could possibly do this through the Brampton, Mississauga and District Labour Council by involving its membership. They represent a substantial number of trade unions in that community. He is quite excited about the concept. I think both the member for Mississauga North and I feel there is an opportunity to pursue it with the labour council perhaps being the lead group in the organization.

If we think of other groups, if we all think about our community, we might think about the senior citizens’ groups. We have a senior citizens’ group in Mississauga that is truly a remarkable organization, led by Mrs. Lucy Turnbull, a person of great fame, loved by many, many Mississaugans, a group that could motivate and indeed has motivated its membership to raise funds to help build a wonderful senior citizens’ social centre on Cawthra Road in Mississauga. So we have a major group there.

We have many multicultural groups that are clearly looking for ways to motivate, to generate enthusiasm within their own organizations and to try to direct the energies of their groups into specific areas. I submit they would be extremely interested in this kind of concept.

We have the labour umbrella groups I referred to, the labour council concept, the individual labour unions and corporations that are very responsible that I think would be interested in providing a facility, a service, for their employees and the families of their employees if it was done in a comprehensive way; service clubs -- the list goes on and on.

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Clearly, there is a way to develop such a facility if we can only generate the enthusiasm and the leadership from within the community, because government cannot continue to do it all. We see our health care budget taking a third of our entire provincial budget, and throwing more money at the situation, in my view, is not the solution.

I have two minutes plus left in my time allotment and I would appreciate the opportunity of saving that for some wrapup comments after others have spoken.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I am pleased to be able to speak to this particular resolution because it is one that hits very close to my heart. Being a resident of and the member for Sault Ste. Marie, I am aware of and very closely involved with the group health centre there. I commend the member for bringing forward this model as a very appropriate one for health care in Ontario, because it has proved so successful in my community of Sault Ste. Marie.

This centre was formed back in the late 1950s by a very dedicated group of steelworkers at Algoma Steel Corp. The steelworkers there were convinced that a better system of health care could be provided to the people of northern Ontario than was being provided by the system which was in place at that time. They banded together and self-financed the start of this centre at a time when the north was certainly not receiving the kind of health care other communities were. The costs of health care in Sault Ste. Marie were much higher than in other communities at that time and the steelworkers recognized the importance of a group approach to a health care facility which would provide new services to our community which had not been there in the past.

I would like to commend the United Steelworkers of America for the work they did back in those years and the work they have done in maintaining this health centre since then. To this date, the majority of the board of directors of the group health centre in Sault Ste. Marie are members of the United Steelworkers of America. They continue to have overall control of the centre and it is really their initiative which has provided this sterling example of an alternative health care facility for Ontario.

Many of us here in the Legislature know -- perhaps others are not as aware -- that the family of the member for Mississauga West (Mr. Mahoney), who has brought forward this resolution, was very involved in this program. In fact, his father, Bill Mahoney, who was at that time the national director of the United Steelworkers of America, was one of the original board members and founders of this group health centre. I can certainly understand his pride in this facility and why he would want to bring it forward as an important example of what kind of health care is possible in the province.

The best testimonial that can be made for this health centre is the fact that it is one in which the membership is completely voluntary. The fact is that people in Sault Ste. Marie have the choice of whether they want to go to their own private, individual physician, as is the case with the vast majority of residents in the province, or whether they want to be associated with this particular health centre. Given that choice, the fact is that in a community of just over 80,000, 50 per cent of the residents of Sault Ste. Marie, more than 40,000, are members of the group health centre.

In fact, my family have been members of the group health centre for the years since I returned to Sault Ste. Marie after completing university. We have found that the services there really do provide not only equal care but, in our view, better care than is provided through the route by which most individuals are getting their care in Ontario.

There are real advantages to membership, to belonging to a health centre like this, particularly for families that have young children. We have found that, in terms of family care, with the kinds of minor ailments that children come up with from time to time -- the sore ears, the minor injuries, the fevers or ailments that one cannot quite identify in young children -- with those kinds of semi-emergency cases where families want to bring their children in to get a quick assessment, it is much easier and much quicker to get that assessment through the health centre than it is either by trying to go to your family doctor who in many cases is not available, of course, on a moment’s notice or by having to go to the emergency wing of a hospital.

In most communities in Ontario, when one has a case that one is concerned about in one’s family, one has to go to an emergency wing of a hospital to get quick care. Most people, I think, know the kinds of bottlenecks that occur in the emergency wings, the difficulty in getting quick service unless you are a very, very serious emergency, because of the shortages of staff and facilities that the hospitals have.

The group health centre has a very efficient system of emergency care in off-hours which is oriented to the kinds of family problems that occur from time to time, particularly with children. We have found that it is much easier, much quicker to get access to a doctor and to get a quick assessment of what your child’s ailment is, get a quick prescription, pick it up right there at the group health centre and get the child back home. We have found real benefits to the operation of the health centre in Sault St. Marie.

The fact that more than 50 per cent of the residents of the Sault belong to this health centre proves the success of the operation of the centre. The centre has specialities in a wide range of areas. In fact, in some areas in the Sault the only specialist in Sault St. Marie is the specialist at the group health centre. It is much more than just family medicine and general practice medicine.

The centre in the Sault continues to grow. It has started up a satellite operation in the western part of the city, an area where we have not historically had very many doctors engaged in private practice. It has recently opened up a new women’s health clinic adjacent to the main facility and continues to attempt to provide more and more services.

Unfortunately, in terms of the overall system of government funding, there have been restrictions in terms of areas that the group health centre in Sault St. Marie would like to go into but has been prevented by the government from going into. We have to have a government program which is more accommodating to these kinds of alternative health care facilities and which provides the opportunity to go into new areas, such as the group health centre’s desire to do day surgery. This service and many other services that they provide are really aimed at keeping people out of hospitals.

Study after study, tests of the group health centre population in Sault Ste. Marie versus those who are not in the population show that it saves dollars for the province. The per capita cost of a community health care centre like the group health centre is in fact lower than the cost of the typical medical care in the province. The capitation formula recognizes those kinds of costs, and the revenues that the centre has been able to get from the formula have enabled it to expand its services and provide better and new equipment for their positions over the years.

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Unfortunately, the medical community historically has not been supportive of this kind of concept. Certainly, the book First and Foremost in Community Health Centres by Jonathan Lomas illustrates the kind of problems that the community had in developing this centre, the absolute objection to it and fights with it that came from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the Ontario Medical Association in Sault Ste. Marie and most of the professional doctors there at that time. We have to encourage these alternatives and ensure that they do exist and that the solely for-profit system of medical care is not the only primary method of care in the province.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: I would like to congratulate the member for Mississauga West for bringing forth this resolution and tell him that our party intends to support it. I had not intended to speak on this resolution because our Health critic, the member for Parry Sound (Mr. Eves), who also happens to be the whip, did want to speak on the resolution. I am filling in and I will try to do my best to be supportive. I might say that the whip is engaged with the House leaders in trying to resolve the impasse that was brought about by the House leader for that side. I hope he will be doing something beneficial where he is.

I am not as knowledgeable as the member for Mississauga West who introduced the motion or indeed the member for Sault Ste. Marie who has just finished speaking, but I do recognize the importance of this type of resolution and have no hesitation in supporting it. I would just caution the members that I hope it is not one way the government is trying to ease the burden of health care costs on the present hospital system. I believe that the two have to be supported. Certainly, some of the issues that have been raised by our leader in the House are very critical and need to be addressed now, not through some form of resolution from this chamber in private members’ hour.

I do not intend to reiterate all of the comments that were made pertaining to the benefits of health service organizations, but I would like to mention just a couple. Health service organizations do tend to provide special attention to health maintenance and illness prevention measures which will enhance the health status of the population served. That is very important. It is a consideration that this government has made a commitment to but does not really seem to be following up on. It is extremely important to bring to the public’s attention the importance of illness prevention and ways that it in turn can enhance its own health.

Another very important objective of the health service organization is to decrease institutional health care by giving emphasis to ambulatory care, self-care and home care. I would very strongly like to support that concept of home care. In the riding that I represent, Wellington, Dufferin and Peel -- Wellington now; I have lost Dufferin and Peel -- we have many municipalities which are totally rural in nature and would receive very little benefit from the likes of this health service organization, but would receive immense benefits from the home care programs that could be delivered by this type of organization or which can continue to be served by the Victorian Order of Nurses, who have done an outstanding job in Wellington, Dufferin and Guelph.

I feel that this is an area that has been neglected by this government. It was very reluctant to fund the Canadian Red Cross Society and the VON when they demonstrated they had a deficit position. They play an important role in the health care service of this province, especially in ridings like mine, treating rural elderly people who, if it were not for the care provided by the VON or the Red Cross, would end up in a hospital situation.

I fail to understand why the government would not be supportive of their deficit position. Reluctantly -- I say reluctantly -- after one of our members, the member for London North, introduced an emergency debate on the issue to provide funding, the government in the next few hours decided that maybe we were right, that it should provide that funding which was needed to continue the service.

I fail to understand why the government would introduce a throne speech promising home care and encouraging people to maintain their residence if they so wished and saying it would be supportive of providing home care services. Since this is exactly what the VON and the Red Cross have been doing, why then create a problem for these organizations by not providing the funding necessary to do this very important job?

The government reluctantly agreed to fund the deficit, or at least most of it. In the case of Wellington, they agreed to pick up $62,476 of a debt of $80,640. While it is not enough, it is at least a move in the right direction. But if the government were really serious about its throne speech promise to provide home care, instead of fighting with the organizations that provide this service -- whether it is provided through the VON or the Red Cross or through health service organizations such as the one in the Sault -- instead of giving them a hassle over a deficit for doing the very thing the government encouraged them to do, why would it not suggest that indeed they expand their services, provide more services to these people who do require the health care services and who are willing to accept them in their own homes and to stay there instead of being forced to move into a senior citizens’ home or hospital to receive the same types of services?

It seems to me that it would be logical to say to the VON in Wellington, Dufferin and Guelph, “Go out and service the people in your area to the best of your ability and we’ll be extremely pleased to pick up the cost,” because that cost will be about one tenth of the cost it would entail if they had to move into the hospital setting.

I would like to say that the entire thrust of the resolution has a lot of merit. There are certain areas we can expand to alleviate some of the pressure on the health care system, especially in the hospitals. I do not think there is one answer to it, but many answers. This could possibly be one way; support of the VON and the Red Cross would be another. I think it is a combination of many rather than a few key areas that will help to put a cap on our health costs; to reduce them if possible, but certainly not allow them to increase, and at the same time to free the hospitals up to provide the necessary services that apparently are not being provided at the present.

There are too many cases being brought to the attention of the Minister of Health about people who are in need of heart operations and are not receiving them and then are paying the ultimate price. I would hope that if this resolution would be one way towards solving that problem, then indeed it is something that all members of this House should be willing to support.

In closing, I would like to commend the member once more for bringing forth the resolution and hope that the Minister of Health will pay some attention to it, and certainly that the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) will be interested in finding it as one method of helping to solve the problem he is facing.

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Mr. Offer: It is a pleasure and a privilege to participate in this resolution, a resolution which comes to grips with and addresses a very immediate concern for so many persons in this province.

I have had occasion to read over the resolution in some detail. The resolution speaks not only of a principle but also contains within it some very important factors, some very important criteria, such as the question of the alternative to hospital care in terms of community-based health services. It talks about the example of Sault Ste. Marie.

In the time allotted to me this morning, I would like to discuss in some detail those two aspects, the community-based health provision as well as the example found in Sault Ste. Marie. I would also like to take that example and superimpose it, if I might, in some way on what is the region of Peel, a part of which I, as the MPP for Mississauga North, represent.

First, I would like to compliment the member for Mississauga West on this resolution. He has spoken in his time period at some length and with an eloquence and a commitment to this resolution which I think is in many ways founded in the book which he has commended to the members to read.

This book, as he indicated earlier, is The First and Foremost in Community Health Centres: The Centre in Sault Ste. Marie and the CHC Alternative, by Jonathan Lomas. I have taken a look through the book, and if I might, I would like to quote one part for myself, with a few paraphrases within it. It states:

“One member of Barker’s executive” – and members will recall that that is a reference to John Barker, a founding member of the CHC in Sault Ste. Marie -- “in 1946 was Bill Mahoney” -- that is the father of the member for Mississauga West -- “an astute politician and a committed union activist. At that time, Mahoney was recording secretary in 2251, but in 1947 he left the local steelworkers for the national office, where he became assistant to the national director and in 1957 national director, both influential positions in the steelworker organization.” I would like to underline this last sentence, which states, “His presence in the national office for over 20 years meant that more attention was paid to the Sault local than might otherwise have happened.”

I think this speaks to the commitment and the dedication and effort put forward by Bill Mahoney. I think it also speaks to what may be a hereditary passage of genes to his son, the member for Mississauga West, because I dare say in many ways that is the type of description that one can give to the member for Mississauga West in terms of his dedication and commitment to this particular resolution at hand. Accordingly, I commend the member for Mississauga West for the work that he has put into this resolution.

In dealing with community-based health centres, we are talking about facilities which offer a range of co-ordinated primary health care and related services to a number of groups. These services are provided in a multidisciplinary manner and are specifically designed to meet the health needs of these groups. They are sponsored and managed by individuals and others interested in the provision of health and social services in the community.

They have very important advantages. They are responsive to health needs of the community and the individuals they serve and involve them in the treatment and care decisions. They consider health in a broad community and family context and emphasize improvement of health through health promotion. They are designed to improve access to appropriate health care services. They offer a comprehensive range of services which are co-ordinated at the individual level through a case management approach. They are funded on an alternative to the fee-for-service basis, and all staff, including physicians, are salaried employees responsible to the centre’s community board. They promote cost-efficient and an optimal use of a variety of health care professionals such as health educators, nurse practitioners, nutrition counsellors, physicians, social workers and community outreach programs.

The member for Mississauga West went into the example of Sault Ste. Marie in some detail. In the time permitted to me, I am not going to reiterate what he has said, save for the fact that it is a centre which has been in existence now for 31 years. It is a centre of success. It is a centre which has responded to the needs of the community in increasing access to health care. It is a centre which has, in a very fundamental way, brought residents of a community into the planning of health care in the community in which they live.

If that is a success, and it is, then can we superimpose that, the example of the Sault, the example of community-based health facilities, on the region of Peel, for instance, it being a region of dynamic and increasing growth, an area greater than 600,000 people at present? It is a region growing not only residentially but also in the industrial, commercial and retail sectors. With such growth, no matter how well planned, no matter how well prepared the politicians at all levels may be, come greater demands, a greater concern into the community.

I believe we can take the example of the Sault, take the example of Flemingdon Park, take the example of many other areas in this province and use that as a step in providing that type of service, as an example in the region of Peel through the use of community-based health facilities.

As the member for Mississauga West indicated, I have had occasion with him to speak to our local Mississauga-Brampton labour congress. They are interested, they are ready. I think we can build upon the successes of these types of facilities by bringing in a larger client group, if I might use that term; not only the industrial sector but different community groups such as seniors, whatever limitation our imagination might wish to put; because there are groups of interested individuals who want, at the very minimum, to sit down and talk about this concept, which has provided examples of success in the past and is building upon that success.

I think the region of Peel, for one, and other areas throughout the province should be investigating this whole question of community-based health providers, should be talking about how we can bring the individual community to the table in the planning of health care, how we can create an environment which is supportive of physicians and other health care personnel and which allows a flexibility in responding to the health care needs of the population served.

We can, through such a service, develop a co-ordinated system of health care delivery. We can provide that special attention to health maintenance and illness prevention measures. We can decrease institutional health care by giving emphasis to these types of community-based provisions.

As time is running out, I would like to congratulate once more the member for Mississauga West. I invite all members of this Legislature to heartily support the resolution at hand.

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Mrs. Grier: I am glad to have an opportunity today to talk about community health centres. I really welcome the support and the understanding of the differences between health service organizations and community health centres and the need for community health centres which is evidenced by the mover and the other speakers to this resolution.

I too will be happy to support the resolution, though I do have a couple of qualifications that I want to put on the record.

The first one is that in the resolution moved by the member for Mississauga West, the preamble indicates that to recognize the ever-increasing costs of hospital care is a reason for community health centres. While that is one of the reasons, of course, I am always a little worried when I hear arguments in favour of community health centres based on the assumption that they are somehow going to save money, because I do not think that is necessarily true.

I think what they are going to do is perhaps allow money that is now used in hospital emergency rooms and extended stays in hospitals to be used in other health-related fields, but I think it is unfortunate to assume that because you have a community health centre you are suddenly going to save money. What you are going to be doing is spending health care dollars much more effectively than you are at present and spending those dollars on the prevention of health care problems. For example, the Sault Ste. Marie figures show that there is a 48 per cent lower use of hospital emergency departments in the Sault as compared to comparable communities, and a much lower utilization of hospital beds.

The other qualification I have with the resolution that is before us today is the implication that the model used in the Sault is a model that ought to be used in all communities. I recognize that the member for Mississauga North understands that is not necessarily the case, but I think it is an important point to make. The Sault project suits that community. The project I am involved with in my community, the Lakeshore Area Multi-Service Project, LAMP, suits my community.

The very basis of community health centres is that they reflect the particular community in which they are located, and as they are a grass-roots kind of service they must respond to the particular needs of their community. It is very dangerous to imply -- and I know the member is not necessarily doing that, but sometimes the ministry does -- that a model that suits one community will necessarily be applicable to another.

My own involvement with community health centres began back in the early 1970s. There were at that time very few in the province of Ontario. There was the Sault, which has existed for some time as a result of the actions of the United Steelworkers of America to get it going, but when I became involved in trying to get LAMP organized, there was the York Community Services and there was a health centre in South Frontenac on Sharbot Lake. We in LAMP felt this was the kind of service that our community needed, and we had a devil of a job persuading the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services that this ought to be the case.

We eventually got funded and opened our doors in 1976, classified by the ministry, along with York and Sharbot Lake, as a pilot project, and we struggled for many years to get secure, ongoing funding. It was only when the Honourable Larry Grossman was Minister of Health that the commitment was made. We have certainly gone from strength to strength, and the kinds of services that are provided are wide-ranging and reach out into the community, and have done a lot to make a community with a variety of health and social needs better served.

I therefore certainly welcome the commitment and the support that is being voiced by the Minister of Health -- certainly, in discussions of her estimates last November she indicated her support for community health centres -- and by the members of her caucus as evidenced by the support for the resolution today.

I want to say, though, that just as the member for Mississauga West has indicated the need to work with communities and to bring together coalitions of interest to get these centres going, I hope when that work is started, that expression of interest is not going to be stifled by the red tape and bureaucracy of the process that eventually leads to funding.

For example, in my own community there is an area that is known as Stonegate. Stonegate is a rather unique pocket of mostly low-rise apartment buildings tucked away on the easterly border of Etobicoke and surrounded by a fairly affluent single-family area. There are over 6,000 people living in the neighbourhood known as Stonegate. Eighty-seven per cent of them live in apartments, 78 per cent of the households are families and one third of the population has a mother tongue other than English.

The education levels and the household income levels in Stonegate are lower than the average, both in the city of Etobicoke and in Metropolitan Toronto. So when I began working with that community some years ago to begin to identify their needs, because there is an absolute lack of social recreation or any kinds of community facilities -- not even a community centre where a community meeting can be held -- health needs were quickly identified as being something that the community needed.

A committee has been formed by the Stonegate Community Association to get a community health centre going. That organization was successful in persuading a group of students at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute to do a survey of the community, which they have called A Needs Analysis for the Proposed Stonegate Community Health Centre.

The conclusion of that survey found that there was only one doctor in the neighbourhood serving that population of 6,000, that many of the people in the community had to go quite a distance to get to their own family doctor, but in emergencies they made extensive use of the emergency departments at St. Joseph’s Health Centre and Queensway General Hospital, that two thirds of the residents were dissatisfied with the level of care available to them and that 30 per cent had experienced problems in obtaining medical services in the past.

When asked if they would use a health centre, 52 per cent of those surveyed said they would use it regularly and 37 per cent said that they would use it occasionally. If ever there was a community where the kinds of criteria that had been talked about in this debate this morning are applicable, it is Stonegate.

We have an active citizens’ organization attempting to identify and promote the needs of the community, we have the criteria of a community with special needs that could well be served by this kind of locally based health service and we have a very lengthy, extensive, time-consuming, enervating process to go through before the funding will be approved. The application has to be made to the district health council, the district health council has to obtain from the minister the funding that is required and then juggle a whole range of competing demands before recommending to the ministry that yes, this particular application for a community health centre deserves support. Then, of course, the minister has to make her decision.

My point in describing that is to plead with the minister and with the government members of this House to perhaps translate much of the goodwill and the support for community health centres that has been expressed here today, and in other speeches by the minister, into practical means of quickly responding to the identified demands of communities. There is a very real opportunity to translate the concern that has been expressed into direct action.

I certainly welcome that expression of concern and hope that the debate today will lead to a better process, a faster process, and more important a much greater allocation of funds to this very necessary and very worthwhile sector of health care.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray): The time remaining permits only the member for Mississauga West to conclude the debate.

Mr. Mahoney: I would like to thank the member for Kingston and The Islands (Mr. Keyes) who was ready to speak, but we have run out of time on this debate this morning. I am confident he would have been speaking in support as the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Health and I appreciate that support.

I would like to thank the member for Sault Ste. Marie and the member for Mississauga North for their kind comments and support of the bill, and to make a brief comment on some of the comments by the member for Wellington (Mr. J. M. Johnson), who said in the beginning that he hopes it is not a way the government is looking to ease the financial pressures on hospitals. Frankly, quite unabashedly, I say it is. That is indeed the intent from my perspective, that hopefully we would be able to do that.

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I would like to wish the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore (Mrs. Grier) well in the future success of the community health centre that she is working with her community to establish. I thank her for the comments, but I do believe that indeed it is a way of saving money by redirecting the money and spending it more effectively and more efficiently.

I quite agree that the Sault model may not necessarily be the model that would apply in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Mississauga, Oshawa or wherever. Each project must reflect the nature of that community, but the concept is there and the concept works. As I mentioned in my talk, there is one in Flemingdon Park, Don Mills, that is very successful; a similar concept with a different twist. We do not just go on a rote system of establishing one way of doing it; we must look at all different kinds of alternatives.

Finally, I think there would be a tremendous spinoff in side benefits from such a project in Mississauga, in the region of Peel, and that would be the sense of community, the sense of ownership. At a time when we are facing tremendous strife, tremendous pressures, it could bring all the diverse groups, both cultural groups and economically diverse groups, together in a common cause that would be for the benefit of the entire community and its families.

CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM / RÉFORME CONSTITUTIONNELLE

Mr. Chiarelli moved resolution 57:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government of Ontario should consider the following in its consultative constitutional process:

1. The promotion of an amendment to the Canadian Constitution adding a subsection 6 to section 33 of the Constitution Act, 1982, to give to the Parliament of Canada and to any province the option to permanently render inoperative within its jurisdiction the “notwithstanding” provision, and that if such an amendment were made to the Canadian Constitution, the government of Ontario would, as soon as practicable, permanently opt out of the right to use the “notwithstanding” clause and would further encourage the Parliament of Canada and all other provinces to do likewise.

2. To refer to the Ontario Court of Appeal an appropriate question to determine if federal power of disallowance as set out in section 90 of the Constitution Act, 1867, (The BNA Act) is a subsisting and usable power for the Parliament of Canada or is it a power rendered inoperative by constitutional convention and, if such power is a subsisting and usable power for the Parliament of Canada, can the power be used by Parliament to disallow a provincial statute, law, regulation or provision which has the effect of depriving any individual or legal entity of basic and fundamental human rights and freedoms.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray): The member for Ottawa West will know that he has up to 20 minutes for his presentation and may reserve any portion thereof for wrapup.

Mr. Chiarelli: Before I deal with the substance of my resolution, I want to emphasize the context in which I am presenting it. In June of last year, the select committee on constitutional reform reported to this House, a report which was adopted by all three parties. The very first recommendation of the report was, “That the Legislative Assembly of Ontario establish a standing committee on constitutional and intergovernmental affairs.” The report stated, “The dialogue must continue.”

In Canada, today and for the foreseeable future, constitutional issues will play a dominant role and the pending standing committee on the Constitution will be significant in the framing of our province’s part in the Canadian constitutional debate.

There is an uneasiness across the land, a fear that our social peace may be fragile and is threatened. The tremendous burden of responsibility on our 11 first ministers must become a shared responsibility. So it is that if this House at this time can become a small lightning rod to help focus debate, then collectively we will have played a small but important role in the process.

The intention of my resolution is to put into debate two related ideas which are worthy of consideration. I am asking the members of this House not to approve or reject the ideas themselves, but to refer them to a broader debate, including the standing committee on the Constitution and the public at large.

The first part of my resolution deals with the so-called “notwithstanding” clause. Let’s be clear about what it really means. The Constitution Act, 1982, creates fundamental freedoms and equality rights which include freedom of religion; freedom of expression; freedom of the press; and equal protection and benefits of the law, without discrimination based on race, nationality, colour, religion, sex, age or physical disability.

At the same time, the Constitution Act, 1982, says that Parliament or a province can declare that any of these rights and freedoms do not apply to any particular piece of the legislation or, in fact, do not apply to all of their legislation.

This is unacceptable to a majority of Canadians, but because it seems unlikely that Parliament and the provinces will soon agree to abolish their right to override the charter, the first part of my resolution asks the government of Ontario to consider seeking a constitutional amendment to permit any province or Parliament the right to permanently nullify the “notwithstanding” clause within its jurisdiction. Ontario could then lead by example and entrench the charter without override for itself, and at the same time encourage others to do likewise.

It is in the interests of the people of Canada, and therefore the people of Ontario, to be subject at all times to a Constitution that effectively preserves and promotes basic and fundamental human rights and freedoms. Human rights and freedoms are indivisible, and allowing any province or Parliament the power to suspend these rights makes our country divisible.

Les droits et libertés ne doivent pas être pris isolément. Il est important de se rappeler qu’une province qui suspend aujourd’hui l’application de cette Charte des droits et libertés, et ce avec l’assentiment de la population, peut aussi la suspendre demain contre cette même population. Vers qui alors se tournera la population de cette province pour obtenir de l’aide? Qui leur apportera de l’aide si le parlement passe outre à la Charte pour suspendre les libertés civiles? Qui oubliera les événements d’octobre 1970?

Par conséquent, il faut se rappeler que la clause « nonobstant » est en fait une arme à double tranchant, et que notre société civilisée n’a pas besoin d’armes constitutionnelles si draconiennes pour résoudre ses problèmes.

Human rights and freedoms should remain indivisible. It is important to remember that a province which suspends the charter today with public approval can suspend it against that public tomorrow. Who will the people of that province then look to for rescue? Who will the people of that province look to for help if, indeed, the federal Parliament overrides the charter to suspend civil liberties?

Who will forget the crisis of October 1970? Therefore, let us remember that the “notwithstanding” clause is in fact a double-edged sword and that our civilized country does not need to solve its problems with such draconian constitutional weapons.

