Hansard Transcript 1989-Feb-20 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr. R. F. Johnston: The world is full of irony. Today, when we have learned that a policeman has been shot, it follows by just a couple of days the announcement that the Canadian murder rate is at a 20-year low in this country. I want to make a statement regarding capital punishment today.

I was in Florida when the morbid fascination and delight at the death of multimurderer Ted Bundy took place in a state where the number of murders is escalating at an incredible rate, even though it has had a very highly publicized death penalty for some time. It was with great pleasure that I noticed that our murder rate had dropped so significantly that not one police officer died last year in this country, a country which has again turned away from the death penalty as a deterrent.

To all those people who had thought of it as such, I hope this argues very strongly against the notion that it should be used in those terms. For those people who believe that somehow it should be kept in terms of an eye for an eye or who believe, as the head of the police association said, that there has to be a place for vicious animals who cannot be rehabilitated, I would say to them that we have no argument. There is no discussion that can take place on that kind of basis. For those of us who wish a safe society, we have found a good solution in this country, far better than those countries which have opted for the death penalty.

PROVINCIAL-MUNICIPAL RELATIONS

Mr. McCague: I read two items recently which explain why Ontario’s municipalities are disillusioned with the Liberal government. The first noted that the only thing worse than the inaction of the government has been its actions. The second stated that the local option has become a stylish way for the province to cop out on thorny issues.

Ontario’s municipalities, victims of both Liberal lethargy and buck-passing, would heartily endorse those opinions. From housing to infrastructural renewal, courtroom security, Sunday shopping and education financing, the Liberal government’s idea of leadership that works has been to toss the matters to the municipalities and say, “Here, you lead.”

To make matters worse, the Liberals have cut back on the financial resources municipalities require to do the province’s job for it. Instead of freezing unconditional grants, the Liberal government should freeze all attempts to slough off its responsibilities on to municipal governments.

It should also stop treating municipalities, as one official of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario said, like a ministry branch office. Our municipal governments deserve more than high-handed paternalism disguised as a respect for local autonomy.

HOMEMAKERS’ PENSIONS

Ms. Poole: In December 1983, the federal government’s special committee on pension reform recommended that the government implement a homemakers’ pension. In a nationally televised debate on women’s issues in August 1984, Brian Mulroney stated that a homemakers’ pension could be implemented “in an evolutionary way, without the cost being unbearable.”

“In fact,” he said, “a saving could be realized.”

More than four years later, during the 1988 leaders’ debate, the Prime Minister tried to explain his inaction on this promise by stating, “We couldn’t do everything overnight when we came in and inherited a very bad fiscal situation.”

There is a very fundamental inconsistency in these two statements. In 1984 women were told that a homemakers’ pension could ultimately save the government money. In 1988 they were told the federal government could not afford to implement that homemakers’ pension.

Approximately three million women in Canada are waiting for pension protection. The Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) has stated that he has raised this matter during meetings of the federal Finance minister and the provincial treasurers. The time has come for the Prime Minister to stop making excuses and to act on his promises in both 1984 and 1988, promises to implement a homemakers’ pension. The women of Ontario are waiting.

NATIVE PEOPLE AND THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Mr. Hampton: The Race Relations and Policing Task Force completed its hearings in Thunder Bay on the weekend. While in Thunder Bay, they heard about some very disturbing events involving native people and the criminal justice system.

For example, Shirley O’Connor of the Ontario Native Women’s Association spoke of killings left uninvestigated and of individuals lost in the bush who froze to death because police would not conduct a search. Sara Melvin, representing 33 communities in the Sioux Lookout area, described seeing police batons with the words “For Indians, hold here” inscribed on them.

The problems that native people have encountered with our criminal justice system are not new. They have in fact gone on for far too long. The Attorney General (Mr. Scott) has stated on various occasions that he intends to address the plight of native people in our criminal justice system, yet we have seen precious little other than unkept promises from the Attorney General.

We want to discuss many of these issues in some detail with the Attorney General. We have been waiting for some time for the Ministry of the Attorney General estimates and the native affairs estimates to begin so that we could examine in some detail the expenditures and programs of these ministries as they relate to our native people, yet the Attorney General has postponed these estimates week after week. When will they happen?

ORILLIA SOLDIERS’ MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

Mr. McLean: My statement is directed to the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) and concerns the proposed development of Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital.

The minister knows that a consultants’ report commissioned by the hospital’s board of directors recommends the construction of a second health care facility in Orillia. The existing building would be used for chronic care and the proposed second campus would be used for acute care. In fact, three separate consultants have recommended the construction of this second campus.

The consultants’ report was sent to the minister in January 1988 and the minister said the final decision on the proposed second campus would be forthcoming in March 1988. We are now approaching March 1989 and the minister has still not announced her decision. The hospital’s board of directors is close to wrapping up its $5-million fund-raising campaign. They must know if they should extend this campaign to support the construction of a second hospital campus in Orillia.

I would urge the minister to meet with the board of directors of Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital as soon as possible to clear up the confusion surrounding the proposed construction of a new health care facility in Orillia. That meeting should take place within the next few days.

CAREERMOBILE

Mr. Mahoney: I would like to inform my colleagues in the House about a very successful program that has been launched by the Peel Board of Education.

On November 2, 1988, the Careermobile, which is a mobile career counselling centre, opened at its first location, the Port Credit Secondary School. It is a mobile career assessment and information centre and it is staffed by a career assessment officer and three technicians. They work with and enhance existing guidance programs that are offered in the secondary schools. The cost for this 40-foot by 12-foot trailer is jointly shared by the Peel Board of Education, the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission and corporate donations.

I recently toured the Careermobile during its three-week visit to Erindale Secondary School and was very impressed with the available computer, video and print materials. These materials include information on over 1,000 different occupations, education and training programs, job search skills and nontraditional career options, as well as student job opportunities. I feel it is a very worthwhile and innovative program which will assist our students in determining their future goals.

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Today there are so many various avenues to research for a career decision and very often our students do not have the facilities to investigate all these avenues as well as the opportunity to sit down with a counsellor to help them.

During a three-week stay at various schools throughout Peel, the Careermobile is open for the community as well as the student population.

HOUSE PRICES

Mr. Laughren: Last week in this House, I asked the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) which community had the fastest-escalating house prices and he tried to tell me it was not Brantford. As a matter of fact, it was indeed Brantford. I used the figures from the Canadian Real Estate Association. The Treasurer used the numbers for the months from January to December; we used December to December, 12 months, which seems to me a more logical way to go about it.

Even when we used the Treasurer’s way of figuring it out, it proves out that Brantford had higher price increases as a percentage than Toronto did last year, so somebody in the Ministry of Treasury and Economics has made a mistake. The fact is that house prices are rising too fast all across the province.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I hope members will be interested to know that Ontario Hydro successfully floated a $500-million bond issue in Europe today. The 10-year issue was led by Merrill Lynch Canada Inc. and is the first to be completed by Hydro in Europe since 1984. It carries a coupon of 10 7/8 per cent. Costs associated with this financing are approximately one quarter of one per cent lower than those for an equivalent financing transaction in Canada and constitute a saving of $1.25 million per year. Ontario Hydro’s finance program for 1989 totals approximately $3.2 billion.

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

Hon. Ms. Oddie Munro: Today marks the start of Ontario Heritage Week 1989. This is a time to celebrate the heritage preserved and reflected in such things as buildings and landmarks.

Beyond these landmarks of the past, we also want to focus on other aspects of our heritage, such as music, folklore and traditions. This broader emphasis reflects the rich diversity of the province’s multicultural tradition. This broader perspective is also the basis of the review of the Ontario Heritage Act that is under way.

The importance of the preservation and wise use of our vast cultural heritage, in all the forms in which it exists, has never been more evident. In a rapidly changing world, a sense of who we are as Ontarians is surely critical to the future.

On the occasion of Ontario Heritage Week, I would especially like to thank the hundreds of thousands of Ontarians in communities across the province who have made the preservation of our heritage their responsibility. I congratulate them for their significant achievements.

RESPONSES

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

Miss Martel: In anticipation of the statement that I knew was going to be made by the Minister of Culture and Communications (Ms. Oddie Munro), I do have a response on behalf of our party. We are pleased to join with the minister in celebrating Ontario Heritage Week. This is a good opportunity for all Ontarians to discover, celebrate and showcase our history and our roots.

Heritage groups will be demonstrating the work they do in various locations throughout the province during this week. Highlighting these activities will serve to make Ontarians aware that who we are today is very much a function of our past, who our ancestors were and how their contributions helped to shape this province.

I hope all members will join their constituents in celebrating the rich and diverse cultural and historical heritage of their communities and of the province as a whole. While our multiculturalism brings unique opportunities for enrichment, the same diversity also presents challenges which we can better face with increased understanding, acceptance and tolerance.

I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the thousands of individuals who work so hard to organize the activities in each community during this special week and throughout the year. Among the thousands of individuals and organizations involved in heritage activities are, of course, the Ontario Heritage Foundation, historical societies, local architectural advisory committees, museums, libraries, archives, schools, etc. These people all deserve our thanks and appreciation, for without their efforts and dedication such events would not be possible.

The preservation of our heritage, both natural and historic, is vitally important. Let all of us keep our heritage and our history alive and vibrant and enjoy this week both as Ontarians and Canadians.

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

Mr. B. Rae: I would have thought that in the interests of accuracy, the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) might have wanted to point out that when he was the critic for the opposition he often used to point out that in borrowing overseas you might save a little bit on the interest from time to time, but there is also the factor of the changes and fluctuations in the value of the dollar as opposed to the value of the currency in which money is being borrowed.

The Treasurer is then telling us that this leads to an automatic saving of $1.25 million per year. I would have thought that in the interests of accuracy he might have, at least, added the sentence, “This will, of course, depend on what happens to the dollar and on what happens to other currencies.” On these decisions to float in other markets, I would have thought that might have been something that would have been added to the Treasurer’s statement.

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

Mr. McLean: I want to respond briefly to the announcement with regard to Ontario Heritage Week. I, for one, want to compliment the minister for making this statement today. I, for many years, have known the value of reflecting on our history and on our past. When you travel around the world and in this great province, you are always looking at a heritage that we should not forget.

There are so many things that I know the minister has funded over the past period of time that are so important to Ontario in maintaining the heritage that we have. We must protect our present and look at the past and our future. When we look at some of the train stations in this province being torn down and being remodelled to be bus stations and for other purposes, I think it is great that we are maintaining that for the future. We also look at tourism and for people to come here and see what we have in our heritage. That part is very, very important.

I think it is interesting. We will be watching the review with regards to the legislation. There is a lot of history in many of our municipalities. I would hope there would be some help for these municipalities in putting a profile together so that we can maintain and look back at our heritage and see where we have all come from and how we can make Ontario a better place to live.

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

Mr. Runciman: I have a brief response to the announcement regarding the Ontario Hydro bond issue. I am just wondering about the fiscal responsibility of Ontario Hydro, which we so frequently like to talk about and which the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) and his leader used to talk about a number of years ago but certainly do not pursue with any vigour of late.

I want to talk about something that I made the Minister of Energy (Mr. Wong) aware of some time ago in respect of the windfall, if you will, to Ontario Hydro in respect of the value of the Canadian dollar over the past year. In its budget, Ontario Hydro had looked at, I think, about a 75-cent Canadian dollar. The dollar, as we all know, was of significantly higher value than that and this represented a windfall in the neighbourhood of $150 million to $200 million for Ontario Hydro in the last fiscal year.

I suggested, along with a number of others in the province, that this be applied to a one-time payment to reduce the significant Ontario Hydro debt, part of which is a United States debt which is in excess of $9 billion, as the Treasurer will be well aware. To my knowledge, that has not been done. Hopefully, consideration is still being given to that initiative, but we are not optimistic.

The study carried out by Cresap indicated that there are 2,500 redundant managerial employees in just one sector of Ontario Hydro’s operations. What is the response of Ontario Hydro to that? “Well, we’re going to look at keeping these individuals on through a period of time and finding opportunities for them within Ontario Hydro.”

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Shortly on the heels of that announcement, we have another indication from Ontario Hydro that it is going to build an approximately $200-million edifice in North York to house -- guess how many Ontario Hydro employees? -- 2,500, exactly the number identified by Cresap as being redundant: an edifice in North York which is nothing less than a monument to excess.

This Treasurer and government try to convince us that they are fiscally responsible on frequent occasions. We have to wonder about that; but we certainly do not have to wonder about it in respect to Ontario Hydro. It is not the hallmark of that crown corporation, and this government, despite all its rhetoric, has done nothing to change that.

ORAL QUESTIONS

PROPERTY SPECULATION

Mr. B. Rae: I would like to address a question to the Treasurer, who has been musing over the last few days outside this place both to the Toronto Sun editorial board and, indeed, to a great many reporters on Thursday about the wisdom of imposing a land transfer tax increase on every single purchaser of real estate in the province; in fact, he is talking about doubling the land transfer tax.

Since the doubling of that tax would have the effect of increasing the average resale price of somewhere over $250,000, increasing the cost to that purchaser by a more than $2,000 tax ripoff, can the Treasurer tell us what possible justice or merit there is in even contemplating a tax increase that will not deal with speculation, that will not focus attention on the real crux of the problem, but will instead punish absolutely every person who is in the housing market?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I have never given even a passing thought to doubling the land transfer tax. I do not intend to do it, and the question is therefore irrelevant.

Mr. B. Rae: I wonder if the Treasurer might tell us then what was on his mind when the Toronto Star on Friday, February 17, reported he said, “an increased land transfer tax could slow speculators who purchase homes and flip them for a profit.”

If the Treasurer says he does not have something on his mind, perhaps he would do us the justice of saying what he does have in mind. Again, why is he focusing attention on a land transfer tax when that is a tax that applies to every single purchaser across the board, instead of focusing attention on a tax on land speculation which will deal directly with speculators in the marketplace and not punish everybody and treat all the people out there who are trying to buy a house as if they are some kind of speculators?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I think the honourable member is aware that there are other problems in the development of the general community of Ontario that perhaps he has not brought his mind to bear on; the necessity, for example, of providing infrastructure, sewers, water and so on that the province is providing assistance to municipalities on. This is funded in large measure by the amount of money collected on the land transfer tax.

The honourable member knows that we do not earmark those revenues, but he is aware that as these properties are sold, it provides the province by way of the consolidated revenue fund with the resources to meet those requirements based on these growing communities.

Mr. B. Rae: I am asking the Treasurer to focus specifically on the question I have asked him, not some other question which he might have hoped somebody else might ask him. He has a choice as to what kind of tax he is going to impose or not impose to deal with this question of speculation.

Just to ask the Treasurer to cast his mind to one specific example: He will know that the federal Tory government sold a 17-hectare site at Wilson Heights Boulevard to a company for $14.28 million and, two months later, this company resold the property for $19.8 million, which is a profit of $5.5 million.

The land transfer tax on this original sale was $212,675; if doubled, it would take it up that much higher. But whether doubled or not, the company is still left with over $5 million in speculative gain, gain that is pure speculation, a quick flip of property which was previously public property, the price of which then escalates and goes right through the market as it is flipped again and again.

I want to ask the Treasurer one more time: Why does he not deal with that situation by imposing a very tough and rigorous speculation tax, rather than contemplating increases in the land transfer tax which simply punishes absolutely everybody who decides to try to get in on buying a house? Why does he not choose the effective method?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I am not convinced that the land speculation tax is as effective as the honourable member would point out. However, I did say in response to the question asked by his financial critic, that the Treasury is looking at alternatives in land taxation that may or may not be useful. The fact that the member raises it every day is interesting, but we are reviewing it and we are examining what the effects on the community might be.

It appears to me that the governments in the past have moved in with draconian solutions at about the most inappropriate point in the market. My own view, having lived through this -- from the opposition’s point of view particularly -- was that the land speculation tax, in my judgement, was not effective in the trial that it had here in this jurisdiction.

Mr. Speaker: New question.

Mr. B. Rae: Two years ago the Treasurer was telling us that the heat had gone out of the market.

Mr. Speaker: Question to which minister?

DRUG ABUSE

Mr. B. Rae: In the absence of the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan), I would like to address a question to the Premier. Reports from police, social workers and people who are working on the street provide us with a most disturbing picture of the dramatic increase in the use of cocaine and, in particular, the use of the drug which is a cocaine derivative known as crack.

I want to ask the Premier why it is that, given this dramatic increase in the use of cocaine and crack and a dramatic fall in the price of both cocaine and crack, there has been really no change and no improvement at all in the provincial facilities for the treatment of people who clearly now have an addiction problem with both these drugs?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I appreciate the honourable member’s anecdotal information in that regard. As he knows, we have a very large facility funded by the government, the Addiction Research Foundation; and a number of other programs have been instituted to try to address this problem, both at an enforcement level and at an educational and medical level.

I can tell my honourable friend that the need for facilities for rehabilitation is one of those matters that is constantly under review. Should the government deem that to be necessary, obviously that is what will be done.

Mr. B. Rae: In the report that the Metropolitan Toronto Police made to the Metropolitan Toronto Police Commission last year, in their request for more help and more police officers to deal with this problem, they said there were 24 deaths in Ontario in 1987, 12 of them in Metropolitan Toronto, which in their view were directly caused by cocaine. In 13 other deaths, cocaine was found in the systems of the deceased, along with other drugs. In 17 other deaths in Ontario, cocaine was found in the bloodstream of persons who died from other causes, that is to say stabbing or shooting.

This is not entirely anecdotal evidence. It is evidence that is very firm on the street as to the large number of people who are affected and who, in fact, are killed by the use of these drugs and by crimes associated with these drugs.