In conclusion on the first part of my resolution, I repeat that the rights and freedoms under our charter should be indivisible and unconditional. Ontario, therefore, should consider the alternative of unconditionally entrenching the charter within its jurisdiction without override and should encourage other provinces and Parliament to do likewise.

The second part of my resolution, and I might say very much related to the “notwithstanding” provision, deals with section 90 of the British North America Act. Since this section has received little public discussion in recent years, I would like to give a brief bit of background.

The disallowance or veto of provincial statutes by Parliament is authorized by the Constitution Act, 1867; that is, the BNA Act. In 1938, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the power created by this section was “subsisting” and not subject to any restriction, with the exception that the power had to be exercised within the prescribed period of one year. Historically, the federal government has disallowed or vetoed 112 provincial acts or bills, but no act has been disallowed or vetoed since 1943.

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The nonuse of this power over the past 45 years may have given rise to a constitutional convention against the exercise of this veto power. Constitutional conventions are rules that are not enforced by the law courts but are regarded as obligatory by the officials to whom they apply and whether or not a convention exists against the use of the disallowance or veto power, the power still appears today to be valid and unrestricted in law.

One might ask why it is important that the disallowance provision of our Constitution be revisited at the present time. In my opinion, it has been indeed a strange phenomenon that section 90 still remains a legal part of our Constitution. Why and how could the drafters of the Constitution Act, 1982, not have eliminated section 90, the veto power? Could it be that there was simply an assumption that there was a convention against its use? Could it simply have escaped their minds?

Let me refresh our memories. At the very time the 1982 Constitution Act was being drafted, the Supreme Court of Canada, in its Patriation Reference 1981, dropped on to the desks of each first minister, his advisers and the Canadian public a court decision which commented on the veto power. In the context of dealing with the constitutional convention issue, the Supreme Court of Canada stated in 1981 that, effectively, if a provincial law were vetoed by Parliament, the courts would be bound to enforce the veto.

It is therefore imperative, in my opinion, that in the light of this background we look at the section 90 veto power in relation to the “notwithstanding” clause. The “notwithstanding” clause was enacted in the 1982 Constitution Act expressly to override fundamental freedoms and equality rights. Yet the strongest legal argument to apply the federal veto power is to veto provincial laws which offend against civil liberties.

Consider the following authorities. Mr. Justice G. La Forest, in his book on disallowance, stated, “The makers of our Constitution, in order to prevent the local legislatures from abusing their legislative rights, granted to the government the power of annulling provincial legislation.”

Further, in 1974, Senator Eugene Forsey stated, “There can be no doubt at all that the Fathers of Confederation considered the power of disallowance one of the strongest safeguards against acts of tyranny and usurpation by provincial legislatures.”

Further, constitutional expert R. MacGregor Dawson favoured the disallowance of “provincial acts which affect fundamental rights of Canadian citizens. These rights should be the same in all provinces of Canada and should be unassailable by provincial statutes.”

Furthermore, legal scholar Paul Weiler stated, “While it would raise local hackles, Ottawa should be prepared to scrutinize the use by provincial legislatures of their non obstante authority and to disallow any instances of flagrant denial of basic human rights.

Finally, and more recently, in the words of a leading constitutional lawyer, “The power of disallowance is already in the Constitution and is operative.... Ottawa has the constitutional authority to override the override.”

Therefore, I ask the question again, why was the section 90 federal veto power not removed from our Constitution by the first ministers in 1982 when the veto’s most likely future use would be to kill a provincial law which infringed upon civil liberties, when they knew section 90 might be used to override the override?

It is time for us to appraise the value or otherwise of the federal veto power by referring it to the Court of Appeal. We may then debate whether to keep it or abolish it, but in the context of today’s constitutional dynamics, we cannot ignore it.

In summary, therefore, I ask the House to consider the following: First, through the “notwithstanding” clause amendment proposed by this resolution, let us not fear to lead by example.

Second, by means of the disallowance or veto aspect of the resolution -- that is, referring the issue to the Court of Appeal -- let us not fear to explore and test our present constitutional realities.

Finally, let us recognize Jefferson’s principle that each generation has the right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its own happiness. Therefore, let us collectively and individually participate in the constitutional process of our generation, knowing full well that with our Canadian diversity every agreement will be a compromise.

Mr. B. Rae: I am happy to participate in this discussion. I regret that the Premier (Mr. Peterson) is not here to say a few words, but I do want to speak in this debate, as I have on other matters involving constitutional reform, because I regard that as one of the jobs of a Leader of the Opposition and I do not intend to duck my responsibilities. I want to speak very directly to the motion being put forward by the member for Ottawa West (Mr. Chiarelli).

I do not agree with the proposal being made by the honourable member and I want to say why. Let me, first, dispose of the second point he is making, that we should refer to the Ontario Court of Appeal a theoretical question as to the status of a particular section of the British North America Act. It is my judgement that the Court of Appeal would not even consider this kind of reference because of its totally academic nature. It is not in the nature of the Court of Appeal in this province, nor of the Supreme Court of Canada, to deal with theoretical subjects.

I know there has been a great deal of discussion about referring other sections of the Constitution or, indeed, even sections of the constitutional accord at Meech Lake to the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal for a decision, and I think those references are extremely difficult to contemplate. It is not like sending a piece of legislation to a court and asking it, as we have done with respect to education, to relate that to particular sections of the Constitution and asking what to do in a particular circumstance.

This is asking an academic question: What is the status of a particular section of the British North America Act? I think the Court of Appeal would say that the status of a particular section of the British North America Act is that it is part of the Constitution of Canada. Whether it is invoked is a matter of political practicality and essentially a political judgement to be made by politicians and not a judgement to be exercised by judges.

But let me come to what I think would no doubt be considered to be the central thrust of the member’s resolution; that is, this question of the “notwithstanding” clause in our current Constitution. our current Charter of Rights.

I was a member of the House of Commons throughout the discussions on constitutional reform proposed by Mr. Trudeau after the 1980 general election. I can honestly say, as I have said on other occasions in this House, that my views on this matter of the “notwithstanding” clause have changed. I was one of the hawks, if you like, in our group at the federal House in favour of patriation of the Constitution with a charter, and I was also one of those who, together with the Conservative government in power in this province at that time, were very much in favour of our moving ahead. I felt that if we waited for ever it would not happen, and that we had a chance to do something and that it was important to do it.

I gave a speech in the House, which members can read, on the matter of the effect of a charter and on the importance of having a charter, and I would now like to say that when the premiers got together in that kitchen and came up with the “notwithstanding” clause, which was basically an effort to make a charter compatible with the constitutional position taken by a great many of the premiers who had dissented against the original patriation plan promoted by Mr. Trudeau, I was sceptical.

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But I now want to say that on reflection and on consideration and looking now as I do from a different perspective, I think that the existence of a “notwithstanding” clause is a good idea. I think that it is essential in finding a balance between what courts do and what judges do and what legislatures do. I am not prepared to take a vow, as a legislator, to say that there are no circumstances that I can consider under which, if I were to be Premier, I would not argue on a given occasion that this Legislature should not invoke the “notwithstanding” clause and insist on passing legislation notwithstanding the existence of certain sections of the Charter of Rights.

I want to say why, because at first blush that might seem like a statement that would be surprising to come from a civil libertarian. But let me say that I make this point: On Tuesday of this week, the New York Times had a headline on the front page establishing that the Supreme Court of the United States in its wisdom had voted six to three to disallow a municipal statute coming from the city of Richmond, Virginia, a statute which was designed to set aside 30 per cent of Richmond, Virginia’s business to minority businesses.

The Supreme Court voted six to three to disallow that statute on the ground that it was contrary to section 14 of the United States Bill of Rights, which, as you will know, Mr. Speaker, because of your legal training in a city right next door to the United States, is the rough equivalent of section 15 of our charter.

I want to quote to this assembly the dissent of Mr. Justice Thurgood Marshall, who is one of the last remaining liberals. As members will know, he was the lawyer who argued the case on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the very famous Brown versus Board of Education case of 1954. He was the first black Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States appointed to the bench by Lyndon Johnson. He said:

“I find deep irony in second-guessing Richmond’s judgement on this point” -- that is to say the question of whether or not there was discrimination in Richmond. “As much as any municipality in the United States, Richmond, Virginia, knows what racial discrimination is. A century of decisions by this and other federal courts has richly documented the city’s disgraceful history of public and private racial discrimination.”

He goes on to say:

“More fundamentally, today’s decision marks a deliberate and giant step backward in this court’s affirmative action jurisprudence. Cynical of one municipality’s attempt to redress the effects of past racial discrimination in a particular industry, the majority launches a grape-shot attack on race-conscious remedies in general.

“The majority’s unnecessary pronouncements would inevitably discourage or prevent government entities, particularly states and localities, from acting to rectify the scourge of past discrimination. This is the harsh reality of the majority’s decision, but it is not the Constitution’s command.”

I would also like to quote from Mr. Justice Blackmun, who says:

“I never thought that I would live to see the day when the city of Richmond, Virginia, the cradle of the old Confederacy” -- and I remind members that Richmond, Virginia, was the capital of the Confederacy in the Civil War -- “sought on its own within a narrow confine to lessen the stark impact of persistent discrimination. But Richmond, to its great credit, acted. Yet this court, the supposed bastion of equality, strikes down Richmond’s efforts as though discrimination had never existed or was not demonstrated in this particular litigation.”

The reason that I raise this example is not to make a theoretical point but to make a very practical one. If we really believe that judges alone have wisdom when it comes to deciding on matters of individual rights, then by all means get rid of the “notwithstanding” clause. But if we believe, as legislators, that judges too can be wrong, that judges too can be, yes, in a broad sense, politically motivated and that the courts alone do not have a monopoly on wisdom when it comes to establishing the balances between individual and collective rights, then I say the “notwithstanding” clause is a very necessary safety valve.

If we ever needed some proof of that, it seems to me that the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court is an interesting example. This is not a decision that I could easily live with if I were a legislator in the United States, and I would dearly love to have a “notwithstanding” clause allowing me to say, “We thank you very much for your opinions, your justices, but we disagree with you, and this is why we disagree with you.” That is a right that we, as democratic, elected legislators, have a responsibility to assert and that is precisely what maintaining the “notwithstanding” clause does.

Mr. Sterling: This debate that we are having today, in the view of our caucus, is an extremely important debate in that it is dealing with matters that are of tremendous significance in how our country should be run in the future and the framework in which it should be run.

Therefore, our caucus in total has asked me to say on its behalf that we deem that this is an improper kind of resolution to bring forward in private members’ hour. While we say that, we recognize as well the dichotomy that the member for Ottawa West is in when bringing a resolution like this on.

In the past, in terms of dealing with constitutional matters, both our party and the New Democratic Party have allowed a significant amount of liberty or freedom with regard to their members’ participation in the debate and their decisions on those constitutional matters. Unfortunately, the constraints that are upon us with regard to private members’ hour leave only one opportunity for one member to speak.

The views of the member for Carleton may not be the views of the other members of his party, nor perhaps would our caucus want to take the position that any member should be bound by a party position on as important a matter as this, dealing with not only today’s problems but also our future in Canada in a long-term sense. Therefore, it is unfortunate that the member for Ottawa West has only this kind of method to bring forward his concerns.

Today, our House leader, the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) wrote an open letter to the government House leader, the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway):

“It is the view of our caucus that the ballot item standing in the name of Mr. Chiarelli, dealing with the Canadian Constitution, is of such significant concern that it would be inappropriate to deal with it during the limited time available in private members’ hour.

“As you are aware the purpose of the private members’ hour is to give backbench members the opportunity to raise matters of particular interest to their respective constituencies. When Liberal private members’ resolutions are debated, because of the rotation, our caucus normally only gets one speaker for a limited address of 10 minutes.

“It is our view that Mr. Chiarelli’s motion deals with a matter of much greater concern and should be raised in a more appropriate forum. Therefore, we would recommend that you request Mr. Chiarelli withdraw his motion...” etc.

That basically expresses the view of our caucus, but I do want to temper that with the fact that the member for Ottawa West was faced with a tough choice here. I think that any member for Ottawa-Carleton, including myself and the member, knows probably that that community would pay more attention to issues of this nature than perhaps the rest of the country because it is the federal capital. Many of the people, many of his constituents and many of my constituents, work on Parliament Hill.

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I want to indicate also that during the Meech Lake accord hearings, there were a number of companion resolutions put forward by our party with regard to further constitutional discussions. We would have liked at that time, through a committee decision where a consensus could have been arranged, to put forward a companion resolution with regard to future discussions on the Constitution of our country.

While I appreciate the immediacy of the forum of this resolution dealing with the “notwithstanding” clause because of recent events in Quebec, there are other priorities which some of the members in our particular caucus have with regard to the Constitution.

The member for Ottawa West may argue that he is not saying to the members of the Ontario Legislature, “You must take a stand on either scrapping or not scrapping the ‘notwithstanding’ clause.” He may say, “We are only making a resolution, and therefore I would expect the government to send this resolution out to a committee of the Legislature.” The problem is that the perception -- I only quote the Ottawa Citizen with regard to this. The headline is, “MPPs to Debate Scrapping of Notwithstanding Clause.”

I think it is impossible in terms of the time I have to speak on behalf of my 16 colleagues -- I do not have that opportunity -- to discover the arguments surrounding this particular issue when the message which is going to be given after 12 o’clock today when we vote on this resolution is whether members of this Legislature are in favour of the “notwithstanding” clause or are against it.

I was very interested in hearing the member for York South (Mr. B. Rae) put forward his views on this issue, because it is an argument I have not heard too often or with too much force, so I was very interested in that aspect.

I think the genesis of the “notwithstanding” clause came from western Canada. I think it is unfair for members of this Legislature to cast, even in a perception mode, which is what is happening here today, their support for this kind of resolution to scrap the “notwithstanding” clause. I think we should have those people from out west, who presumably would still support the inclusion of this clause in the Constitution.

I guess the second issue which the member for Ottawa West may use in response to that argument is, “All my resolution says is that each and every province should have the right to exclude that right for their individual province with regard to the future in terms of our Constitution.”

Quite frankly, I would argue vehemently against the inclusion in our Constitution of clauses which differentiated between the 10 different provinces and our federal government as much as is possible. Therefore, I would not like to see that three provinces or four provinces or two provinces or one province chose to deal with a generic clause like the “notwithstanding” clause in a different manner than a neighbouring province or an adjacent province. I think there is a significant argument to be put forward on that aspect as well.

This House, two or three years ago, chose very definitely to rely on another part of our Constitution to take a very discriminatory action. Of course, I refer to section 93, whereby we discriminated in favour of one religious group in Ontario to the detriment of every other religious group.

As members know, I took a strong stand in that particular debate. I find it somewhat hypocritical to take the stand now that we want to deny that future power with regard to other kinds of situations which may arise in this province in the future when in fact we have done that in such recent past.

The overwhelming majority of the Legislature made a decision which the Supreme Court of Canada said without section 93 would have been contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We made that decision consciously and voluntarily in this Legislature, yet we are now talking about limiting that kind of flexibility in the future.

Therefore, I find it somewhat confusing and so do people within my constituency. In fact, the former New Democratic Party candidate wrote a letter to the Ottawa Citizen pointing out this very fact.

I would like to congratulate the member for Ottawa West for bringing this forward, but we have difficulty in terms of the forum in which it has been brought forward.

The Acting Speaker: In view of the statements by the member for Carleton, I feel I am obliged to remind the member and the third party of the provisions of standing order 71(e) on how a vote may be blocked and not brought to a vote.

Mr. Beer: I think that when we enter into constitutional debates, and in some respects we do not do that often enough, interesting points emerge. That is one of the real values of debating these issues.

I would like, first of all, just to deal with a couple of comments made by the previous speaker. I think one of the things that those of us who were on the select committee on constitutional reform felt as we were wrestling with the various issues around Meech Lake was that there was a need for more open debate and, if you like, a need to kind of demystify the constitutional process.

In that regard, I am delighted that my colleague the member for Ottawa West has brought forward this motion, and the operative words, as I look at it, are the words “to consider.” I think that, as with a great number of issues that are brought before us, there has not been the kind of public debate, outside of the first ministers or attorneys general and outside of the academics, on a number of these issues where we can say with a sense of certainty that we know what we want to do.

It seemed to me that in the context of a private member’s motion dealing with the “notwithstanding” clause, this would give at least some of us, initially, an opportunity to raise some of the issues that we have to grapple with before determining what we are going to do. My support of the motion is that I see this going, like the recommendations from the select committee, to further study and review by the standing committee which I hope will be formed this year, and indeed by a broader public.

I say that because I would like to encourage at any future time when we enter into these debates -- I know that within the Liberal Party of Ontario there are differing views about the “notwithstanding” clause. The points that were raised by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae), both today and during the debate on Meech Lake, would be, I think, accepted and indeed taken in the same light by a number of my colleagues. I find a number of the points he has made this morning to be very compelling and ones that we do have to look at.

It seems to me that in looking at the “notwithstanding” clause, there are a number of factors that we want to review.

First of all, again, the way it came into the Constitution, through the so-called kitchen meeting, has meant that we have not had the kind of in-depth discussion of what it means or how we would like to see it applied, to what extent we want to keep it and in what way.

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There are some arguments, such as the ones advanced by the Leader of the Opposition, as to why we ought to keep it. Professor Peter Russell has argued that because it comes back every five years, it does allow legislative bodies to reconsider what it is that they have taken action on where they have used that “notwithstanding” clause.

At the same time, we had before the select committee various groups -- particularly minority groups of different kinds, whether ethnic minority groups or disabled, and certainly many women’s groups -- who were terribly concerned about what they saw happening or what they perceived might happen in terms of the Meech Lake accord and those rights. Those people look on any kind of action that a government may take as somehow being threatening or having the potential to be threatening to them. Many have decided that the greater strength for them lies in the courts.

If we look at the Charter of Rights at this point, there are a number of areas where, frankly, I do not think we completely know yet in terms of, say, sections 2, 7 and 15, exactly what we mean in terms of applying those rights. Do we really want to give to the courts the final decision in determining what we should do with those?

There may be some other rights -- perhaps the older, more fundamental ones, I suppose, in the context of legal rights -- where perhaps we do have a firm view and a firm decision. We may, after public debate and discussion, want to move to a somewhat more limited “notwithstanding” clause. The whole issue of the “notwithstanding” clause is very Canadian. Here we have a Charter of Rights and in the middle of it we plunk down what would seem to be something totally contrary to the spirit of having the charter. Yet we wrestle with that balance within our own Constitution between the role of Parliament, the role of the legislative assemblies and the role of the courts.

The example which the Leader of the Opposition has presented this morning poses that dilemma very acutely, I think. If we looked at that in the Canadian context under section 15, which deals with similar kinds of rights, where we are evolving and trying to bring about better and more effective programs that deal with discrimination in that area, I certainly can see the argument that we want legislatures to remain active.

But when we look at the whole area of the clause, I feel there is again not an understanding of both what it applies to and what effect we want it to have in the future. Are there different ways we might be able to find to achieve that purpose and to clarify more firmly certain rights which can then be more enshrined, if you like, than they are at the present time?

I believe that in supporting the consideration of my colleague’s motion, we are helping to put into the process a number of key issues over and above the ones that were identified in the select committee. I think we must have that kind of full public debate around the “notwithstanding” clause that will certainly include looking at the way in which it was used in Quebec and at ways in which perhaps there is a validity to having that clause and why that or something like it would be important to keep.

What I want to see is that we get down to the business in a more normal and regular fashion, where legislative bodies can actually deal with these issues and where individual members can feel they can speak perhaps more freely on them without always having the sense that, “My gosh, if we even discuss this, somehow the fabric of the country is going to fall apart.” We have to become, I suppose, more at home with constitutional principles and issues and be freer to discuss them so, I think, we can come up with better solutions than we perhaps have in the past.

At this point, I want to link that consideration back to the various recommendations which we made in this Legislature through the select committee and the adoption of its report, because what we did there was to establish clearly a number of key and critical issues for the next round. I think they remain very much issues at the front of any agenda that would be brought forward.

Naturally we want to wait and see what the committee from New Brunswick proposes on a number of issues. Given events of the past year since our report came forward, they may very well decide that they want to bring forward some recommendations with respect to the “notwithstanding” clause, and I think that would be something a standing committee of this Legislature would want to review.

It is my hope that ultimately Manitoba will return to review the Meech Lake accord in the light of its own understanding of the issue as well as in the light of our report and those of the federal Parliament and New Brunswick.

All of these, though, have to be put on the table and examined. The member for Ottawa West has said, “Here is a possible approach.” In looking at that approach, we may decide it is not a useful way to go. We may decide some other way is a useful approach to it. We may decide, as I say, to limit the applicability of the “notwithstanding” clause.

If we do not sit down and start to discuss some of these issues, I fear we again will end up in the kind of situation we had with the Meech Lake accord, where people were surprised that there was any kind of accord and where we did not have the kind of discussion we are having this morning, at least in a brief way, around this particular motion.

I support the member’s motion. This should go out and be reviewed. The standing committee should add this to its agenda, so that not only we in the Legislature but a greater body of the Ontario public can have a better understanding of the constitutional issues as we try to work our way through these complex items.

Mr. Allen: l am happy to join in this debate on the issues of disallowance and the “notwithstanding” clause in our Constitution, in particular the latter since it has generated a good deal of debate recently around a few decisions made by particular provinces.

I certainly agreed with the Conservative member when he said that these are very large and difficult questions to deal with in the time available in private members’ hour. I do not think that means they should not be discussed. I also want to say, like him, that we are all of us wrestling with these questions and that I do not think any one of our parties is wholly united around the attitude and position we should take vis-à-vis the “notwithstanding” clause in particular.

I know that when the Premier, perhaps in a somewhat mystified fashion, makes some remarks around the “notwithstanding” clause, he is not clearly articulating the full position of members of his own party in this House, let alone at large. I think the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) has expressed himself from time to time in a different vein with respect to the “notwithstanding” clause. I think I heard a member of a very relevant department at one point not so long ago wishing that leading members of government on all sides and across the country would refrain from ex cathedra pronouncements with respect to the “notwithstanding” clause.

I think that is all good advice, that we should all be reasonably humble in our opinions on this rather large and important matter. However, I do have to oppose the resolution, not because it is simply a reference to a consultative process or reference to the standing committee which does not yet exist, but because it does propose that a certain position be promoted with respect to the “notwithstanding” clause.

Let me say first of all that I think we misunderstand when we talk, as the leading proponent in this debate did, about human rights being indivisible. That is true, but it does not mean that the delivery of human rights is one and indivisible. There are many agencies that promote and defend human rights in our Constitution. In the final analysis it does not follow that because that is given to one agency, such as the Supreme Court, therefore human rights one and indivisible would in fact be defended. We have many agencies and many ways of doing that, and the legislatures of this country are principal among those which should be foremost in the defence and promotion of human rights.

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When he talks about the “notwithstanding” clause being an instrument to override human rights, that is quite contrary to the case. The point is that the courts themselves can be contrary to human rights in their decisions when one takes those judgements in their total context of both governmental action and the power various groups have in the economy, etc., vis-à-vis each other when they go into and come out of court decisions. The result, the hope of an overriding clause, is that legislatures would remain in the struggle to affirm, continue and maintain human rights when courts go wrong.

The case in question which my leader referred to is a very important one in the United States. The judge in the case said laws favouring blacks over whites must meet the same constitutional test that applies to laws favouring whites over blacks. In other words, the decision cannot take any account of the differential in power of the two contestants.

Let me refer to a Nova Scotia decision relating to women, which characterizes many of the decisions that have been made under the charter with respect to women and their rights. In separation cases and divorce proceedings and the custody that follows, men’s incomes go up and women’s incomes go down. The result is a very big power differential. What did the Nova Scotia court decide in the context of a charter case with regard to legislation that provided women with support payments and not men? It said that equality had to reign and therefore the support payments for women had to be wiped out. They did not even go so far as to say that the men should get support payments. In other words, equality of nothing was better to the judges than equality of something.

If one looks at decisions that were made under the charter in recent months, one finds the same kind of drift. Let me cite very briefly a résumé of some of them. The Alberta Court of Appeal has held that freedom of association prevents governments from interfering in the formation of business partnerships. The power of the Combines Investigation Act to search corporate records for evidence of anticompetitive behaviour has been struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada for denying a corporation’s right to privacy. The Court of Appeal has held that the right to freedom of expression protects commercial as well as political speech, thereby striking down provincial regulation of children’s television advertising as a denial of the advertiser’s right of freedom of expression. Legislation enabling unions to use compulsory collected dues for political and social causes has been struck down by the Supreme Court as denying workers freedom of association.

One can go on with a whole series of examples which indicate that under the charter, quite wrong decisions are being made vis-à-vis substantial human rights. In that context, it seems to me entirely inappropriate that legislatures, which have fought for and promoted legislation to provide substantial rights with respect to housing and income maintenance -- you name it -- for people across this province and across this country, should in any respect take a back seat to the courts when it comes to issues of repairing rights and the damages to people’s rights.

Therefore, while I do not deny the value of the charter or of the courts, I do oppose this particular motion with respect to the “notwithstanding” clause.

Mr. Chiarelli: First, I want to comment on the comments made by the member for Carleton (Mr. Sterling) with respect to the appropriateness or otherwise of this particular issue in this particular forum at this time.

I can recall, I believe it was some time last year, there was a matter before this House in private members’ time dealing with a resolution on a constitutional amendment to entrench property and civil rights in our Canadian Constitution. The member for Carleton, to my recollection, participated in that debate; he voted on it and the rest of his caucus did as well. I do not see a lot of difference between the nature of my resolution and the nature of the resolution he and his caucus debated last year. I have to ask whether it is a little too politically sensitive for his party to debate this issue in a forum which does not even bind his party or his caucus.

This particular time period is members’ time and I do not need the member for Carleton to tell me what I should or should not discuss. I am very proud to discuss this issue at this time. I might ask if the member for Carleton were aware of the fact that last month a poll was taken of the people of Ontario in which 68 per cent of them said they disapproved of the “notwithstanding” provision of the Constitution and 14 per cent said they approved of it.

The people of Ontario are interested in hearing this issue as well as other issues debated in the open. The Meech Lake process left a sour taste in some people’s mouths, because it was supposedly done behind closed doors. I am saying, let’s take the issue of constitutional reform, put it on the table and discuss it in an open forum.

I repeat that my resolution deals as much with the process as with the substance. I am not asking this House today to agree or disagree with my resolution. I am saying it is an idea, it is a notion. Let’s put it into the mill and churn it, along with all kinds of others.

The Leader of the Opposition wants to keep the “notwithstanding” provision in. I respect that position. I think that position should be put in the mill as well. I think we should get it into committee. We should get it on the table in public and we should start talking about these things, because the people in Canada and in Ontario today are concerned about the constitutional process. It should be an open process and I think that we have to give it credibility.

Therefore, I want to say I appreciated very much the comments of my colleague the member for York North (Mr. Beer) in saying that we are simply here talking about an approach to put in the mill, to discuss and debate further on down the road.

I want to make some additional comment on the “notwithstanding” provision. Certainly a court can be wrong; certainly a parliament can be wrong. Because either one could be wrong in any particular instance, does that mean we should give it to neither one? We have to make a choice; we have to make a decision.