The Premier referred to the Addiction Research Foundation. The Addiction Research Foundation has 10 inpatient beds for all youth addiction, that is to say drugs and alcohol. When the Premier talks about the Addiction Research Foundation, is he telling us that he thinks 10 inpatient beds for kids who are addicted to all drugs and alcohol, all those drug problems, are in any sense adequate, even for beginning to touch on this problem?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: Certainly that is not the full extent of the government’s programs. Some very helpful person under the gallery just handed me a note that may interest my honourable friend:

“The ministry currently is spending $35.6 million on 149 community-based programs, including detox centres, day and residential treatment and evaluation and counselling services, funds the Addiction Research Foundation with an annual operating budget of $32 million, the Donwood Institute and public and psychiatric hospitals. Annual funding for mental health and addiction programs has increased 50 per cent since last year.”

That being said -- and those are some facts for my honourable friend’s consideration -- I am not trying to argue that that is enough; we are always looking at ways to upgrade our programming to assist people.

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Mr. B. Rae: While the Premier is getting his information from under the gallery, perhaps he could answer these questions. His own report from the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay (Mr. Black) showed that in 1987 nearly 1,000 Ontarians were treated outside the province for drug-related medical conditions, and even the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay referred in his report to the terrible shortage of services for young people and the terrible shortage of services in northern Ontario, two specific problems which he said cried out for action.

We are dealing now with a crisis affecting our young people in this province: waiting lists; kids having to go down to the United States; kids going into programs which their families cannot afford and which are not adequately subsidized by the Ontario health insurance plan; costs to families which are running in the thousands of dollars in terms of this treatment. There is a crisis of people who are not getting treatment because the services simply are not available in this province.

Does the Premier recognize the severity of this crisis and what is he prepared to do to see that we begin to get it under control in terms of treatment?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I think the honourable member would say that this government is indeed concerned and has started to implement action as a result of the Black task force.

Mr. B. Rae: Nothing. You have not made one announcement.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: That just is not correct. We have a wide range of programs that are available in a residential community-based area. That is the thrust, as the member knows, of health care delivery of this government and this province. That being said, these matters are constantly under review; if we can improve them, we will.

USE OF MINISTRY AFFILIATION

Mr. Harris: I wonder if the Minister of Housing can tell us why her ministry has given permission for a member of her ministry staff to use his job with the Ministry of Housing to run a private association with the aim of promoting the use of Smart card technology.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am sorry. I would like more information about the question that was raised by the member and I will look into it.

Mr. Harris: I am not surprised that she does not know what is going on over in her ministry. That has been demonstrated time and again.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Harris: I have here a business card of Lorne M. Boates, CA, founding president of the Advanced Card Technology Association of Canada. The address is third floor, 777 Bay Street, and the phone number is the ministry phone number. The minister will know that address is the Ministry of Housing address. The phone number is, indeed, the ministry phone number. Yet nowhere on that card does it mention or say anything about the Ministry of Housing.

I wonder if the minister can tell us how she or her deputy would allow a civil servant, whose salary is paid for by the people of Ontario, whose office, phone number and fax number are paid for by the people of Ontario, to work on behalf of a private association which has nothing to do with his housing responsibilities or his responsibilities with her ministry.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: As the member has indicated, this is a matter that I am pleased to investigate. As soon as I have an answer, I will bring it to the House.

Mr. Harris: When the minister is investigating, she might also want to investigate not only his involvement but also the fact that the card says he is the founding president of this organization that is clearly intended not to study the possible use of Smart cards but to promote their use to the government of Ontario, and in all likelihood to the Ministry of Housing of which he is now an employee, at some time in the future.

I also would refer the minister to minutes of the last meeting of the Advanced Card Technology Association of Canada. It was indicated there in the minutes of this meeting that the Ministry of Housing would be prepared to pay the costs of the incorporation of this association. Can the minister explain the reasoning for her ministry to be paying for the incorporation costs of a private organization that has nothing to do with the work of her ministry?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I must say I admire the member opposite’s capacity to spin one question into three. I will answer as I answered before. I am pleased to look into the matter, and anything that needs to be said about it I will bring back to the House.

RAPE CRISIS CENTRES

Mr. Jackson: My question is to the Solicitor General. On Thursday of this week, the minister will meet with representatives from several of Ontario’s rape crisis centres. As she will recall, last year, based on several questions we raised in this House and based on the closure of two centres and the potential closing of four others, she agreed to review the funding policies for staffing in these centres. In fact, as we know, she only modified the policy, but in reality the access to staffing moneys is as strict as ever in Ontario.

The minister also announced last year that she would request five-year plans in order to stabilize funding in Ontario rape crisis centres. She has now informed these groups that they must come up with new, one-year-only plans.

Could the minister please tell the House why she is backpedalling from her commitment to provide staff funding, as the Liberal government in Quebec does, and why she is backpedalling from a five-year stabilization plan for Ontario’s rape crisis centres?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I am indeed happy that I will be meeting with these groups this week, as we have a very major undertaking to look at. During the summer months, I went and visited at least half of the rape crisis centres around this province and was interested to realize as I travelled around that they have very much changed their mandate.

Whereas originally they were addressing primarily victims of recent sexual assault, which is why, I suppose, they were placed under the Ministry of the Solicitor General, in fact a great deal of their time and energy is now devoted to the problem of incest recovery. This is a growing and very demanding new mandate and one that I, with them, will be examining.

It is not what was originally under their planning process, and it must be looked at in new and creative ways, because many communities in this province have no services at all, while indeed the organizations that do exist could all have twice the money and still be short-staffed.

Mr. Jackson: The minister knows that she has postponed these meetings with the centres on four separate occasions. Some have cynically suggested that it was because she had hoped the House was going to prorogue two weeks ago.

The fact of the matter is, and I raised this question with her a month ago in this House, that several centres in Ontario are actually going to run out of money. Several ran out of money this weekend, several more are slated for running out of funds this coming weekend, and they still have to maintain their operations for a further two-month period.

What does the minister suggest these centres do? Should they close their doors? How does she propose that they cope, when she is on record as saying she will advance no dollars in order for them to keep their doors open? What does she propose that these centres do?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I do not know where I am on record as saying I will advance no dollars. In fact, I have advanced money on a regular basis, over and above what was in the original ministry budget, to make sure that no doors were closed.

Indeed, we have expended extra money to keep these centres open until we can work with them to put in a long-term plan. In one sense, the funding is on a year-to-year basis, the same as all other such funding is on a year-to-year basis. There is no intention -- and they are aware of this -- that they will not be funded next year. They know they will be funded. The questions are will they be funded for new and different programs; will they be funded more than the rate of inflation and so on? Their funding is not in question, nor has any door closed.

Mr. Jackson: The minister knows that the numbers of calls are doubling and tripling. She knows that the mandate has broadened in terms of the amount of counselling and client load which these centres are being called upon to carry. She suggests that there are many facets to the problems of sexual assault that rape crisis centres have to cope with.

The minister will be aware that on December 15, 1988, Steven Bancroft Buchanan escaped from the cells beneath the old city hall. Buchanan had savagely raped three women and was subsequently recaptured. The minister will also be aware that New Zealand has a law which allows victims to request notification whenever a previous assailant has escaped custody, applied for a day pass or parole or otherwise been released.

Is the minister prepared to support a victim’s right-to-know law within areas of provincial jurisdiction?

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Hon. Mrs. Smith: The question ranges quite beyond the ministry I am in charge of in so far as it goes into the Ministry of the Attorney General and other ministries. Many of the matters the member has raised are under constant consideration. I will be dealing with them and other questions with the groups when I meet with them.

I am pleased to note the member acknowledges that the scope and demand for this service is increasing at such a great rate that it is almost impossible to visualize how we can service this area. This is why we look to them to come together with us for new and creative solutions, because as I say, even if we funded the existing centres to all of their needs, that would still leave the vast majority of the province with no service at all. We have to address it on a much broader and more general basis so that we can be creative and thoughtful in our approaches.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mr. Allen: I have a question to the Minister of Community and Social Services. On the weekend I was at the Federation of Women Teachers’ Associations of Ontario conference, Women and Poverty. Inescapably, as I attended workshops after plenary session, the question that kept arising and arising was not just poverty among women but poverty among children. The organization has become intensely concerned, as has group after group in Ontario, with the fact that somewhere in the order of 400,000 children in this province live in poverty. They have thrown themselves into the battle to secure some action from this government.

When group after group on the front line has come to the minister and his government with the problem of children in poverty, not just for months now but for years, why does he have to be dragged towards some kind of action on this crucial and fundamental question in Ontario’s social life?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: It is clearly stated in the Social Assistance Review Committee report that poverty has an impact on children well beyond their own families. It has an impact, as the teachers’ organization referred to, in the school system itself. The findings of Dr. Dan Offord for McMaster University in Hamilton suggested exactly the same thing, so that is known to us and that was one of the reasons we asked Judge Thomson to do the review.

I have indicated before, and I will indicate again, that the response to that review is under very serious consideration and within the next two to three months, probably less, a response will be given from the government.

Mr. Allen: Of course, the minister never commits himself fully to the first stage of the SARC report’s reforms.

I will remind him how severe the problem is in the light of an American study by the US Urban Institute which indicates that it is not just the poverty and children in general, but that Canada has the second-highest rate of children living in severe poverty. That puts it at the second-worst situation among western countries in that respect.

A recent study by an M. Smeeding for the Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics indicates those countries that have resolved this problem have done it because their programs for single women, sole-support mothers and children are much better in terms of government action.

Might I then ask the minister again why, when his government has in excess of $180 million in the high-tech fund and when the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) has just discovered that over $360 million he was not expecting is sitting in the tax accounts of the federal government waiting to be transferred, has this government not made a clear and unequivocal declaration that it will act fully and completely on the first phase of the Thomson reforms, and at least give some hope to those families and children and teachers and others on the front line that there will be real action on children in poverty in Ontario in the very near future?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Like the honourable member, I too was very concerned to hear about the comparative position of Canada with the other western nations of the world. I believe we were second only to the United States at the bottom end of the scale.

However, let me refer to the $300 million the honourable member indicated. Naturally, he would not be at all surprised that when I found out about that I had a little discussion with the Treasurer, and he pointed out to me clearly that this was a one-time flow of money from the federal government and we could not count on that happening every year.

The honourable member will be as certain as I am that we want to be sure the kinds of money we need for this enhancement of social assistance to the parents of those children which then affects the children themselves, is going to flow every year from this point on, not just for one year. Therefore, I want more assurances than just that kind of money flowing from the federal government in order to enact this program over a long period of time, not just over a short period of time.

PROPOSED GRAVEL PIT

Mr. J. M. Johnson: My question is to the Minister of Agriculture and Food. As the minister is aware, the township of Puslinch in the county of Wellington is engaged in an Ontario Municipal Board hearing to defend its draft official plan, specifically its extractive industry policies and the preservation of farm land. Why did the ministry refuse to participate in this hearing?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: The honourable member knows it was his government that brought in the food land guidelines. The guidelines have never objected to developing or using land for aggregate purposes. The only thing is that there was never any mention made about extracting aggregate below the water level, so we have had to contend with that. Here again, as long as they are prepared to rehabilitate that land to the best of their ability, the guidelines would permit that type of thing.

We will be certain and we will be assured that there will be rehabilitation of that land wherever possible. That is the reason we have not appeared before the OMB.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: The minister knows you cannot rehabilitate below the water level. The University of Guelph, the leading agricultural college in Canada, is one of the participants in this OMB hearing as a proponent of having certain agricultural lands in the township of Puslinch designated to allow the extraction of sand and gravel. One would have thought the University of Guelph, dedicated as it is to achieving the best in agriculture, would not be taking this position.

Does the minister not understand that by failing to have his farm land preservation policy defended at this hearing, he is condoning the University of Guelph’s position and is sending a signal out to all Ontario that he has abandoned his ministry’s commitment to preserving agricultural land in this province?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: I disagree with that. We have to be realistic about this whole thing. We have to acknowledge the fact that various counties rely on gravel extraction for construction purposes and other purposes. Take a look at Essex; take a look at Kent. If the food land guidelines were to say there will be absolutely no extraction of gravel, then Essex and Kent would be in pretty dire straits when it comes to using that kind of aggregate for those purposes.

The same can be said in other areas of the province. The food land guidelines face reality, knowing that development of one kind or another has to take place on agricultural land. As I indicated, the food land guidelines also require that land be rehabilitated to its --

Mr. J. M. Johnson: You cannot rehabilitate it.

Hon. Mr. Riddell: Oh yes; we can rehabilitate a lot of that land. Sure, some of the land will not be rehabilitated, but we can move fill back into lands where gravel has been extracted under the water level and the rest of it can well be used for irrigation ponds to carry out some of the irrigation work that may be done in that area.

PUBLIC SECTOR PENSION PLANS

Mrs. Fawcett: My question is for the Treasurer. A number of teachers in my area have expressed concern about the management of their pension funds. Some members have said they would like the funds to be managed by the government. Others have wondered whether their funds could be better managed by their federation. Could the Treasurer advise this House whether this has been part of the negotiations with the federation and could he explain the thrust of these talks.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I thank the honourable member for notice of this question. It is certainly an important one since during the discussions with the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, our main proposal was for a joint trusteeship of the management of the teachers’ superannuation funds. This would have involved equal representation on behalf of the government and the teachers, with an impartial chairman.

Unfortunately, the teachers felt there should be final, binding and obligatory arbitration associated with this. It is my view that because in the funds the Treasurer must guarantee there is about $20 billion involved, passing this responsibility off to a third party as an arbitrator was not something I cared to recommend to my colleagues.

I would say, and I am glad to have a chance to make this specifically clear, that I hope the legislation we are presently preparing will have the alternatives right within it, that the teachers may opt for the trusteeship we have already offered, or if they feel it more appropriate to move right out of the public system and manage their own funds. This of course would mean that the government and the taxpayers would no longer have the heavy responsibility of guaranteeing the benefits.

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Mrs. Fawcett: I thank the Treasurer for that clarification. It has also been suggested by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union that pensions be negotiated as part of the total negotiated contract. Would the Treasurer please comment on this.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: The negotiability of pensions is something I really have no personal objection to as long as the taxpayers, as represented by the Treasurer and the government, can in the last analysis make a balance on whether or not the tax base can withstand the value of the benefits in the future. Once again, our discussions got into difficulties -- I guess that is the appropriate word -- on the basis of final, binding and compulsory arbitration. I simply repeat for the honourable member that since these funds would together accumulate to $20 billion, we felt the public interest had to be represented directly by the government and not handed off to a third party by way of arbitration.

ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE

Mr. Morin-Strom: I have a question for the Minister of Community and Social Services with regard to substance abuse problems being faced by young people in our province. The Addiction Research Foundation has reported that in Algoma, families of these young people cannot find proper treatment facilities, not only in Sault Ste. Marie but elsewhere in Ontario as well, particularly for children below the age of 16.

Will the minister give us his assurance that we are going to have programs established in Sault Ste. Marie and other residential treatment programs established in other communities across the province in order that the recommendation from the task force, from his own colleague the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay (Mr. Black) is met, that the ministry provide “a high priority to a co-operative effort to establish additional programs and services for adolescents and teenagers in Ontario at the earliest possible moment”? When will this happen?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: For children below the age of 16, our ministry does not at the present time, as the honourable member has pointed out, have a specific range of programs for substance abuse. Rather, we use the programs available through our children’s aid societies or through our children’s mental health centres.

The honourable member will be well aware that both of those services are presently available in Sault Ste. Marie. I might add that the children’s mental health centre in Sault Ste. Marie has undergone some very positive transformation over the last two or three years, and more and more of the community is making use of that service now that it is producing the results the community wants it to produce.

The honourable member is also correct that the Black report clearly indicated that in consultation with other ministries, particularly the Ministry of Health, our ministry should look at the possibility of specific programs for substance abuse as opposed to the more generic programs. That is under consideration at the present time.

Mr. Morin-Strom: Certainly, the minister must recognize that there is a very serious problem with the extent of the programs and services being provided by other agencies when we have a situation in a community such as Sault Ste. Marie where last year 38 local youths had to be referred to drug treatment programs in the United States, in cities such as Minneapolis, St. Louis and San Diego, at an average cost of $20,000 per child. The bill for these kinds of programs amounts to nearly $1 million just for youth in Sault Ste. Marie.

When is the minister going to come through with programs that allow these young people to be treated in their own community in a much more effective and efficient way by the government of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: As the honourable member is probably aware, the Premier (Mr. Peterson) has made it very clear to all ministries of government that are impacted by the Black recommendations, particularly the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and my own ministry, that we must come back to him directly with our proposals and plans to implement the recommendations of the Black report.

We have done that partially up to this point. The member is aware of the fact that the Ministry of Education has made some significant movements in that direction. The Ministry of Health and our ministry are presently co-operatively co-ordinating their response to it, because as the member knows, where significant treatment is involved our ministry has a lower capacity than the Ministry of Health. What is under consideration at the moment is whether this should be a joint effort and whether one or the other of us assumes full responsibility for it.

BEEF MARKETING

Mr. Villeneuve: My question is for the Minister of Agriculture and Food. In the minister’s recent announcement on the beef vote, eligible voters must have owned or raised a minimum of four head of cattle for at least 45 days during 1987 or 1988. I have been contacted by a young person who is currently a bona fide beef producer and recently got into the business, but did not own four head of cattle in 1988 for at least 45 days. Will this young person have the opportunity to vote, or what has the minister done to look after people recently involved in the beef business?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: The criteria have been established. If you did not own four head of cattle for a period of 45 days, either last year or the year before that, then you will not be considered an eligible voter.