My resolution is based on the premise that on this type of issue I put my faith in the court system as opposed to the parliamentary system. On that point, I would like to refer to a quote from a constitutional lawyer, Morris Manning, who has asked:

“If our freedom of conscience or religion can be taken away by a law which operates notwithstanding the charter, if our right to life or liberty can be taken not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice, what freedom do we have?”

I also want to refer to comments made during the constitutional discussions. The opposition critic for the Liberal Party in the Quebec Legislature, who subsequently became Minister of Justice, spoke very strongly against the “notwithstanding” provision and said there are times when a province or a country would need to rely on strong protection against infringement of civil liberties. He referred particularly to the October crisis of 1970. It is a double-edged sword. I would be very happy to leave that decision to the courts rather than to the caprice of some parliament in one of the provinces at one time or another.

On the question of disallowance or the veto power, my resolution tries to link the question of the “notwithstanding” clause and the disallowance or veto power. It is not the first time that link has ever been made, because during the pre-1982 constitutional negotiations the federal government proposed the elimination of the disallowance power. Therefore, it implied that it is there and that it can be used.

The proposal was contained in the constitutional amendment bill of 1978. The bill created a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that would be binding on Parliament. The provinces, however, would not be bound by the charter, unless they so chose. Where a province did adopt the charter, the federal government would cease to be able to disallow that province’s statutes. At that time, there was an understanding that there was an override to the override by reason of the section 90 veto power.

In my concluding remarks I want to say that this is a sensitive issue. I think it is very difficult for anyone to say that there is a right answer or a wrong answer. I think there is a right thing to do. The right thing to do is to put these issues on the table and debate them.

If we could have a small debate today for an hour, I think it would be to everyone’s benefit. I certainly appreciate the fact that, unlike the third party, the Leader of the Opposition cared enough to come in and debate this particular issue. I am saying to this House, if it votes in favour of my resolution, that I am asking members to put forward their ideas and my ideas, to put them on the table and discuss them.

My idea is one notion that could be considered. It is certainly not exclusive, and at this point in time I would not want it to be exclusive. Therefore, I am asking this House, if it were to favour my resolution, to refer these very important issues to the constitutional standing committee when it is formed and to the public, the people of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker: That completes the allotted time for debate on ballot item 57 and ballot item 58.

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COMMUNITY HEALTH SERVICES

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Mahoney has moved resolution 58.

Motion agreed to.

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CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM / RÉFORME CONSTITUTIONNELLE

The House divided on Mr. Chiarelli’s resolution 57, which was agreed to on the following vote:

Ayes

Adams, Beer, Chiarelli, Cleary, Collins, Cooke, D. R., Daigeler, Elliot, Fawcett, Fleet, Hart, Henderson, Keyes, Kozyra, LeBourdais, Leone, Lipsett, Lupusella, Mahoney, Miclash, Nicholas, Oddie Munro, Offer, Owen, Pelissero, Roberts, Ruprecht, Sola, Tatham, Velshi.

Nays

Allen, Ballinger, Bryden, Callahan, Charlton, Cooke, D. S., Epp, Grier, Mackenzie, McGuigan, Morin-Strom, Philip, E., Polsinelli, Rae, B.

Ayes 30; nays 14.

The House recessed at 12:09 p.m.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The House resumed at 1:30 p.m.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

PROPOSED OBSERVATORY

Miss Martel: The Sudbury neutrino observatory, a world-class research laboratory, has been proposed by a consortium of scientists from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. The project constitutes an exceptional opportunity for Canada to establish leadership on a major front of science; namely, the use of neutrinos to investigate fundamental processes occurring deep within the sun and stars.

The facility would use 1,000 tonnes of heavy water and would be sited at the best location in North America, at a great depth in the Creighton mine of Inco Ltd. in Sudbury.

The SNO project leaders have approached the Premier (Mr. Peterson) for a commitment of $7.2 million over four years, but so far have received no reply. This represents only 13 per cent of the total cost of $53 million. The money spent will be directly related to local industrial development and will involve the local labour force extensively.

The project should be funded out of the Premier’s Council technology fund. The Premier’ s Council has spent $204 million on seven centres of excellence, $90 million through the industry research program on a series of research and development projects and $21 million on the university research incentive fund. Almost $7 million remains in the fund.

The neutrino project would be less than one per cent of the total, and the benefits to the north and the rest of Ontario and Canada are invaluable. The SNO would keep our best scientists here in Canada, promote R and D at universities and attract international scientists. As well, the northern region will benefit from the economic spinoffs which arise from construction of the facility and the high-technology requirements of the laboratory.

The Premier should act now to make funds available so that the Sudbury neutrino observatory can proceed.

NORTHERN ONTARIO

Mr. Eves: I want to read from a statement made by the Minister of Northern Development (Mr. Fontaine) on June 9, 1988. It says, “I take great pleasure today in announcing that the government has redefined northern Ontario to include all of the 10 territorial districts for the purposes of government policy and program administration.”

On the next page he says: “Official inclusion in northern Ontario will give individuals, institutions and organizations access to specific programs oriented to northern needs. For the people of Parry Sound and Nipissing, particularly those living south of Algonquin Park and the French River, this means being treated in a consistent fashion with other northern districts by all government ministries.”

That was the statement the minister made on that date. It was confirmed by the Premier (Mr. Peterson) on several occasions. It is too bad that the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education, the two largest ministries in government, do not seem to consider themselves part of all government ministries for Ontario, because neither one is willing to give a commitment to the people of Parry Sound and Nipissing that they indeed will be entitled to share in all programs, as said by the Minister of Northern Development, by all ministries that are specifically allocating programs to the north.

For example, we now have the Minister of Northern Development trying to say that the northern health travel grant program is not a northern program. Northern Ontario, under the Ministry of Health Act, is defined by regulation. I would suggest that they get their act together over there and treat us the same for all ministries.

EASTERN ONTARIO

Mr. Keyes: Contrary to the comments attributed to eastern Ontario members of the third party and reported in this Monday’s edition of the Ottawa Citizen, eastern Ontario is receiving attention from the senior levels of bureaucracy at Queen’s Park. Those members implied that eastern Ontario is being overlooked, and I would like to address those unfounded remarks.

The honourable members’ remarks may reflect eastern Ontario’s status as it was perceived by many residents with respect to a former administration, but certainly are a long way off the mark in what is happening today. Our last budget announced a $25-million fund -- the eastern Ontario community economic development program -- provided over five years to assist municipalities in planning and implementing strategies for effective, long-term economic development.

We are encouraging eastern Ontario communities to group together at the county level to define goals and to build plans that are based on their strengths and needs and that truly reflect the direction the communities will take over the next five years and beyond. This development program will combine the initiative, knowledge and resources of eastern Ontario communities with funding and support from the province.

This week and next, eastern Ontario has the benefit of a series of five one-day workshops directed at businesses wishing to provide goods and services to government agencies, boards and commissions and to learn from seven ministries how they may share in the $2 billion of purchases made by the government. Monday’s buy-east seminar in Kingston was attended by 110 business people, and equal strength is expected in the centres of Pembroke, Smiths Falls, Ottawa and Cornwall.

Yes, eastern Ontario is receiving attention, and rightfully so.

NURSING SERVICES

Mr. Reville: I think the honourable members would like to hear part of a letter I received from Carol Helmstadler, president of the Ontario Nurses’ Association Local 94 at the Wellesley Hospital. She says, “It is difficult to see how the minister and the nursing administrations can persist in saying that money is not a major factor in the nursing shortage when four major studies have documented that it is a key issue. I have yet to meet a nurse who works in acute or critical care who does not feel that the only way to turn the shortage around is to reopen central negotiations.

“In the hospitals, the nursing administrations are also refusing to face the realities which the four studies have outlined.”

Listen to this, Mr. Speaker: “Although the RNAO study documented that the phasing out of support staff has been a major cause of the escalating critical shortage, one week after this study was released our administration,” that is, the Wellesley administration, “announced the phasing out of our orderly pool .” How about that?

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. Harris: I would like to bring the House up to date and make it aware of what the North Bay Nugget thinks of the health care system in this province. The editorial is headed “Take a Number.”

“If the Premier of this province or his Health minister required heart surgery, it would be interesting to see how long they’d have to wait.

“How many times would they have to have their surgery rescheduled? How long would it take them to come up with a solution?

“Neither David Peterson nor Elinor Caplan requires heart surgery, for which they can count themselves fortunate.

“Four hospitals in Toronto have a waiting list of 1,000 patients facing delays of up to six months for heart surgery. There are only 14 heart surgeons to perform the operations.

“The deaths of at least two people are being blamed on the delays. One man died after his triple-bypass surgery was delayed 11 times because of the shortage of intensive care beds. A second man died after his operation was postponed nine times.

“People are paying all their lives for medical coverage that doesn’t even cover them. These two men were entitled to medical treatment after having paid for it. But the province isn’t ensuring it’s delivered.”

It concludes by saying this: “Ms. Caplan is expert at making Ontario hospitals just scrape by. And one of the sickest things in this province is this government’s attitude towards health care.”

That is from the North Bay Nugget, and I suggest to the members that a number of communities and newspapers around this province would agree with it.

VICTORIA PLAYHOUSE

Mr. Smith: I would like to take this opportunity to inform the House of a tragic event which has devastated the town of Petrolia. It is with great regret that I inform the members in the House that the Victoria playhouse was destroyed by fire yesterday, January 25, 1989.

The picture from the Petrolia Advertiser Topic that I am showing depicts the fire. Members will notice that the fire was in the lower part of the building at 8 a.m., and 40 minutes later, the tower which contains the clock was engulfed in flames.

Within this building were the Petrolia town council chambers and offices, which were also destroyed. This historic building was celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and the playhouse started its centennial year with a New Year’s Day levee. This tragic fire has not only razed the building but also ruined many important documents, including the town’s archives.

Those members who have had the opportunity to watch a live theatrical performance will appreciate the importance of acoustics for one’s complete enjoyment of the performance. The Victoria playhouse was unique in its architectural design in that from any seat in the theatre, one could hear a whisper of the performer without the aid of a microphone.

A great loss is being felt by the mayor, Marcel Beaubien, and his council, as well as the people of Petrolia and Lambton county. I might just add that in --

Mr. Speaker: The member’s time has expired. I am so sorry.

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WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

Mr. Reville: Who can wonder why people in Ontario find the Workers’ Compensation Board hard to take? Listen to Walter Gresley Jones. In 1958, he burned his hands while doing a radioactive cleanup. For 30 years he fought for a pension, and guess what? He got a five per cent pension last year. He is 83.

The board has awarded him a pension to cover five years. They have told him to come on back and appeal if he wants some money for the other 25. Way to go.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. Harris: I have 15 seconds to finish the editorial from the North Bay Nugget. It says:

“Desperate Canadians are turning elsewhere for treatment. About 125 have turned to a clinic in Cleveland in the past year.... One of the problems is the shortage of heart surgeons. In Montreal there are nearly twice” --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. It actually took longer to complete the North Bay Nugget editorial.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

HEALTH PROFESSIONS

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I am pleased today to table the report of the health professions legislation review submitted to me by Alan Schwartz, who conducted the review. The report will be widely circulated to health professions and the public for consideration and response to the recommendations.

Currently, there are 19 health professions regulated by statute, five of which are governed by the 1925 Drugless Practitioners Act. Five more have statutes more than 25 years old and the Health Disciplines Act is 15 years old.

The health professions legislative review was initiated in 1982 to review existing legislation and make recommendations to the Minister of Health regarding which health professions should be regulated, as well as updating and reforming the Health Disciplines Act and related legislation. As well, Mr. Schwartz was asked to devise a new structure for all legislation governing the health professions and to settle outstanding issues involving several professions.

The review has been an exhaustive one, involving more than 200 groups, including approximately 75 health vocations and professions.

The report recommends an omnibus bill, the Health Professions Procedural Code. This bill would propose to set common standards for professional self-government. Under the omnibus bill, each regulated profession would have its own specific act.

It is unique to table a report in the form of draft legislation, but I am doing so because I believe the members of this Legislature, the professions and the public should have time to consider this comprehensive document before the introduction of legislation for first reading.

My paramount concern, of course, is for the protection of the public; for those who use our health care system. I want to emphasize, as we enter the next stage of consultation and review of this critical initiative, that public protection is the first and foremost consideration.

For the next stage, I will invite the groups most affected by the proposals to meet with me to discuss the report. We will move as expeditiously as possible to bring the matter before the Legislature.

I would like to commend Mr. Schwartz and his staff for their efforts in conducting this comprehensive review, and I would like to express my appreciation to the many health professionals and others who gave their time and expertise in assisting the review.

I believe Mr. Schwartz is in the gallery today with his team and I would like the House to acknowledge his presence and thank him for his contribution.

CHILD CARE

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I would like to inform members today of two measures being taken by my ministry to address issues of the quality of child care in Ontario.

This government is committed to quality in child care. That commitment was outlined in our New Directions for Child Care, announced in 1987.

In keeping with that commitment, I am announcing today two measures. First, we want to help parents become more knowledgeable about the child care operation which they have selected for their own children through the placing of parent information posters in all child care centres in Ontario; and second, we will assess the way in which licensing requirements are currently enforced by my ministry.

Let me enlarge on each. First, I want to bring members up to date on the progress of our parent information initiative. Specifically, this has involved the production of the poster entitled Information for Parents. This initiative fulfils the undertaking to develop a posting system as set out in New Directions.

The poster, in English or in French as required, will be displayed in all the 2,500 licensed child care operations in Ontario. The poster will begin appearing in centres as of March 1 as part of the annual licensing inspection process. Each poster will highlight the results of the most recent licensing inspection by early childhood education specialists from my ministry.

It is simply not possible for staff of my ministry to be at each child care centre each day. Parents are there every day. The poster is designed to give the parents the information they need to engage in discussion, become involved and participate in ensuring that a high quality of care is provided in that centre.

The content of the poster is the result of pilot testing and consultation between parents, the operators of child care centres, my ministry’s early childhood education specialist and child care advocacy groups. The poster summarizes in clear, precise language the present Ontario requirements for staff, program, discipline and health and safety, and indicates the status of that particular licence in each of these areas.

Display of the poster in each licensed centre will be made mandatory, so that parents can readily discover how a particular centre measures up to the regulations. Also, the poster will clearly indicate what action, if any, must be taken by an operator to bring the standards of the centre up to the legally required level within a set time frame.

I believe that we have here a useful tool for operators of licensed centres as well as for parents, one that will give them a common basis for dialogue on matters concerning a particular child care centre.

The government is committed to providing parents with the information they need to play a role in ensuring a high quality of child care. We also recognize the vital role played by staff of my ministry who are responsible for inspections of these centres. As such, we are committed to ensuring that we are doing the best possible job of enforcing the regulations that currently exist.

I am therefore announcing today the beginning of a review of enforcement practices in my ministry. This review of the ways in which current laws and regulations concerning child care are being enforced will be carried out immediately. The review, to be managed by my ministry staff, will examine the Day Nurseries Act, the regulations under the act and how these provisions are being enforced. It will also investigate the degree of compliance with the legislation. Furthermore, the review will examine enforcement practices throughout the province to determine whether these are consistent and effective.

The work of the review is expected to take approximately six months. At the end of that time, I expect to receive an analysis of enforcement practices throughout Ontario along with recommended strategies to help my ministry’s operational staff ensure compliance with the act and its regulations. Issues that can be solved only by new legislation will also be identified.

As we undertook in New Directions, we will be initiating a more comprehensive review of the act in order to develop a new child care act. This review will begin this spring.

The measures I have outlined in the House today recognize the role that the government must play, but also ensure that parents have the information they need to achieve quality.

RESPONSES

HEALTH PROFESSIONS

Mr. Reville: I want to respond to the statement today by the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan). Thousands of people in the health care professions and thousands of patients and clients of health care professionals have been holding their breath waiting for this document to finally break the surface of the murk under which it has been hidden these seven years. Although the Minister of Health is correct when she says the Health Disciplines Act is 15 years old, I might point out that the Health Disciplines Act was eight years old when this process began.

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This is a very nice book; it has a lovely peacock colour. Mostly what is in this book is a bunch of laws. Before anybody gets too excited about all these laws in the book, we must remember that these are Mr. Schwartz’s laws, not the government’s laws, and we have no idea what the government’s laws will be, because we have come to be suspicious of this government.

What I can tell you is that although we should thank Mr. Schwartz for this fairly long process -- and perhaps Mr. Schwartz’s bank manager would like to offer thanks as well -- I want you to know that many of the health care professions feel they have been losers in this process. There are 53 health care professions which have been left out in the cold and those people will want to come forward at some point when we see the government’s law to have some things to say about all that.

I have not read this 349-page document as yet, but a lot of people have told me what they think is going to be in it, and they have been telling me that for about three years now. They may be right and they may be wrong. Some of them actually signed off on this. Some of them said that the process broke down completely. While it was broadly consultative at its early stages, in the latter stages it became just another hugger-mugger government exercise. “Hugger-mugger” means kind of secret.

One of the things that I hope is in here is a new process for disciplinary hearings so that they will be open to the public, so that the public can see just what goes on at the colleges when they constitute themselves as disciplinary boards in respect of health care professionals against whom it is alleged some kind of misbehaviour has occurred in respect of a patient. That would be good.

Other things, however, that have been brought to the attention of all the members of the House include the concern of all those people in the province who like to go to naturopaths. The profession of naturopathy is very concerned that it is not addressed in this legislation. Many people will want to come forward and let the government know how they feel about that. We must ensure, and it is our party’s commitment to ensure, that anyone who wants to make a submission to this government and this Legislature about this review should be entitled to do so. We will not stand by if the Minister of Health tries to limit the discussion to only those professions which are included in this review. That is of the utmost importance.

We look forward to hearing from the health professionals and from the public as to what they think about the review, and we will participate aggressively and vigorously in the legislative process when we see a bill.

CHILD CARE

Mr. B. Rae: The Liberal program of child care now consists of putting out a pretty red poster with a whole lot of print on it and announcing a review. There are thousands of children who are still on waiting lists and still ineligible for child care in the province because of the fact that the Liberal government has refused to pay for that child care, refused to provide that child care. That is the announcement that people have been waiting for from the Minister of Community and Social Services. That is the issue that unites families in his own community of Kitchener-Waterloo. That is the issue that unites families in Hamilton, in Thunder Bay, in Toronto, in Ottawa, right across the province.

The issue is the fact that there are thousands of children in working families who do not have access to child care simply because the spaces are not available. The minister’s answer to their plight is to provide some parents who have access to child care centres with a pretty poster, and to tell them that there is going to be a review. That is not why the Liberal government was elected. It was elected to provide child care as a matter of right.

HEALTH PROFESSIONS

Mr. Eves: There is not much more for me to say after listening to the member for Riverdale (Mr. Reville) expound at some great length with respect to the health professions legislation review. However, I do want to say that we too, like the official opposition, have been hearing rumours for many months about the eventual disposition of the Schwartz recommendations within the ministry. Apparently they had some difficulty deciding exactly what document they were going to produce. However, we do look forward to reviewing the blueprint that we have before us.

I must compliment the minister, and I do not do this very often, for discussing her technique here with respect to tabling the report in the form of draft legislation because I do think it is the only practical and commonsense approach to the situation; we look forward to participating in the review in the months ahead.

CHILD CARE

Mrs. Cunningham: I would like to speak to the statement made by the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney). We are very pleased with the poster that is being distributed throughout the day care centres across Ontario, for a couple of reasons.

Mr. Black: We knew you’d see the light eventually.

Mrs. Cunningham: Anything that one can do to get parents involved in their child’s program is extremely important to the quality of the program and extremely important to prevention in the services that we provide across this province.

Mr. Ballinger: Dianne is a bright light.

Mrs. Cunningham: However, my criticism would be that it is about time. We have been waiting a long time for this.

Mr. B. Rae: For 42 years.

Mrs. Cunningham: The other part of the statement today had to do with a review of the child care act, and part of the review involves looking at the enforcement practices. I would encourage the minister to look at the enforcement practices very quickly. I think the minister does have enough information through the ongoing licensing of these centres to come up with the problems in a very quick way so that we can look at some actions that would give us new ideas about how we can create more child care spaces. Through the licensing procedure, we find out what is not right and how we can make things better and better ways of service delivery. I encourage the minister to proceed with this activity in a very quick way. There is not a lot of time needed.

I would make the same observation on the child care act. I would think there has been plenty of consultation in the past, not very old, some ongoing reviews that the minister can be looking at so that we can come up with a piece of legislation that would meet the needs of the citizens of Ontario.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mrs. Cunningham: It is most annoying to try to respond to the minister’s comment in the House about an issue this serious with so many interjections. I would begin to think some days that the members are not here to learn anything, even from their own ministers. I would make that statement quite seriously.

This is an important piece of legislation that has to be looked at. We encourage the government in this activity, and we encourage the government at the same time to provide more spaces across this province at a quicker rate than what it has indicated. We encourage the minister, as we did in the estimates, to come forth with the new child care act and we really do applaud him for involving parents as much as possible in not only the process of bringing this poster to date, but in processes for improvements in the system.

ORAL QUESTIONS

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. B. Rae: My question is for the Minister of Health. I am sure the minister will have heard, or if she did not hear it herself it has been reported to her, the story that was carried last night on the CBC program As It Happens relating to an incident which is said to have taken place on January 17 in Toronto.

According to this news report, a man was taken by ambulance through Toronto. He was, in a sense, turned down at two hospitals and he died on the way to the third hospital, the Toronto General Hospital. I wonder if the minister can tell us precisely what she knows about the death of this individual on January 17 and her explanation as to why he died in these circumstances.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: In fact, I did not hear the program and am not familiar with the details of the specific case. I can tell the member that the process in Metropolitan Toronto and the use of the registry is to improve patient care by getting patients in need to the nearest available resource. In Toronto, there is a formal trauma system where trauma patients are taken to Sunnybrook Medical Centre, St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto General Hospital and/or the Hospital for Sick Children.

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Mr. B. Rae: If the minister is telling me that she has not done any kind of investigation or that this incident has not been reported to her, it is a sad commentary on what is going on within her own ministry. I just cannot understand how she would not be in a position today to answer questions on this subject.

Just so the minister will know, it is my understanding, again from the program, that this individual, who has not been named -- and we have not been able to find his name, because that information has not been released to us -- was taken very ill in the west end of Toronto. While driving by St. Joseph’s Health Centre, they were told that St. Joseph’s was CCB, which means critical care bypass, so they did not stop at St. Joseph’s Health Centre. They went past Toronto Western Hospital and were told that Toronto Western Hospital was also not prepared to take this patient. This patient was taken to Toronto General Hospital, where he died.

Mr. Speaker: The question?

Mr. B. Rae: I would like to ask the minister why she does not know what is going on. Can she tell us if this is the best the emergency system can provide? Does she not recognize that there is a serious problem which must be addressed?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I will look into the details of the case which the Leader of the Opposition raises.

I can tell him I have had conversations very recently, as recently as last evening, with the chairman of the Hospital Council of Metropolitan Toronto as well as with emergency medicine specialists, in particular Dr. Rowat, the chairman of the academy of emergency medicine at the University of Toronto, and also with emergency specialist Dr. Gerotti, who works in downtown Toronto as well.

The goal of the new system that has been implemented is to make sure that resources are identified and patients are taken to available resources as quickly as possible. I can tell the member that John Dean, the Metro commissioner of ambulance services, agrees with me and says that the goal of the program is to get the patient to a hospital that is open and ready, and that a few extra minutes needed to transport to a facility that is operational will ultimately be of benefit to the patient.

I am always concerned when I hear of any delay, and I will look into this incident.

Mr. B. Rae: Everybody in this House would agree on what the goal of an emergency system should be. The goal of an emergency system should be to get an acutely or critically ill patient to the nearest possible hospital.

What appears to have happened in this case is that in two cases the nearest hospital was closed. It was closed because the emergency department was temporarily down. The emergency department was temporarily down because there are not enough nurses in the system. There are not enough nurses in the system because the Minister of Health is not responding to that problem.

I would like to ask the minister: Does she not realize that as a result of the shortage of nurses in this system, beds are closed throughout the system, emergency departments are backed up throughout the system and in fact many patients are not getting the kind of care they need? Can she confirm that, as we speak right now, emergency departments not only in this city but indeed across the province are closed on a temporary basis, either on a CCB basis or on what is called an RDC or redirect critical basis, for the simple reason that there are not enough nurses and staff to provide the care needed in that --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The medical experts I have spoken to have advised me that many changes are needed within our health care system to respond to the changing times, changing technologies and changing ways of providing service.

I can tell the Leader of the Opposition that the bottom line is that emergencies are being looked after, patients are not refused emergency treatment and all life-threatening cases are given priority.

Dr. Rowat did tell me that those hospitals which continue to allow patients to back up their emergency departments for days at a time while continuing to admit elective patients need to be contacted. “Appropriate administrative policies need to be implemented in those institutions to ensure more effective and efficient use of their hospital resources.” That is his quote. We are doing that and we are working co-operatively to implement those changes.

Mr. Speaker: New question?

Mr. B. Rae: I want to come back to the minister on this, because I am just not satisfied with her answer.

Surely she would agree with me that if we know that at any given time in this city, for example, there are a number of hospitals whose emergency departments are closed; in fact, patients are not now being taken to the nearest possible place for care. Would she not agree with me on that?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: What I would say to the Leader of the Opposition is that it is important that we recognize that the system which is being implemented in Metropolitan Toronto will identify those hospitals that have resources available, and getting the people to those resources as quickly as possible is the objective of using this new technology in directing people. Particularly in Metropolitan Toronto, where we have so many hospitals and so many resources, it is important to know who is stressed and who is underutilized.

Mr. B. Rae: That was not my question. What I am asking the minister is this. Her answer to my first set of questions was that it was the goal of the system to provide the quickest possible care at the nearest possible place. The question that I asked the minister was this: Would she not agree with me that because of the closures that are now in existence in Toronto, patients are not being taken to the nearest possible hospital? They are being taken to the nearest hospital that is available at that time, and that means that patients, in some cases, are having to drive halfway across the city, taking 10, 15 or 20 precious minutes of their lives to get to an emergency ward when, in fact, the wards closest to where they are sick and have fallen ill are closed because of the shortages in the system today.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would say, with respect, to the Leader of the Opposition that we are all concerned about people getting the care they need as quickly as possible. In fact, what I would say to him is that people are taken to the most appropriate facility where they can get the quickest care.

Mr. B. Rae: With all the beds that are now closed in the system, hundreds of beds closed in the system, over 1,000 nurses short in Toronto alone, would the minister not agree with me that what her vaunted policy really consists of is that patients will be taken to whatever emergency ward happens to be open at the time? Is that not really what it comes right down to?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: Within our system, patients in need of emergency care are given priority. The emergency care advisory committee has given us recommendations so that we can have standards and recommendations for standardization in emergency units across this province. I have asked the Hospital Council of Metropolitan Toronto to begin implementing those guidelines. I believe that the system which is in place will respond to the fact that we want people to get the care as quickly as possible and as close to home as possible.