Mr. Villeneuve: In the minister’s announcement on the same beef vote, one of the questions pertains to working towards a national supply management program. If a national program is not a realistic goal, and it may not be, how much extra income does the minister feel the agency or commission that regulates the sale of all cattle will put into producers’ pockets?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: That is really not for me to decide. I am sure that if the honourable member has cattle on his farm and is an eligible voter, he will be the one who will help make the decision whether there will be a beef commission and whether this beef commission will strive towards a national supply management system. That is what the voters out there will decide.

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

Mr. Offer: I have a question to the Minister of Skills Development. I have recently received a number of concerns from constituent electrical companies. Their concerns deal with the requirements, and in particular the ratio, of journeymen to apprentices under the Apprenticeship and Tradesmen’s Qualifications Act. I have been informed that there is an acute shortage of electricians at present in southern Ontario and I ask the minister what steps he is taking to address this problem, under apprenticeship, of the ratio of journeymen to apprentices.

Hon. Mr. Curling: The member addresses a concern many people have been writing to me about regarding the ratio of electricians’ apprentices. As the member knows, the active involvement of the construction industry over the past couple of years has caused a great demand on that profession. As the member is quite aware, the ratios are set by regulations. Any changes that are made to those regulations are done through a provincial advisory committee, which people make representation to. If such changes take place, we will look at it very carefully and adjust those ratios. At present, the ratio is one to three. For every journeyman there are three apprentices.

Mr. Offer: Regarding these concerns brought forward to the provincial advisory committee about the current ratio, can the minister give me some idea of the time period for which this committee will be looking at this issue of ratios under the apprenticeship act?

Hon. Mr. Curling: Maybe I turned the apprenticeship ratio around. It is one apprentice to three journeymen, if I can just correct the record. I thank the member for Scarborough West (Mr. R. F. Johnston) who seems to be on the ball in this respect. We have to be extremely careful that in the changing of these ratios we do not respond just to the moment where there is a demand, because the concern of the profession is that we may have a flood on the market itself.

To respond directly to the member’s question, as soon as we receive those reports from the provincial advisory committee we will look at them very seriously and make the necessary adjustment.

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FRENCH-LANGUAGE SERVICES

Miss Martel: I have a question for the minister responsible for francophone affairs concerning the French Language Services Act. The minister will know that during the estimates for his ministry I raised concerns that there had been very little information given to the general public concerning the act. I raised the concerns because it appeared to me there was a great deal of confusion around what the bill entailed, who would be responsible, who would be affected, etc.

Two weeks ago my office surveyed most of the ministry offices in Sudbury to determine how the act was impacting upon them. We found some very wide discrepancies in a number of areas: how it was determined that the act would be implemented in the ministry; how many -- if any -- other positions would require bilingual staff; what provisions there were for French-language training, etc.

Given all of this, I would like to ask the minister if he would commit himself to ensuring that all of the French-language co-ordinators for all of the ministries located in Sudbury would meet with the staff in Sudbury to go through the act and all of the questions arising out of it.

Hon. Mr. Grandmaître: I want to thank the member for showing so much interest in Bill 8. I know she is faced with some problems in her area, and the Office of Francophone Affairs and myself have always been willing to offer not only her but her party or any member of this House more help. But I would like to remind the honourable member that a significant number of initiatives have been created by the Office of Francophone Affairs through videos and brochures.

Every ministry has an implementation manual. Every regional caucus has been shown these implementation manuals and videos. I have even offered the member, at the time of the estimates, to visit her caucus personally with members of the Office of Francophone Affairs and provide her with all the necessary information so that every co-ordinator, every public servant, will have the same real information that she is looking for. Yes, I will provide the member with all of the help necessary to provide information to all civil servants.

Miss Martel: I think the minister is telling me that yes, he will direct all of the co-ordinators to meet with the staff in Sudbury. I certainly hope that is what he is saying because that is specifically what I am looking for.

Also, as a result of the work we did, one of the big concerns I have arises out of the fact that there are some very different mechanisms for providing French-language training throughout each of the ministries. Because each ministry is responsible for providing French-language training to its staff, there is a wide discrepancy between who is receiving training and just how adequate that is. As a consequence, would the minister seriously consider developing a general policy which would apply to all ministries, so that all staff would have equal and adequate access to French-language training?

Hon. Mr. Grandmaître: An interministerial committee was set up some months ago and it is now working on a kit, on a program that will, as the member says, provide everybody with the same information. As the member knows, co-ordinators from every ministry have different ways of delivering the same information, but some co-ordinators do not communicate as well as others. It is our responsibility to see that all co-ordinators receive and transfer this information and we will provide the member with all the assistance needed, instead of doing what some members of the Conservative government are doing at the present time -- using the press to misinform the public generally about Bill 8. At least the member stands up and asks a very perfect, legal question.

FUNDING OF SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCIES

Mr. Villeneuve: I have a question of the Minister of Community and Social Services. The minister is aware of a number of strikes involving local associations for the mentally retarded.

Can I get the minister’s attention?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Villeneuve: There are a number of strikes in the area involving associations for the mentally retarded. Sudbury, North Bay, Dufferin county and Dundas county in my own riding are affected. The minister should know that the associations and union locals involved agree that the problem is one of inadequate transfer payments. The strike is on now in Dundas county.

Does he agree that strikes are most disruptive to the mentally handicapped and service will suffer for as long as local agencies are unable to compete with the pay and benefits given to ministry staff and other public service employees?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Where a strike is in progress, arrangements have been made by the administration and management people of that organization to continue those necessary services that simply cannot be withdrawn; for example. residential services. Day programming, however, is stopped and the young people continue to reside with their own parents in that situation.

I do not like that any more than the honourable member does. The difficulty, however, is that the amount of money that we can flow to the agencies is roughly in the neighbourhood of the inflation rate, 4.5 or five per cent, as the case may be.

The individual agencies then have to decide how they are going to allocate that money for a range of services. Obviously, the biggest bill they have to pay is their salary bill, and that restricts them somewhat: I certainly agree with that. We constantly try to flow them as much money as we possibly can. It is not always what they would like to have.

Mr. Villeneuve: The minister realizes that a percentage across the board just compounds the problem. It does not solve anything. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer.

The starting salary, for instance, at the Rideau Regional Centre is $12.84 an hour. In Dundas county, after three years. a worker receives $9.50 an hour. How can the minister justify the withholding of funds to equalize pay levels across Ontario? At the very least, try to improve the transfer payments so some of the associations that are receiving the lowest salaries get looked after in a slightly better way than the rest of the province.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Over the last couple of years, we have reversed the ratio of the total number of resources going to institutions compared to those going to community agencies. About a year and a half ago we reached the point where more than 50 per cent of all the money in my budget for the developmentally disabled is now going into community settings versus institutional settings. I do not know what the figure is right now -- we have not done the final analysis for this current fiscal year -- but I am sure it is going to be that much more again.

As the honourable member knows, we are gradually and increasingly moving more people out of facilities and back into the community and providing community services so that people who already live in the community do not have to go into an institution. As we do that, we are able to move more and more of those resources back into the community, and as that process continues we will have more resources and we will be able to improve and to boost and to enhance the services we are offering at the community level.

TEACHERS OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

Mr. Mahoney: My question is to the Minister of Education. I have recently received, and I am sure a number of members of this House have also received, correspondence from English-as-a-second-language teachers who are concerned that the regulations in Bill 70 will create two streams of teachers -- first, that of continuing education teachers certified to teach credit courses; and second, continuing education instructors who teach noncredit courses -- and that experienced English-as-a-second-language instructors in adult programs particularly will be displaced by those holding the Ontario teachers’ certificate.

Could the minister please explain how Bill 70 will affect the current provisions regarding qualifications for teaching English-as-a-second-language programs?

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Hon. Mr. Ward: The member will know, as will all members, that Bill 70 has been debated in this House, it has received second reading and I would expect it will shortly receive royal assent.

The purpose of Bill 70 was to create a contract for continuing education teachers. Prior to the establishment of this legislation, all certified teachers in the province could either have a permanent contract or a probationary contract. Those teachers who taught only continuing education classes were not being provided the opportunity for either one of these contract options.

Bill 70 has created a third form of contract for continuing education teachers. The legislation does not change any of the other existing provisions. A continuing education teacher of a credit course will, of course, still require a teaching certificate and it will be only those instructors who teach noncredit continuing education courses who will not require a teaching certificate.

Mr. Mahoney: I guess the letters have not reached the members of the opposition. They do not think this is a serious concern but I can assure them that it is to a number of my constituents. The Teachers of English as a Second Language Association of Ontario has submitted recommendations to the ministry which outline a request for a special provision that would allow experienced ESL instructors to qualify for OTC certification, which would then permit them to be classified as continuing education teachers.

Could the minister tell us what his ministry is doing with regard to the recommendations of this association?

Hon. Mr. Ward: I am very much aware, of course, of the concerns being expressed by the Teachers of English as a Second Language Association of Ontario. As I indicated in the initial response, I do not believe that the legislation established under Bill 70 will have any detrimental impact. I think the issue is very much one of certification. The professional development branch of my ministry is examining a wide variety of issues as they relate to the certification process.

In dealing with those issues, we have widespread consultation with both the Ontario Teachers’ Federation and the Teachers of English as a Second Language Association of Ontario. I am sure their concerns will be fully aired in making determinations as to future regulations. Of course, my ministry will be very sensitive to the needs of all groups.

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

Mr. Mackenzie: I have a question for the Minister of Labour. The minister was over in Hamilton for an opening and some other events over the weekend. Following his visit, I had a call that I must confess disturbed me a little bit. It was from some of the injured workers who did some lobbying of the minister while he was in Hamilton.

One of the questions they were asking him was why everybody is not going to be allowed to appear before the committee that is looking into Bill 162, and they mentioned some of the delays in the hearings.

The minister, according to the injured workers who called me, told them he had nothing to do with that at all; if they had any concern they should be contacting the committee and that it arranged its own business. He also made what I thought was an uncalled-for and rather strange comment: that they might also be interested in knowing that the chairman of that committee was a New Democrat, the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren).

Can the minister tell us if he has been quoted correctly by these injured workers?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I am glad the member for Hamilton East brought us back, during this question period, to last Friday in Hamilton, because he and I participated Friday afternoon in what I thought was a rather historic event: the opening of an occupational health and safety clinic in that community that I think is really going to make a difference to the working people of that community and be of great assistance to workers from the Hamilton-Niagara area.

He is absolutely right. The member for Nickel Belt is the chairman of the standing committee on resources development and he is doing a great job. The chair of that committee, along with the committee members, determines the schedule for the hearings and it is inappropriate for me to take on the responsibility of determining the timetable for the hearings under Bill 162.

I think the member for Hamilton East would agree that any interference by me as to the scheduling of those who want to appear before the committee would he entirely inappropriate and that if people have concerns about the schedules, they ought to contact either the chairman or the clerk of the committee. That would be the appropriate step, so I was correctly quoted.

Mr. Mackenzie: I am pleased that the minister was honest enough to admit that is exactly what he said to these workers. I would ask him why the cheap shot, because is it not also true that when we tried to move that committee so that it could hear all of these people, it was the six Liberal members on that committee who voted solidly to deny us that right and it was the minister’s executive assistant who was running up and down the line telling them what to do in the committee hearings?

That was a cheap shot concerning the chairman of that committee, and the minister knows it. Let me tell him the workers know it as well.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Now we are getting into patent nonsense from the member for Hamilton East. I will tell my friend from Hamilton East that I do not think the member for Nickel Belt is embarrassed about being a New Democrat, and I do not think he is embarrassed about being the chairman of that committee either. I think he is proud of both of his marvellous characteristics.

Several weeks ago the standing committee on resources development determined that it would hold some six weeks of public hearings, long before the events of a few days ago that the member for Hamilton East describes. It decided, after due deliberation, that it would hold six weeks of public hearings. I am glad that it provided that much time.

The events of last Wednesday were to the effect that the committee should throw away its agenda -- and I think it is outrageous for that to be suggested -- and that it should just go on having hearings until every single person who wants to have an opportunity to make an oral submission be heard. If my friend the member for Hamilton East can show me one occasion in this House where a standing committee -- and I know, Mr. Speaker, I am taking a long time -- decided to have hearings until every single deputant was heard, then I will be terribly surprised.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The member for Leeds-Grenville is waiting very patiently.

LONG-TERM PLANNING

Mr. Runciman: My question is for the Treasurer. It deals with a demographic study that his ministry released a couple of weeks ago -- I believe it was his ministry -- indicating that the population of Ontario would increase by approximately three million people by the year 2011, believe.

I am just wondering if the government has any concerns with respect to that projected population growth, its impact on the province and various regions of the province. If so, what kind of long-term planning is it involved in?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: The office of economic policy releases that demographic study every year and it forms the basis of whatever long-range planning occurs. The honourable member is aware that we also make an economic projection year by year, the so-called grey book, which was presented to the House in December just passed, giving us the basis of the economic changes for any plans that we bring forward during that year.

I cannot tell the honourable member that I have reached any conclusions about what the projections are to the year 2011. Although I certainly hope and expect to be assisting the government of the day with its economic policy, I have not got around to any definitive recommendations in that connection at this time.

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Mr. Runciman: Perhaps that response should be cause for concern in some quarters. If we take a look at the current problems that the government is facing with respect to health care, education, the consumption of prime farm land, congestion in our major urban areas, waste disposal problems, increases in terms of street crime, housing prices in Metropolitan Toronto and other areas of southwestern Ontario, traffic problems which we are all familiar with, highway infrastructure concerns, I wonder if it would not be prudent for the government to consider perhaps a royal commission to engage in long-term planning with respect to population growth in this province, measuring its impact on a variety of services we have come to take for granted that now are under some severe strain, and perhaps even proposing targets for this province which we could work towards achieving.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I think the member is aware that the ministries of the government are in a planning mode at all times. Our responsibility as ministers is to see that we make projections by way of budget and development that are going to meet the needs of the community.

I think it is quite possible, particularly from the honourable member’s point of view, to be depressed about the future; perhaps he has every reason to feel so depressed. But when we step back from the immediate problems of the day and see what has been accomplished in the past by the honourable member’s colleagues and also see the quality of life we have achieved here, with the provision of opportunities for ourselves and our children by way of good education, by way of the improvements of the environment and opportunities on a very broad basis, we feel nothing but optimism as we look to the future. That probably is the basic difference between our party and his.

PETITIONS

NATUROPATHY

Mr. Kanter: I have a petition on the subject of naturopathy, signed by some 20 or 21 people who attend a practitioner in my riding. The petition reads as follows:

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

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

“Whereas it is my constitutional right to have available and to choose the health care system of my preference;

“And whereas naturopathy has had self-governing status in Ontario for more than 42 years;

“We petition the Ontario Legislature to call on the government to introduce legislation that would guarantee naturopaths the right to practise their art and science to the fullest without prejudice or harassment.”

I have attached my name to the petition, and I will now submit it to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. There are a number of members who would like to present petitions if they could be heard.

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION

Mr. Tatham: I have a petition which reads as follows:

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

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

“We request the government of the province of Ontario to recommence negotiations and direct the parties to the negotiation process to work towards a reform of pension arrangements which will serve the legitimate needs of both the government of Ontario and the teachers of this province. As Ontario educators, with full participation in the teachers’ superannuation plan, we have a direct and vital interest in these negotiations with respect to both our current and continuing status as contributors, and to our retirement security.”

It is signed by 230 people and I have also affixed my signature.

MOTIONS

ESTIMATES

Hon. Mr. Conway moves that the standing committee on social development consider the estimates of the Ministry of Education before the estimates of the Office responsible for Women’s Issues and that the estimates of the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations be transferred from the standing committee on administration of justice to the standing committee on general government, to be considered there before the supplementary estimates of the Ministry of the Environment.

Motion agreed to.

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

Hon. Mr. Conway moves that Mr. Ferraro and Mr. Smith, and Mr. Black and Mr. Elliot exchange places respectively in the order of precedence for private members’ public business and that, notwithstanding standing order 71(h), the requirement for notice be waived with respect to ballot items 65 and 66.

Mr. Harris: I would like to take just a couple of moments to talk about this motion. This type of motion has come forward from this government on a very regular weekly basis. There has been a sense among House leaders that private members’ business is for the private members and that in spite of the rules and regulations that are there, which I point out are there for a good reason, we would, none the less, attempt to accommodate private members’ wishes as best we could when changes come forward.

Normally it has been that a member wanted to debate his bill and perhaps because events have overtaken the necessity or urgency of that bill or motion, he has to change it, or through sickness or illness or some other unforeseen event the member is away. Then we allow members to exchange places and we have always done that.

The motion deals with standing order 71(h). It says, “At least two weeks’ notice must be given for any item to be considered in the private members’ time and all bills to be debated must be introduced or notices of resolutions tabled not later than the Tuesday of the second week prior to the week in which the item is to be debated.”

The reason for this is to alert the critics of all parties, and indeed to alert the caucuses of all three parties that “this is the motion or bill that I wish to have debated.” I think all members require some time to take a look at it, to decide whether they support it or not, do a little research and contact the various interest groups that may be interested in that particular resolution.

From time to time, we have waived these notice periods for all caucuses: some in my caucus, some in the New Democratic Party, some in the Liberal caucus. We do so most generously, I believe, in the very spirit of nonpartisanship, on behalf of the private members themselves, regardless of which party they come from.

However, time after time now, for a period of the last five or six weeks, we have seen this motion come forward consistently at this particular time, and always on behalf of the Liberal caucus and the Liberal members. I suggest that this is an example, particularly when we look at the actual content of the motions.

They appear to be not so much motions that members would normally come for and that they would be interested in, but motions that are developed in the ministries and handed to a member. They say: “Please move this. It says what a great job I and my ministry and our government are doing in an area.”

I guess every once in a while a government likes to have somebody take some time and do that, although I find it strange that a private member would use up the one opportunity he or she may have every two or three years to really stand for something and be known for something, and use it in such a partisan way. None the less, that is what has happened.

I think we are seeing that this government is really, truly devoid of any and all direction in the front bench, as well as now in the back bench. Recently, a management consulting firm released a report that suggested that the government lacked any vision at all, all the way up through to the Office of the Premier. It seems that the government back benches are also lacking in ideas and concerns.

Last week, my colleague the member for Simcoe West (Mr. McCague) pointed out during private members’ time that one hour of valuable House time was wasted because none of over 30 Liberal backbenchers left with outstanding ballot items was prepared to proceed last Thursday, so only one ballot item was done instead of two.

I wish to reiterate my commitment to try to accommodate the government so that we may get on with the business of the House that is apparently so important that we are still sitting here at the end of February to try to clean up business that is normally attempted to be done by the end of December, which was two months ago. But I have to ask myself if the compromises that our party and the New Democratic Party have made and continue to make are really of any value in light of this particular motion.

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I suggest that perhaps the answer is: I think not. The compromises we are making do not appear to be helping the government find any sense of direction. Private members’ business should not be punished for the clumsiness of this government nor for its lack of vision or direction, this occasion today being another fine example.

Our party will allow this motion to go ahead. We will have to look at two different motions and the ones we had planned and started to caucus last week. We will recaucus the two new ones this week and will attempt, in the few days available to us, to be ready to participate in a meaningful way this Thursday.

I think it is fair for me to point out that the government House leader and the whip may want to take a look at what is happening among their backbenchers, particularly at a time when one would think that they must at least suspect that there are probably 10 to 15 cabinet vacancies that will occur, if not immediately, then certainly in this next year.

This group, collectively, might want to be better prepared; might want to demonstrate a commitment to a cause or a concern and not be whipped around by the current administration, which appears to be shoving these things at them and saying: “Look, we are in serious trouble here. Please do this instead of what you might be interested in.”

Once again, we will support the motion, but I thought it was important that I get those few comments on the record.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I have just a couple of brief comments. First of all, I want to indicate that I support the comments that have been made by the House leader for the Conservative Party. I think these types of motions have been occurring too often -- perhaps on occasion they have also happened with opposition parties -- and I think that we are going to have to make sure that all members take responsibility for upgrading the importance of private members’ public business in this House.

I think over the last couple of years, especially since private members’ public business has been switched to Thursday morning, it has not been receiving the attention it did in the past, or the attention of the individual members. The turnout for votes at private members’ time is particularly disappointing. Very few members, especially members from the government, attend to vote on these important matters.

But I think that this motion in particular is a further diminishing of the importance of private members’ public business. The fact of the matter is that the Liberal government and its backbenchers did not expect that the Legislature would be in session at this time. As a result, they did not give any planning to private members’ time.

I do not think it is fair to the opposition members and other members who want to participate in these debates, since there is no real opportunity to research them and therefore little opportunity to have real, meaningful debate in the Legislature.

I also think it is important to note that there are two opposition members who are on the list who are ready, willing and wanting to debate private members’ ballot items. The new member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Kormos) and the Conservative member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham), I am sure, would like to debate private members’ resolutions. They are on the list but they are at the bottom of the list because they were elected in by-elections.

If the government members cannot come up with ballot items to debate on time, I wish the government House leader would let us know and I am sure the member for Welland-Thorold and the member for London North would be more than willing to put forward their items and have them debated on a Thursday morning.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I want to briefly respond to the interventions of my friends the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) and the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke). I regret that other business has called the third party House leader to another place, but I have to agree with him that this is a very routine motion that we have done, as he rightly indicated on a number of other occasions, to facilitate the business of private members in all three of the caucuses.

Notice has been given. I think the member should look at the Orders and Notices paper because, for the members in question -- I think of the member for Lambton (Mr. Smith), who wants to engage a debate about speed limits, something I know I have a particular interest in -- it does not in any way indicate the kind of deficiency that the member for Nipissing seemed to be suggesting. I think it is a routine motion. I do not think there is anything untoward about it.

The member for Windsor-Riverside knows well, of course, what the protocol is with respect to the lottery list. It is true that while the very sterling member for London North and the member for Welland-Thorold are actively involved, they, like the rest, have to take their place in this lottery.

I can remember the frustration years ago of being further down the list than perhaps my friend the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh), who, I remember, always seemed to do particularly well in drawing an earlier, as opposed to a later, card.

I repeat that it is a routine motion. I am pleased to put it forward today because I know I will be putting one forward at some time in the future to perhaps accommodate the squire from Mount Forest, who, unlike me, is always ready to proceed.

As a final observation, I want to say, though the member for Nipissing is absent, that I know the member for Simcoe West will communicate to him that my colleagues on the government benches do not say to me any of the sorts of things that were being suggested by him.

They really just ask me, “How is it, government House leader, that the member for Nipissing could have been so outfoxed by Tom Long in the setting up of the criteria to choose the next leader of the Tory party of Ontario?” They say to me: “The member for Nipissing seems to be a very shrewd operator, tough-minded in matters of legislative debate. How is it that he could have allowed the president of the party, so youthful and so inexperienced in other matters, to have so completely taken charge of the criteria that will determine the next leader of the Tory party?”

Mr. Speaker: Is that referring to the motion?

Hon. Mr. Conway: So I say to my friends from Mount Forest and Alliston, if they want to report to the Tory House leader what it is my colleagues are wondering about, they can convey that wonder and wonderment, because we do not know how the member for Nipissing could have been so completely outfoxed in something so important.

Mr. Speaker: Usually, I allow the proposer of the motion to make the final response. Is there agreement to hear the member for Simcoe West?

Agreed to.

Mr. McCague: I just want to say to the House leader that his response to the points that were raised by the House leader for the Conservative Party and the House leader for the New Democratic Party was completely irrelevant to the point they were making.

It is important that everyone knows that we are supposed to have the matters to be debated before us two weeks ahead of time. Here it is three days ahead of time. That follows a booboo of last week in the absence of the House leader, who was ably replaced by the government whip. It is one booboo after another.

I think everybody in this House felt there would be some adjournment or whatever at about this time, and here the government has so much urgent business to do that it cannot tell us on Thursday what it wants to do next Thursday. I think that is a shame.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I believe we have heard the motion. We have had considerable discussion on it.

Hon. Mr. Conway: If the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) wants to make an intervention, I certainly wouldn’t deny him.

Mr. Speaker: Well, I will have to ask, is there unanimous consent?

Agreed to.

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Mr. Laughren: I want to follow up on the government House leader’s comments about the Tory leadership race and talk about the reasons why Tom Long is leading in that race over the member for Nipissing, even though personally I think the member for Nipissing is more in tune with the ideology of this province than is Tom Long, whom I have never met.

I really was very interested in hearing what the House leader had to say about that, because he is a student of Ontario political history, and when he talks about it and even ruminates about why a particular candidate is doing better than another, I think most people in Ontario listen to him. I just want to say to the government House leader that I do not agree Tom Long should be the front runner in that race; I think it should be either the member for Nipissing or John Tory, although there are others in that caucus who could emerge as dark horses.

I do not want to take up the time of the House in an unfair way. I really did not intend to get into this debate this afternoon until I was provoked by the government House leader, who insisted on this diversion in our deliberations, but I do think it is important to note that the government House leader is staking out his position as to whom he is going to support in the Tory leadership race.

Mr. Speaker: That is pretty good proof the Speaker will have to be much firmer in the future.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HOUSING (CONTINUED)

Mr. Chairman: Would the minister like to move to the front?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Yes, and I would also like to request permission to have staff join me on the floor. May I do that?

Agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Oshawa would like to start.

Mr. Breaugh: First, I want to thank the members for rearranging schedules. I was called away last week. My father is having kind of a rough winter and I do appreciate that other members were kind enough to allow us a little latitude in how we go through these estimates.

I read the minister’s opening comments, and because we rebroadcast the proceedings in the evening, I had the opportunity to watch them. I was struck as I watched the speech. As you read it, it is like a lot of other things written by the Ministry of Housing these days. There is kind of a pro forma agenda at work, of things the government wants to say about housing and the kind of initiatives it wants to take in that regard and the way it functions.

As I watched the speech, one of the things that struck me was how sad it is and how unfair it is essentially to take someone who has good intentions and a fair amount of background in other life experiences and plunk her in the middle of the political process in this kind of position. Without being patronizing at all, I have said for some time that it is very difficult, because the way the political process works is very different from anything that I have ever experienced before.

There is a natural tendency, I suppose, on the part of many ministers, to gather around them people who are friendly, who are knowledgeable in their field and who will advise them to use them a lot in terms of, “How do I respond to this question?” because it might well be in a field where they have no real personal knowledge. It is unlikely they have ever worked in a field quite like this before and so they rely on people within the ministry to write speeches for them, to provide them with information and to provide them with answers to oral questions.

There is, somewhere in there, a dividing line between the minister who takes hold of a ministry and establishes a direction and does things -- it is not to pretend for a moment that any human being can know what 15,000 or 20,000 people are all doing at any given moment in time. He or she cannot. Those of us who are in politics know that.

But there is such a thing as a direction being set and there is also such a thing as ministers being taken prisoner by ministry staff. I regret to say I think that is what has happened here. I hear the minister when she responds and it is almost as if there is a record going here. There is a standard response to whatever the question is. It does not really matter. There is a ministerial answer that has to be put out.

Those of us who are fond of a British television program called Yes, Minister watch that television program in great agony, because it is too close to the truth and we know it. While everybody else watches that British television program, hilarious in the knowledge that this is just humour at work, those of us who have been in politics for a while know that there is much more than humour at work in that program. There is a whole lot of truth flooding out.

Even a casual observer who sits in the gallery in these chambers for an afternoon like today will soon see little pieces of paper flowing back and forth. The Premier (Mr. Peterson), in answering a question today, got one from underneath the gallery. It gets to a point where it does not really matter who wrote the note. As long as the note says something reasonably coherent, it gets a minister out of a difficult situation.

As I watched the minister give her opening remarks, I was struck by the unkind feeling that there was something gone wrong here. I have had an opportunity, mostly while driving these days, to think about what has gone wrong and I think I have identified some things that we ought to pursue and that she ought to pursue.

The first is, it really strikes me that here is someone who knows what to do, who has the intentions and the political will to do it, and if she were allowed to do it, good things would happen. She is not the problem. The problem is those around her. She cannot, as the Minister of Housing, build enough housing units to ever do any good so long as we have a Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) in Ontario who is the biggest land speculator in the province. That is impossible.

We cannot possibly supply enough affordable housing for our people when our efforts as governments are long and difficult and require co-operation from a lot of other people, and the private sector is out there playing in a field that it sees, quite rightly, as a business. So as a business decision, if there are 100 units available on the market over the weekend in Mississauga, why would one not sell them off for the biggest buck one can make? That is precisely what they are doing.

If the law says one can buy an apartment building here in Toronto or in any other community in Ontario and flip it over in six weeks or eight weeks and make a few million dollars, why would one not do it? It is legal and it is being done. Set aside, there is nothing particularly evil about that, except that in the middle of a housing crisis the evil comes about when people are evicted, when tenants pay the increased rent, and when governments write laws that start out to try to be fair and reasonable to both sides, to recognize that there are costs incurred by landlords and that we want to acknowledge those and somehow work those into a fair rent review system.

But what we wind up with is a rent review system that is hated equally by both sides. It is hated by landlords who say, “This is the worst form of bureaucracy I have ever seen,” and particularly by the smaller landlords who do not have their own bureaucracy to go to war with these folks, who do not have accountants and lawyers on file, who do not have a whole lot in the way of paperwork and who do not have a whole lot of documentation.

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A small landlord is as much a victim in this system as a tenant, and the larger landlords who can afford to hire the accountants, lawyers and bookkeepers, the people to do renovations whether they are needed or not, and the companies to supply them with new stoves and new microwaves whether they are needed or not, can find a way through the system quite nicely. In fact, for those folks, the government in Ontario has given them what is tantamount to a situation where they cannot lose money on an investment. That is a scary thought, but that is what is happening in the housing field.

For those who, like many members here, have worked for a long time with nonprofit housing of various sorts, have tried to get senior citizens’ housing in their community, have tried to see that there is housing available for low- and moderate-income groups in the community, it is very difficult for us to stand back and watch this happen.

We know how long it takes and how much work is involved in getting even, say, a small co-op of a couple of hundred units actually built. That is a long, difficult, bump-and-grind process of trying to get governments to co-operate, one level with another, of trying to get human beings who have very different agendas in the same room talking about what they want, making their decisions about what the building should look like, seeing what an architect can do, seeing what a builder can do, going through all those aggravations in a field where that is not their normal work experience. It is a strange and difficult thing.

At the end of it, people who are involved in nonprofit and co-op housing are immensely proud of the kind of things they build. Part of that pride comes from the fact they had to overcome a great deal of adversity, but that runs against the norm in Ontario and they know it and they soon find out how difficult it is to gather all of that up and push it in one direction and stay there long enough to make it happen.

It does happen and we should all be proud when it happens, but it happens so infrequently. One looks at the struggle that is involved in making that occur as opposed to the ease with which the private sector sells a building in an afternoon. People we do not even know, people who do not even live in this country can invest in land, in property in Ontario and flip it over in an afternoon, and the tragedy is not their investment; the tragedy is that the ministry itself can work until it is blue in the face and have all of its work undone in an afternoon by someone we do not even know.

I would bet that in an afternoon of real estate investing in the city of Toronto, they will have more units change hands than the ministry could build within a year. I do not think I am wrong on that. I think it is quite simple to have that happen.

I want to spend a little bit of time on some of the things I think are right about housing and some of the things where I think we are off course a bit.

Like most members here, I am subjected to an immense flow of paper from people all over Ontario who bring their problems to Queen’s Park, who write to members in all three parties and expect us to offer an opinion on a matter or assist them in some way or who simply want to vent a problem.

Here is one that came in this morning. It is an example of the kind of thing I was just talking about. This is from 3380 South Millway in Mississauga; 100 low-rental units financed by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. were sold off over the weekend to prospective individual buyers at a $150,000 price range. The one I have is $157,700.

It is an example of where our system has gone wrong, clearly. These particular units in fact were financed by the federal agency that offers mortgage money in the area, CMHC, so there is that kind of involvement. These units were also involved in the Cadillac Fairview flip scenario, if I can describe it that way, that has been the subject of a great deal of investigation about speculation and about whether it was done properly and legally and all of that. So these units have a bit of a history.

The pertinent fact, though, is that there are now about 100 families who were paying rather substantial rents, it is true: about $890 a month for three-bedroom town-house units. They are now going to get evicted and that is fairly clear, too, because when people bought this, they were told by the people doing the selling: “There’s an easy way to get possession of the unit if you don’t like these tenants. You simply say you want to occupy these premises for your personal use and they have to leave.”

I do not think there would be a riding in Ontario that does not have a similar kind of situation. It compounds itself. It gets worse as the situation turns over; in my riding, for example, on Glen Street. I had some tenants in to see me about a week ago. They brought in file folders that made a pile about three feet high on my desk, file folders full of information about the units where they live.

They happen to be ones like this one in Mississauga that have a long and complicated history. They were built by one person, put on the rental market, then pulled off the rental market and sold as condominiums. They then continued to be rented as condominiums. They have multiple owners; about 150 people own that building. They are all rented at different times to different people. They are all subjected to different sets of rent review.

Nobody in the building has a clue what the legal rent is for that building. Nobody in the building really knows who the owners are. There is no one there to do maintenance work. There is no one there to whom to complain. When they go to the rent review process, they are faced yet again with what they see in very real, personal terms as an evil thing at work.

It is evil for two very good reasons. First, nobody on this earth can understand rent review in Ontario; that is an unfortunate fact, but it is true. Second, it produces all the wrong results. It is supposed to provide a mechanism whereby the landlord gets a fair return on his dollar and the tenant gets a reasonable rent.

People get confused when they see the Minister of Housing stand up and say, “Rents this year are going to increase by 4.7 per cent,” and then the Rent Review Advisory Committee says, “Yes, but for you, it’s 13.” People have little messages going in their minds, saying: “What is this? Didn’t somebody official and important at Queen’s Park say they would be 4.7? Then how could they be 13 per cent, or 11, or 12, or 50 or 62? How in the world can that happen?”

It happens in part because of the process. If you have read the newspapers lately, you know the Treasurer has had a lot to say about housing matters. He is not the Minister of Housing, but he is, I would contend, one of the main crosses she has to bear, because I think the Minister of Housing knows full well -- as she would say on her own, as she gets another little piece of paper from her staff -- that most of what she is trying to do is thwarted by the person who usually sits in that seat.

As a matter of fact, if the government wants to change the cabinet around this afternoon, this might not be a bad time to do it. I think she knows it does not matter a hoot how many units she announces. If the Treasurer does not take some steps to slow down speculation, all her efforts, all the money she spends, all the staff time she puts forward are going to go for nothing, because in a housing situation where there is surely a supply problem for certain kinds of people, if she is not able to produce those houses at the same instant other houses are flipped over, we have a major problem. Are people going to stand around and wait for houses to be built? They do not seem to have much choice these days, do they?

The Treasurer has this mindset. He is being very fiscally irresponsible, in my view, because he knows there is a housing problem. He knows the problem centres on affordability. He knows speculation causes much of this problem and he continues to look at it from the point of view of how much revenue he can gather into the trough.