Mr. Brandt: My question, as well, is for the Minister of Health. A few days ago, I did in fact raise the case of Mrs. Gaccioli of Sarnia, who died the day that she was released from Victoria Hospital in London. I would like to advise the minister that the Gaccioli family is in the members’ gallery today.

They are here, in part, because we did receive some information that the minister may have further information with respect to what transpired in this particular case. If my information is correct and if the minister does have that information, would she in fact share that with the members of the assembly at this time?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: First, let me offer my condolences to the Gaccioli family who are today. I think we can all sympathize with the deep loss and grief that the family is experiencing.

I have in fact received the following information from London Victoria Hospital regarding Maria Gaccioli. Mrs. Gaccioli had undergone bypass surgery previously in September 1984. On December 29, she presented at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Sarnia with an acute myocardial infarction and was transferred to Victoria Hospital in London on December 30 for further medical assessment. Tests indicated that she should undergo a second bypass operation.

As members will know, cardiac patients are classified as emergency, urgent or elective, by the specialists. Emergency patients are treated immediately. Urgent and elective patients are scheduled by physicians, taking into account their condition and the condition of other patients.

Mrs. Gaccioli was recommended as an urgent case. On January 9, after being assessed as stable, she was transferred out of the coronary care unit to ward care. Based on other urgent patient needs, she was expected to undergo surgery in one to two weeks. My understanding is that the doctors involved felt the patient’s condition was stable. Mrs. Gaccioli was discharged on January 13 with instructions to report any change in her condition to her doctor.

Again, my sincere condolences to the family and friends of Mrs. Gaccioli.

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Mr. Brandt: The night before Mrs. Gaccioli was released from the hospital she was not only given medication, but she was also given oxygen. She had suffered severe pains during the period of some two weeks she had been in the hospital. Most of the information the minister has released to the House today is information I gave the minister during the course of question period over the past of two or three days when I brought this particular case to the minister’s attention.

As a result of some of the questions I would like to raise and that still remain unanswered in my mind -- this is not the question I want to ask -- will the minister now tell us why her staff never, at any time, contacted the Gaccioli family to get their side of this very, very serious matter.

I ask the minister, is she prepared to conduct a full and comprehensive inquest into what happened in this case, so we can satisfy the family that Mrs. Gaccioli was given every consideration in terms of the treatment she received at that hospital; or that if there is fault, that fault will be assessed to the right person or persons involved?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As the leader of the third party would agree, I believe it would be inappropriate for me to make any medical judgements. In fact, I understand that the physician is out of the country and that the hospital has contacted the family to arrange for a meeting to answer any additional questions they have.

Mr. Brandt: I do not believe that is satisfactory. She stated earlier in the House, in response to a question from the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae), that life-threatening situations are given priority.

If life-threatening situations are given priority and if it is unacceptable to the members of this Legislature when someone dies being transported to a hospital, how much more critical it is when someone who is in the hospital suffering from heart problems, receives oxygen the night before, has a history of heart problems and went under a triple bypass some four years ago? If that is not a critical, urgent case, how bad is the health system in this province?

Why is it not possible for us to get to the bottom of what happened so that we can be given at least some assurance that this kind of case will not occur again in Ontario?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I again say to the leader of the third party that I believe it would be inappropriate for me to make any medical judgement whatever.

Mr. Brandt: I am asking for an inquest; I am not asking you to make a medical judgement.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: What I would say to the member is that following the meeting with the physicians and the hospital, if the family have any further questions they would like me to look into, if they contact my office I would be pleased to investigate.

Mrs. Marland: My question is to the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley). I see he has not arrived yet, so I would request to stand down the question.

Mr. Speaker: Is there agreement to stand down the question?

Agreed to.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Kormos: I have a question of the Premier. The Ontario Automobile Insurance Board has announced that its decision now will not be available until mid-February. It is an interesting delay. The government broke its promise to create an insurance advocate. The government refused to fund interveners in the board’s hearing. The government failed to provide direction pursuant to section 27 of the act. The board spent no time investigating what were just and reasonable rates for the driving public.

The question is, in view of the fact the insurance industry has monopolized that hearing, has not the board become nothing more than a mouthpiece for that private auto insurance industry?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The answer is no; and I see it has not taken my honourable friend very long in this House to believe in conspiracy theories.

Mr. Kormos: Interestingly, first, the government denies its promise to reduce auto insurance rates. It has created the board and failed to do what I have listed. I note with interest an article in the Canadian Bar Review that states among other things that “agencies” -- like the board, I presume -- “tend to adopt the only viewpoint presented to them, that” --

Hon. Mr. Scott: That is a very different case. Don’t give us that nonsense; that is a very different case. Whoever the author is will fix you up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Go back to law school.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That was not a supplementary to the Attorney General.

Mr. Kormos: It says, “. . .that governmental agencies rarely respond to interests that are not represented and that the mere setting up by governments of regulatory agencies is insufficient to protect the public interest.”

The article called out for effective public intervention and funding for public intervention. It was written by the present Attorney General (Mr. Scott) and published in 1982. In view of what the Attorney General says about this type of board, without public interveners being funded, being monopolized by a single industry that they are designed to regulate --

Mr. Speaker: Does the member have a question?

Mr. Kormos: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

What is the government going to do now to protect auto insurance consumers in the province?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The independent board will make its own judgement and the Attorney General, in the kind way in which he usually operates, has agreed to take the member opposite aside and explain the article to him.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. Harris: I have a question for the Minister of Health. Sam Rota from North Bay is currently in St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto awaiting a cancer operation. He was admitted on January 13, close to two weeks ago now. Three times he has been diagnosed as having operable cancer of the stomach. Three times he has been given the required needles and taken to the operating room, and three times he has been wheeled back from the operating room because his doctor was informed there was no intensive care unit bed available for post-operation.

This is not the first-class health care system this government inherited in 1985. I ask the minister to look into this case and I ask her how many more cases like this are going on in Toronto right today.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I am always distressed when I hear about this kind of situation. I can tell the member opposite that I understand St. Mike’s is opening additional intensive care and critical care beds very soon. That was part of the announcement we made last June. As he knows as well, Dr. Sibbald and Ms. Kaminski are reviewing the procedures to ensure, if possible, that those occurrences are minimized. I am hoping to have a report from them very, very soon.

Mr. Harris: We have heard this answer from the minister about five times on five different cases. We are informed through this Legislature and throughout the province that even when more beds are available, there will not be the nurses to be able to staff those beds.

Mr. Rota is not a young man but he is hoping he has a few more years to live, with what his doctor informs him is an operable cancer if it is operated on soon enough. He has not been scheduled again this week. He has been told they will try again next week, without any assurance the operation will come off.

I would ask the minister, aside from the life-threatening delays on this type of surgery, does the minister not have some sensitivity for what a man this age is going through, knowing he has cancer, knowing this operation is the only hope he has, and for the psychological effect that has on people like Sam Rota; and as we are increasingly hearing on many more patients across this province?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I am always saddened when I hear of any delay. My goal is to ensure people have access to effective, high-quality care as close to home as possible and as soon as possible.

I can tell the member that St. Michael’s received funding for six noncardiac critical care beds as part of the expansion of its trauma program. They are a designated trauma centre. I understand from them that they have critical care nurses who are graduating from the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute course and that they expect to be able to staff those beds over the next few weeks so that stories such as this are a thing of the past, I hope.

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ROUGE VALLEY

Mr. Faubert: My question is to the Premier. Some residents of my riding of Scarborough-Ellesmere as well as residents of other areas of Scarborough have expressed to me their concerns that a decision has been made on the Rouge Valley lands. They continually advise me of rumours and hearsay. Some of them are very concerned about the future and the preservation of the Rouge Valley lands. One such rumour that was brought to my attention last weekend stated that the government had made a decision to sell off 3,000 acres in the Rouge Valley. Could the Premier please put my constituents at ease and advise me whether any such decision has been made?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The answer is very clear. There is no suggestion we are going to sell off 3,000 acres in the Rouge area. I do not know where these rumours emanate from, but my honourable friend will be aware that there are many rumours floating around this place at all times. Most of them are wrong. The answer is we are not contemplating that and I hope my honourable friend will reassure his constituents of our strong determination to save the Rouge.

Mr. Faubert: Can the Premier then advise the House of the present status of the Rouge Valley lands and whether he expects the government’s plans regarding these lands will be announced this spring?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am hoping this spring. As my honourable friend knows, there is a major planning exercise going on with that complete quadrant with respect to housing, transportation, parks and a variety of other things. All the determinations have not been made in that regard, but I want him to rest assured that central to the vision for that area is to save the Rouge, to keep it as open space for people. That is where we are. There is no exception to that and I am sure he can reassure his constituents in that regard.

CONSTRUCTION SAFETY

Mr. Mackenzie: I have a question to the Minister of Labour. I would like to raise with the minister a serious problem brought to my attention today. I have a memo dated January 16, 1989, from the director of the ministry’s construction health and safety branch, CHSB, to all staff.

The memo concerns expenditure restraints. It states, “Except for emergencies and delivery of essential client services, such as pressing investigations, there will be,” and goes on to list 10 areas of spending cutbacks including needed training and travel. The director states, “In an attempt to keep the CHSB expenditures within the budget appropriations, these restrictions may appear to be drastic, but I assure you they are absolutely necessary.”

If the minister were as serious about health and safety as he indicated on Tuesday, why would he force spending cutbacks on the department whose job it is to ensure health and safety on construction sites? God only knows we have had enough examples of the need lately.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: If the member will do me the courtesy of sending me a copy of the memo -- I have not seen the memo and the list attached to it -- I can assure him I will give him a full response when I have had a chance to see and review it.

Mr. Mackenzie: I will.

Workers need improvements now. There are even problems on the SkyDome site that the Minister of Labour likes to think of as a model. I raised this in the House on January 19. Daniel Stoyanoff, a plumber and a member of the workers’ health and safety committee, says, that despite last week’s protest where workers downed tools for a day, “Nothing has been brought to the point where it is acceptable.”

Actions speak louder than words. The spending cutbacks of the CHSB are not a good sign. They will potentially result in more problems on Ontario construction sites. Will the minister assure us, as I am hoping he has indicated in the Legislature, that he will provide the CHSB with the budget it needs to do an effective job? He has to remember we will not have anything new in place for probably several months or a year.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Just to respond to the member from Hamilton East’s comment on the SkyDome site, my understanding is that all the orders that arose as a result of the work stoppage a few days ago have now been complied with. There is one outstanding issue, and that issue relates to the extent to which workers who left early from the job would receive pay for that period. I remind him that in Bill 208 that issue is addressed thoroughly and completely. As far as issues relating to specific orders that were issued after inspectors were on the sites are concerned, all those orders have now been complied with.

TRUANCY

Mrs. Cunningham: My question is for the Minister of Education. More than 20,000 students, mainly 13 to 16 years of age, were repeatedly absent without leave from Ontario schools last year. A major research project on habitual absence commissioned by the Minister of Education has been completed for 18 months, but has yet to be released by the ministry.

The government states it is committed to encouraging school attendance and reducing dropout rates. Would the minister tell the House when he plans to release this long overdue report on absenteeism?

Hon. Mr. Ward: I can assure the member for London North that we will release any studies we have available as expeditiously as we can. I also point out to the member, as I did on a previous occasion, that we are looking very carefully at this whole issue. We have been in consultation now for some time with other ministries, the Ministry of the Solicitor General and the Ministry of the Attorney General, to look at the legislative options. I do want to reiterate my view and the view of the ministry that our prime role in dealing with truant students is one of intervention and assistance, as opposed to merely looking at legislated solutions.

Mrs. Cunningham: We too believe in intervention and we too believe in prevention. Unfortunately, the problem goes on in spite of everyone’s efforts in school boards across this province. The minister knows the courts do not have the power to intervene and order counselling for adolescents. Twenty thousand truants need our guidance. Unfortunately, the provincial government has not stepped in with clear policies for these students in Ontario.

We are asking the minister to step in quickly. We are not talking about quasi-judicial process or punitive measures. What we are talking about is the ability of professional educators and counsellors to assist young people who are crying out for our help. This is a very serious problem. The minister has had endless consultation; he admits it himself. When will he amend the Education Act so judges can order counselling for truants, to be specific?

Hon. Mr. Ward: Once again, the member puts as her prime thrust the need for legislation, the need for court orders to require young people to maintain an appropriate attendance within their facilities. At the same time, she puts forth the view that the answer is intervention and prevention. I believe our schools have the ability now to intervene and to serve those students in the proper context.

As I indicated to her, with some of the changes that have taken place as a result of legislative changes both federally and provincially, there is some difficulty with regard to the current legislation. We are working with other ministries on proposals to deal with that. We will address it as expeditiously as we can.

FINANCIAL PLANNERS

Mr. Daigeler: My question is to the Minister of Financial Institutions. On December 20, a former Ottawa financial planner pleaded guilty to bilking 29 people out of a total of $309,000. In the context of this unfortunate criminal act, I read with great interest in the Globe and Mail of January 11 that Quebec is planning to regulate financial planners. According to the story, this would make Quebec the first Canadian province to have such legislation.

May I ask the minister, first, what measures are presently in place to protect Ontario consumers who are dealing with financial planners; and second, whether he is considering legislation similar to the Quebec proposal?

Hon. Mr. Elston: That is a very good question from the member for Nepean because it is a timely issue with which we must deal in the financial world. First, we have not developed a position as advanced as that of Quebec, although the issues surrounding its paper and its proposals are of interest to us and we are busy now, even as I speak, looking at the options Quebec is reviewing.

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In Ontario at the moment our regulation is not so much with respect to the salespersons and their activities but more particularly regulation of the product and the manner in which the product is distributed to the public.

We can see some problems in the field, but there does not seem to be a widespread difficulty. We have not had a large number of difficulties; not to say that the problem does not exist or that it is not an important one, I believe it is.

In a situation like the one he noted in Ottawa, the member has clearly outlined a situation where, if somebody puts his mind to a fraudulent activity, it becomes a very difficult endeavour indeed to shut it all off. But may I say that because of the activity in Quebec and certain examples like the one he has just cited, we are quite interested in reviewing the options that are available for legislative activity.

Mr. Daigeler: I am pleased to see that the minister is very much considering this question, which is of obvious interest even to many seniors as well, because quite often they have invested moneys with financial planners. I certainly agree with him that the majority of the financial planners are very honest, straightforward and reliable people, but unfortunately, there are always exceptions.

Can the minister advise us as to what time frame we are looking at for when he might introduce regulations?

Hon. Mr. Elston: At this point, l am unable to indicate that we are in a position to put a time frame around our consideration of the matter. I think it will be interesting for us in Ontario to follow the developments in Quebec, and in fact we will be doing that. In my meetings with the ministers of other provinces, as they come up, I expect to be able to undertake some discussions with respect to the size of the problem in their various jurisdictions, particularly that of Mr. Fortier, where he has already moved to do the regulation.

Again, I want to underscore the need at all times for consumers in the marketplace in Ontario to be using good, common sense and judgement with respect to purchasing products of all kinds, but certainly in particular with the nature of financial products they must ensure that they get the fullest sort of explanation, not only from those people who are marketing but from personal advisers as well, such as lawyers and others who can provide some specific expertise if they have any question whatsoever about the merits of the investment that is being proposed.

ASSISTANCE TO TOBACCO FARMERS

Mr. Wildman: I have a question of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. In view of the fact that the provincial government has introduced legislation to prohibit smoking in the workplace, and in view of the fact that there are about 640 more tobacco farmers in Ontario who need adjustment assistance to help them get out of tobacco production, can the minister explain why he and the provincial Liberal government have so far refused to participate in the additional $60-million, federal-provincial program proposed by the federal Tory government to assist these farmers during last fall’s federal election campaign?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: As the honourable member knows, the adjustment program that we have in place now has gone a long way to assist tobacco growers in adjusting to the problem that they are facing, having to take more acreage of tobacco out of production.

During the election campaign, the federal government announced that it had $30 million that it was prepared to add to the $30 million we already have in the program. It would appear to us that this $30 million would be ample to help any farmers who want to exit the program. The fact of the matter is, as we are told by the leaf buyers, that we may be arriving at the situation where we are not going to have enough acreage to produce to demand. We have to be very careful that we are not creating incentives to have more tobacco come out of production if indeed the demand is such that they need more tobacco. That is the thing we are a little concerned about.

Mr. Wildman: Would the minister agree that while there may indeed be the demand, the price that the producers are getting is substantially less than it was in the past, so there still are more than 600 producers who want to get out of the business? If that is the case, can he assure us that if his government continues to refuse to participate in this proposed federal-provincial program, the federal government will proceed with its $30-million adjustment program?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: I think the federal government is obligated to proceed with the $30 million because Mr. Mazankowski, the present Minister of Agriculture, was in tobacco country during the election campaign and I believe he said very emphatically that there would be another $30 million available from the federal government.

When he comes out with that kind of strong statement, I just cannot believe he would retract now.

Mr. Speaker: New question; the member for Burlington South.

Mr. Jackson: I don’t know why; it happens in Ontario politics all the time.

RAPE CRISIS CENTRES

Mr. Jackson: My question is to the Solicitor General. She will know that on December 31, Joan Steer, executive director of the Windsor Sexual Assault Crisis Centre, resigned in frustration over this government’s approach to funding rape crisis centres. She is not alone. Others have resigned and we are told that more will be resigning, and some centres will close their doors.

At issue is the government’s policy which makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for centres to apply government funds towards staffing costs.

Given that the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres has called upon her to sit down and meet with it, given that it has written and asked for a meeting, will she undertake to promise to meet with the coalition before the end of February to discuss this issue?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: The member has his facts partly correct and partly incorrect. Indeed, I am well aware that there is a great deal of concern among the sexual assault centres about the great growth in their case loads and the difficulties in funding the work. However, as I reported in this House last year, once they approached me, right away I changed the policy that the money they received could not be used towards staffing. They are completely free to use the money towards staffing as they see fit.

Mr. Jackson: The minister is only partly accurate in her response. The fact is the policy has been changed, but the net effect is that, under the stringent criteria, no centre has been able to apply the provincial moneys towards staffing. To her credit, the minister has helped three centres that were about to close. She and her government have undertaken a very expensive campaign of public relations which has almost doubled the number of calls to these centres.

The moneys that are transferred from this government expire on February 28. The minister has not given this group a clear statement that she will in fact meet with it, and it has asked by letter to meet with the minister.

Given that the Ministry of Correctional Services fully funds the staff costs of halfway houses and given that the Ministry of Community and Social Services funds four full-time employees at the John Howard Society, would the Solicitor General, when she meets with the coalition, explain why her government will fund full-time permanent staff members who serve criminals but will force rape victims to rely on volunteers for support services?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I am sure the member is not suggesting that funding from these other programs should be withdrawn. I am working with these centres and have met already with the Windsor Sexual Assault Crisis Centre. I was there and had a very good meeting with them, as I have with several other family violence centres across the province.

We have spoken to them about the funding and told them that they indeed can expect no extra funding in this year; it would have to be a matter of next year’s estimates. I have already set a time to meet with them again to discuss this problem and I am presently discussing with other ministries involved the overall picture of how to meet this demand.

The member knows that these programs, which started in the first instance primarily for people who suffered some sexual assault in the immediate past, have grown extensively to cover programs for the survivors of incest, often childhood incest. These are very long counselling programs, drawn out sometimes over years, and they have made a dramatic difference in the amount of work put upon these centres. We are examining where this should properly be funded and how it can be funded, but the member must recognize that this is a new and dramatically growing program.

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SCHOOL ACCOMMODATION

Ms. Collins: My question is for the Minister of Education. Last July, the Wentworth County Board of Education achieved a final solution of its obligations under Bill 30. Recently, several of my constituents in the Stoney Creek area have inquired as to what specific commitments were made for the provision of accommodation in our area.

Could the minister please clarify what his obligations are to the residents of Stoney Creek under the terms of the settlement?

Hon. Mr. Ward: Under the agreement which was reached between my ministry and the two boards in the Hamilton-Wentworth region, a commitment was given to the Wentworth board that the ministry would assist the board in designating a future site for the long-term needs of the Wentworth board in the eastern part of the region, on the mountain side.

During the course of the past several months, officials from my ministry have met with officials from the city of Stoney Creek as well as the Wentworth board of education and the planning department of the region. We became aware of the fact that there were already two designated sites on the upper portion of Stoney Creek.

At the same time, we contacted officials at the Ministry of Government Services. They canvassed their files to make a determination as to what land they may have available under government control, and meetings with the board and its officials have been ongoing to provide assistance in finding the most suitable location for the Wentworth board’s future needs in the city of Stoney Creek.

Ms. Collins: The minister will understand that there is a great deal of anxiety that remains among the people of Stoney Creek. Recently the board, as the minister mentioned, made requests for assistance in securing an acceptable site on the mountain. Can the minister provide an update as to what progress has been made?

Hon. Mr. Ward: As I indicated in my response to the original question, when we were reviewing the situation in upper Stoney Creek, we became aware that the board already had a designated site. However, I am advised by officials at the Ministry of Government Services that there is indeed another 15-acre parcel within the Heritage Green area.

Officials from the Ministry of Government Services and my ministry have advised the Wentworth board of this fact. We have asked them to convey to us whether they deem this to be a more appropriate or the most appropriate site. If that is the case, we will pursue the matter further with MGS in terms of assisting that board to secure a site for its future secondary needs on the Stoney Creek mountain.

PROPOSED OBSERVATORY

Mr. Laughren: I have a question for the Premier on a proposal to build a neutrino observatory in the Sudbury area. It is a $53-million project; a neutrino observatory, a high-science, high-technology proposal. I thought the Premier would know about it.

If it is built, it would put Sudbury and that observatory in the forefront of pure scientific research. The Premier was asked for $7.2 million through the Premier’s Council to help get this project under way. The proposal was made to the Premier in November 1988. There is worldwide support for this. Can I ask the Premier why he has not responded to that request?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I do not make the judgements on that. Very frankly, I am not even aware of the proposal. I do not personally screen them because they go through an independent peer review and the member would not want me to intervene in any way in that regard, expressing my favourites.

There is no question everybody knows that Sudbury is one of my very favourite places in this entire province and we have, as the member knows, done an enormous number of things there in the last little while -- the university, the hospitals, the science centre and a variety of other areas. We are determined to keep Sudbury in the forefront of world leadership in a wide variety of areas, but I cannot respond specifically to my honourable friend’s question because I do not know the answer, frankly.

Mr. Laughren: I appreciate the rather disarming frankness of the Premier’s response, but I am surprised at it, given his stated interest in the world of high technology and things world class. This would actually be a world-class observatory if it could get started. There really is interest from the scientific community all over the world and the proposal has been put to the Premier, or at least to his officials. I am surprised he does not know anything about it.

The proposal would cost this province only $7.2 million out of a total of over $50 million, and that is over a four-year period. All they are asking the Premier for is about $2 million a year for the next four years.

I am quite serious when I say that this would put Sudbury in the forefront of pure scientific research. It would attract leading scientists from around the world. It would complement existing research that is already going on in Ontario universities.

Would the Premier make himself aware of this proposal with a view to acceding to the request for funding that has been put before him and before the Premier’s Council?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: Let me just say to my honourable friend that I do appreciate his advice in this matter and I will pass his concern on to the panel that does make these decisions, but I just want to tell my honourable friend something --

Mr Laughren: I don’t think you know about it.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I was not aware of it. As the member knows, there are many, many applications and there are not, shall I say political decisions in that regard. They are viewed with respect to their scientific merit, with respect to the consortia that are involved, with respect to other funding and with respect to potential long-term job prospects and the impact on the communities and whether we have a capacity to do something unique in the world. All of those factors are taken into account, and many others, by a group of people who are far more qualified to make these judgements than I am.

It is not a regional development program. It is not a set of decisions made by politicians, even though the cabinet is ultimately responsible. What we are trying to do is use limited funds in an area that I am delighted my honourable friend supports, because he recognizes personally the importance of high intellectual value added in this province, particularly because he personally has contributed so much in that particular area.

We realize we have to be in the forefront of scientific research and technology. It is important to the standard of living we are going to have in the future. I am very proud of some of the things that have happened through the council over the last little while. My honourable friend knows we cannot guarantee everyone will be successful, but we are banking on some very bright people in this province to keep us in the forefront.

Given the fact that it has the full support of my friend opposite, a man whose opinion I value extremely highly, I am going to send a copy of this Hansard --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

POLLUTION CONTROL

Mrs. Marland: I know the Premier is aware of the Ontario Hydro report, Options Available to Meet Acid Gas Limits and Selection of Preferred Options. I have read that report with great concern and it appears that the Lakeview generating station in my riding of Mississauga South will not be fitted with scrubbers. There are no plans prior to 1994 to help reduce toxic emissions from those stacks. The use of low-sulphur coal will not be considered until what the report refers to as beyond 1994.

Would the Premier authorize independent monitoring of emissions -- and I stress “independent” -- from the stacks at Lakeview during cold starts to maximum and varied lows to ensure my community and all those concerned about the environment that the increased use of the Lakeview station is not going to create health or environmental hazards.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I apologize to my honourable friend. I am not in a position to give her any assurances, although I will discuss her concerns and her constructive suggestions with the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley). There may or may not be merit in them; I am not in a position to comment.

That being said, I hope that my honourable friend supports the direction in which we are going. I believe she did yesterday when the minister reported in the House about the plans with respect to Ontario Hydro.

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There may be a problem with Lakeview, and if there is we will try to work with it, but I think my honourable friend has to understand that we cannot be parochial about this matter. There is a lot of acid rain falling in this province that comes across other borders. Conversely, some of ours falls in other jurisdictions as well.

This is not restricted to specific constituencies. It does not just fall out in certain constituencies because they happen to be Conservative. This is not a plot just to gas out certain people, let me tell my honourable friend that. Although I could tell her it is a tempting idea, I think, on certain occasions, that is not the object of it.

Obviously, we have looked at every power station on its own merits. This is a major step forward. When I sat in this House in the opposition for many years and we talked about scrubbers -- and my honourable friend the now interim leader of the Conservative Party will remember those discussions -- we talked about moving ahead on Ontario Hydro and never anything was done. Now we are moving. We are showing leadership that is second to none.

I know the position of my honourable friend’s party on this over the years. There is no party that was more backward on these matters. The member should stand up and be proud of the leadership the Minister of the Environment has taken.

Mr. Speaker: Just before I recognize the member for a supplementary, I understand this was a leadoff question. You will get two supplementaries.

Mrs. Marland: I wonder how the Premier measures leadership of his government in acknowledging that this report addresses only two scrubbers by 1994. We are not moving ahead quickly to protect the environment in terms of acid gas emissions in this province through Hydro’s installations. I feel that on behalf of all the installations of coal-fired thermal units in this province, two scrubbers alone are not sufficient in five years.

Hydro has indicated that in all likelihood Lakeview will be generating more electricity, and thus it will generate more toxic emissions. If Hydro has nothing to hide by its present operating system at Lakeview, then why will the Premier not commit to an independent test to assure the public that Lakeview is safe today and not just some time in the misty future beyond 1994?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I am not sure my honourable friend understands the nature of acid rain and acid gas emissions because they are so widely dispersed. We know there is a problem with Inco. It was not just in Sudbury. It was all over southwestern Ontario. It was all over North America, for that matter. It is not limited to one particular area. We have very tight restrictions on Ontario Hydro and the standards that it has to meet and it is going to meet those. They have come forward with a plan and are bringing in scrubbers to do that. My friend should stand up and celebrate that.

Obviously individual emitters will be analysed, but I do not think my friend need worry her constituents. She can tell her constituents that their situation is going to be very much better under our administration than it was under her party’s administration.

Mrs. Marland: My constituents have four stacks without any scrubbers and no plans for any scrubbers until after 1994. We have eight coal-fired thermal units in this province. We are talking about two scrubbers. That is two chimneys. I want to tell the Premier that everybody understands how widely dispersed acid gas emissions are in this province. I am talking about a facility that is densely surrounded by residential population and right on the shores of Lake Ontario.

Mr. Speaker: And your supplementary?

Mrs. Marland: My supplementary is a request that the Premier agrees to have an independent evaluation of today’s operation. That is not such a big deal. Will he at least agree to have that assessment to establish, in his own words, that my people are safe in that community?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: My honourable friend misunderstands the way the system is and the way it works. We did not put Lakeview into her riding. She put it in. Her government and the members of her party put it there. We had these discussions many times prior to her coming to this House. She can tell her --

Mrs. Marland: This has been there 45 years.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: Is she blaming it all on Mitch Hepburn? Go ahead. Did Mitch Hepburn do it?

Hon. Mr. Scott: It was George Drew who put it there. Remember George Drew.

Mr. Harris: George Drew would never have done that.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: Go ahead. Blame Farquhar Oliver. Blame Mitch Hepburn.

Let me tell my friend that what she is seeing for the first time in recent history is a deeply committed Minister of the Environment who actually understands what is going on, and because of this man’s leadership the member’s constituents are far safer than they have ever been. If the member does not believe me, she should lean forward and ask the gentleman sitting just in front of her. I am sure he will stand up in this House and agree with us in this regard.

Mr. Speaker: l am in a bit of a quandary here, yet it really is not that serious. That was a leadoff question. Therefore, I will have to recognize the member for Simcoe West.

COUNTY GOVERNMENT

Mr. McCague: There is a chance that the member for Oxford (Mr. Tatham) and I were going to talk about the same subject, but my question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs. During the past several months, he has had a van of his colleagues travelling Ontario to find out what people think about the reform of county government. I am just wondering if that report on the reform by the member for Oxford and his colleagues is now in the minister’s possession.

Hon. Mr. Eakins: My colleagues have been working very hard on this. They have had excellent rapport and input from the various counties across the province. That report has just been finished now, and I will be looking at it. It will be made available as soon as it can be printed and translated.

Mr. McCague: I have a request and a question. I was wondering if the minister could see fit to release that report in this Legislature rather than some place outside of here, so we might have a chance to compliment the member for Oxford and to make some comments, whatever they might be, to the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

Hon. Mr. Eakins: The member for Oxford has done a tremendous job. He has held many meetings with the people across the province, arriving at a solution which I believe will see a greater degree of credibility for municipal government in this province. I can tell the member that as soon as the report is ready and translated and printed, it will be available to him at the first opportunity.

DAIRY INDUSTRY

Mr. Tatham: My question is for the Minister of Agriculture and Food. Oliver Bertin, in the January 12, 1989, edition of the Globe and Mail suggests that the Pillsbury Co. of Minneapolis wants to export in quantity Haagen-Dazs ice cream from the United States, rather than manufacture under licence in Canada, which is the current arrangement.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade prohibits imports of all dairy products. The company claims that ice cream is not covered by GATT since it is a processed food rather than a dairy product. Minister, what kind of dessert can our dairy farmers expect?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: This matter has certainly forced Ottawa to take a stand to defend the fundamentals of marketing boards and the supply-management system, namely, to control imports of dairy products, chickens, turkeys and eggs.

I strongly support the position taken by the government of Canada that the import controls on ice cream and yoghurt are fully consistent with GATT. I was extremely pleased to hear that the federal Minister for International Trade, John Crosbie, has said that the government of Canada is firmly committed to supply management and plans to vigorously defend these import controls before the GATT dispute panel.

PETITIONS

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION

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

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

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

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

It is dated January 26, 1989, and signed by some 48 teachers of the East Parry Sound Board of Education. I have affixed my signature thereto.

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Mr. Speaker: It is very difficult to hear the petitions or the content of the petitions. I am sure all members who are having private conversations could help me.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Brandt: I have a petition for the Lieutenant Governor in Council signed by 1,390 persons from Sarnia and area, which reads in part as follows:

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

“We, the undersigned Ontario residents and taxpayers, wish to add our voices to the many other Ontarians who are concerned about the potential 35 to 40 per cent increases in auto insurance premiums. A 40 per cent increase is not anything like the ‘cap on insurance premiums’ that you promised in the last election campaign!”

I further have 461 petitions on the question of increases in auto insurance rates that are similar to the petition I just read. To save the time of the House, I will just give you the number: 461 from the Windsor area. This is addressed as well to the Lieutenant Governor in Council.

I also have 294 petitions, again from the Windsor area, directed to the Lieutenant Governor in Council, objecting to the proposed increase in automobile insurance rates.

Mr. Speaker: Are they not addressed to the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario?

Mr. Brandt: Yes.

Mr. Speaker: You said the Lieutenant Governor in Council.

Mr. Brandt: Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, sorry.

I further have 395, again petitioned with respect to the same subject and in the same manner. These also are from the Windsor area.

I also have a petition for the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario signed by approximately 1,050 persons from Scarborough and area which reads in part as follows:

“We, the undersigned, reject the proposed 40 per cent rate increase on auto insurance. We demand that this whole problem be re-examined by a truly independent investigation. The report should evaluate alternative methods of providing auto insurance and include procedures for the establishment of a level of rates which are reasonable to auto vehicle drivers.”

I present this one as well. Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Speaker. Those were thousands of names that I presented in petition today.

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

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

“We, the undersigned, petition the government of Ontario to reform the workers’ compensation system in Ontario so that people injured at work get decent pensions, rehabilitation and jobs when they are able.”

These are signed by too many people to count.

HOME CARE

Mr. Jackson: “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 the Red Cross Society has incurred a deficit because the government of Ontario has failed to fulfil its promise to adequately fund home care services and therefore the Red Cross may be forced to withdraw their home care services, we petition the Treasurer of Ontario to adequately fund the Red Cross services so that 170,000 citizens of Ontario are not forced to seek more expensive care in an institutional setting.”

This group of petitions has my signature and support and brings the total to over 2,700 petitions on this subject from the city of Burlington.

Mr. Speaker: I am glad you are keeping a running total.

REPORT BY COMMITTEE

SELECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY

Mr. Carrothers from the select committee on energy presented the report on Ontario Hydro’s Draft Demand/Supply Planning Strategy and moved the adoption of its recommendations.

Mr. Carrothers: The committee held six weeks of public hearings last summer and fall into the demand/supply planning strategy which Ontario Hydro released in December 1987. It heard from some 16 expert witnesses, 27 interest groups and, in addition, received 120 written submissions. It commissioned background analyses from 11 consultants and as well heard briefings from the Ministry of Energy.

During its extensive deliberations over the past 11 months, the committee has come to recognize that the supply of electricity is vital to the functioning of our modern society here in Ontario. The committee believes that the recommendations contained in this report will serve as a valuable guide for establishing future demand/supply planning priorities and improving the power supply planning process in Ontario.

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

INTRODUCTION OF BILL

GOVERNMENT CHEQUE CASHING ACT

Mr. Morin moved first reading of Bill 210, An Act to prohibit the Charging of Fees for the Cashing of Government Cheques.

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Morin: The proposed bill prohibits any person from charging a fee for cashing a cheque issued by the government of Canada, the government of Ontario or a municipality. This bill does not apply to the financial institutions referred to in section 3 of the act.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

TIME ALLOCATION (CONTINUED)

Resuming the adjourned debate on government notice of motion 20.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I appreciate the opportunity to speak for a few more minutes on this particular resolution that has been put forward by the government House leader, a resolution which really threatens the democratic process here in Ontario because it changes the practices and the operation of the Legislative Assembly. We do have standing orders which specify the rules of debate and the process for the passage of bills through this Legislative Assembly.

This motion really is an affront to the democratic process in that it puts a severe limitation on the rights of members of this House to have full and adequate debate on these two very important bills, Bill 113 and Bill 114. The motion will limit the debate to two days in total in terms of the committee of the whole, at which time amendments can be considered on the bill and then only one day for each bill, potentially three hours of debate for each of these two bills before final votes are taken.

Certainly within a period of three hours it is very difficult for all the members of the Legislature to have an opportunity to speak on bills as important as these ones. We have had considerable opportunity for those who have been on the committee to speak to the bills, but that only covers some 11 members out of the 130 members of this Legislative Assembly. I believe that we should follow our normal practices and stay with the standing orders of the House in terms of our process for debate on these two bills.

We know that these bills, which attempt to open up Sunday shopping across Ontario, are strongly opposed by groups right across the province.

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As members of the assembly, we have all heard from many of the groups and individuals we represent in terms of their concerns with respect to this legislation. I would just like to bring forward several of the arguments that have been made as to why this is bad legislation, why this is not in the best interests of the people of Ontario.

One of the groups that has made very effective representations with respect to these bills is the group called the Coalition Against Open Sunday Shopping. I have here, in a letter from them, the fundamental points that they make. They say:

“We know that many members of the Legislature share our deep-felt disappointment with the Retail Business Holidays Amendment Act and the Employment Standards Amendment Act. What we now see is, in our view, bad legislation, bad policy and -- what should be of considerable concern to any politician -- bad politics. It appears that the Liberal government is attempting to change the very fabric of our society for no apparent political advantage. We are sure you will agree that the problems of enforcement with the Retail Business Holidays Act are in no way corrected with this legislation. In fact, they will be exacerbated.”

This group represents several hundred business organizations, church groups and public interest groups representing millions of residents of Ontario. We have a list of the membership of the coalition, and I just point out the kind of broad-based support it has in terms of a selective grouping of some of the organizations involved.

They include the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, the Baptist Convention of Toronto, the Canadian Tire Dealers’ Association, the Catholic Women’s League of Canada, the Canadian Jewellers Association, the Canadian Shoe Retailers’ Association, the Christian Labour Association of Canada, the Coalition for Family Values, the Consumers’ Association of Canada, the Institute for Christian Studies, the Kingsway Business Management Board, the Lutheran Council in Canada and the national association of brick distributors.

The list goes on and on. I am just giving the members a brief indication of the kinds of organizations that are involved: the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the Retail Merchants Association of Canada (Ontario), the Ontario Federation of Labour, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the Stratford city centre committee, the United Church of Canada, the United Brewery Workers, the United Senior Citizens of Ontario, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the city of Waterloo, United Co-Operatives of Ontario and so on and so on. The list is almost endless in terms of the opposition to this legislation.

One of the organizations that should be most closely listened to is the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the ones that are being saddled with the responsibility that this government refuses to take. I read from this letter that members of the Legislature have received from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. It reads as follows:

“At its recent annual conference, the association had a lengthy and hotly debated session on the issue of Sunday shopping. The delegates unanimously supported the association’s longstanding position that it is inappropriate to charge municipalities with the responsibility for regulating retail store openings on Sundays and holidays.”

They conclude their remarks with the following: “The association remains steadfast in its opposition to local option legislation with respect to Sunday shopping.”

The position of the municipalities of Ontario is quite clear. They are all against this particular bill. I would point out that a number of organizations -- and I hear the member for Kitchener (Mr. D. R. Cooke) expressing concern about this bill. I would point out I have a document here from the Waterloo region Sundays for People. Their quote is as follows:

“Sunday closing legislation is currently under fire in our community and across the province. The Peterson government has announced that it intends to transfer the regulation of Sunday and holiday store hours to the municipalities. This decision will ultimately lead to wide-open Sunday shopping in most communities.

“If, for example, Guelph were to decide to allow Sunday openings, the Cambridge and the Kitchener-Waterloo area will be pressed to open as well to avoid losing retail sales to Guelph.

“Business, labour, churches, social groups and all four of our MPPs are opposed to Sunday shopping, yet the Peterson government still plans to move ahead with their proposal. This is unacceptable to the people of Ontario.”

Who, in fact, are the four local members from that area? They are my colleague the member for Cambridge (Mr. Farnan) and, as well, three other Liberal MPPs: the member for Kitchener-Wilmot (Mr. Sweeney), the member for Kitchener (Mr. D.R. Cooke) and the member for Waterloo North (Mr. Epp). I wish those members were in fact adequately and fully representing the concerns of their own constituents.

One of the groups that has expressed concern is the United Co-operatives of Ontario, which is a major farm organization providing services to the farming community. We have this kind of representation to the members of the Legislature from the United Co-operatives of Ontario:

“The board of directors of United Cooperatives of Ontario has consistently considered this question and, as a result, has taken the decision that they are firmly opposed to any extension of Sunday business operations beyond that currently permitted by law.

“Furthermore, we do not feel that the issue or question should be left to municipalities for decision, as that may lead to an inconsistent and chaotic set of regulations across the province.

“Many of our member co-operatives have already indicated to us that they strongly support the position outlined above. United Cooperatives of Ontario and its affiliate member co-operatives represent over 90,000 members, 2,600 employees, and conduct business in 195 locations in the province.

“We trust that all members of the provincial Legislature will give due attention and recognition to the wishes of those groups and individuals who oppose the further extension of business operations on Sunday.”

Certainly, this should be an issue, particularly with respect to those rural areas of the province that, in many cases, are currently being represented by government members who in fact are supporting this legislation, not supporting the concerns of their own constituencies.

Of course, all of us have received numerous letters and petitions from our own constituents. Just as an example, I read a letter which I have received from a resident of Sault Ste. Marie. It reads as follows:

“I am writing in regards to the Sunday shopping. Being a full-time worker in the retail business, I am definitely opposed to this being identified as a regular shopping day. I feel that there are plenty of shopping hours during the week for people to take advantage of. Coming from a large family, I know and recognize Sunday as a day for the family to be with each other, and gives us a chance to enjoy the finer things in life.”

Another short and simple letter that I received from a local constituent:

“I believe that the decision regarding open Sunday shopping should remain with the Ontario government and not with each municipality. Also, I am against open Sunday shopping.”

I will read the following letter which I just received last week from one of the small businesses in my community. It says as follows:

“I am the manager of a Black’s retail camera store in your riding and I am writing you in connection with the government’s Sunday shopping legislation. Sunday shopping is a concern of mine and the other members of my family. Ontario’s current Sunday closing law, the Retail Business Holidays Act, provides retail employees and small retailers with a common pause day.

“Due to the domino effect, the municipal option contained in Bill 113 is a prescription for wide-open Sunday shopping across the province. Bill 114, which purports to protect retail employees who refuse to work Sundays, is a sham. No law can protect vulnerable retail employees from subtle pressure to work.

“I believe that the public and the media are not sufficiently aware of the inadequacies of Bill 114. It is a cruel joke for the Peterson government to refer to Bill 114 as labour legislation, which when taken together with Bill 113, eliminates the common pause day.

“Your party’s opposition to the local option is to be commended. I would urge you and your caucus colleagues to use every legitimate parliamentary tactic to oppose the passage of the Peterson government’s Sunday shopping legislation.”

We have further submissions, which I think all the members of the Legislature have received from other organizations; as an example, the Citizens for Public Justice, another multiorganizational group similar to the Coalition Against Open Sunday Shopping. We have had their arguments presented on why these bills are improper, are not supported by the people of the province and why everything possible should be done to stop them.

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In my view, the essence of this issue is the quality of life in our province. I am concerned that there must be an opportunity for families to have a day of rest, relaxation and reflection; six days of labour should be sufficient demand on the people of our community. Children should be able to count on having parents at home at least one day per weekend. In the case of single parents who work in department and grocery stores, Sunday shopping means many children will be deprived of valuable time with even one parent.

There are of course many union workers, including steelworkers, who have to work on Sundays in industries with continuous operation. There are other workers -- in restaurants, corner stores and hotels -- who have to work on Sundays. They all qualify for an alternative to Sunday as their day of rest, but those workers will tell you that their day off is just not the same as being able to have Sunday off. Certainly we should not be forcing Sunday work on sectors of the economy where it is not necessary.

Shopping is both a necessity and a good thing. There is nothing wrong with supplying our daily needs with care and attention to style and imagination. A great retailing industry out there clamours for attention and is at our service six days a week, but surely we give away too much if we let a common pause day become like the rest.

I believe that this government motion is taking us in the wrong direction in terms of process in this parliament and in terms of the bills we are going to have restricted debate on. Those bills are not in the best interest of the people of this province. I hope that we will turn down this resolution.

Mr. Eves: It is a pleasure for me to rise and comment on government notice of motion 20, which we now have standing before the Legislature. This is a very unusual government notice of motion, because I believe it is the first time, in this Legislature in any event, that any government in the history of Ontario has attempted to put two government bills into the same guillotine motion.

I know the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway) and the government House leader, who is one and the same person sitting there so appropriately in his spot, has shown some concern in the past -- and we will get to that in a little while -- about such guillotine or closure motions. He prefers to refer to them, now that he is in government of course, as time allocation motions. However, he was not nearly so kind when he was a member of the opposition.

Hon. Mr. Conway: If you look at my words and read them carefully --

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr. Eves: We will read them very carefully as we proceed with this debate.

It is important first of all to look at the point of order that the leader of the official opposition raised in this very important matter, and that was supported by my colleague the member for Carleton (Mr. Sterling), because we are looking at a serious departure from past traditions in this House. I have read very carefully the Speaker’s comments and rationale behind his ruling.

Although I and my colleagues in our party did not challenge the Speaker’s ruling, because quite frankly we believe and share that the Speaker was acting in what he considered to be the best interests of the Legislature in an impartial, objective fashion, I would beg to differ with some of the Speaker’s reasoning with respect to reaching the conclusion he reached.

I do not really have a quarrel with the part of his reasoning that comes to the conclusion that you can deal with various stages of a bill in one single time allocation motion. I think the precedent has been set for that in other legislatures and indeed in our very own House of Commons in Ottawa as recently as the debate with respect to the free trade agreement.

However, where I think the Speaker’s reasoning does rather stretch one’s imagination, if I might put it that way, is when we get to the issue of dealing with two bills together in the same time allocation motion. I am looking at the Speaker’s comment: “On January 9, 1986, this House agreed by unanimous consent to permit the motions for second reading of three related bills to be moved together and for the bills to be debated together.”

That may very well be true, I say to my colleagues, but that is a totally different matter altogether. The House can do anything it wants by unanimous consent, virtually, and on that occasion we were not talking about a time allocation motion at all, we were just talking about dealing with second reading of three related bills together.

The only precedent the Speaker could find with respect to this was in the House of Commons at Westminster. He could not find any precedent in any legislature or the House of Commons in Canada whatsoever. He said, “In the House of Commons at Westminster, precedent has been established to allocate time in one motion to several bills jointly.”

It is interesting to note also that the standing orders speak of, to quote the Speaker quoting from the standing orders themselves, “the allocation of time to any proceedings on a bill.” It does not talk about bills. It never perceived that we would deal with more bills than one at once. Those words are in the singular and they are meant to be in the singular for a very express purpose and that is what the members of this House have decided the rule should be.

The only other justification the Speaker could find with respect to being able to do this to two bills in one time allocation motion was a quote from a book, House of Representatives Practice in the Australian House of Representatives: “for the rules to be suspended to enable related bills to be considered together.” I might even point out that that is not dealing with the time allocation motion itself.

If you were in a court of law, you would be stretching logic past the acceptability point to try to argue such a case before any judge, I would submit, and I think it is stretching logic a little to come to the conclusion that was reached with respect to dealing with two pieces of legislation at once. I would have much preferred that the chair had ruled that there had to be two time allocation motions introduced, one for Bill 113 and one for Bill 114. I will get to another reason for that in a minute, that is, because Bill 113 I think has had much more debate and much more time spent on it than Bill 114 has to date.

I also would like to reiterate a point that several of my colleagues have made. The interim leader has raised the point about the government members, especially the government backbench members, being able to speak as freely as they wish on this particular issue. We believe the government acted prematurely in introducing a time allocation motion on Bill 113 and Bill 114. One of the reasons for that is that only about one third of the government’s own MPPs have had the opportunity to debate the bills.

Hansard shows that only 36 out of 94 Liberal members, excluding the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and the Speaker, have either formally debated the Sunday shopping bills in either the Legislature or in the standing committee on administration of justice.

By invoking the time allocation motion, the government is in fact restricting the rights of its own members to address an issue which must be of great importance to many of their constituents. After all, we are all here to serve the same purpose, to serve our constituents. There are many occasions when a member of the Legislature, he or she, may disagree with what the overwhelming majority of their constituents think on a particular matter. It is my view and the view I think of most representatives that they are here to represent the views of their constituents which may not necessarily be their own personal views from time to time.

I would say to the government members opposite that they should think about that before they finally vote on these two pieces of legislation. I am sure they are going to go out of their way to make their constituents aware of the fact that, despite the fact their constituents do not want the Sunday shopping legislation, they are going to vote for it anyway because the good old Premier is going to tell them to do so.

By the way, excluding the Premier and the Speaker from the number of members on the government side who have had an opportunity to participate in debates on Bill 113 and Bill 114, 36 out of 92 members is exactly 39 per cent of the government members to date who have bothered to express an opinion one way or the other. I guess we can gather that the other 61 per cent of Liberal members have constituents who do not care about Sunday shopping, so they do not care to say anything about it, either in the Legislature or before the committee.

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Hon. Mr. Conway: You didn’t find my speech convincing?

Mr. Eves: I have the government House leader’s speech here. I have several of his speeches. I am going to read some very interesting quotes that the government House leader has made in years past.

I would like to compliment my colleague the member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham), who raised the issue in the Legislature with the Premier, asking if he would permit government members to cast a free vote on Sunday shopping, without any type of coercion, subtle or otherwise, or any type of suggestion of reprisal or stagnation of one’s political career, shall we say.

Because all members are elected to represent their constituents, we presume their votes will be based on their own consciences and those of their constituents, representing the viewpoints of their constituents. I think every single member should be able to vote on this important legislation by what his own constituents think. I recognize that may vary quite differently in different parts of the province. I would suggest, without prejudging the issue, that members who represent urban ridings might have a totally different viewpoint than those representing rural ridings throughout the province.

I would urge, as indeed my colleague the member for London North has on several occasions, each and every Ontarian to write or phone his MPP and tell him how he feels about this particular issue. I am sure MPPs would be happy to know, and I am sure they will follow the viewpoint of their constituents rather than that of their leader, I would hope, on this important matter.

Now I think we should get to talking about what the viewpoint of certain members of this Legislature has been in the past with respect to time allocation or guillotine or closure motions that were introduced by governments.

Mr. Black: Same old stuff.

Mr. Eves: It is not the same old stuff, I say to my colleague the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay (Mr. Black); I do not believe he was a member of this assembly in 1982 or 1983.

Mr. Dietsch: No. He’s not that old. He’s just a rookie.

Mr. Eves: He certainly is that old. He may be a rookie; that latter comment may be true.

I would like to read into the record the viewpoint of the government House leader. I am quoting from page 5942 of Hansard dated December 8, 1982:

“Quite frankly, as my colleague and leader has indicated, it is an experience and rule among lawyers that difficult cases make for bad law.”

The government House leader was referring to remarks by the individual who is now the Premier of Ontario.

Later in the same Hansard, a different page of the same date, he said:

“I would like very much to see the resolution of this deadlock by means of the framework we have evolved here since my arrival seven years ago, namely, the House leaders’ panel, because I do not want to see this kind of new order born in the middle of this kind of deadlock and difficulty.”

Hon. Mr. Conway: Almost eloquent, I’d say.

Mr. Eves: Almost.

Further along in the same debate, on the same date, there is another quote, which reads:

“Notwithstanding what some in the government may feel, I think we threaten to poison this parliamentary well if we proceed in this debate by writing into our rule book this kind of time allocation.”

What we have here now is a totally new deviation that goes much beyond any time allocation motion that has ever been introduced in this Legislature in its history.

Hon. Mr. Conway: You’re forgetting where I talk about structured time allocations.

Mr. Eves: We are coming to many more quotes of my friend’s. He should not get too upset. We have lots more of them left.

Another quote, from February 15, 1983, reads:

“I reiterate, we have been able to do the business of this Legislative Assembly for a long time, through wartime, through great depression and much acrimony, without the time allocation procedure.”

Is the member for Renfrew North suggesting to this Legislature today that the so-called crisis which the government sees with respect to Sunday shopping legislation, as it is commonly known, is more important than wartime and great depression? Is that what the member for Renfrew North is trying to tell us today by having this very motion, government notice of motion 20, before the Legislature?

Again from February 15, 1983, the very same member:

“I cannot believe we are seized in the winter of 1982-83 with some parliamentary crisis that forces us into a new avenue, down a slippery slope of time allocation, without which we have been able to function for the previous 115 years. I really have to say that we must be protected from this type of majority government stampede and arrogance.”

That is from the present government House leader himself, no less. Another quote from him on the same date: “I conclude by pointing again to the long-standing presence of standing order 36, which gives to the government House leader” -- he is now himself, I might add, no different person than the government House leader. Pardon me, I deviated from my quote there. Picking up on the quote again -- “and the Minister of Education all they require to move the debate along from time to time as they see fit, in a way that squares itself with parliamentary practice of this place and the standing orders under which I thought we all operated.”

The very next day -- he was not done yet; waxing eloquent, he carried on for several days in a row during this debate -- he said:

“The fact that we have come to require government notice of motion 11 at this time on this issue says it all about the parliamentary proclivities of the member for York Mills. Unlike her predecessor -- now government House leader -- this Minister of Education does not understand that in a parliament, a sense of compromise and conciliation, on timetable at least if not on substance, is a very useful and helpful procedure.”

Carrying on further on the same day:

“My point is simply that in my time here...we have had many a heated debate on many a government bill.... We saw the best of the British parliamentary system at work, a bit of give, a bit of take.”

Hon. Mr. Conway: Did I say that?

Mr. Eves: The member said that. Another quote from the member:

“It reminds some of us of the happy compromises of an earlier day on important legislation that made this place work in the face of strong opposition. And without closure.”

Another quote from the same day -- boy, he was very vociferous on this occasion:

“The past practice in these cases has been for the minister to consider withdrawing the bill -- not for ever, but until such time as tempers cool, calmer heads prevail and conciliatory amendments can be rethought, re-entered and reworked.”

A final little quote from the same member on the same day, February 16, 1983 -- we have a long way to go yet; we are only at February 16, 1983:

“It is the way of our forbears. It is the way of our tradition. It is not the way of some extraneous place that might, in this instance, provide some convenient crutch on which the government might lean.”

That was none other than the member for Renfrew North himself.