In normal circumstances, one would expect the Treasurer to think along those lines. But in the middle of a housing crisis, at least he should have the good grace and dignity, once in a while, to pause and consider the misery he causes the Minister of Housing. He seems not ready to do that yet; in fact, quite the opposite. Every time I see the Treasurer of Ontario talking about the price of housing, he is trying to figure out some new angle to get more tax money from it. He is proposing lot levies now, more of them, for different purposes, collected by the school boards to ease the strain on the provincial budget, to finance education.

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He is talking now about perhaps increasing the land transfer tax. That does nothing except fatten the old provincial coffers again. I do not deny for a moment his financial problems, but I think he ought to have mercy on those who believe, foolishly perhaps these days, that they have some reasonable expectation, at some point in their working lives, of actually owning a home.

He gives us all of the nonsense about how lovely it is to live in St. George. I am sure it is. I would be interested to hear the Treasurer’s reaction if we took the 3,000 people or so who are on the waiting list in many of our communities and bused them all to St. George tomorrow morning and said: “Here they are. Now we are going to put up low-income housing right here in downtown St. George and we want you, who invited them all to come and live here, to turn the sod.” I wonder what his reaction would be. Maybe he would love it. Maybe he would come back from overseas long enough to actually attend. It would be wonderful.

That is the heart of what I see as the problem here, the conflict, perhaps personified by the Treasurer, who wants to rake in the money and who sees, in his mind, every justification in the world for indulging in land speculation himself as long as a portion of the profits that are derived from that goes back into housing somewhere else. I think that is a crime. This province owns better than 90 per cent of the land mass itself, so land for housing is not the difficulty. It really is not.

It is a question of whether the federal government, the provincial government and a lot of municipal governments are going to be speculators in land or attempt to use a resource which they already own to resolve a social crisis. That is going to take some guts, but I do not see very much evidence of it happening anywhere in Ontario, to tell members the truth. That saddens me.

Let me talk a little bit about some of the other problems that have come up in a little while. I must say I find the points of agreement between different groups quite fascinating from time to time, and here is one which fascinates me. I do not agree very often with the Toronto Home Builders Association, but I do now. When they did their little press release a little while ago and the new president of the association, Frank Giannone, made his maiden speech, so to speak, he noted that a study conducted for the association shows that 11 per cent, $26,103, of the $237,545 price of a new home in Brampton was attributable to fees, taxes and other levies imposed by the municipal, provincial and federal governments.

Without spending a lot of time on whether lot levies are good, bad or indifferent, I think the point made there that has to be considered by all of us is, are we not supposed to be having a crisis in housing? Should governments not be helping instead of taxing? Should it not be an occasion when governments at all levels say, “We cannot resolve all the problem by ourselves here, but one of the things we could do is take a look at how much we contribute to the cause of the problem, the price of a home”?

I have to say I am in full agreement. When governments dip into the price of a house for more than $26,000, something is radically wrong. How did we get to this position? For those of us who are observers of what is happening in housing, this is barely the tip of the iceberg. The fact is that today this house in Brampton probably has gone up another $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000, and the percentage of taxation rises accordingly. Ontario is thinking about at least increasing the land transfer tax and it is talking about letting school boards collect more lot levies off this.

The problem is not that $26,000 is obscene. I think it is, but that is not really the point; the point is that is the trend line. That is where it is going, and it is going up. The real problem is that for most people their reasonable expectation of buying a home is no more.

There is not a member of this assembly, supposedly fat and healthy, overpaid politicians, who could qualify on his own for the mortgage for this house in Brampton, not one of them; and there are no young people out there, supposedly the first-time home buyers, in any community anywhere close to Toronto who, on one salary in a family, could qualify for the mortgage.

Not in my community; none of my well-paid, unionized, strong industrial workers at General Motors of Canada on their own could qualify for a mortgage in my own community. That is a crime. That is taking my community away from the people who built it, and that is wrong.

It is true that if you own a home, as I do, you can be happy about this. Sometimes I think this government is kind of banking on that a lot, that anybody who has real estate now of any kind -- in my own community there is a place called Olive Avenue which is one of the great places in Oshawa. It is great because I live on it, among other things. I live at one end and Mike Starr lives at the other. It is kind of a political spectrum.

Traditionally it has been a working-class neighbourhood with a variety of housing. There is good substantial housing stock there. It was at one time considered to be about the cheapest place in Oshawa that you could buy a home. It is not any more. I know of places on Olive Avenue that do not have basements, never mind R-2000 insulation. There is nothing underneath that house except cold air, and it is selling for $100,000, $110,000, $115,000. That is truly ridiculous.

When one looks at the new subdivisions in Oshawa, and this is something I think we should pay a little more attention to: I remember last week when the Toronto Real Estate Board survey of the price of houses in Ontario came out that in North York the average price was $800,000. The first thing I thought was: Who would pay of their own free will $800,000 to live in North York? Apparently it was because there are not many new homes coming on the market there and the ones that are coming on are all big, huge and luxury. They are now called in the trade superhomes.

It is unreal to think that in this society a house of any proportion goes for that. It is unreal to think that in this society, people who are well paid -- not the poor -- people who are teachers, people who are well-organized industrial trade union workers do not have a reasonable expectation of being first-time home buyers.

I heard the Treasurer and the Premier mumbling out in the hall. They were suggesting, “Well, if you don’t want to pay $800,000 for a house in North York, don’t.” That is a lot of sympathy from people who are supposed to be our political leaders. They say, “Well, go east, go west, go north, go anywhere.” They did not suggest going south, but it is a little cold and wet out there these days. “Just leave. Go somewhere else.”

When I bought my first home, for example, I was working here in Toronto. We started to look at where we could afford to buy a house, and that is pretty much what we had to do: by the Woodbine Race Track, took a look at homes in Barrie, found a very nice place in Oshawa and bought there. It was viable for us, because at that time in the teaching market you could trade teaching positions fairly readily, as you could now. Resettling in that way was a viable option.

For a lot of people this is not much of an option. Those who would advocate that people who live in Toronto ought to go to Courtice, Newcastle, Uxbridge and places like that ought to go out there and hit that road for a couple of weeks every day and see just what it is like to commute back and forth and see the kind of stress and strain it puts on them and their families.

Try to find a parking spot in the Whitby GO station; it is real fun. The judges in the Durham region tell me they can always tell what is going on in the GO parking lots by the number of assault charges laid. Things get kind of hot and heavy out there on a morning when there is one spot left and three guys want it; even some very dignified people get into some most undignified arguments about who is going to park in the spot.

Mr. Campbell: Like yourself?

Mr. Breaugh: I would never do that.

The traditional option is: “Look elsewhere. Go a little farther east.” Members should come out and see what it is like in places like Courtice and Newcastle. They would be amazed that we have wall-to-wall housing now from Newcastle right into Scarborough. You really cannot tell the difference from one municipality to the other, even though the initial concept behind regional government was to see that there was a distinctiveness kept about local communities.

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There was all kinds of funny talk about buffer and park space and distinct communities and that kind of stuff. If members go into any of the new subdivisions in Oshawa, they will find people who probably do not know where Oshawa is, because they work in downtown Toronto. They drive back and forth; they leave the house at six in the morning and they get back around 7:30 or eight o’clock at night. It is really tough to develop a sense of community when that is your lifestyle; but for many people, that is really what it is all about.

What about people who traditionally are now renting accommodation, thinking: “In another year or so we will take advantage of OHOSP, the Ontario home ownership savings plan. We will go out on the market and we will save up some money and buy something”? People are looking at that and saying: “This is nuts. So what if we save a few thousand dollars under this tax exemption? The few thousand dollars that we save are used up in a week in house prices. We would be crazy to sit around and wait 12 months to save $5,000 when the prices of units go up that much in a weekend.” And they do.

They just fall farther and farther behind in their real expectations of whether they can actually buy something. Can they afford to pay out $900 to $1,000 a month in rent and reasonably be expected to save very much money? Probably not. So a lot of those people who would normally be entering the housing market as buyers are excluded just because of the reality in which they live.

As you travel around places like Metro Toronto, you will see different phenomena. In my community, for example, we are actually having a boom in rental accommodation being built. It is kind of remarkable and I do not think government would lay much claim to it, but it is happening. The value of land in Oshawa is escalating to the point that where we have a single-family home on a big lot -- and we have a few of those left around the community because they were built before there was a sewer and water system in Oshawa and they needed big yards for septic tanks -- the economics of that has turned around to the point where somebody can go in and buy three or four of those, get the land rezoned and put up an apartment building.

We have some going in that regard. I think that is kind of defensible, in that it is intensifying the use of the land, increasing the density a bit, but it meets two things. First, we need rental accommodation of any kind in our community, so it is good from that point of view, and second, from a land use point of view, it makes some sense.

I see the same phenomenon being used in other communities. Here in Metro, in North York, for example, I see good, substantial housing stock. It is 30 or 40 years old, that is true. It is not the most glamorous thing in the world, but I have been in a lot of those houses and people are proud of them. They are well kept and they are being bought five or six at a whack now. What springs up in their place is the superhouse again. They take down three good single-family houses and put up one huge sucker.

Some of them I do not understand. I have driven through parts of this city. If I made friends with the home builders’ association a little while ago, this will put it offside. They build some of the ugliest monstrosities behind huge brick walls, and why anybody in his right mind would pay half a million dollars for a jail like that is really beyond me. But people do. The market is there, and I see a few out my way. They are mostly in Whitby, where the market is a little more upscale than in Oshawa. There is no sense to this.

My wife and I were looking at model houses over the weekend, because she is trying to convince me to put some paint on the walls. We looked at one that was a very nice home. But I will tell the truth: If I am paying that kind of money for a house, I want an estate. I want a place for the dogs to run and the horses to gallop and a huge pool. I cannot afford any of this, so this is all theoretical to me, but I would not pay half a million dollars for a home that has a four-foot setback, and a lot of the homes that we looked at on the weekend do. The house completely fills the lot three times over. I do not know that that is really good planning by anybody ‘s standards.

I guess the point is that essentially what was seen not very long ago as normal, reasonable expectations of home ownership is not there any more. We should start to say that. Whether that is world class or not and whether that is fashionable or trendy or whatever, that is true. But people in many parts of our province do not have a reasonable expectation of buying a home of any kind.

It used to be said: “Okay, if things are getting a little pricey in your neighbourhood, stop thinking about single-family homes. Start thinking about town houses. Start thinking about condominiums and concepts like that.” Take a look around at what is available even in that type of housing. Take a look through the Toronto Star on a weekend. See the price of the condominiums and tell me whether you qualify for that mortgage either. You will not.

Most of our population is being precluded from purchasing a house of any kind. Find me the town houses that are being built to form a higher and better land use concept here in Metro Toronto. They are not. Find me the condominium that is on the market anywhere in Metro for less than $100,000. There are not any.

I have a friend who just paid something like $180,000 for a very fashionable broom closet down by the lake, and that is essentially what it is. For that kind of money, what he got was two and a half rooms, I think, one of which could be either a sunroom or a bedroom, depending on your mood, I guess. But that is all that is there. That is atrocious.

It is true, and I think I would agree, that not everybody should or wants to live in downtown Toronto. A lot of people should live somewhere else, but the problem is that they work here. They have to be here. They have to live within commuting distance. We are not really doing anything about assisting the commuting process at all.

I know all about GO trains and I know all about highways and I know who does not want highways and expressways and all of that. But if the argument is that they will work in the downtown of a big, urban centre like Toronto and live 50 miles away, this country is not set up for that. Other countries are, but this nation is not, and we had better be prepared to have governments pay for the infrastructure to transport people at high speeds over that distance because we sure do not have it now.

Even my beloved GO train is discussed in here a lot, and I have ridden on a few occasions lately. If I had to get up at six to have the great pleasure of riding the GO train for a couple of hours and the TTC and standing around in the stations for another hour or so, so that my travelling time in the course of a day were three and a half to four hours, I do not think I would be loving my GO train quite as much as I do now when I ride it periodically.

If that is what the government wants to do, if that is the plan of action, then it has to get with it. It is going to have to start talking about some kind of high-speed train service and there is not any. It will amaze me if this government or any other in Canada can get approvals for such a thing.

I think we have some major problems here. They have to do with the price of houses and the kind of speculation that is going on in housing of all kinds these days and the fact that this government seems quite content to do nothing about it. I want to conclude this little part of the recording by saying that I understand how tempting it is to just do that, to sit back.

I often fantasize; every once in a while a real estate agent drops a little something into my mailbox. I cannot believe there is some fool out there who would pay that much money for the house that I bought for $97,000. More than double that price is the going rate in Oshawa for that kind of a home. I keep thinking: “I actually live in a home. I and a mortgage company in London have this tremendous piece of real estate in beautiful Oshawa. Couldn’t I do a whole lot with this kind of cash?” Then I think: “But I do have to live somewhere. Where would I go?”

Even in Napanee -- I was there in the last week or so -- the average selling price of a house is upwards of $100,000. Good God.

Mr. Keyes: No, Goodyear.

Mr. Breaugh: The member may say “Goodyear.” My father lives there. This is a little aside, but my father gives me all the scoop on what is happening in Napanee and it is really true. People in Napanee have very mixed feelings about Goodyear coming to town.

Initially they thought: “This is great. Here’s an industry coming to Napanee.” Now they are getting down to: “That’s nice, but who puts the road into the plant? Who puts the sewer into the plant? Where do these people live and what does that do to the price of housing?” My dad is really worried that the parking meters in Napanee have just gone up to a dime. He thinks they might actually hit a quarter. So the ravages of inflation are marching on Napanee and they know it.

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I think they would all like the Goodyear plant to stay and grow and develop and all that, but $100,000 as the average price for a resale house in Oshawa is cheap; in Napanee, it is just plain nuts. We sometimes think of this as a Toronto problem, but it is not. It is everywhere in Ontario.

Let me go on to some other things that I think need to be covered a bit.

Let me move to something that happened last summer, just to show the way governments work. At the beginning of this session, whenever it was, last May or June, we discussed some changes to the Planning Act. One of the members had put forward an amendment that said we should stop exclusionary bylaws. Everybody I heard said: “That is a great idea. Let’s do that.”

That has not happened yet either, even though I have, interestingly enough, a confidential draft of the Rental Housing Protection Amendment Act from the Ministry of Housing which essentially steals the amendment of the member for Burlington South (Mr. Jackson) and puts it forward as a government amendment. This is interesting, because this did not come to me in the normal flow of things. This is a copy of a top-secret government memo. It is even stamped “Confidential.” I was so thrilled. Do members know how long I wait for confidential stuff to hit me?

This is interesting. This is the amendment proposed by someone in the Ministry of Housing. I got it from a friend in North York. It is an unusual way. I usually buy the Toronto Star in the morning and get all my confidential information that way, but this was sent in by a guy from North York.

When the member for Burlington South asked the minister who is responsible for the Planning Act, the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Eakins), “Are you going to move such an amendment?” he said no. This is how it slips from one ministry to the next. One top-secret document is not quite accurate, because apparently somebody forgot to tell the Minister of Municipal Affairs what the Ministry of Housing was doing. Not to worry; nothing has happened yet on that.

The other little thing was that I thought it was time we started talking, in a formal way, about actually doing something about affordable housing being included in official plans and thinking about the process of how to do that. Does the government want to pick 25 per cent as the percentage of the houses in a community that should be affordable? Does it want to start laying out what exactly it means by affordable? The first problem we get to, of course, is that affordable is different things in different communities, according to the average selling price and the income in that community. That would be pretty hard to do on a provincial basis, but frankly I think we could do it.

I was so happy to be invited to a meeting of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario at the Royal York Hotel. There, I got not one but two ministers of the crown saying the same thing. On this day, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and the Minister of Housing were in agreement. They both said -- I know this is a little hard to follow, but I ask members to follow it if they can -- “The government of Ontario wants every municipality in the province to take its fair share of affordable housing, about 25 per cent. Both of us think this is great, and this is what the government wants to do.” When people asked, “Is this government policy?” they said: “No, this is a discussion paper. We will discuss it a bit more, but this is what we want to do.”

They are really wrapped up in this discussion, because we have not seen any more of that. In fact, the other day when I made inquiries about whether the second amendment about affordable housing would be included in the Planning Act, the word I got back was, “No, we are not ready to do that yet.” In which century will we be ready to do something like this?

I do not care about the mechanics. I would even let the government steal my amendment. I would even deny that I ever put forward the amendment, and the government could put out its own confidential draft to anyone it cared to. But I think at some point in time the government has to stop giving speeches about affordable housing and start doing something that makes it happen.

I have heard the argument discussed at AMO and elsewhere. The municipalities, by and large do not like this idea. They think the province is sticking its big, ugly snoot into their business. I do not argue with that for a minute, but I would say to them: “If you don’t want us to do that, do it on your own. If you don’t want a provincial law that makes a requirement under the Planning Act that your municipality deals with affordable housing, there’s one easy way to shoot that idea down; go out and build some affordable housing in your community.”

One of the things that has always confounded me about the planning process is simply that there is one thing that is not really ever taken into consideration when plans of subdivision are approved. We think about the environment. We think about engineering. We think about schools. We think about libraries. We think about sidewalks, lighting, landscaping, fences, type of brick that can be used -- everything except one little matter: How much are houses in the subdivision going to cost, and another little thing, when might we see these?

One of the ironies that I see in the process is that I remember being on the Durham regional council when it was first created about a decade or so ago and having all these developers coming in making a pitch to the regional council that they wanted to build affordable housing, and we all thought: “That’s great. Why don’t you go do that? We will approve your plan of subdivision and we will change the official plan because we want affordable housing.” We all wanted that.

The one thing we forgot to ask those suckers was, “When are you going to build this thing?” A lot of them have not been built yet. A lot of those plans that we approved are not even owned by those folks any more. They have long since sold them off in bits and pieces to all of their friends in the development industry, and we never really talked about the prices of the units.