Now we have some very interesting quotes coming up from other current cabinet ministers of the day. No less a person than the current Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley), in that very same debate on February 15, 1983, was quoted as having said:

“I recognize that is more embarrassing to the government because it would likely mean this form of closure would have to be invoked several times as we went through the various sections of the bill. That would be embarrassing. It would perhaps prolong proceedings for a greater period of time than would suit the members of the governing party. Nevertheless, if they were intent upon imposing closure, it would have been the preferable method of doing so.”

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Another quote from the member for St. Catharines (Mr. Bradley):

“I feel the government would have been much wiser to have adopted a different course of action. I think it is blocking the democratic process; that is a mild word to use.”

Another quote from the same individual who is now the Minister of the Environment and no doubt will be voting with the government on this issue:

“I ask that he” -- the Premier of the day -- “recognize the lack of wisdom of proceeding with a motion of this kind. It clearly stamps his government as one that is prepared to bulldoze legislation -- important and less important -- through this House.”

I presume the member is still of the same opinion and he is of the opinion now that his government is one that is prepared to bulldoze legislation through this House.

Mr. Dietsch: Were you in the House then?

Mr. Eves: Yes, I was in the House then, as a matter of fact.

The Premier of today was quoted in the first debate of December 8, 1982:

“As my colleague pointed out, there were other options. That is why we cannot support this motion for closure, guillotine, phase closure, time allocation or whatever one wants to call it.”

Another quote from the current Premier on December 8, 1982:

“I have the right to pursue the most vigorous opposition that I can pursue, and the longer I am here the more I believe very strongly that the opposition is the only thing that stands between government and the sheer, naked use of power. It is the only check we have in the system, and I believe it is our responsibility to exercise it in as responsible a way as we can.”

Another quote from the Premier on the same date:

“Speaking for myself and for our party” -- I presume that means the Liberal Party; he is still a member of the same party, I presume -- “I say that part of our responsibility in pursuing what I hope to be a vigorous opposition is that we want to amend the bill and make it better.”

This is not unlike some of the arguments we are using on this side of the House today. I continue with the quote:

“We regret very much that we have been precluded by certain kinds of behaviour from having that kind of discussion.”

I would now like to deal with some matters of importance, I believe, with respect to the amount of time these two pieces of legislation have spent in committee and, indeed, in the Legislature. I would like to get on the record some facts with respect to those times and times spent.

In the standing committee on administration of justice dealing with these two pieces of legislation, there were 522 presentations, oral and written, made to the committee. Out of these 522 -- now think of this -- only 30 indicated even some measure of support for Sunday shopping to varying degrees. What percentage, I wonder, is 30 out of 522?

I would suggest that the government members think about this for a minute, because I think the percentages in their own constituencies are not too different from the members of the public who bothered to come before the justice committee to make their viewpoints known.

I am sure that a government with 94 members, with all its resources, scoured every square inch of Ontario to get every delegation it could ever find in any nook and cranny in the province here before the justice committee to speak in favour of Bills 113 and 114, and what it found was 30 groups that have some measure of support.

We are not done yet, I say to the government members, because we are going to come to an even more interesting statistic here in a minute.

Although these 30 groups expressed some support for Sunday shopping, they did not all indicate support for the current legislation. In fact, most of them were against the local option idea, despite favouring the idea of Sunday shopping.

Nine groups in total, nine out of 522, supported the current draft legislation. The government members might want to stop and think about that as a percentage for a moment.

Number of days spent studying the bills: We have heard that the reason why we need this time allocation motion and why we have been debating it for the last couple of days is the fact that so much time has already been spent studying the bills.

The government claims the Sunday shopping legislation has been studied and considered for nine months, including 60 days of legislative debate. In reality, the majority of time in the justice committee was spent in hearings, not considering the legislation clause by clause at all.

There was comparatively little time for debate in the committee, and the time spent on Bill 114 was next to nil. Presentations concerning both bills 113 and 114 were made for some 13 days in committee.

Clause-by-clause consideration of Bill 113 lasted some 20 days or 52 hours. Think about that, Mr. Speaker. Fifty-two hours represents four days and four hours. Pardon me, it is not even that long. A day has 24 hours, does it not? Twenty-four times two is 48, two days and four hours. That is the amount of time we have spent. That is why we need a time allocation motion, because we have actually talked about it clause by clause for the total sum of 52 hours.

Clause-by-clause for Bill 114 lasted less than four hours. That is why we need the time allocation motion, obviously. We spent all of four hours on the debate on the particular piece of legislation.

All told, it appears that some 34 days have been spent in some fashion in some consideration of the bills.

Bill 114 is thought to be somewhat unfair, discriminatory and totally unnecessary. I would like to address Bill 114, because we have had all of four hours’ discussion about it. That is why we need closure, I guess.

The Sunday worker legislation does greater harm than it does good, I suggest, because it creates an aura of protection for retail workers but in reality offers little or no protection for the most vulnerable in our workforce, particularly single parents.

The government has literally singled out generally the weaker, less wealthy segment of our society, particularly the nonunionized retail workers and small retailers, and has made them the unwilling target of a bill that will force them into unwanted situations which normally never would have been considered before, having had the full discretion over their working preferences and choices in their chosen occupation.

I think it is a rather pathetic defence that the government believes the dictum that misery loves company. It wants to tell us that many people already work Sundays. Some retailers do work Sundays within the current legal framework, whether in convenience stores or gas stations or pharmacies or providing essential services.

The vast majority of retailers in this province, nearly 400,000 retailers, do not work Sundays. The fact that most retail workers do not work Sundays means that with the passage of this unwanted and undesirable legislation, all retailers will now have to reconsider their chosen profession.

They will take into account whether or not they want to work Sundays. If they do not, they will be forced to deal with rearranging their lives or facing their employer or, worse still, the employment standards branch of the Ministry of Labour.

It is a thoroughly devious statement and a very serious misconception for the Minister of Labour (Mr. Sorbara) and the government to state that under Bill 114, retail workers will have a choice about working Sundays. They will not. They will not have a choice because they will have to go up against their employers. When an employee has to battle his or her employer, guess who is going to win?

Bill 114 is also unfair because it creates unreliable procedures for retailers to follow, resulting in serious uncertainty for all within the retail sector.

The government offers us a test of reasonableness, as it says, which I think is really an insult to any employee with a valid concern about Sunday work. What an employer considers reasonable may be very different from what an employee considers to be reasonable. What the mediator from the Ministry of Labour considers reasonable may be very unreasonable to either an employee or an employer.

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Any mediation process is subject to some element of unfairness. When it pits employer against employee in a setting that both would rather avoid altogether, in theory I suppose an employee may have a platform to argue his or her case with the bill, but in practice most employees will not have the power or the stamina to ensure that their rights are upheld. This is because many retail employees are uneducated and have little time to spend in lineups at the employment standards branch, struggling as they often are, juggling their time with two or three different jobs, school and family. That is especially true, I would suspect, in the case of the single parent.

Bill 114 also has an element of discriminatory practice to it. The bill is discriminatory because it includes the premise that retail employees may have to declare their religious preference, which may well be a determining factor in an employee’s decision to refuse Sunday work. This is an infringement of a personal right of Canadian citizens, something which does not appear to stand up against our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Our provincial government must recognize not just how much we cherish the right to our own individual religious preference, but also the blatant discrimination that this bill and Bill 113 pose by forcing an employer or an employee to make his or her religious preference known. Currently, it is illegal for employers to ask potential employees about their religious preference. If Bill 114 is enacted, employees may feel it is necessary to explain their religious preference and beliefs to protect their jobs and refuse to work on their chosen Sabbath.

Bill 113 will also place corporations, perhaps for the first time in history, in the predicament where it will be necessary to define religious preference within their corporate bylaws. I think this is an astounding and literally unbelievable suggestion on the part of any government and it infringes the most sensitive and private rights of citizens of this province.

Why is Bill 114 necessary in the first place? I think Bill 114 is totally unnecessary, and I say that without reservation. Everyone from church groups to unions and unorganized labour, mall merchants and major corporations has made it extraordinarily clear to the standing committee on administration of justice that this legislation is seriously flawed, unwarranted and unwanted.

Again, only some nine groups have expressed an interest in Sunday work out of a total of more than 500 groups. The desires of the people could not be clearer: there is no mandate for bringing forward this legislation. As a consequence, there is no need to bring forward Bill 114, which only serves a political purpose, that is, to help the government save face, which it unfortunately does not do, with its proposed Bill 113, a bill that clearly no one in the province wants or needs, at least that the overwhelming majority of the province does not want or need. We cannot support Bill 114, just as we cannot support Bill 113.

Bill 114 was introduced as a companion bill to the government’s controversial Retail Business Holidays Amendment Act, Bill 113, on April 25, 1988. It was intended to assist employees in the retail sector who will be subjected to retail store openings on Sundays with the implementation of Bill 113. The government claims that its bill establishes new protections, namely, that retail workers will be able to refuse Sunday work which they consider to be unreasonable, and establishes a mediation process in cases where the employer and the employee disagree on what constitutes unreasonable Sunday work.

The mediator, it is interesting to note, will be an employee of the employment standards branch of the Ministry of Labour. I wonder if he or she will do his or her mediating on a Sunday. When no settlement is reached, the matter will be referred to an independent referee for a determination. Bill 114 has been introduced, as was Bill 113, against the wishes of a wide array of interest groups in the province ranging from labour groups to church groups, retailers, nonretailers, municipalities and the Coalition Against Open Sunday Shopping with its more than 300,000 members.

The bill is solidly opposed on all sides because, although it claims to offer protection to retail workers, this so-called protection is not guaranteed. The bill will merely make available certain staff from the employment standards branch for hearing cases where employees who do not wish to work Sundays have been asked by their employers to do so.

As a result, the bill makes any complaint against working on Sundays an unreasonable complaint; that is, when a retail employee who does not want to work Sundays cannot work out an agreement with his or her employer, the retail employee’s complaint automatically constitutes an unreasonable request, according to the bill. Only these unreasonable requests can go before the employment standards branch for their so-called protection in the mediation process. The bottom line is that there are hardly any grounds on which an employee can refuse to work and successfully defend an adjudication.

Ontario has approximately 550,000 retail workers, some 50,000 of whom are unionized retail workers. The Ontario Federation of Labour claims that Bill 114 is poor legislation by almost every conceivable standard and that for the nonunionized employees in particular the so-called right to refuse is simply not there at all. The OFL has suggested that the Minister of Labour either legislate compulsory premium pay for Sunday work or scrap the bill, along with Bill 113, altogether.

As I said at the outset, there are many, many groups that have appeared before the committee, making either verbal or written presentations. I have a list of them here. I will not bother to read the names of the 522 that have appeared before the committee, but I do think that some government members should just think about some of the groups opposed to Bill 113 that have appeared before the committee. I think that after they --

Mr. Furlong: What does this have to do with time allocation?

Mr. Eves: First of all, time allocation is not necessary. It is certainly not necessary with respect to Bill 114, where we have had all of four hours’ consideration; and according to some previous statements of the government House leader, the Premier and the Minister of the Environment, there should never be time allocation. There is never justification, ever, in parliamentary tradition, especially in this Legislature, to introduce a time allocation motion.

It is not necessary, according to the member for Renfrew North, in wartime, it is not necessary in depression and it is certainly not necessary now, I would suggest.

Hon. Mr. Conway: George Drew never read petitions until the sun set in the north.

Mr. Eves: Nor have I, I would say to the member for Renfrew North.

We have heard opposition to Bill 113 ranging from the Anglican Church of Canada to the town of Aurora to the Aylmer Bible School to the Consumers’ Association of Canada to Michael Cassidy to the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers to the Canadian Lord’s Day Association to the city of Cornwall to Citizens for Public Justice, Canadian Tire Corp., Centennial United Church, Doral Holding Ltd. Essex Christian Reform Church, the town of Exeter, Foulds Brothers Furniture, the freedom of choice movement, Greater Peterborough Chamber of Commerce, the town of Hanover and the London Chamber of Commerce. The Premier of the province should be familiar with that one.

We have heard from many, many concerned individuals as well, representing, I would say --

Mr. Black: The Parry Sound chamber of commerce.

Mr. Eves: Yes, the Parry Sound Area Chamber of Commerce as well, as a matter of fact, as the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay points out.

I would think that if the government even listened to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, there can be no doubt that the overwhelming majority of people in Ontario as well as the people who have appeared before the justice committee are opposed to this legislation.

One has to ask oneself why, in the face of in excess of 90 per cent of the people of Ontario opposed to Sunday shopping, the government is ramming Bill 113 and Bill 114 down the throats of the people of Ontario. I think government members should ask themselves that when they stand up and vote on these very important issues.

I do not think we need time allocation. I would even suggest that if we had not seen a time allocation motion, we might have already completed debate on both pieces of legislation.

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Mr. Philip: It is a pleasure to participate in this debate on closure which the government has seen fit to bring forward.

Hon. Mr. Conway: Dr. Philip, you know better.

Mr. Philip: Well, Dr. Philip knows the laird from Renfrew perfectly understands what closure is, because in opposition he argued that time allocation was closure. If he would like me to quote the sections, I would be happy to do so.

What I found interesting was the free-time political broadcast by his lordship from Renfrew. I have never seen such a performance in my life. I have seen his lordship perform on many occasions. He is one of the best performers in this House. In this instance, he could not even look into the camera. He could not look straight into the eye of the camera, because he knew what he was trying to do to the public who were watching.

Let me tell members some of the statements he made in that rather interesting performance. First, his argument for this closure motion. This gives members an indication of the arrogance he manages to have come to in government in only a very short time. He said, “In September 1987, the people of Ontario gave us a strong mandate to govern.”

What he failed to say, of course, was that he and his colleagues and, more particularly, the Premier went to the people of Ontario and said:

“We’re in favour of the recommendations of the select committee which my colleague Mrs. Smith” -- at that time she was not the Solicitor General -- “put her name to. We’re in favour of the principle of a common pause day.” Six months later, of course, he did a complete flip-flop. The mandate he received was not a mandate for this legislation, as we have heard across the province time after time by the different deputations.

He said also that we must move on in this legislation to make way for other important legislation, and went on to name justice legislation. We have seen one of his justice bills. The justice bill last week was an amendment to the Sheriffs Act which passes on to the municipalities the cost of policing, of safeguarding, of the security functions of the provincial courthouses. This is truly a matter which once again the municipalities had not asked for.

We have heard the outcry from the municipalities. We hear from Metropolitan Toronto that this bill, which is so important for the government House leader to get through, will cost the taxpayers of Metropolitan Toronto an additional $14 million. Property taxpayers are going to have to pay for that, because the provincial government once again in this justice bill is going to pass on its responsibility but without any kind of subsidization in terms of payments to the municipalities for the extra cost they are going to receive.

Interjection.

Mr. Philip: I hear the member from Scarborough, who used to be a municipal councillor there. His fellow municipal councillors are saying how bad that bill is. He does not have the courage to stand up in the House and give his view on this bill but he likes to interrupt me while I am giving mine.

I am sure the people in Scarborough would like to know not only where the member stands on this bill but also where he stands on the fact that they are going to pay higher municipal taxes as a result of his government wanting to bring in this other legislation, which it feels is so important that it needs closure in order to get on with it.

The member for Renfrew North said also that time allocation would allow for an additional four days of debate in this House. Whoopee. A bill that is of this importance, and he wants four days of debate in this House.

Hon. Mr. Conway: After 63 other days.

Mr. Philip: It is interesting. Let me deal with those 63 other days. Of the 63 other days, a major portion was hearings. About those hearings, it is very interesting that the House leader in his free-time political broadcast also said, “We have listened to the people out there.” Have they listened to the people?

I asked the researcher for the committee, who is nonpartisan, to see if she could calculate as best she could, without any duplication -- because some people appeared with different hats on -- exactly where the people stood on what the government is saying is the essential principle of the bill, namely, the municipal option, which the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) at one time called the chicken option, the passing-the-buck option.

Of the presentations, 402 were against the municipal option as compared to 26 in favour of the municipal option. If the government had really been out there listening to the public, as it says it has, surely it would dawn that when 93.9 per cent of the presentations that commented on the main section of the bill -- section 4, the essential principle of the bill -- were opposed, the government has to do something about it or it is not really listening; or if it is listening, it is not being sensitive to what the people are saying. In spite of this, the government refused to withdraw this section.

The minister says that the members in the committee, more particularly the opposition members, were moving amendments to the bill and that this was taking a lot of time. Let me say this: The members in the opposition, my own colleagues in the New Democratic Party and my colleagues in the Progressive Conservative Party, were moving amendments based on the very hearings that Liberal members heard but refused to pay attention to.

The public demanded that there be minimum fines in the bill. The opposition moved the amendment and the Liberals refused and defeated it. The public demanded that criteria be contained in the bill so that if there were a municipal option, which they preferred there would not be, at least there would be some standards. The opposition moved that and this was defeated. The public demanded the provision for an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board in some way, the same way as other municipal decisions can be appealed. This the Liberals used their majority on the committee to defeat.

The public demanded that there be at least a simple review of the legislation if it were to go ahead. If the Liberals were so much in favour of this legislation, if they were convinced in their hearts as well as wherever that they were right, then they would not object to a review somewhere down the line. We moved that review process and the Liberals were so afraid of their own legislation that they used their majority to defeat it.

Let me give a few quotes from some of the people to whom at least the opposition parties listened, but to whom the government refused to listen.

Hon. Mr. Conway: He points an accusing finger.

Mr. Philip: I am pointing an accusing finger at the laird from Renfrew because I know that he was not a member of that committee, but I am sure that if he was not directing --

Hon. Mr. Conway: I watched and listened to you and Farnan and I have never seen the like of it.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I think he was pulling the strings.

Mr. Philip: I think my House leader is wrong. It is the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) who seems to pull the strings of the Premier, and then the Premier descends from above on all the other members. I am sure that the laird from Renfrew is very embarrassed at having to defend this legislation, not just to his constituents, but to his parish priest, who I know is very much opposed to this legislation.

Hon. Mr. Conway: Ed, I am not easily embarrassed.

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Mr. Philip: If we look at the different sections of the bill, we see what the different groups that appeared before us said.

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario, of course, said that the entire section 4 should be deleted. These are the municipalities of Ontario. These are the so-called grass roots, which the Liberal government is trying to argue it must pass this authority on to because they know what is best for their people. Having made a decision as to what is best for their people, they said, “We do not want section 4.”

Out of the other side of their mouths, the Liberals on the committee said, “Oh, yes, but we are going to give you section 4 anyway.” So by one stroke of the pen or one stroke of their argument they say the municipalities know what is best. On the other side, when the municipalities say: “All right. We know what is best. We do not want section 4.” They say, “Oh, well, you are going to get it anyway.”

Another group, the Ontario Automobile Dealers Association, said to exempt automobile dealers from municipal authority under this section by inserting the words, “except automobile dealerships” following the words “retail business establishments.” The opposition moved that. We thought it was reasonable. Even wide-open jurisdictions in the United States exempt automobile dealerships from being open on Sunday.

The automobile dealers themselves said that what happened in western Canada was that it increased their costs by $150 to $300 per new car, that it would be inflationary to the public, that it would cost more to buy a new car if this legislation came through, if our amendment to this bill did not pass. But this government knows better than the business community what is best for the industry, so the government said, “Even though you want this exemption, you are not going to have it.” Even though other wide-open municipalities have at least seen fit to have an exemption on car dealerships, they are not going to have it. The government knows what is best for this industry.

Even though they are arguing that it is going to mean that some of their better staff members are going to move on to other forms of selling because they want a Sunday off, because their families will demand it, because it puts pressure on them, the government says: “We do not care about your personnel problems; we know what is best for you, and we are going to leave this in. We are not going to accept the amendment that the car dealers of Ontario asked for.”

The Netherlands Reformed Congregation, along with a number of others, asked that we restrict the municipal authority under various sections. The government refused. The city of Toronto asked that section 4 be deleted and provided a detailed proposal on how it could be amended.

It stated: “Delete this provision and strengthen the existing framework in the current legislation by introducing consistent guidelines to govern municipal designation in tourist areas and the following considerations might usefully provide a basis for province-wide guidelines. Municipalities may allow stores to open on Sundays and holidays where it can be established that the sales to tourists constitute or are likely to constitute a major share of their business. In permitting stores to open on Sundays, municipalities should have regard for general desirability of retaining Sunday as a common pause day and municipalities should avoid placing stores not permitted to open on Sunday at a significant competitive disadvantage.”

The city of Toronto said, “We are willing to work with you on providing guidelines for the tourist exemption which you claim is so important to you,” and the members on the committee refused it and said it could not be done.

The various groups that appeared said that if the government is going to have provincial legislation -- as the Liberals were arguing that this is, and of course everybody else knows that it is not; it is passing the buck to the municipalities -- at least have some fairly concrete provincial guidelines as to how the municipalities can evaluate whether they should have certain types of exemptions. Of course the Liberals on the committee said no.

I want to outline, if I may, just how specific some of the amendments were, because the Liberals tried to indicate that somehow members of the opposition were simply stalling on that committee.

Mr. Black: You were.

Mr. Philip: The member for Scarborough keeps on interrupting, but he fails to speak on this bill. They do not call him the sitting member for nothing. I am sure he sits an awful lot more than he stands up for his constituents.

If you look at these amendments, you can see just how specific they are and how much work members of both the New Democratic Party and the Conservative Party put in, trying to come to grips with this legislation and trying to improve what is a bad piece of legislation, at least bad in terms of the essential principle of the bill, section 4.

On October 5, I moved that subsection 4(1) of the act, as set out in section 4 of the bill, be struck out and, instead, the following be substituted:

“Despite section 2, the council of a municipality may by bylaw permit retail business establishments to open on any holiday,

“(a) if, in the opinion of the council, it is essential for the maintenance or development of a tourist industry or cultural industry in the municipality; or

“(b) if the establishments provide essential services to the municipality.”

We moved that and we argued that. The Conservatives moved a similar amendment, and the Liberals used their overwhelming majority on the committee to quash the amendment.

Mr. Black: It wouldn’t work.

Mr. Philip: The member says it would not work, but he did not pay any attention to the committee. He has failed to stand up in this House and express how he thinks he could make it work, but he loves to heckle and make noise on the side.

On October 7, I moved a very simple motion. One would think that this government, which is so new, would at least believe in open government; at least they would give lip service to it in the first couple of years of their government. One can see here just how autocratic the Liberal government is. I moved, on October 7, a fairly simple amendment, that section 4 of the act, as set out in section 4 of the bill, be amended by adding the following subsection:

“Shall publish a notice announcing the council’s decision to review the Sunday shopping issue and providing details of a public meeting and shall send copies of the notice to all persons who have asked to be notified about any proposed changes in Sunday shopping bylaws.”

It is a fairly simple motion. If the government is going to make a change that is so fundamental to people’s lives, to people’s work, then it should at least have a system whereby you would publish it in the local newspaper so that people would find out about it and so they could come and make their views known to the local council.

One would think that is not a terribly hard thing to do. The provincial government on other matters publishes when it is having hearings on all kinds of things, many of which are not nearly as important to the daily lives of families as this legislation is, and yet the Liberals do not want to require the municipality to advertise if it is planning on making a change.

How can one help but wonder that the Bay, the Cadillac Fairviews, those friends of the Liberal Party, are behind this? If you are going to sneak up on people and get through your opening on Sunday, it is much easier than if a whole bunch of people know about it, because they can create an awful lot of noise and confrontation and information if they know about it.

In a democratic system, one would assume that major changes should at least be advertised. But no, the Liberals decided that was too democratic for them.

Mr. Black: If you had any confidence in the municipal authorities --

Mr. Philip: The member from Scarborough is making the noise again that if we had any confidence in the municipal authorities -- the municipal authorities told the Liberals what they thought of this bill and what to do with it, but they would not do it.

Mr. Black: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray): The member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay on a point of order.

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Mr. Black: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I wish the member for --

Mr. Dietsch: Wherever he is from.

Mr. Black: -- wherever he is from would stop referring to me as the member from Scarborough. I am the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay, I am not the member from Scarborough. I feel very badly for the member from Scarborough who is getting credit for all of the wise and intelligent things I am saying.

Mr. Philip: I am sorry that I have mistaken one Liberal for another, but they get marching orders from the Attorney General and they all say the same things all in the same way, so it is a forgivable sin if I mistook one Liberal for another because they all follow and they all march to the same tune. The problem is that the tune they do not march to is the tune of their constituents, who have been telling them over and over again that on an issue like this, which should be a matter of conscience, they should at least vote according to their conscience and according to the way their constituents ask them to. That is the one thing that they will not distinguish themselves by.

On October 7, I moved that a municipality, if it is contemplating a change, “shall follow the requirements for the contents of the notice and its circulation as set out in the regulations or a provincial review body designated under this act.”

That is a simple way of saying that under the regulations of this act there should at least be a system set out whereby municipalities would inform their electorate if they wanted to make major changes.

The Liberals refused, so they could have a municipality that wishes to give no notice to its people --

Interjection.

Mr. Philip: Mr. Speaker, if I am going to address the House, I would appreciate it if --

The Acting Speaker: The member for Etobicoke-Rexdale has the floor and the right to speak in an uninterrupted manner.

Mr. Philip: It is fairly obvious that the Liberal members who did not listen to the public at the hearings and voted against the amendments that the public asked for in the committee do not want to listen to these amendments now, even those who were not on the committee. They still prefer to accept and parrot the notes that were sent to them, probably written by the Attorney General but distributed by the Solicitor General.

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario, that local body representing a majority of the municipalities in Ontario, requested an amendment which I moved on October 7.

I moved that, “No municipality shall pass a bylaw under section 1 until:

“(a) the members of the Legislative Assembly in whose riding the municipality lies, in whole or in part, hold a public meeting concerning the proposed bylaw; and

“(b) a majority of the members of the Legislative Assembly referred to in clause (a) approve the proposed bylaw.”

The Liberals in the committee liked to say that this was provincial legislation; that it was an unfair statement by the press, by the association of municipalities, by the unions, by the women’s groups, by the church groups that they were passing the buck; that this was really provincial legislation.

If that was provincial legislation and the members of this Legislature were not passing the buck, then surely they would want to be in on any decision affecting their constituents and their municipalities, and that is why the association of municipalities said: “Fine. If we’re going to have this authority, let’s share it then. You say this is provincial legislation. Fine. We want to at least put in a provincial end to it.” That is why they asked for that.

Of course, when it came to putting up or shutting up, they fled. They said, “No, no, we do not want to have that authority, it could be embarrassing to us.”

For a Liberal it is embarrassing. How do you stand on both sides of the fence without splitting your pants? That is the trick that they keep on trying to do. Therefore, it is better to duck the issue, and therefore they defeated this amendment.

Mr. Dietsch: That is a sexist remark.

Mr. Black: It certainly is. It is typical.

Mr. Philip: The members say that is a sexist remark. I find it very sexist that they think that only men wear pants. That kind of kept him quiet.

On October 17, we moved that in the case where a municipality was contemplating a major change, it “shall, if the most recent federal census indicates that 5,000 or more residents of the municipality have as their mother tongue a specific language other than English and a local newspaper publishes in that language, publish the notice...in that newspaper.”