I am not advocating this as a hard-and-fast rule, but here is something that I think is worthy of people’s consideration. If you want to fast-track subdivisions -- and I have heard the minister give her little speech on this, and it is not a bad one; it is not a great one, but it is not a bad one -- the one thing you are going to have to do to get me on side with that is that you are going to have to say, “Here’s what the units will cost and here is when they will be built.”

If you are to kind of remove the democratic rights, and you are going to do that with any kind of fast-tracking of plans of subdivision, you are going to have to say to some citizens’ group, “Listen, you have to get your act together by 30 days and put your objections to this change to the official plan before council within the time period.” You are going to have to have some defence that says: “Here is the reason why. We need affordable housing in this community this year. We will approve these plans of subdivision now and we expect in a contractual agreement that the developer will actually build them by this fall and here is what the units will cost.” I think if that is what the minister has in mind, that is what she is going to have to do.

I have not heard much more about everybody having to take his fair share since that wonderful meeting down at the Royal York last summer. I know the minister gives speeches on it occasionally. I keep asking when the Planning Act is going to get called. I keep asking if there are going to be changes. Are there new programs, new policies, new legislative initiatives going on?

I do see what the response has been from many municipalities. It varies a little bit, but a lot of them do not like this idea and a lot of them are not doing very much to provide affordable housing in their community. I am going to be on the record again as somebody who says, “I believe there is a social responsibility in every single community in Ontario to be aware that there are people in your community who don’t have a decent place to live. If you want to be elected to a council at any level, part of your job is providing them with decent housing; and if you don’t want to do that, don’t be elected. Go off into the private sector and make your fortune, but get out of the way, because part of government’s responsibility is to at least be aware when there are problems,” and there surely are problems.

Let me tell members one of the things that causes a problem. The government of Ontario continues to sell off much of its surplus land at a profit. I have listened with great interest to proposals, for example, around Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital grounds and things like that where there is something at work which says, “We’re going to take publicly owned land and develop it in a certain way so that at least part of it will be affordable housing.”

A lot of the concepts that are being discussed now are a little different. In my community, for example, I have a really big co-op project under way now. It is a hard sell, because the really big co-op project is about 50 per cent of the project in total and the rest of it is going to be market value stuff. The argument centres on, “We want to integrate this” and all of that, but a lot of the people who live in that area of town say: “We know what co-op housing is and we know what nonprofit housing is; we have seen that in our community and it is okay. But what is this monster that you are putting on our land? What is the scale and proportion that is here?” They are having a little difficulty grappling with that.

I heard the minister when she finally came to Oshawa and she gave a little speech and did her “not in my backyard” stuff. We do not use words like “nimby” in Oshawa. It is in our backyard, and we would like to see improved housing of any kind.

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We have the argument in every one of our communities. We have had it again this fall and we will have it again, I am sure. When people go and put a group home in a neighbourhood, they should at least have brains enough to walk around the neighbourhood and say: “Hi, we are moving in. This is who we have in here. How are you? Can we help you?” If people have brains enough to do that, any street in Oshawa will take them, because they have them on any street in Oshawa, including my own neighbourhood. We understand what is going on here.

It is only when people move in under the cover of darkness and do not bother telling the neighbours what they are trying to do that people get a little hot about that, because they think, and it is not a bad idea: “If you want to move in next door to me, just tell me who you are. That is all we need to know. You tell us what you are trying to do and maybe we could help you out a little bit.” There is nobody in my community who does not know someone who needs a hand once in a while. There are lots of them. Quite frankly, there is not a group home going that is not far more acceptable to a neighbourhood in Oshawa than a bunch of young guys moving in next door.

We just went through one of those. It is an interesting little aside. Last summer a group of people in a neighbourhood came in and that was the turning point. A guy -- a lawyer, of course -- had bought an old house in Oshawa, and, like a lot of other friends at the golf club, I suppose, rented it out to a bunch of young guys. Now it is not the norm and I am not prejudicing my case at all, but young guys in Oshawa do like to have fun. To be a little more specific, they like to party. If you are my age or older, you might not like to party every night, all night. Some of these guys do and they have stamina; they can really keep it going.

So the selling point to the neighbourhood was simply: “That is what you have got now. We are going to bring in a group home that has little children. Would you not rather have them in your neighbourhood than these guys partying every night?” In the end they said, “Maybe we will try the little children and see whether they stack up.” So it all kind of depends on whether you talk to one another, which is something that a lot of people do not do.

Let me try to get through some other things that I think are important. I have watched the government as it takes the land it has and puts it out for proposals. We are getting kind of an interesting phenomenon that I am not really happy about. The government land that is being made available to groups is rather limited and groups are having some difficulty sorting out who should make an application to use a particular piece of property. The easiest way I can think of to resolve this is simply to make more government land available. There are a lot more nonprofit groups out there who want to get involved in providing affordable housing for different kinds of groups; and there are some that are doing just a magnificent job of providing housing for people where, to be honest, I do not think anybody has ever thought about it before.

What kind of housing do people with a particular handicap really need? People are spending a lot of time and effort figuring out how big the door should be, how high the cupboards should be, what kind of tap you can use in there, and taking the old idea of modifying an older building in a neighbourhood to something that is really quite unique. In a lot of the projects, although that reluctance on the part of the neighbourhood to accept this new facility is there initially, at the end the project is so well done the people see it as a real asset to the neighbourhood and they like it. All they needed was a little space and a little conversation to get it off the ground and going.

I would really like to see more of that on a much larger scale, because I am not an advocate of “Supply is the only answer,” but I am a realist; we have a big supply problem out there. I also know there are lots of groups who want to do their bit and would gladly put forward proposals; they are not just the traditional church groups. I was really pleased when the Catholic Church came in with its announcement. Again, this is a bit of an aside: when you do something good, you really do not have to add to it; the truth in itself is good enough.

I was immensely pleased that the Catholic Church joined hands with the ministry and put forward a proposal to build more nonprofit units, but the ministry did not have to include in that public announcement units that are already built. It would have stood up just fine on its own merit; they do not have to add to it every nonprofit house that has been built since Adam put the ark somewhere. If they just tell the truth --

Hon. Ms. Hošek: It’s Noah and the ark.

Mr. Breaugh: Whatever it is. I was never good at that kind of stuff.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: We’ll do Bible classes later

Mr. Breaugh: Yes, I need more Bible classes.

I think units already built detract a bit. I recall from estimates about a year ago that the minister wants to talk all the time about numbers. I do not, because I do not think the numbers mean anything. They particularly do not mean anything when the ministry staff plays quite as fast and loose as it does with numbers every day.

When someone identifies the price of houses as difficult, the minister’s response is to change the guidelines on what is meant by affordable or change the income numbers. If they think they are not going to get their 30,000 units built this year, they simply expand the time frame a bit: back 10 years, forward 20 years. Surely to God, they will build 30,000 units in that time frame.

I think when one does something good, one really does not have to embellish it at all; just say exactly what one is doing and let it stand on its own merit and it will be just fine. There is no need to add to it.

Let me move to a couple of really unfashionable things. It is not fashionable to talk about the homeless any more. The International Year of Shelter for the Homeless is over. All those wonderful, good and caring people who went to all the seminars and meetings about the homeless, who displayed their social conscience so prominently during that whole year, seem to have gone elsewhere. I cannot believe that is true. I really cannot believe that people find it acceptable that there are real human beings within a stone’s throw of this Legislature sleeping on parking grates, that there is a whole subterranean culture now of people who know where there are holes in a wall, as simple as that.

I am told, although I have not been there, that Pearson International Airport is a haven for the homeless because it has huge tunnels with electrical wiring and it is warm and it is inside, and once you get in there they do not work very hard at throwing you out; that you can go and sleep for a while as you join the other throngs of travellers who are going somewhere on a vacation and look rather unkempt after they have been on an airplane for a while and are sleeping in the lobby at the airport; that the homeless can walk in there, and they do not look much worse than the others who have just come off the plane from wherever, and just lie down.

I know that in some of the very fashionable hotels in downtown Toronto, the poor and the homeless have found that on a cold winter’s night, if you find a way to get in the fire exit, and that is not too hard, it is unlikely that anybody is going to find you until the next morning and so you can stay there. It is ironic that some of the richest people in the world and some of the poorest people in the world share housing overnight, but it is true. It is true that they have little lists now of which garages are open at what hours and how you can get in.

All of this is happening, when we know there are homeless people here and we know there are ideas that could provide them with some type of housing. This is a difficult thing to do.

In my community, for example, is a rather neat piece of business, I must admit. The Salvation Army, bless its heart, has been residing in downtown Oshawa for as long as I can remember with a nice, big, brick building on Simcoe Street South. It was not quite up to its needs any more and so it went out and built itself a new church just south of Rossland Road. We have had a men’s hostel just down the street for a lot of years. It is not exactly the most gorgeous place around, but it was serviceable and it was used.

We also discovered that there are lots of women who are homeless and so we found an idea at the Young Women’s Christian Association. The hostel services moved into the old Salvation Army building. They have a hostel. It is nice, bright, clean and warm, and there is good food and companionship and people will talk to you. They also have some longer-term apartments. They are a little on the small side, but they are a lot better than anybody could get elsewhere. Just down the street is the YWCA. It has a project under way where it is building some apartments on land it owns.

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The point of all this is simply that if governments just kind of get out of the road for a while and listen to people who have ideas in any of the communities we represent, there are people out there who have what the government needs, who have the land, who have the initiative, who have the expertise or who can develop it. They need a little help from governments in terms of financing, arranging mortgages and things like that.

If the government would back off and let them do the good work they know how to do, it would not resolve all of the problems but it would resolve a heck of a lot of them. I know the minister is going to say, “That’s what we’re doing,” but I really think she ought to spend some time talking to people who are trying to get these proposals through the ministry. It is not nearly as easy as some might think.

When the minister was in Oshawa she met one of my friends, Lucas Peacock. He is kind of an amazing old guy. He is, I think, 91 or 92 these days. He drops in to see me every once in a while and tells me about what they are doing at the Sunrise Seniors’ Project. It is perking along, but it sure is not an easy road gathering up people in the community who would help him, take his idea and make it real, going through all the little things the ministries want, acquiring property, looking at sites and seeing if you can put a bid on this, that and the other thing.

I hope that building is up so that Lucas Peacock and all of his friends have a pretty good place to live, because one of the things that struck me as being really neat is that here was an older man, a respected man in our community who had an idea all on his own. I remember when he was sitting in my office the first time we talked about it. He said: “You know, Mike, we need seniors’ housing. That’s a need and we know how to do that. But there are also a lot of seniors who need a little bit more than housing. They need somebody to talk to them. They need a little bit of medical care. They need access to certain other types of advice and services.”

One of the first things Lucas Peacock found out was that despite how sensible this idea was and how practical it was and despite the fact he had seen it in operation here in Ontario, he soon found out this is not how Ontario does things. If you go from one ministry’s jurisdiction to another ministry’s jurisdiction, you do so at your peril, so the process for getting that project approved and under way has been a long and difficult one. It is to the minister’s credit, and to everybody’s credit, that it looks to me as if that is finally going to happen. But oh, it has been tough, and if it had not been for somebody like Lucas Peacock, who is about as pigheaded a man as I have ever met in my life, it probably never would have happened.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: More pigheaded than you?

Mr. Breaugh: Yes, even more pigheaded than me.

Whatever the problem might be, I am worried that the homeless are not popular any more, that the idea that people sleep in cardboard boxes is not news. It will be news again because it is winter after all -- it does not seem like it today -- and there is no question in my mind that somebody is going to die in the next few weeks, because it is Canada and it is cold out there. The people who are homeless are not in great physical condition. They may find a grate tonight and they may not. There are more of them out there.

I am ashamed to say that there are a lot of people in our society who think something like homelessness is a matter that can be dealt with at a conference. It cannot. The conference has nothing to do with the homeless. The conference is for people with a social conscience who want to go to a meeting for an afternoon. Homelessness is about people who are cold, starving and hurt and do not have a place to live. While many people would like to think that does not happen here in Toronto, that it does not happen outside of Toronto, I want the record to show that it happens in every one of our communities.

I know that tonight, despite the fact that I have a really good hostel system in my community and that we have worked very hard to provide long-term accommodation for people who are homeless, there will still be guys out under the Centre Street bridge tonight, some because they cannot conform, some because they do not want to go to a hostel, an apartment building, a church group or anywhere. That really should not be the criterion.

They have a need. The need is there and I hope the society in which I live is not so cold and callous that it says, “Let them die,” because that is what is going to happen. I know that in other societies and cultures around us there is very much a different attitude. I am struck every time I visit a major American city at the way the homeless are dealt with there, like cattle on a street, a problem to be put out of sight. I like to think we are better than that, but we are not by very much.

Let me go on to a couple of other things I think are worthy of some note. The problem I brought up in the fall is another interesting one about some houses that were being built using steel beams. In a slightly broader sense, I think there is a jurisdictional problem of the building code and the municipal governments supposedly enforcing provincial and federal statutes, but the end result is pretty much the same. By the time the problem is discovered, the steel beam that is supposed to hold up somebody’s dream home and is substandard cannot be corrected because it is covered up.

We do not have a process whereby things of that nature can really be discovered. We do not have very much in the way of accountability for manufacturers who supply defective parts that are used in a home, although we have reviewed, for example, the Housing and Urban Development Association of Canada home warranty system and although the home warranty system has said, as I recall about a year ago now, that it wanted to do a kind of “Who are the good builders?” booklet and list builders who have had a lot of problems and give credit to those who have had very few. That still is not out.

Every time you raise a question of whose jurisdiction it is, you get a really interesting array of answers. When you bring up something that is a matter under the building code, you very often confuse the ministers. The Minister of Municipal Affairs usually says, “It’s not my responsibility.” The Minister of Housing usually says, “Well, that doesn’t come under my ministry.” Both usually say, “But it comes under the municipalities.” When you go to the municipalities, they usually say, “Well, that is provincial legislation.”

People get really mad when you give them those kinds of answers, especially if they have just plunked down $200,000 or $300,000 they really do not have to buy the house of their dreams and it looks to them as if the thing might fall apart. If and when it does, they know nothing is going to happen to fix it. I really think the Ministry of Housing ought to take a little look at that.

I was interested this fall when the Minister of Housing very quickly brought in an amendment concerning what kind of metal is used in taps in schools. I was really impressed because -- was it the CBC that broke that story? -- really quick, within hours, the minister --

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Days.

Mr. Breaugh: Days, she said. I apologize for making her quicker than she actually is.

Within days, the ministry had announced a great change in the code. I thought: “That’s wonderful. There’s a problem that has been discovered in drinking fountains all over Durham and several other regions, and it only took the government of Ontario a few days to correct it.” I thought at the time: “It’s kind of a heck of a note, though, that it has to be the CBC that uncovers all this. Didn’t the ministry know anything about that?”

Then I saw a further interview on the CBC with some guy who must be on the verge of retirement, because he was a ministry employee and he was on television saying, “I have been trying to get these people to do this for two years now.” I must admit I went from saying, “There is a minister really on the ball. Somebody identifies a problem and a few days later she corrects it,” to finding out maybe she was not quite as sharp on that matter as I thought she might be.

I want to move on to a couple of other things that stirred me from time to time. It is not that they are earthshaking, by any means, but they do point out some problems. Some of them are a little more dramatic.

As the members may have gathered, I am not a big fan of anybody’s bureaucracy. I do not deny that we need bureaucracies around to do things, but I get frustrated when the rules are really stupid. It seems to me this is one of those examples.

This comes from Kingston, Ontario. It has to do with the fact that when someone dies in one of the units run by the housing authority there, apparently you have to tell them the person dies.

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They went through a long series of rather alarming things because the person had died in one of the housing units. The housing authority said to the remainder of the family, “You owe us money.” The family wrote back and said: “But they are dead. They are not alive any more. They are not using your unit any more.” Then somebody else said: “That does not matter. You have to pay the money anyway.”

Then they went to the Queen’s Law Students Legal Aid Society. My old alma mater is Queen’s, so I am always glad to see that Queen’s is out, busy in the community. They went through a long battle with the publicly funded housing authority as to whether or not the person who was dead and not living in the unit any more should have paid a month’s rent, I think it was.

Here is my problem: Why do we need to have a legal aid clinic set up to deal with this kind of thing? Is there nobody with any brains down there? Is there not someone who could say, “It does not make sense to have us, as a publicly funded housing authority, collect money from dead people for rent.” That is not a real rocket-scientist kind of question. If they are dead, they are not living in the unit any more. If they are not living in the unit any more, they should not have to pay rent on that unit. Besides, they are dead and you cannot get money from them anyway.

Do we really need a legal aid clinic to establish that fact? Is there nobody with any brains left in the world any more’?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Only you.

Mr. Breaugh: Some days I have to admit I am kind of coming to the conclusion, “Well, it sure ain’t me.”

Here is another example of the same kind of thing. There is apparently on Eastern Avenue in Toronto a housing unit owned by Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority. I want to raise two or three problems about MTHA, but I will start with this one. This woman’s name is Marie Ching Quee, 70. She is now in Taiwan. She has a subsidized apartment in Toronto that is empty.

MTHA has been made aware this woman does not live in this unit and it has been made aware of it for a couple of years. The member for Beaches-Woodbine (Ms. Bryden), I think, has been in contact with them on the matter and so has a local councillor. There are a lot of people who know that here is a subsidized apartment unit that is empty and MTHA in its eminent wisdom cannot figure out that this is wrong.

They are quoted in Toronto Sun stories. As a matter of religious principle, I do not quote from the Toronto Sun very often.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Is it a principle or is it not a principle?