We know that many of the small business people in our constituencies, many of the small store owners in fact do not read the English-language newspapers; they read papers printed in their own language. All that we wanted to do was to say that at least these people should be advised of any changes. It was a recommendation that a number of groups representing the various new Canadian shopkeepers had asked for, but the Liberal government was so insensitive to members of the new Canadian community that it did not even want to publish in their language a notice that could affect their very livelihood, their very business.

Earlier, I referred to the motion that was moved at the request of the automobile dealers, but again the Liberals decided that it was not worth their while listening to that industry.

On October 18, we moved, “If the council adopts a plan or an amendment to the plan, it shall ensure that the plan or amendment is made available to the public by publishing it in a newspaper having general circulation in the municipality and no such plan or amendment to the plan is valid until 30 days after the date the plan or amendment is published.

Again, another simple exercise in democracy: If you are going to have major changes that are going to affect people’s lives, you should at least let them know about it. Again, the Liberals on the committee defeated that.

My colleague moved that if a council adopts a plan, it “shall ensure that the plan is made available to the public by publishing it in three consecutive issues of a newspaper.”

That was also defeated. They did not even want the simpler one I had of publishing it once.

We moved a number of other amendments, but let me draw to the members’ attention one that I think is important. As a matter of fact, I just received a letter the other day from the Ontario Convenience Stores Association. Coincidentally, it arrived a number of days after I had moved my amendment, but my amendment clearly reflected their concerns. They said:

“Dear Mr. Philip:

“I am writing to you on behalf of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association to express our appreciation for your co-operation and assistance throughout the justice committee’s deliberations on Bill 113, the Retail Business Holidays Act.

“You are no doubt aware the Ontario Convenience Stores Association has followed the committee’s progress closely since it began consideration of Bill 113 in the summer. We believe that the committee’s process” and it goes on. Then it says:

“The amendments adopted by the committee leave important aspects of fairness unaddressed.

“The right to an independent appeal: At present, the law provides for a process involving notice, public consultation and input. This process will be initiated and administered by the municipalities. We believe, in addition, an independent appeal process must be provided in order to ensure that a body other than the municipality will consider the public concerns regarding the administration of its consultation process. At present, the bill is silent on that.”

I had moved earlier, and I guess they had missed that because it happened a few days before, a fairly comprehensive amendment that required or allowed for an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board. We can have an appeal to the Ontario Municipal Board on some of the most insignificant -- and I say this not in a pejorative sense -- but insignificant in terms of a total community impact kind of decision, yet on a major decision that is affecting people’s lives and their style of life, their quality of life, their businesses, their right to earn a living in the way in which they have been accustomed to, on a major change which will affect their businesses and their working patterns, the Liberals refused to allow an appeal.

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I can appeal if my neighbour does something that barely infringes on my property or something like this, but I cannot appeal if my very livelihood is affected in David Peterson’s Ontario. I say to the members opposite that I find that shameful. It shows exactly what this government’s agenda is. It is clearly an agenda of wide-open Sunday shopping.

We asked that if the Liberals really believed all the statements that the government propaganda turned out, at the very least, since they themselves said that this was “significant” legislation and we said, “Yes, it’s significant in a negative way,” they said it was in a positive way -- I think we can all agree, whatever side of the issue we are on, that this is significant legislation; you cannot have as many people come out and speak on an issue like this without saying that it is significant legislation -- then surely, if we are wrong in the opposition and the Liberals were right, they would not mind having a study in a few years, a little bit down the line, to see what kind of impact the legislation was having. In other words, was it working or not? Did it achieve what the Liberals said it would achieve or, indeed, was it the kind of disaster that was experienced with similar legislation in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia?

The Liberals are so afraid of their legislation that they refused to even have that kind of study. We built into the bill a simple amendment that said, “Upon the Legislative Assembly first sitting in 1990, a select committee of the assembly shall be appointed, to be known as the select committee on Sunday shopping, with the authority to sit during the session of the Legislature.” Then the amendment went on to define what it would look at, including, “shall consider the merits of the policy and the objectives of this act and its effectiveness.” It “shall report its observations, opinions and recommendations to the Legislative Assembly not later than the second anniversary of the coming into force of this section.”

In other words, what we were asking for was a review. If this is the important legislation the Liberals claim it is, then surely they would have nothing to hide, nothing to be worried about, to have an all-party committee of the Legislature look at it two years down the road to find out whether it was working or not.

This kind of, what some would say, sunsetting -- I think sunsetting is a little bit too strong for this amendment because the sunsetting regulations which were advocated by the committee headed by the member for High Park-Swansea (Mr. Fleet) would be much more draconian in the kind of sunsetting they would advocate in other areas, whereby unless certain things were done, the thing would self-destruct; but in this case, it did not even destroy the present legislation. All it does is say that two years down the road there would be an all-party committee to evaluate whether or not this legislation is effective.

The Liberals hemmed and hawed and, first of all, they said, “It would set a precedent.” They found out that it would not set a precedent because, of course, none other than former Attorney General Roy McMurtry had introduced legislation years ago that had this kind of review process. Indeed, they soon found out that the Minister of Housing (Ms. Hošek) in this Legislature had introduced similar kinds of legislation: that a bill had to be reintroduced in a couple of years’ time.

The whole argument at that time was that it would be a temporary thing in order to allow for a study. That, basically, was the principle of our amendment. We said, “If you’re not afraid of the legislation, if you say that it’s going to have major consequences” -- and all parties agree that it will have major consequences; we saying it is negative, the others saying it is positive -- “at least put it to the test. In two years’ time, have an evaluation to see where you go.” The Liberals would not even allow that.

What I am trying to do is to show that in the committee we were, first, listening to the public and, second, we were moving amendments based on the recommendations of the various groups which appeared before us. Instead, the Liberals accepted two opposition amendments: a very minor one that changed a notice from one week to four weeks --

Mr. Black: Why should we have made the amendments you suggested? Your ideas were faulty.

Mr. Philip: The Liberal says my ideas are faulty, but the people who are watching think these ideas are workable and the people who recommended them, including the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the grassroots politicians who are elected across this province, thought they were workable.

But the Liberals thought they know so much better than the public, so much better than the municipalities, so much better than the churches, so much better than the business people who understand their own business, so much better than the trade unionists, so much better than the women’s groups and so much better than the various social agencies that appeared before the committee.

Mr. Dietsch: That is not true at all.

Mr. Philip: It is true. I have just had the member for whatever, from the Liberal rump down here, interject that it is not true. He has just said that my amendments are rubbish. But they are the amendments that were asked for by the public, so if he is saying my amendments are rubbish then he is saying that the municipalities, the church groups and all the other groups that appeared are presenting ideas that are rubbish.

That, of course, is the same kind of mentality the Premier had when he said, “Mr. Speaker, we have to move with this legislation because we have to move into the 20th century.” What an insult. What an insult to the various sophisticated European countries that feel they can live in the 20th century without having an American-style, materialistic, wide-open Sunday shopping kind of environment. If that is his idea of progress, frankly, I think he is galloping very quickly into the 17th century and not the 21st century.

This legislation should not be forced through in this very quick manner for a number of other reasons. The first reason is that it is fairly clear that the government just did not do its homework before it introduced Bills 113 and 114.

First, at least the previous Conservative government had the good grace to consult with the trade union movement in all labour legislation it brought forward. It did not always agree with them, but at least it consulted with them. At no time was Bill 114 introduced to any of the workers’ groups or the industry groups as other labour bills were under previous governments.

It is fairly clear that there were no impact studies done. The government claimed to know how many salespeople were working on Sundays now, but it could not even break down how many were working for only a few months of the year, as is the case, for example, at tuck shops at golf courses and tourist industry shops, or how many are working just a few hours a week, how many are working just weekends and so forth.

One would have thought the government would at least have gone to other jurisdictions that had introduced similar legislation to find out what the impact was. They did not do that. The minister said the domino theory is a myth, yet we know from British Columbia, where this legislation was introduced, that it was not a myth. It started with one municipality opening up: Richmond, British Columbia. This is a municipality many of us have flown into; Vancouver Airport. It is not a large shopping municipality; it is a municipality with a number of hotels and so forth around the airport.

Once that one municipality opened up, gradually the domino theory started to come into force. Indeed, we now know that in British Columbia there are 55 municipalities wide open, many of which did not want to open but were forced to open as they saw millions of dollars cross the border and cross the street to the adjoining municipality that had opened.

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The domino theory does work, but the Solicitor General refuses to even look at that possibility. Indeed, even during the hearings we have said that in British Columbia the domino theory happened. The Liberals say it has not. The Solicitor General says it has not. Fine. Let’s ask any clerk --

Mr. Black: The NDP passed that.

Mr. Philip: It is very hard to address you with this noise in my ear, Mr. Speaker. The member does not have the courage to stand on his feet and tell his constituents what he thinks of this bill, but he wants to prevent me from doing so. I ask you to call him to order.

The Deputy Speaker: All members, please, will respect the standing orders and allow one member at a time. The only member recognized right now is the member for Etobicoke-Rexdale.

Mr. Philip: I will not speak at great length any further because I know that the member for London North, who is an excellent participant on our committee, wants to address many of the same concerns and has indeed come out of a very important committee meeting in this Legislature in order to do so.

We suggested that the Liberals on the committee choose any municipality in British Columbia and bring the clerk of that municipality -- a purely nonpartisan person if there ever was one -- to come and meet with our committee and tell us exactly what the BC experience was. The Liberals were so afraid of that kind of nonpartisan information that they refused that simple request.

We asked that the members of the committee consult with their own colleagues in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where there is a majority Liberal government and where they had rescinded similar legislation after two years.

I see a member in the House right now who had met with people in these municipalities when she was down there as chairman of the standing committee on the Ombudsman. She knows that they told her: “What nonsense. You are going to duplicate the same kind of nonsensical mistake that we did and two years later you are going to be in the identical position that we are and have to rescind the legislation.”

That is what happened in New Brunswick; that is what happened in Nova Scotia. But the Liberals on the committee would not even consult with Liberal members in other provinces to find out, in an open way, what had gone on when this kind of silly, unworkable legislation was introduced.

Miss Nicholas: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker --

The Deputy Speaker: A point of order under which standing order?

Miss Nicholas: I am sorry, I do not know the standing order. However, the member was referring to myself and I do not recollect any such events or comments having transpired. I ask him to clarify his comments.

Mr. Philip: I would be very happy to clarify my comments. We were in the Maritimes to deal with Ombudsman matters. I suggested to the Liberal members on the committee -- the member for Scarborough Centre (Miss Nicholas) included -- that they might ask their Liberal colleagues what they thought of the Sunday shopping legislation and their experiences there, where they had introduced it and were now having to rescind it.

A number of the members of the committee took that opportunity. If the member did not, and did not want to listen to her own colleagues in other provinces, then I am sorry that she missed the experience. But some of the other members did hear from their colleagues.

I am glad that at least some of the other Liberal members were conscientious enough to ask, or at least that they stood still and listened as their Liberal colleagues told them exactly what they thought when I asked the question.

Mr. Furlong: Name names.

Miss Nicholas: You’re making it up.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Philip: The Solicitor General says there were problems in the tourist exemption, but when she tabled the legislation, and indeed up until now, she could not name those municipalities where there are specific problems. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario asked her for the list. Finally, after tabling the legislation, she said, “Here are the municipalities that have used the tourist exemption,” but she could still not tell us which of those municipalities had a specific problem.

We have legislation that is designed to solve a problem, and the minister cannot even elaborate where the problem is. Where are the municipalities where there have been major problems? Indeed, when the Association of Municipalities of Ontario asked the minister, “You claim that there are problems. We, whom you say are the grassroots and should best be able to solve problems, say to you we are willing to meet with you, we are willing to define the tourist exemption, we are willing to refine the regulations,” she in fact refused their help.

This is the consultation where the government House leader is saying, “We have had hearings, we have consulted with the public and now we should go forward with the legislation.” There was no consultation. We had hearings and the government did not listen. They introduced legislation without any kind of impact studies, without any kind of research, without being willing to look at other provinces where similar legislation had been introduced and had been an abominable failure to the point where it had been rescinded by Liberal governments in those provinces, let alone by other political parties.

So we get to the crunch, and the crunch is that the government cannot justify this legislation. It has not listened to the public. It has not listened to the input from the various communities. It has ignored the wishes of small business. It has ignored the wishes of women’s groups. It has ignored labour groups. There was not one labour group that said it was in support of Bill 114 -- not one person, let alone one labour group. Not one management group came forward and said it was workable.

They have ignored the wishes of consumer groups. They have ignored the automobile dealers in this province. They have ignored all of the church groups. They have ignored the Canadian Tire store operators and all of the various merchants like them who say it will mean higher prices and a lower level of service. They have ignored the grocery store owners who say that it will mean an increase in food prices of between five per cent and 15 per cent as a result of their overhead costs.

The only people this government seems to be willing to listen to are their friends, the Bay, and the Cadillac Fairviews of this world.

There is an interesting comment in a paper called Save our Sundays, and it says:

“Do the Liberals Care?

“After working evenings and Saturdays, retail employees want to be with their families and friends on Sunday. For six weeks this summer, a committee of the Ontario Legislature toured the province to find out if Ontarians want Sunday shopping, but do the Liberals really care?

“Your grocer, Canadian Tire store, lumber man, automotive dealer, Home Hardware, furniture store and jeweller made submissions; thousands upon thousands of retailers said no to wide-open Sunday shopping. Do the Liberals care?

“The majority of Ontarians, senior citizens’ groups, unions, faith communities, lifestyle groups are against the legislation favouring wide-open Sunday shopping. Do the Liberals care?

“Over 95 per cent of the municipalities are against the local option. Think of it -- 95 per cent don’t want Premier Peterson to force it on them. Is it fair? Is it democracy? Do the Liberals care?

“Over 90 per cent said no to the government’s plan to change the law; over 90 per cent. Do the Liberals care?

“We trusted Premier Peterson. Before the last election he said, in response to the unanimous report of the all-party committee, ‘The sense of the committee was that there was widespread support in Ontario for a pause day and I accept that advice.’ Why have the Liberals broken their trust?

“We have a Premier who lacks the political courage to make a provincial decision and washes his hands by passing it on to the municipalities, knowing the consequences.

“The Liberals claim to support a common pause day, but will their MPPs have the courage to vote against this bill or wash their hands of it as well? Do the Liberals care?”

I have been on the committee with the Liberals. They have listened but they have not acted. They have listened but they have not shown empathy with the public of Ontario. That is why we have this closure motion. No, the Liberals do not care.

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Mrs. Cunningham: It is with some regret that I find myself in the House today speaking to a motion that is, quite frankly, a motion the government of this province should not be particularly proud of. When we get into methods of curtailing debate and allocation of time orders, I think we are probably looking at a process that has been used some five times in the history of the province and, I would add, not proudly.

Mr. Black: All by Tory members.

Mrs. Cunningham: No, not all by Tory members; some by Liberals in the past. But in fact, the very first motion was by a Tory member. It was put forth during a very important time in our history, one the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay would know well because he was at that time probably a superintendent with a school board in Ontario. He would have been very familiar with the Inflation Restraint Act, as it was something we had to consider very seriously in our teacher negotiations across the province. In itself, in the eyes of the government of that time, it was extremely important, not unlike this government at this particular point.

However, I mention that motion in the House today as an example of one the Liberals at that point in time were very much against when the government felt it was necessary for the first time in the history of the province. I am now talking about 1982 when a time allocation motion or a guillotine motion was brought before the House.

Trying to relate specifically to the order, I think we should know that in the Parliament of Canada this is a process that is used rather frequently and has been over the years, but in the parliament of Ontario it is not one that has been used very often at all. We look for parliamentary practices in documents that are considered to be, of course, the law. Erskine May is one that I think is well respected and is used in this House by the Speaker and by the clerks on a regular basis.

Under allocation of time orders or guillotines, it advises us, “In many sessions in order to secure the passage of particularly important and controversial legislation, governments have been confronted with the choice, unless special powers are taken, of cutting down their normal program to an undesirable extent, or of prolonging the sittings of parliament, or else” -- I think this is the one that relates to this government -- “of acknowledging the impotence of the majority of the House in the face of the resistance of the minority.”

I think what has not happened here is that the government has not been able to work out a way of bringing closure to this debate and issue regarding Bill 113 and Bill 114. More importantly, when they did come to a closure motion, an allocation of time motion, a guillotine motion, they brought forth one that in the history of this province is unprecedented with respect to the democratic process and the ability of elected members who have not been on the justice committee to be able to come to this House and committee of the whole House, to speak to amendments that would make this bill one that would be acceptable to the public, one that would be meaningful and necessary to the province.

Instead, they have presented us with an allocation of time order that allows for some two days at one stage of hearings and another day at the other stage; that is, in committee of the whole House. Members elected across this province will have an opportunity of some two days -- that is, perhaps four, four and a half or five hours -- and at the third reading stage, on that sessional day, only one day, in order to respond to the bill itself, to bring their constituents’ views forward and to speak to any amendments either the government or the opposition would like to present, which I think is the purpose of bringing a controversial piece of legislation like this Sunday shopping legislation before this House -- so that people across the province can be included in the debate if they so wish.

Members should know that in the 26 days of public hearings, a few of those hearings were televised from this Legislative Building here at Queen’s Park. I think it was some six or seven, perhaps more; I stand to be corrected. The point I am making is that the hearings took place during the summer months, that most of the hearings of course took place in other cities across the province and that the public were not always able to find out just how their own representatives felt on this legislation or to witness the role they could play.

Mr. Haggerty: I am sure it was explained very well in London.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mrs. Cunningham: It was explained very well in London, thanks, quite frankly, to myself. I did not see that the Solicitor General or the Premier felt it fit to come to the hearings in London or to make their views known at the hearings, but they have done so in other ways.

We should also know that the majority of the public are very much disappointed in the stand they have taken, and I say that with all honesty.

If we take a look at this allocation of time order or this guillotine order we are talking to right now, quite frankly, it can be easily observed by anyone that the three days, with some six or seven hours of hearings that can be public and in which all the elected members can take part, have been very carefully designed so that if every member were to speak one way or another to either piece of legislation, the maximum amount of time you would get from your elected representative, if we were to share the time equally among all 130 of us, would be three minutes.

This particular allocation of time order states that on two days at committee of the whole hearings and during one day at third reading stage, if everyone were to stand up and speak to what I think is one of the more controversial pieces of legislation that will have tremendous impact on the quality of life of families, and if they were to share the time equally, the elected person from your riding, who represents you, could in fact speak for three minutes.

Our question would be --

Mr. Dietsch: You know that isn’t true. You never share time.

Mrs. Cunningham: That is the time. We are willing to share the time. I would be most happy, when I take my seat, to listen to a Liberal member speak to this piece of legislation. In fact, Ontario is listening very carefully to its elected members on this. I think people are noting that they are not taking their opportunity or taking their turn in this Legislative Assembly to speak to Bill 113 and Bill 114.

On the allocation of time order, I would expect that maybe the Liberals would stand up and talk about how much time has been wasted, because in the view of the Liberals, that is exactly what they think. They think the public that have come before the committee have been wasting their time. The Premier is on record talking about 55 days of wasted time; he talked about that. In fact, the words the Premier used were “ragging on for 55 days.” That is easily looked upon by the public as disrespect for them and disrespect for the representatives they have elected to speak on their behalf. “Ragging on for 55 days” is the way the Premier looks at this motion.

One should know that I do not think we would have had to take so much time if the Liberal members of the committee had not been given marching orders. It is very difficult when you have been told just what to say in a paper distributed before the hearings started. “Answers to Questions You Might Be Asked,” I believe it was called. It is very difficult then to speak freely.

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When this motion is finally brought before the House, we are hoping we will see each Liberal member, during the three days, stand and speak. That will certainly be a request we will be making of the Premier, that everyone take his three minutes and speak on behalf of the constituents he represents. I challenge the members to do that.

As we move forward in this debate, obviously I am annoyed at the opportunity this large majority government has taken, quite frankly. In the words of Erskine May, this is a very serious procedure we are looking at right now:

“Orders made under this procedure are known as ‘allocation of time’ orders, and colloquially as ‘guillotine’ motions. They may be regarded as the extreme limit to which procedure goes in affirming the rights of the majority at the expense of the minorities of the House” -- that is exactly what has happened -- “and it cannot be denied that they are capable of being used in such a way as to upset the balance, generally so carefully preserved, between the claims of business and the rights of debate. But the harshness of this procedure is to some extent mitigated either by consultations between party leaders or in the business committee” -- which we will not talk about right now -- “in order to establish the greatest possible measure of agreement as to the most satisfactory disposal of the time available.”

If there is some mitigation that can be attributed to the process here in establishing this motion, I have not been able to find it. How anybody could bring forth a motion that allows every member of this House just three minutes to speak to such a controversial bill and then blame us because they do not take the opportunity -- I have been in this House speaking to Bill 113 when the Liberals, upon their turn, would not stand up and take their turn.

I can say that has been observed by all of the province of Ontario. They should sit up and take their knocks because of it. As I said before, I am sure many of them will be saying goodbye to their seats. It is so sad because so many of them are capable of representing the people who have elected them. But nobody likes to think that people have to take their marching orders in this way. I will go back to that.

It is very interesting that when the first allocation of time motion was put, it was by the Honourable Tom Wells around a motion the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay would remember very well, because it affected him considerably in his work. It was Bill 179. At that time, the Liberal Party’s deputy leader, the member for Renfrew North, expressed concern about “so serious and so significant a new departure in terms of the way we have conducted ourselves in this Legislative Assembly for lo these many years.” That is what he said.

Those were made around Bill 179. Over the period of the allocation of time order, meaning the committee of the whole and the allocation of time, some eight or nine days were allowed in this Legislature for debate; not three days for two bills, but some eight or nine days for just one bill. Actually, it was in 1982. I could give the exact date. It was the very first time in Ontario that this process was followed, December 8, 1982. I am not sure of the date the guillotine motion was presented, but it will not take me long to figure that one out.

The most important part is that it was the present government House leader who was the most vocal in speaking against it, and that motion allowed for a significantly longer period of time for debate by the members at that time.

Mr. Wildman: And it was only on one bill.

Mrs. Cunningham: There were fewer of them and it was one bill, not two bills over three days.

If we are speaking to the topic today, that really is the issue. If that is the best the government House leader could do, then it is shameful in the history of the Legislative Assembly of this province.

I actually was asked to speak at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in Vancouver on this procedure, and I spoke with some degree of pride because Ontario has not seen fit frequently to interject into its proceedings any allocation of time orders. In fact, we probably stand as being the province with the best record. We should be very proud of that. At any time an order like this is put forth, a significant amount of time should be left for every individual to speak.

I understand the government House leader also stated, “I cannot believe we are seized in the winter of 1982-83 with some parliamentary crisis that forces us into a new avenue” -- listen to this, Mr. Speaker, and do not smile, please; you are supposed to be extremely professional in your job -- “down a slippery slope of time allocation, without which we have been able to function for the previous 115 years.”

Mr. Cureatz: Who said that?

Mrs. Cunningham: The member for Renfrew North said that on February 15, 1983.

He goes on to say, “I really have to say that we must be protected from this kind of majority government stampede” -- then he adds two words and I think these are the best two words for this government -- “and arrogance.” That is really what this all about.

We do not really want the House leader to take all of the blame, although I did have a lot of respect for him with regard to parliamentary procedures in this province. I know he takes his job very seriously and I know he speaks on our behalf, as a Legislative Assembly, across Canada from time to time. He is looked upon as one of the experts. I find it really hard to believe he could come up with, not so much the allocation of time order but the structure: three days, that is all, for two bills, and if everyone speaks, they will be allowed three minutes each.

We know the Liberals are not too concerned about that, because quite frankly they do not want to speak. I challenge the Liberals to come to our House leader and the House leader of the official opposition and give their names and we will graciously give them time to speak to Bill 113 and Bill 114. We know they will not do it, but I challenge them now. I think that would be a worthy challenge.

If they do want to speak during the time allocation, at either the committee of the whole hearings or third reading, we would welcome the opportunity for them to speak. I challenge them to do that. We will see how many of the 94 of them put their names forth.

Mr. Cureatz: Some 32 Liberals.

Mrs. Cunningham: Well, even to speak. Let them speak against the bill or for it; we do not care.

The Premier of this province also has his opinions on time allocation. During the very first time allocation motion that was put, around the Inflation Restraint Act, he too felt the need to speak to it. He felt very strongly and this is what he said:

“I have the right to pursue the most vigorous opposition that I can pursue, and the longer I am here the more I believe very strongly that the opposition” -- Mr. Speaker, listen to this -- “is the only thing that stands between government and the sheer, naked use of power.” The Premier of the province has certainly changed, has he not?

He certainly does not believe that any more. “It is the only check we have in the system and I believe it is our responsibility to exercise it in as responsible a way as we can.”

That was from Hansard of December 8, 1982.

As the members of this House know, we receive numerous letters on a daily basis in our office around Bill 113 and Bill 114. There is no way that I have even tried to read any of these letters in the House; I think it is a waste of time and I do not think that was the intent of many of the letters. The petitions, yes. But going over the mail just yesterday to take a look at these few letters I received in the last two days, I think it is very interesting how they relate to this allocation of time and the very reason we are here for this debate.

The first one is a copy of a letter, quite frankly, from the Lumber and Building Materials Association of Ontario. It was sent to the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Eakins) on January 11, and I received a copy of it yesterday.

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It is a typical letter. I did not pull it out for any reason except it happened to be in my file last evening as I was looking at my mail. This is a brief opposing Sunday retailing legislation to the standing committee on administration of justice, and this is a letter following the hearing.

What they are trying to say in here is that they made many suggestions for improvement in the bill. Somewhere along the way in this letter they say: “Whether these suggestions have merit or not, the point is that by unilaterally scrapping the very essence of the Retail Business Holidays Act, the provincial government will be giving the terms ‘panic’ and ‘knee-jerk reaction’ new meaning.”

This is the response of that particular group, the Lumber and Building Materials Association of Ontario. We talk about real people and how the government does not listen to people who come before committees because they are not the real people. All of the letters that I have are from people who have not made presentations to the committee, and these people are real people. It really bothers me. That is the tone of the letters.

The next one is from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. They felt a need to write in very late December. Again, I was copied on this particular letter and, of course, it was sent to the Solicitor General. It was from Stephen Clark who is just filling an interim position. He is the mayor of Brockville and the president of AMO.

“At a recent meeting of the board of directors of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, I was elected to fill the vacancy in the office of president to complete the term of Michael Power, former mayor of Geraldton.”

If I use the incorrect terminology, I am always ready to correct it, so now we have it on the record.

“As president, one of my first tasks arises out of the December meeting of the board of directors. The board of directors had before it an excerpt from the Ontario Hansard dated October 18, 1988, in which you stated: ‘The Association of Municipalities of Ontario specifically refused to discuss anything because it considered it a letting down of its position. It still has not come forward with any positive suggestions.’” Okay, that was in Hansard, and that was the Solicitor General making those statements.

Now we have the chairman, Stephen Clark, of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario speaking: “The board of directors, which comprises 78 persons from across the province, took exception to this comment. It directed that I write to you for the purpose of the record and recall to you that the association has on several occasions requested yourself and the government of Ontario to join together with AMO and other interested groups to address the question of the tourist exemption.”