Mr. Breaugh: It is like yours. It is the one small streak of liberalism in me. I occasionally read the Sun, but I am really reluctant to quote from it.

This is so dumb. Here is an empty apartment unit. I have no problem at all with some woman from Taiwan who comes here, qualifies for a subsidized apartment and gets one. I would be happy about that. I would be happy to help her fill out the forms to get it. I do not even mind that this one unit is vacant and apparently allocated to somebody from Taiwan. That does not bother me at all.

But is there nobody over there with any brains at all? Somebody could at least say: “Fine, you qualify for a subsidized housing unit in Toronto. If you want to come and live here and use it, that is fine, but we can’t keep it empty.” It does not seem to me we need to call in the rocket scientists either. Is there nobody who could say, “Would you come and see us?” If she says, “No, I am not flying in from Taiwan over some subsidized unit in Toronto,” is that not grounds enough for saying, “We have a whole lot of people who could really use this unit”?

Is there not a way to do that? I think the problem is that they turn it over to the MTHA lawyers, which is always a dangerous thing to do.

Let me deal with a couple of other things. I want to go into these in depth, because I know there is a coroner’s inquest on one matter. They have been brought to me on a couple of occasions now, various problems that are in buildings run by MTHA. I want to say right off the bat that I do not have any big grudge against it at all. I know that it is a big housing authority with a multitude of problems and times are tough in there.

This is just a small point. The minister was bragging a little bit about how wonderful relationships are between the ministry and MTHA, and MTHA and its employees. They are so wonderful, the guys want bullet-proof vests to go to work; I mean, give me a break. She could at least acknowledge there have been one or two problems encountered. She could at least acknowledge there is a little difficulty.

We would all feel heartened if she said, “Yes, there have been some problems in the past and we are trying to straighten them out,” but do not come in and say everything is wonderful. Everything is not wonderful. The whole world knows it is not wonderful. Anybody who lives in an MTHA unit knows that. Anybody who visits the units knows that. We have some problems here that have to be resolved, with or without John Sewell -- whatever the minister’ s argument was.

Just as an afterthought, some day the minister might tell the world why she fired John Sewell. It would be just an interesting anecdote in her autobiography or something. I think we deserve a bit of an explanation as to what happened there. Did he offend her grievously or something?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: He was not fired.

Mr. Breaugh: “He was not fired.” Again, that is the good answer. “He was not fired; he is just dead.”

Just to put a serious note on it, on two occasions now people have come to me with cases of suicides in MTHA buildings. There is now a coroner’s inquest into one matter concerning the death of Margaret Miller. There was no question, from what I know of it, that Margaret Miller was a woman who had a whole lot of problems. But her problems were not helped by the fact that MTHA had threatened her with eviction.

It brings into question a whole range of things that I, and other members here I know, have had to deal with with the local housing authority. We have never quite said to the local housing authorities all over Ontario precisely why they are there, so in my experience they have a tendency to become simply landlords, like any other landlord. One fits their rules. They provide one with a unit. That is it.

I do not deny for a moment that much of what any housing authority has to do is simply that: provide, as a first thing, affordable housing. And housing authorities do that. I wish they were a little more creative in the way they go about it. I wish there were a little more involvement on the part of tenants in the way the units are run. I wish there were a little more consultation than there actually is in terms of the day-by-day administration.

My favourite story about housing authorities is one from the south end of the city where the people who designed the units apparently thought that whoever was going to live there was not going to have any garbage, because they put one door into each unit, and the garbage always sits at the front door. The tenants do not like that and the administration does not like that, but the simple answer is, if one only has one door, there is only one place where the garbage can sit. That is at the front door because there is no back door.

I am sure we all have stories of going to visit apartment buildings that are run by different housing authorities and seeing the levels of maintenance that are there. Some are really pretty awful. I think some of Sewell’s proposals would have solved some of the design problems that are in the buildings, but those proposals, even when they get developed to that stage, seem to die, There is a certain inertia that comes into those things, and nothing ever happens with them. I really think that is sad.

I do not like the idea that somebody who is a maintenance worker in a housing authority, in Toronto or anywhere else in Ontario, feels so threatened when he goes to work that he sits down at a bargaining table and asks for bullet-proof vests. There is something really pretty wrong here. I know people who live in units like that who are terrified by it.

I know some other projects. The minister had something in her statement, as I recall, that went something like this: The housing units are allocated solely on need now. There are no other criteria.

I have seen this and I understand the problem. I would be someone who would say that it is a really good idea to integrate housing units. I know of some where the integration, for example of seniors with young children, works really well.

One called Little Ark Day Care is in the middle of a seniors’ building not far from my office. It is a great project. It is a great idea. It really works well. In my view, it works well because the idea was from the seniors. I also know that I have some other seniors’ buildings where my senior citizens are terrified to go out in the hall because there are little children running down the hall. They all have a friend who had a fall lately and broke a hip or an ankle. For people who are 70, 80 or 90 years old, they know, whether it is medically provable or not, that you get one fall in your lifetime, and when you are 80 years old and you fall and break your hip, that means you do not move very much any more after that.

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I am not sure whether it is because of the way in which that type of thing was done. I do not know that many seniors would argue that other people in the building is a wrong idea; I do not think they would. I think they are uncomfortable about how decisions like that are made. Perhaps somebody should go to them and say, “Let’s gather up all the seniors in the building and let’s have a little talk about whether it would be a good idea or a bad idea to have small children and young families in here.”

I will bet there are a lot of seniors in that building who would like to see a little kid in the hall, but I think they would also like it to be their idea. I think whether the approach, in terms of decision-making, was correct is probably the biggest part of this problem. I do not think they argue about whether there are other people with housing needs who deserve a break just like they got. That would be a pretty tough argument for any senior I know to make, that they should get some help with their housing but that others, a little different from them, should not. I would be happy to go and argue for an afternoon or so with them about that kind of thing.

But I do know they have fears that are legitimate. I know from my own experience with my father. He has been sick this winter. When seniors get physically ill, there is a range of other things that come into play. They get sad. They get a little depressed, not quite as feisty. They do not quite want to take on the world. I have all kinds of older people who are my friends who are living in a building that is integrated now who feel threatened for some reason.

I have to say this. I am of an age now where I like little children for about an hour and a half, and after that they get on my nerves. I have done my time with the little ones. I appreciate the fact that my kids make noise when they come home but do not cry at two o’clock in the morning. I think I would have a little difficulty if they did that.

That mix of people with different needs is one that I think has to be entered into with a little more thought. It is as simple as that. I frankly agree with the minister’s position that it should be on the basis of need, but I think too that we have a bit of an obligation here not to make decisions on high and expect everybody out there to say, “Great decision.”

We are dealing with people’s lives. I do not think it is that big a deal to go out when they want to integrate a building and say, “Let’s talk about this a little bit,” much like when they want to put a group home on my street. If they want to come and talk to me about that, that is fine. If they want to make me part of the decision-making process, that is fine. But it is a little tough when somebody looks you in the eye and says: “Well, we’re here. So what? What are you going to do about it?” It is a little hard to go around afterwards and ask for their co-operation about something.

That is a lot of what I think has been on the main agenda. I just want to do one more.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Keep going, Mike. You’re doing great.

Mr. Breaugh: I am trying.

There is a certain awkwardness in the ministry these days. I am not sure where this came from, but somewhere I hear that there is a lot of privatization going on in the Ministry of Housing, that a lot of proposals are being made about turning things over to the private sector. Somehow we expect some people, for example, in nonprofit housing, to go to endless meetings on their own because they are interested in providing affordable housing for some group, and we expect others to be able to take that idea and make a big buck out of it.

I will grant that there is a place here for the private sector. There always has been and there always will be, but some reason has to enter the picture too. We cannot expect volunteer groups to put together nonprofit proposals and sit there cheek by jowl with somebody who is making $1 million doing the same thing. That is not going to work.

The government cannot take nonprofit housing and make it a situation where it is in fact profit housing. That is not going to work. One had better be awfully careful when one invites the private sector into the ministry. The Ministry of Community and Social Services -- the minister is here so I do not mind using this as an example -- has for years struggled with this idea. I was one of the people who said it would be a good idea to get people out of the ministries every now and then and give them examples. Let them work in the field for a while and then bring them back in.

But that causes its problems. When some people are sitting in a Toronto office designing the criteria for funding a program, and the next time you see them they are out in the private sector making an application for that funding, talking to their good friends whom they worked with for a couple of years, that causes a problem and it is not just a perceptual problem. So in other ministries where we have tried to do this kind of thing, I think we should have learned some lessons.

In housing, the problem of letting the private sector right inside the structure of the ministry is one the minister had better approach with great care. She had better be prepared to delineate in very clean terms just what the private sector can do. Is the private sector being invited to take over the Ministry of Housing? I hope not, but even if they do not take it over, what are they going to do, what will their responsibilities be and how will we go about this?

I am concerned because there has not been a lot of public discussion about this. I see little memos on ministry letterhead about the kinds of proposals they are willing to take. I see there are cautions in there about conflict of interest and all kinds of things to boot, but the cautions are there with good reason. One had better tread very carefully in that regard.

I have gone on at some length. There is certainly a lot more material I have here which people have asked me to raise. Let me conclude with some simple points, going back to what I started with. If there is some kind of magical solution, I wish we would find it now. I do not believe there is. If there is one single solution, I wish we would get on to that now. I do not believe there is. It is not simply a problem of the ministry grinding out a number of theoretical housing units. That is no answer. It is particularly no answer if we are losing affordable accommodation at such an alarming rate.

I am not as concerned, to tell the truth, about what we are doing on the positive side. I see some good things happening there. I see some initiative, some acceptance of housing as a ministerial responsibility, to the point where I think the government really knows what it should be doing. I simply encourage it to get on with the job and go do that.

Whatever encouragement or boot in the rear end this government needs, we should all collectively give that to it. The government knows what to do. It knows how the nonprofit groups can put together proposals. It knows how many times we will have to attack the Treasurer for being such a mean old -- I cannot use the word, but he is.

It is not just a matter of spending money. It is not just a matter of using allocations. Over the past two or three fiscal years now, the ministry has been unable to spend the money it has. I understand the problem that is there. I understand that when the Conservatives were in power, for some reason they decided they would basically stop the work of the Ministry of Housing in almost every shape and form imaginable. They virtually disbanded the ministry.

So I do not have any argument that this was a major problem that had not come about quickly, but that over a decade or so the whole thing had just been wound down. I think all of us here who were even vaguely interested in housing knew that it had to be built back up again. Frankly, I think the Liberals made some of the same mistakes they made when they put the thing together, but that is fine. It is their decision to be made.

I am alarmed at the amount of good affordable housing that is being taken off the market. I think there is just about as much going off the market these days as there is going on. I am alarmed at the options people have, whether it is renting or buying these days. Members will share my alarm a bit, no matter where they live in Ontario, if they simply get out and look at the price of real estate in their community. It differs quite a bit from one to the next, but it truly is alarming.

It is truly a sad fact that the next generation coming up is going to have a problem to face that we never did have. Their expectations about actually owning a home are going to have to be totally different from ours. I bought my first home through the good graces of my in-laws who gave me the $1,500 to put down, and from the fact that my wife and I were both making princely sums as teachers, I think at that time almost $25,000. I could not even qualify for a cardboard box with that kind of income these days.

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I think it is going to take collective action on the part of a lot of people. We are going to have to change the way we finance houses. Our lending institutions have to turn their bright and kind minds towards the notion that there are different ways of financing, which are used in other jurisdictions, and that the traditional 25 per cent down and all the rest of your salary every other month is going to have to change or quite frankly they ain’t going to be lending money to these folks, because nobody, but nobody is going to qualify for a mortgage under these conditions.

To some degree, we may have to begin now to look at the European models for transporting people in and out of our urban centres. I am reluctant to get on that horse, because I know how expensive that is, for one thing. I know how difficult the approvals are and I am not sure that is the greatest lifestyle. But I surely think it has to be looked at, and to some small degree implemented now.

The curse we have is that if we had done all of this 10, 15 or 20 years when it should have been done, we would have saved ourselves such a pile of money that we would have been able to give everybody in Ontario one new house, even in North York. But we have not done that, so I think there are substantive problems there.

The other thing that really has to be said though, and I have said it before, is that I am really amazed at the number of laws we have in Ontario that apply to some folks but not to others. The minister introduced some amendments to the Rental Housing Protection Act which are really nifty. I had some nifty discussions with some tenant activists who think that just because the words were changed on paper things are going to be real different.

I think it is a nice law. I just wish laws like that could actually be enforced by somebody. I wish we could find a cop, a building inspector, I do not care who it is, somebody to be charged with the responsibility of enforcing these laws. The truth is that nobody does it.

Mr. Fleet: Are you applying for a new job, Mike?

Mr. Breaugh: No; I certainly would not want this job, I will tell the member that.

That is the problem with it. I am concerned somewhat that in rent review, in the Rental Housing Protection Act, in building standards and enforcement, there are a lot of severe problems simply because there appears to be no one clearly responsible for enforcing a law. I have had discussions with municipal officials who say: “Listen. We have our own bylaws to enforce here too, so don’t bother us with getting us to enforce provincial housing laws.”

They do not see it as their responsibility. They will do what they can, but that is it. The province has something like two inspectors and hopes to get to five to cover all of Ontario for that kind of stuff. That is not going to do it either. I think a major problem is emerging.

You cannot go very long having laws on the books that everybody ignores. That contributes to the breakdown of the relationship between landlords and tenants. This is a pretty law-abiding group of folks who live in this area. I think, by and large, they want to respect their laws. When there is a law on the books that nobody bothers to enforce, people lose respect for that law. They somehow seemingly lose respect for one another and you very soon have, not a violent society -- I do not think we are that -- but you have problems that cannot be easily resolved.

When you have a law on the books that says if there is a hole in the wall the landlord has to fix the hole in the wall, and the landlord does not do that and the people who are tenants in that building do all of the little things they are supposed to do and 12 months later the hole is still in the wall and the landlord is still saying, “I do not have to fix that if I do not want to;” and the city inspector says, “It is not really our responsibility, but we will issue a work order on that;” and people are saying, “All I wanted was to get the hole in the wall fixed,” that is not an unreasonable thing.

That is exactly the scenario I went over with a group of tenants in North York -- I think it is Brookside Drive up there -- and they were people who could work with the system. They knew how to fill out forms, how to register complaints; they knew the law, they knew how many people the city of North York had allocated for that type of work and they knew it was hopeless. That is the kind of thing they were looking at.

Very simply, if the law is there the law should be respected by everybody and enforced by somebody. The legal rights that tenants have under all the laws in Ontario are not worth very much unless there is some mechanism found for seeing that their rights are followed up on.

I think I will leave it there, since I have had a chance to get on the record some of my concerns, and then we can proceed through the votes. Perhaps the minister would care to respond.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am very pleased to have my critic from the opposition here to discuss these important issues. I was also, as the member knows, very pleased to visit his riding recently, where we shared a nice meal and talked also to some of the people in his community who are committed to doing some things that will make a difference in making it possible for people to have decent places to live.

I must say that the member is lucky to be living in Oshawa, where the community has indicated very clearly not just by its words but also by its deeds its understanding that people need to be able to live near where they work, they need to be able to have reasonable accommodation, decent accommodation, and there seems to be an understanding in the community as a whole, as well as in the governments in the locality, that everyone has a role to play in making a difference in this problem. I think that in living in his community he has some good examples of the kind of co-operation between levels of government and the community as a whole that does indeed make a difference.

One of the things we are working on doing very clearly, not only in the words that I speak around the province but also in some of the policy decisions that we have taken, is to make sure that every municipality in every region in the province takes on its appropriate responsibility, along with ourselves and the federal government, in making sure that people can live in communities where they work, where they have a reasonable place to live.

That is not going to be an easy thing to do, as the member himself knows, because of the various things that he has raised today, but I think that certainly our goal is very clear. The message that I have been delivering is as clear as I know how to make it. I think the policy directions that we have taken lead very much in this direction, and I will be talking more specifically about some of them as I go on.

I think the appropriate thing that I would like to do right now is really to respond to all the issues that were raised by the critic from the opposition. I will follow them as well as I can from the path he took in walking through the issues. If they skip a little, that will only be because he skipped a little, but it seems to me appropriate to do it that way.

One of the things that the member for Oshawa was most concerned about was the question of tenant protection. He mentioned the sale of various apartment buildings. Let me say that we have much more tenant protection now as a result of the action already taken by this government than was ever there before. The Rental Housing Protection Act is there to make sure that the rental housing we already have stays rental housing.

I think that is a very important improvement that the new law will give, and it has not only the words that are required to make this happen but a significant statement with some teeth in the act for enforcement, for prevention of harassment, much greater penalties for anyone who breaks the law, a much clearer indication of the seriousness with which the provincial government takes these issues.

We responded as well as we possibly could to the concerns that were raised to us by people who said that the previous legislation simply did not go far enough and was not clear enough in making those points. Sometimes when you have legislation, as we had before, that is short-term, you discover what you could do better.

In this case, I think that in the last round of the new Rental Housing Protection Act we have done better and have responded to the problems that people showed us were actually there in the law before. I am pleased about that. I think that is an appropriate response on our part to the problems that were there for people.

The member talked also about the long process to get nonprofit housing built, and I share that concern. I can tell him that I too wish that this process could go more quickly and I will tell him what we have done about it; but let me just put it in some kind of context, and that is that, difficult as the building process is, it also needs to have a lot of steps along the way.

What we are talking about is a very, very serious enterprise. Someone does need indeed to find the land. Someone does need indeed to make sure that it is appropriately managed and got through the zoning system. It is obvious that the building has to be designed properly, that concerns in the community have to be taken into account, that the whole process of financial management has to be learned and walked through.