That is why we are all here. It is because this government does not know how to consult. They do not know how to go out and say, “Help us solve the problem.” Because they do not want help in solving their problems, they just pass the buck to the municipalities and let them do it, at the expense, I must say, of thousands of people across this province who will be forced to work on Sundays. That was the second letter that I looked at.

Mr. Cureatz: I hope you have more.

Mrs. Cunningham: Well, I mean, I opened the book. Truly, this is what was in my reading file last night.

Mr. Cureatz: That is not even fan mail. That is just about Sunday shopping.

Mrs. Cunningham: No, I can tell the House this certainly is not fan mail for this large Liberal government that does not know how to listen.

This one is from the chamber of commerce. My point in raising this is that we are talking about democracy here. A guillotine motion is not even part of our procedures here in this House. A special motion has to be made and it has been used only some six times in the province in 135 years. The House leader was the one who disliked it the most, and the Premier disliked it just as much, so members can imagine.

Anyway, because we are, as political representatives of our community, asked to read petitions from time to time, and we have read the petitions, the one thing that the public may not understand is that there have been literally thousands of letters sent to Liberal members that cannot come before this House because, quite frankly, there is no way for them to bring them to our attention if they have not been properly constituted in the form of a petition. What the public should know is that the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce and many more groups across this province have sent cards that say, “We are completely opposed to your intention to make municipalities responsible for administering the Retail Business Holidays Act.”

These have gone to the Premier’s office. When we talk about what we do know about opposition, there is probably an awful lot we do not know because I cannot imagine the Premier bringing in these cards or showing the public or the press the kind of opposition he is truly getting.

The other complaint that we had in our mail, and this one is dated January 9, is from the regional municipality of Peel. What we are talking about here is a lack of leadership, a total lack of leadership.

Mr. Cureatz: Who are the Liberal members from Peel?

Mrs. Cunningham: Okay? It is titled Passing the Buck. It is a letter written to the Premier, of which all of us received copies, which all of us obviously are going to read.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. The member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay on a point of order.

Mr. Black: I have a great interest in the words of the member for London North. I have been sitting here listening attentively to what she is saying. Unfortunately, she keeps being interrupted by interjections from the member for Durham East (Mr. Cureatz) and I cannot hear what the member for London North is saying because of those repeated interjections from the member who is not sitting in his own seat.

The Acting Speaker: The member for London North has the floor and is entitled to speak without interruption from any member of the Legislature.

Mrs. Cunningham: I find it very interesting that the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay should make that comment considering the interjections that I have to listen to usually on a regular basis from his seatmate from Durham-York (Mr. Ballinger), so I cannot imagine this even being a topic of discussion.

Mr. Cureatz: Oh, shame. I am embarrassed now.

Mrs. Cunningham: I think I am going to have to repeat what I have said so far in the House in the last 20 minutes because the House leader just arrived --

Mr. Cureatz: Yes. The House leader missed it. Read the part where he hates time allocation.

Mrs. Cunningham: He is the very first person who needs to be educated around a good time allocation motion and this is the worst one that we have been faced with, I must say that. It is not fair.

I am going back to the regional municipality of Peel. I am talking about democracy here, and I think when one has been given such a huge mandate as this huge, majority Liberal government, that the one thing the public did expect is that they show leadership.

The regional municipality of Peel would not agree with the interjections from, I believe, the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay. It says here, “The jurisdiction that Bill 113 thrusts into the hands of our region is neither wanted nor needed.” It says, “The jurisdiction thrust into the hand of our region” -- the municipality of Peel -- “is neither wanted nor needed.” That is a fact.

“Moreover, the extension of Sunday shopping beyond that which is permitted by the existing legislation will impose a new burden upon the resources of the region and its area municipalities without in any way providing for the resources needed to meet such demands.”

It would not be proper for me to start relating all of the other costs that have been forced back to the municipalities, because I am trying to stay on topic about this allocation of time order. I should add that quite frankly, I really admire the municipalities that have taken the time at their council meetings where they have very important things to discuss -- they have tremendous issues locally, and people are elected to make decisions. They have to take time out of their regular hearings to talk about this ridiculous piece of legislation that is neither wanted nor needed by anyone in this province.

Mr. Dietsch: What about Sault Ste. Marie?

Mrs. Cunningham: Sault Ste. Marie is a tourist area. I do agree that tourist areas should be allowed to be open on Sunday. I agree with the present legislation and I do not see why they have to fix it.

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There were some questions around tourist area and the people from Sault Ste. Marie when we were up there speaking, their chamber of commerce and their local business improvement area volunteered to assist the government in the definition of tourism, as did hundreds of other persons who appeared before the committee. We know because we asked the question. So Sault Ste. Marie, quite honestly and openly, and quite properly, is open -- it would be an area which is considered tourist -- and it does work. The present act, in fact, does work.

On the recommendations for change, the amendments which have been put that we agree to, we really do think it was a good process for increasing fines and also for giving the government more power in injunction. We also think that if we had looked at the definition of tourism and polished it up with the assistance of the chamber of commerce and the local business improvement area of Sault Ste. Marie and others, we would probably be in a very good state right now.

I do believe in local autonomy, I really do, but I also believe in leadership. This bill is not about local autonomy; it is about leadership. I will say right now that this government is showing a lack of leadership in many areas, but especially in the Sunday shopping legislation.

In a letter to me, Black Photo Corp. says: “Bills 113 and 114 are a direct assault on the quality of life in this province. Those bills will do nothing to enhance family values. The family is already being undermined. It will be further weakened by the loss of a common pause day.” This is from Black Photo Corp. For the people watching at home, they should know we are talking about this big Liberal majority government’s lack of leadership around Bill 113. “Government should not be sacrificing retail workers and small business people on the altar of greed.” I do not like to be accused of holding up the House, but this debate is quite in order. “Your party’s opposition to a local option is to be commended. I would urge you and your caucus colleagues to use every legitimate parliamentary tactic to oppose the passage of the Peterson government’s Sunday shopping legislation. Thank you very much. Black Photo Corp., January 12, 1989.” These all came in this week.

Since the House leader is here, I hope he will listen very carefully. In fact, he may even go back to the drawing board, because he will go down in history. He is already down in history.

He is in history as opposing the very first time an allocation motion was ever put before this House. That one allowed for seven days of debate at both the committee of the whole and the third reading stages of the bill, and it was one bill, Bill 179, the Inflation Restraint Act, which, by the way, caused us a lot of trouble for school board trustees; of course, it caused my friend the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay, who was a superintendent at that time, a lot of difficulty, too.

On the other hand, the House leader made some wonderful statements. I wish he had been here earlier. Would it be out of order for me to tell the House leader what he said? It should go down in history. I will be repeating myself, which I do not really want to do, however, “I cannot believe we are seized in the winter of 1982-83 with some parliamentary crisis that forces us into a new avenue” -- I like this part; he was so young in 1982-83 -- “down a slippery slope of time allocation, without which we have been able to function for the previous 115 years.”

This man could be historic; he could be remembered always. But he could not even come up with a time allocation motion as good as the one he was speaking against; one that allowed for six or seven days of hearings in this House for one bill. I am very disappointed in the House leader.

Mr. Cureatz: He must have said something else.

Mrs. Cunningham: Oh, he said lots.

This letter is dated January 12: “The Ontario and Toronto Automobile Dealers Associations oppose the passage of Bill 113.” This is actually directed to the Liberal House leader, because there is a reason we should have more time to be speaking in this House and it is this: there are 130 of us and if we take the time allowed, we will not have sufficient time to put forth amendments that everyone can speak to. I have divided up the time fairly and the Liberal House leader should know that everyone will have three minutes to speak over three days to two bills. We have invited all of the Liberals to speak to the Conservative House leader and the New Democratic Party House leader and let us know when they want to speak. We will be happy to slot them in for even more than three minutes.

This is the reason we need more time. It was our objective to have an amendment to Bill 113, which would prohibit the sale of automobiles on a Sunday or holiday, as now exists in some 30 states of the US. They want an amendment that would prohibit these stores from opening. Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that the Liberal members of the standing committee on administration of justice voted against the amendment? They wanted, in fact, to extend it. I believe we should put this amendment forth during the three days and the Liberals should be speaking about how they want car dealerships to open on Sundays. All right. We are coming to the end.

The Ontario Convenience Store Association also talks about amendments. “The Ontario Convenience Store Association would like to bring to your attention two very important recommendations which we made in our brief to the committee and which were not addressed by the amendments made to Bill 113.” It is talking here about the right to an independent appeal, which we did not speak to, and it is also talking about Bill 113 being amended -- and this is very important, and we have not looked at it yet, and we should; we should be looking at this in the committee of the whole House -- “to include a grandfather clause excluding small stores and convenience stores from the provision which would allow municipalities, in fact, to close any retail establishment on any holiday.”

This is from a group of convenience stores that have been willing to support the public over hundreds of years in this province by being open. They are very small stores. They are a part of the present legislation. Under the new legislation, in fact, they could be closed by their municipalities. No leadership.

The very last one; here we go. Free votes. This is from January 19, 1989. This is to the member for Cochrane South (Mr. Pope), actually, and copied to me. “Watching you on TV Sunday, I could not help being shocked when the member for London North brought up regarding members from Mr. Peterson’s caucus being afraid to vote for their constituents. Peterson laughed in her face.” I cannot believe he did that, but anyway, in the eyes of the public, that is what is happening. Far be it for me to judge the way the government responds to my important questions in this House. “Please see she sets the clippings from the Guelph paper. These may make Mr. Peterson laugh on the other side of his face.” That is from a real person.

Mr. Cureatz: What did the Guelph paper say?

Mrs. Cunningham: I do not like pointing fingers.

Mr. Cureatz: Just read the headline.

Mrs. Cunningham: I think it was the member for Guelph (Mr. Ferraro) who was shrugging off criticisms for having two views, personal and political, on the extension of Sunday shopping. “Liberal MPP” -- and I will not say the name because it is not proper -- “said Monday that it would be totally irrational to stand up for his personal conviction at Queen’s Park and go against party policy.” I would like, in fact --

Hon. Mr. Conway: Now let’s go to Hy and Zel’s.

Mrs. Cunningham: Hy and Zel’s is not the issue. That is what the Liberals want to make the issue. The issue here is Sunday shopping and an extension of Sunday shopping. No one, members of the opposition party or members of the government, agreed with the brief from Hy and Zel’s. Let’s get that one straight right now. We had a lot of sympathy for them. In fact, I thought they were just terrific. I liked Mr. Hy and I liked Mr. Zel. I did not approve of their position, but that is beside the point.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I thought you were the friend of the big drugstores, Dianne.

An hon. member: Are you in the back pockets of the big drugstores?

Mrs. Cunningham: Clouding the issue around back pockets and drugstores is ridiculous. This debate today is about democracy. What we are talking about here is a government that introduced a piece of legislation that will affect people’s lives for ever. What we are also talking about is a government that did not listen to the public and that is now trying to force a piece of legislation through in three days in this House so that every member will have three minutes to speak.

I challenge the government. I do not think the Liberals will take their three minutes and we will be reporting back accordingly. During the next election, I hope they get what they are due. If they do not stand up and speak, I hope they are recorded in this House as having been in favour of the legislation, because that is the way the public ought to read it.

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It is with regret that I find myself in a position to have to speak to this motion. I would like to close with a quote today from Erskine May. This is especially for the House leader and relates specifically to his government:

“Governments have been confronted with the choice,” -- I am now talking about controversial legislation -- “unless special powers are taken, of cutting down their normal program to an undesirable extent, or of prolonging the sittings of Parliament, or else of acknowledging the impotence of the majority of the House in the face of the resistance of the minority.”

It goes on to say about the orders:

“They may be regarded as the extreme limit to which procedure goes in affirming the rights of the majority at the expense of the minorities of the House, and it cannot be denied that they are capable of being used in such a way as to upset the balance, generally so carefully preserved, between the claims of business and the rights of debate.”

That is what this particular debate is all about, I think the House leader could have put forward a more fair motion and I feel very badly that he will go down in history as a person who thinks this Legislature should have only six hours to debate two bills and that 130 members will have, if the time is equalized, three minutes each to speak.

The Acting Speaker: Are there any other participants in the debate?

Hon. Mr. Conway: Was the member’s homily at the Stratford Central United Church of this kind?

The Acting Speaker: The member for Renfrew North will yield the floor to the member for Cambridge.

Mr. Farnan: The moment of truth has arrived. The Liberal government’s lack of accessibility will clearly demonstrate that what we have now is an arrogant and insensitive government, out of touch with the people of Ontario. Before examining the events that have surrounded the Sunday work legislation over the last several months, I invite the viewing audience, I invite the people of Ontario and indeed I invite my honourable colleagues to cast their minds back to those lazy, hazy days of the summer of 1987. I would like to recall the image of open, accessible government that was presented to the people of Ontario.

The people of Ontario will recall the member for London Centre (Mr. Peterson) mingling with the crowd, sleeves rolled up, tie undone, reaching out across the barriers, touching hands and listening. It was very much a Hollywood package, a package of an open, accessible candidate for Premier of the province presenting what he promised, an open and accessible government. Indeed, during his very first days there was a wonderful, symbolic gesture in which the Premier opened the doors of the Premier’s office to allow the media to come in, to allow the public to come. Again, it was to project to the people of Ontario that indeed we were heralding a new era of open and accessible government.

The reality of the matter, my friends, is that there was no new era. The people of Ontario were deceived; they were taken in. First, they were taken in by a temporary openness forced on the government during minority government, an openness that the New Democrats insisted upon. Second, they were taken in by the false sense of hope for greater openness, a major Liberal campaign theme given to the voters in September 1987. It is a theme that we can look back on now in the light of events that have surrounded the issue of Sunday work and say the people of Ontario were taken in.

I want to compare those promises of open, accessible government with what transpired following the election. I was a new member. As a new member, I was somewhat surprised very early on in the government’s mandate when the Solicitor General rose in the House and said that Bill 113 and Bill 114 were being brought forward and that indeed the essence of the bills was the municipal option. Only one week prior to her introducing these bills in the House, she had referred to the municipal option as the chicken way out.

As a new member, I was somewhat surprised.

I thought there was some correlation between what a political party said when it was seeking election and what it would do after an election. A couple of very short months later, the new Liberal government, which had projected itself and portrayed itself as heralding in a new era of open and accessible government, had flip-flopped on the issue of open Sunday shopping, presenting a position that it did not have during the election.

Immediately following this, as members will recall, both the opposition parties, the New Democrats and the Progressive Conservatives, forced the government to take this matter to public hearings. Obviously with the numbers that existed in the House -- I believe 95 Liberals at the time and 35 opposition members -- the only hope that we had of changing the direction that the Premier and the Liberals were taking us in was to force these bills out to public hearings and to hope that the voice of the people of Ontario would be listened to. There was no hope that the opposition’s combined vote of 35 could defeat the position of the government, so we forced the government to go out and listen to the people of Ontario.

It was bad enough that this legislation represented a broken promise. We all recall the Premier during the course of the election stating very clearly: “We favour the recommendations of the select committee. We are in favour of a common pause day.” Yet remarkably he leads a government that is going to undermine a common pause day in Ontario and had to be forced to take that legislation out to the people of Ontario. That is a remarkable transformation. As a new member, I had to sit here and wonder: Why did the Premier do this? Why did the Premier change his mind on this? Where did the idea come from?

Who was the Premier listening to? Was it the retail workers the Premier was listening to? No. Was it the small businessmen of Ontario? No. Was it the municipalities of Ontario that the Premier was listening to? No. Was it the church groups of Ontario that the Premier and the Liberal government were listening to? No.

Was it the Liberal Party that the Premier was listening to? That is an interesting question. Was it the Liberal Party? Maybe this idea had germinated within the Liberal Party and the Premier had an obligation as the leader of the Liberal Party to take this idea, to bring it forward and work it through legislation. But you go to the Liberal Party and you do not find this issue debated. You do not find a policy position on this issue in the Liberal Party.

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As we toured the province, one of the delegations that appeared before our committee included Sylvia Sutherland, former executive vice-president of the Liberal Party of Ontario and mayor of Peterborough. She said: “I feel disappointed and I have been becoming increasingly more frustrated. As far as I understand, the party had opposed opening on Sundays.”

It came as a total surprise. There was no consultation. There was no consultation with the people of Ontario. There was no consultation within the Liberal Party, and yet the Premier and the Solicitor General stood up and said, “We’re going to go ahead with this Sunday shopping, Sunday work legislation.”

Who, we ask ourselves, is the Premier listening to? With whom did the Premier have consultations? With none of the groups that I have spoken about. Not even with the Liberal Party itself. Who is the Premier listening to?

When we get down to the bottom line, the Premier is listening to his big business friends. I say to the viewing audience that is watching our proceedings tonight, there is no difference when you look at the issue of auto insurance or the issue of Sunday shopping. The Premier is listening to his friends. Is this then the openness and accessibility that the Premier was talking about during the summer of 1987?

As a member of the standing committee on administration of justice, I had the opportunity to be involved with this issue from the moment it was raised in the House and I participated in the public hearings that followed. I want to draw attention to a couple of statements that were made during the course of the public hearings. This was at the time a committee was touring the province. We were going to Collingwood, London, Kingston, Peterborough, Windsor, Brantford and St. Catharines.

Ostensibly, the purpose of the committee was to go out and listen to the people of the province, and yet the Solicitor General, who is responsible for carrying this bill, had this to say, “The local option clause is strictly non-negotiable, regardless of what the all-party legislative committee decides.”

At the very moment we were listening to the people of Ontario on that particular item, which is the essence of the bill -- in the words of the Solicitor General herself, the municipal option is the essence of the bill -- the Solicitor General was saying, “Regardless of what the all-party legislative committee decides, the local option stays.”

Then there were the comments of the Premier. Again, as the committee was sitting listening to the people of Ontario, he had this to say. The Liberal government would not water down legislation forcing local councils to settle the Sunday shopping debate, despite mounting opposition. He was correct, there was mounting opposition.

I started off by touching base with the people of Cambridge; and every sector of the community, the most extraordinary political alliance that I ever witnessed in my career, was represented there in Cambridge. Small business, retail Workers, church groups, women’s groups, municipal Politicians; all the sectors of the community were saying, “No, we want the common pause day.” As I toured the province, what l found was that Cambridge was a reflection of the mood in the province as a whole; indeed the people of Ontario as a whole were saying, “We want the common pause day.”

The Premier was correct, there was mounting opposition; and despite the mounting opposition, the Premier said the Liberal government would not water down this legislation forcing local councils to settle the Sunday shopping debate.

A very interesting event took place when we visited the city of London. In London, one of the members of the committee was the member for Middlesex (Mr. Reycraft). He substituted on the committee that day. He is the member for Middlesex and I suspect wanted to be present. He said something that really caught my attention.

He was asked very directly by a person making a presentation if the government members were listening and he was asked whether they would support what the people were saying. The member said -- and the words are emblazoned in my mind; I wrote them down at the time and I have used them over and over again -- “ No responsible member of parliament, no responsible member of a committee, will judge the outcome of the proceedings of this committee while the committee is still in progress.”

I admire him for those words, because that is the way it should be. No member of parliament has the right to make a prejudgement on the outcome of the committee hearings. Yet we had the Premier of Ontario saying, “We will not water down the legislation.” We had the Solicitor General saying, “The municipal option is non-negotiable.” All these things were being said while the committee was in progress.

The Liberal members of the committee whom I worked with through those months and whom I came to admire, because I think we become good friends as we travel on a committee, were somewhat in a straitjacket. Prior to the beginning of the hearings -- and the people of Ontario will want to know this -- before we went on the road, each member of the Liberal Party who sits in this House was given a package. It was a package which said: “This is the speech you are to make on Sunday shopping. This is the letter you will write to a constituent on Sunday shopping. These are the answers to the questions that you will be asked on Sunday shopping.”

Therefore, what you had was a Premier and a Solicitor General who were prejudging the final outcome of the committee and who were actually -- this package was prepared by the Solicitor General’s office -- directing all the members of the Liberal Party to respond in a particular way whenever the issue of Sunday shopping came up.

It is true that as we went from city to city the opposition mounted, so a defensive mentality began to develop, both at headquarters here in Toronto and among the committee members on the road. The Solicitor General had this to say, “Who do you expect to come forward to the committee except the people who are opposed?”

Interestingly enough, we had some 529 presentations, I believe, opposed to the legislation and nine in favour -- 520 in favour and nine opposed to the legislation. I will try that again; we will get it right. We had 529 people who were opposed to the legislation and only nine who were in favour. Yet the Solicitor General says here, “Who do you expect to come forward to the committee except the people who are opposed?”

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I suppose we could carry that to its logical conclusion. We have the government now saying: “What do you expect of the opposition members? They’re going to vote against it. What do you expect?” To follow that to its logical conclusion, what do you expect of the 94 Liberal members but that they will support the position taken by the Premier and the Solicitor General, positions that were taken after the election and not before the election?

I go again to statements that were being made as the Liberals became increasingly aware that they were under attack. At this time, there were probably about 100 briefs presented. We were in Peterborough at the time and the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Kanter), the parliamentary assistant to the Solicitor General, had this to say: “Of the 100 or so briefs we have heard in these two weeks, there have only been a handful of people with real interest, who are not reading from a prepared script.”

Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary assistant, who was the Solicitor General’s representative on the parliamentary committee, saying that people, because they were reading from a prepared script, were somehow less worthy than people who were giving an off-the-cuff presentation?

I will remind all the members of this House that the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick rose in this House only two days ago and directed a question to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations (Mr. Wrye), and, in a 90-second question read from a prepared script.

The reality of the matter is that people read from a prepared script because they had put a lot of thought, a lot of effort, into preparing their brief to the committee. They wanted to present that brief on behalf of a large group. Sometimes they were speaking on behalf of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. When you speak on behalf of 10,000 or 80,000 people, you do not have the liberty of deviating from the brief in an off-the-cuff fashion. I would say to the parliamentary assistant in this case that these people were representing very correctly the views of the people who brought their messages forward.

The parliamentary assistant went on to say, “It is unfortunate that more real people, particularly consumers, haven’t made submissions.” The people who are watching our proceedings tonight who are retail workers, who are small businessmen, who are churchmen, who are municipal politicians, who belong to women’s groups, who are children who appeared before our committee, are all real people, I remind members that 529 delegations representing real people came before the committee and nine came forward in favour of the legislation.

Obviously, in the mind of the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick the nine who came forward in favour of the legislation are real people. The 529 briefs that were presented by individuals representing groups of 10,000 -- hundreds of thousands of people -- were not real people because they were not reflecting the view of the government.

It is very true. The Premier was right. There was mounting opposition, but he was telling the troops: “Be tough. Hang in there. Your leader has spoken. I don’t want any cracks in our armour. I don’t want anybody speaking out of turn. You’ve all been given your package. You know what to write in the letter. You know what speech you have to make. You know the answers you have to give to questions. You don’t have a personal view on this. You have a government position that has been clearly enunciated and we expect you to toe the line.”

To the credit of the Liberal members, I have to say to them, to each man and a woman, they have been good soldiers. They have not deviated from the course set for them by the Premier, by their House leader and by their whip. Not one crack has appeared in the ranks of the loyal Liberals who await promotion to the cabinet or maybe even the plum of being a parliamentary assistant. It is a sad reflection that the people of Ontario are being hung out to dry by the aspirations and hopes for a parliamentary position -- a parliamentary assistant position for a Liberal backbencher.

I want to continue by demonstrating or recalling for the people of Ontario an example of the extreme heavy-handedness with which this government has manipulated this situation. I came back to the House after the hearings and the voice of the people of Ontario had told me there was widespread support in opposition to this bill.

Members will recall I brought forward a private member’s bill. It was a very simple bill. That private member’s bill said members would sit on Sundays for a period of time until we dealt with this legislation and brought it into law.

The purpose of my private member’s bill was very simple. I simply wanted all the members of this House to have the opportunity of knowing what it is like to work regularly scheduled Sunday shifts. Some members of this House, indeed Liberal members on the committee, said, “But we work on Sunday.” Let me tell them it is different being the honoured guest at a community picnic. It is a very different ball game when you have to work regularly scheduled shifts that are disruptive to your family.

What happened to that private member’s bill? What happened was this: It was defeated, 67 votes to 23. I will remind members how it was defeated. It was defeated on first reading. For the first time in the history of this House, for the first time in the history of this government, a private member’s bill was defeated on first reading and we were not allowed to have a debate on that issue that the government work on Sundays.

Why? We were not allowed to have a debate because the government is extraordinarily embarrassed; and it should be embarrassed. The government says: “We are going to pass legislation that will make retail workers work on Sunday. We are going to pass legislation that will make a host of other people work on Sunday. But we want you to know we are not going to pass legislation that will make MPPs work on Sunday. Not only are we not going to pass legislation that will make MPPs work on Sunday; we are not even going to debate the idea.”

The government was extraordinarily embarrassed. Out there in the community, there was a sense of hypocrisy. We had a government that was prepared to pass legislation that would force ordinary Ontarians to work, and at the same time a government that said: “It is good for you. You want to work on Sundays, but MPPs are not prepared to work on Sundays.”

I want the people of Ontario to know that in the vote as to whether or not members should work on Sundays, every single vote cast against that bill was cast by a Liberal and every vote in favour of the bill was cast by a New Democrat or a Conservative. Not even for a short period of time, just to experience what it would be like to work on Sunday, were the Liberals prepared to go through that experience, and yet they were prepared to pass the legislation that would force ordinary workers.

Before I conclude my remarks I want to say I believe that as a symbolic gesture I am going to move another private member’s bill this week. It is a very simple bill. I am going to move that a special sitting of the assembly take place on a Sunday following the closure of the debate on the Sunday shopping bills and that these bills be introduced on a Sunday and passed on a Sunday so that the people of Ontario will see very symbolically that we came to work on a Sunday to pass legislation that will keep them at work on Sundays, perhaps for the rest of their lives.

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

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon. Mr. Conway: It being Thursday, and pursuant to standing order 13, I would like to indicate the business of this House for the coming week.

On Monday, January 30, we will continue with the debate just adjourned by my friend the member for Cambridge (Mr. Farnan) on government notice of motion 20.

Pursuant to discussions of the House leaders today, there is an expectation that we will conclude the debate on government notice of motion 20 on Monday. Assuming that is the case, it is our plan to take the vote on government notice of motion 20 on Monday.

Should any time remain between the conclusion of that debate and the taking of the vote, we have by agreement decided, as time permits Monday, to continue with the adjourned debate of Bill 187 and, time permitting, with the second reading of Bill 149, Bill 169, Bill 192, Bill 197, Bill 134 and Bill 135.

Assuming that the division is taken on government notice of motion 20 on Monday, then on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of next week, we will consider Bill 113 and Bill 114 in a timetable that is consistent with that set out in government notice of motion 20.

On Thursday, in the morning, we will deal with private members’ public business standing in the names Mr. Campbell and Mr. Neumann.

The House adjourned at 6:03 p.m.