These things are very significant, because, unlike some of the other things that governments do, what we are talking about here is building a major capital resource. It is expensive. The groups that build this housing and that then manage it have a 35-year responsibility in managing the building and helping the community that lives there live well; 35 years is a long, long responsibility.

The quality of the building that goes on, the quality of the work that is done up front makes an enormous difference in people’s ability actually to do the job that is required, which is to make sure that the housing gets built and to make sure that the people who live in it have a reasonable place to live and the management can be done right.

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Having said that, I must say that I agree with the member that one would like that process to be as sensible, as rational and as simple as it possibly can be, given the realities of the kind of housing we are talking about. I agree with him and, therefore, we have done something.

In the housing that the province is going to be building unilaterally under the Homes Now program, we have indeed streamlined the process, simplified the process and taken many steps out that used to be there, because in consultation with the nonprofit groups that had a lot of experience, they said to us, “This doesn’t really need to be there.”

We responded to them, analysed it and, in fact, have simplified it. I think that is a sensible thing to have done. One of the reasons we were able to do it is because of the several years of experience we now have and the nonprofit groups now have about what works, what is necessary and what is not necessary.

I must share with the member opposite my frustration in the sense that a significant amount of our nonprofit housing, about 7,000 units per year, is built jointly with the federal government. We have gone to the federal government and said: “Let’s simplify this. We’ve done it in what we’re planning to do. Let’s simplify what we’re doing with you as well.”

At this point, we have not succeeded in getting them to do that. That would be a very sensible thing to do. It would make life easier for the nonprofit groups. I continue to work on getting our federal partners to do that in the work that we do jointly. But in the work that we are responsible for ourselves, in the program we ourselves have done, we have simplified and made the process much more reasonable. I am very pleased about that.

The other thing we have done is issue the policy statement which the member opposite was so good as to remind us of, that was issued at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario meeting last August. He seems to have either stopped tracking that process or has somehow lost hold of it, so let me bring it back to him and remind him where we are.

What we did when we announced it in August was very clear. We said, “This policy statement indicates the provincial policy and the provincial goals.” The most visible parts of the policy statement, the ones most people have fastened on, have to do with the 25 per cent affordability guideline with new housing.

But also, there is not as much notice of some things that we think are going to make a significant difference -- also alluded to by the member -- such as saying that municipalities now have to indicate areas within their communities where appropriate intensification can take place, where we can use the roads, the sewers and the schools we already have.

Literally billions of dollars of public expense have gone into that infrastructure that is sitting there, in many cases not used as much as it should be or underused. We have asked municipalities and communities to indicate where in their municipalities appropriate intensification can take place.

Let me skip ahead to one of the themes the member mentioned a number of times, which is the great pity and the great shame that it is getting harder and harder for people of moderate income to have a reasonable place to live close to where they work.

One of the very great hopes we have and one of the great opportunities is precisely in this intensification, in using the communities that are already there more intelligently. We have asked municipalities to show us exactly how they are going to meet a very clearly stated goal, which is that we use our existing housing stock and land in areas that are already built up more intelligently.

This particular statement also has some targets and deadlines in it for speeding up the approvals process and streamlining the development process as a whole. One of the reasons housing prices have gone up much more than anyone in this House could possibly like is because of the time it takes to get through the approvals process in ordinary private sector building.

I think all of those are very good moves. What we said at the time and what is still true is that we would consult with municipalities and other interested and affected parties and that the end of the consultation process would be at the end of February. We are almost at the end of February and we will be at the end of the consultation process at the end of February. At that point, the province will look at all the information that has been received and will act in very quick order to firm up what exactly the policy statement will be as a result of the responses from the municipalities and other interested groups all across the province.

The member will know that in the midst of all this, there was a statutory municipal election that intervened. One of the things we had to make sure to do was to get information both from the old councils and from the new. I think we have done that as well as we could possibly be expected to do. If he is concerned that something he heard about in August has disappeared, it has not disappeared. It has been part of the discussion process all along. We will come to the end of that discussion process at the end of February and he will see action soon. The other thing that we have done, of course, is work on simplifying the development process. I will talk about that a little bit later.

The member mentioned a number of times that the rent review system is not producing the results that he would like. It is clearly, as the member knows, based on working through a system of justified rent increases. It was based on working hard with both landlords and tenant groups to find the most equitable arrangement we could have come to for a law that would balance the concerns of both those groups.

I believe that the law, though far from perfect, has done some very clear things and some good things in this direction, and we have been working very hard to give people the protection that we believe they need to have from unjustified rent increases. At the same time, other forms of protection for tenants have been instituted, including the Residential Rental Standards Board and some other measures as well.

The member is concerned about the question of what he considers to be land or housing speculation. As the member knows, my ministry commissioned a study on speculation which indicated that, appearances to the contrary, in the market that was analysed in the three years that were studied, there seemed to be not very much of what the member would call speculation. The whole question is clearly one the Treasurer is dealing with and deals with repeatedly as a result of the questions from the opposition.

On the question of infrastructure funding, and the member mentioned lot levies for education, again, let me say there was a green paper released on the whole question of infrastructure. I think that is an appropriate question to ask at a time when we are facing very significant pressures of growth all over the province. It is a cliché to say this, but it is a cliché because it is true: We are indeed growing very quickly.

There were 100,000 people who came into this province a year ago, and 100,000 people came the year before. That, and the natural increase of our population in the baby boom years, who are now buying homes, and the natural demographic shifts, mean that the pressure is significant. As the member mentioned, it is because of that significant pressure that even communities that seem quite far from Metropolitan Toronto are facing their own housing pressures. The member mentioned the community of Napanee and the concern his father had about the mixed blessing of the Goodyear plant.

The alternative is no industrial development. The alternative is no growth. The alternative is no tire company coming into a community and creating jobs. The reality is that if the province is going to grow, and I am very pleased that it is growing; if jobs are going to be created -- and I know the member opposite shares with me the pleasure of the fact that jobs are being created; if the growth is not going to be concentrated only in one area but is going to be spread to various places in the province so that Napanee will indeed grow because there are new jobs, the other side of that is that some expenses and some housing costs will go up. I think the alternative is, in fact, much worse.

In talking about the Napanee question, the member said the municipality suddenly asked, “Who is going to pay for the roads and sewers?” The fact is, someone has to pay for the roads and sewers when the growth happens, and that is exactly the reason we are looking at this whole question of how to fund infrastructure intelligently and well. It is the byproduct of growth. Also, as the member knows, because he knows something about economic development, unless the infrastructure is there, future growth will be threatened.

So there really is no choice here. We cannot build without sewers and roads. Someone has to pay for them. The people who are going to have to pay for them, to some degree, will also have to be the public sector, through taxation. There is no other solution than to figure out how to get the resources and how to be as intelligent and reasonable as possible and to have as little impact on the other goals that we have for people and their housing and other needs. It is a juggling act and it is not easy.

But the reality is that it cannot be done without some spending, and people are going to have to pay for it, because the alternative, as we all know, is much worse. The alternative is no jobs, no growth and no economic development, and that is simply unacceptable. The realities of the world we both live in are that we have to figure out how to pay for this.

That paper on how to fund infrastructure is out there for discussion. We are delighted to have any suggestions anyone has on how to do this as efficiently, intelligently and fairly as we possibly can. That is what we are trying to do. I am not under any illusion that this is easy. I am not under any illusion that people like the fact of having to spend more money on some of these services, but we need the services and they have to be paid for. Those are the simple realities of life.

The member talked about the tax proportion of the house price which the Toronto Home Builders Association mentioned. I have to say exactly what I have said earlier. The reason there are taxes inside home building is that there are services associated with getting that house built. You do not just plunk the house down. There do need to be roads. There do need to be sewers. There do need to be services. As growth occurs, there needs to be some taxation to take care of the needs of human beings that are associated with that growth.

The member talked about the problem of house prices. I could not agree more with most of the things he said about the very great pity it is that hardworking, decent people in this province, who have every reason to think they should have a good, decent place to live, who are not looking for luxury, who do not expect it, who expect to have a reasonable place to live, to raise their kids, to do their work, to live, should not have that. I agree with that; that is something I feel very strongly about.

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I believe that what is going to have to happen is that we are going to have to be more creative about those choices. We are going to have to create more physical types than we have in the past, we are going to have to be more intelligent about using land and we are going to have to create the framework within the various levels of government that allows for those choices actually to be built.

It is fine for us to design them in our minds; unless the zoning allows for more creativity and land use, it is not going to happen. Unless all the appropriate regulatory frameworks are adjusted to allow for that innovation, it will not happen. The only thing we can do as a government is make sure that openness is there and those possibilities are there, because the person of moderate income who works hard in this province has a right to have a decent place to live.

The other thing about that is that we now have very different family sizes and very different lifestyles and the choices that would be appropriate and would make people happy and comfortable today are not necessarily the ones that were built 60, 70 and 100 years ago. That is reasonable too, and I think people in the province recognize that. They recognize that their families are of different sizes, that in many cases both adults are in the workforce because that is what it requires today and because those are the choices people have made about how to live their lives.

All that is fine. What we need to do is make sure that the housing choices that go with these changes are enabled by our own framework and by the framework of the municipalities. That is why I think the land use policy statement we have issued is so important. I repeat it because I think it is so important.

The process of zoning for other kinds of choices, the process of deciding how land can be used, resides in the municipalities and unless they are specifically charged with taking responsibility for that, for taking their fair share, for allowing those housing options, it will not happen. That is the reason that policy statement is so significant. It is out of an understanding that we need these possibilities that we issued the statement and that we are so committed to it.

The member was talking about rental accommodation being built in Oshawa as a form of intensification, and I also am cheered by that. I think that is one of the very important ways we can have better housing and that is the purpose of the housing policy statement.

As to the description of the monster homes he was describing in North York -- maybe he calls them superhomes; where I come from they call them monster homes -- as I understand, what they do is tear down a small house and put up a very big one. It is because of that use of land, rather than what I would prefer to see, which is sensible intensification so there are more units on that land rather than fewer, that we issued the policy statement and that we basically said to municipalities:

“We are prepared to take our responsibility in housing. We are prepared to spend money on nonprofit housing and have shown so. We are prepared to use our own lands and have shown so by releasing some lands, and we’ll be releasing more. We are prepared to work with the federal government to get what resources it has available. You have to do something too. Your role is to make sure that various forms of housing can be built.”

The member has talked about the whole question of exclusionary bylaws. We have consulted on this topic and the member will see a government response forthcoming on that very soon.

Mr. Breaugh: Another?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: No, a new one; the same one that has made sense for a long time. I think that will be happening very soon.

As to the question of fast-tracking various forms of building, I take that one very seriously in two ways. One of the things we have done in the land use policy statement, which I keep returning to because it does have so many parts to it --

Mr. Breaugh: Wherever it is.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: It is in our ministry and it is part of a discussion process with municipalities and with builders and with members of the opposition if they choose to be part of that discussion. I invite the Housing critic, the member for Oshawa, to do exactly that: to write his response to tell us how we could do it better. I would be delighted to hear it.

Let me say that one of the things the policy statement talks about is a requirement for streamlining, a requirement for fast-tracking the whole building approvals process, a requirement on municipalities and on the whole process.

The other thing we have done is worked with a group of people from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, some people in the building industry and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs in particular on streamlining the planning and approvals process.

Again, in line with what we have done with nonprofit housing, we have tried to work together to identify how we can be smarter, how we can work faster, how we can eliminate steps that are not necessary, how we can work together better. I think the member will be seeing some suggestions coming forward from that group that are very much along this track, and we are pleased to be working on them.

The other question the member raised is the whole government land question, which I have mentioned before, but let me just return to it for a moment. As I said, there have been eight sites identified on which we are working actively.

Let me just give the member one example, which he himself mentioned, the Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital site, a large and really lovely site. We have already been actively working with the community and come out with suggestions about what the options might be. We want very much to work with communities, because, as the member says, if you want someone to live in your neighbourhood you walk down the road and say, “Hi. I’m coming and this is what I’m planning to do.” That is what we have been doing. I think it has been a good process. It does not mean there are not rough moments along the way in any of these building processes, but I think we are doing well, talking with the various communities about what is going to happen on the various sites we have that are government owned.

He will be seeing more and more land sites as we work along. We are working with the government land in a very serious way, because I think that though land costs are not everything, serviced land is the single most important cost determinant for housing. That is one of the reasons that land in some locations is so much cheaper than land in other locations. We are trying to be as well organized as we possibly can and also to make sure that the use of government land for people who need affordable housing is maximized.

The member said something about groups having difficulty sorting out who should make applications for government land. We will be working on that, sort of piece of land by piece of land, but for those nonprofit groups having difficulty with land in their own communities, what we have done -- it has been in place for more than a year now and has been very useful -- is the land loan guarantee.

It has meant that groups that identified a piece of land have been able with our help to grab it and hold it until they got ready to go into the building process under nonprofit. What that has meant is that they have not had to worry about the financing associated with holding a piece of land as they go through the planning process. That has been very useful. It is a rotating fund. A really large number of groups has made use of it; it has made a difference in their ability to build.

The member talked about the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless. Again, I could not agree with him more. It is not a question of a year. As long as there are people in this province who do not have a decent place to live, that is totally unacceptable. As long as there are people in this province who do not have a bed for the night, a room of their own, that is absolutely unacceptable. I could not agree with him more. It is not a matter of a year. It is a matter of whatever needs to be done for as long as it needs to he done.

That has been our view too, so one of the things we did last year was give support to community groups all over the province to form community-based groups to bring together the people who care about housing issues and particularly care about the issue of people who are homeless. We now have all over the province 29 committees on access to permanent housing working on the ground in a grass-roots way, bringing together the resources in their community to figure out what they can do in their community to increase housing options for people who would otherwise be homeless.

The reason that is important is that every community has not only different activists and different frameworks but also different solutions -- some things work in the north that do not work in major metropolitan areas; some work in some communities and not in others -- having to do with the local grass-roots politics. Of course, there are political issues in all of these things, depending on who knows whom and how they work with each other.

What we have done is help support the most effective use of those local grass-roots resources as we possibly can and also try to identify answers that arise from a community that suit the temper of that community, because those are the ones that are going to work. If the community feels it has found its own solution and we need to come in to help make it happen, we will do as much of that as we possibly can. We want very much to make that response to a community’s identification of answers.

There are some very hopeful signs. There is a group called the Homes First Society managed by a man named Bill Bosworth, whom I am sure the member knows, who has done some extraordinary things. One of the first things we are doing in the St. Lawrence Square site, which is one of the projects I am very proud of, as that process is going through the planning process for building, there is already a group of people who were formerly homeless building housing for themselves inside one of the old Canada Post buildings.

Eventually that housing will be transformed to housing for them and they will go on to another location to build more housing for more people. This is a situation in which the folks who are themselves on the street are providing their own answers, are doing their own work to make it happen. We are giving them the support required to help make that possible. That is the kind of direction I think we need to go in, because I learned from Bill Bosworth, because I listened to what he said, that one of the resources we never talk about is the resource of the people themselves who are out on the street and who have something to contribute to the solution of their own housing problem.

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But the real solution, as everyone has told me, and I agree with them, is permanent housing. The only answer is increasing the supply of permanent housing. In our Homes Now initiatives, in our Project 3000, in the work that we are doing with the federal government to make sure that the commitments it has made are actually kept, the main point is to say, “As long as there are not enough permanent places for people to live, no matter what we do with the shelter system, it will not be enough.” We have that understanding and I am not going to change my mind about it. It is perfectly clear that what needs to happen is more permanent housing.

I am glad the member opposite agrees with me about the importance of allowing singles and other groups who were previously not allowed to get on our assisted housing rolls to do that. I think it was absolutely the right decision. It has led to some difficulties of the sort that the member described, about integrating people who were not there previously, for example in seniors’ housing. In some communities that was done very well. In some it was done less well. It is very uneven across the province.

I will not change my mind about the importance of having decided that if people need housing, they need housing. They should not have to have a label on their heads that says they are mentally disabled, physically ill or anything like that. If they need help with housing, we are obliged to try to give them that help. If it is a little bumpy in the transition, I am sorry about that, but the alternative is just plain worse: of having people who had no chance of getting any of our help in housing. I think we did the right thing.

In all of these things, I think the key is for governments to work with the local community to develop solutions that suit the provincial goals. One of the roles of the province is to set a standard and to say, “This is what we expect of ourselves and of the local communities and provision of services through people who need them.” How those are met can very much vary in terms of the spirit of the community and the kinds of solutions they can come up with. It is a little less simple than simply saying that from now on everything will be the same all across the province, but it is much more realistic and more responsive to people’s lives.

I too enjoyed meeting Mr. Peacock, who is working on seniors’ housing. Hearing his stories, I am even more convinced that we were right to simplify what we are doing under Homes Now and that we are right to continue to press the federal government to say that this can be done more simply. It should not be this hard to make something happen.

The member mentioned the steel beams question and the Ontario Building Code. Let me say that the ministry has already worked with the building officials in the Toronto area to try to correct this situation. Clearly, the building code is the responsibility of the Ministry of Housing, and that is fine. But the norm is that municipal inspectors are supposed to make sure that the building code rules are adhered to. The alternative is to create an entire superstructure of provincial building code inspectors on top of the already existing municipal building code inspectors. If people think that getting housing built now takes a long time, just wait until there are two levels of inspection. We really do have to make sure that we make what is there work and not create yet another complication that makes it even harder to get reasonable housing built in a reasonable time. I think that is the only way to make it work. Of course. the Ontario New Home Warranty Program, which is administered by the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations, is also dealing with this matter and with others.

The member mentioned the change in the code for lead solder, and I cannot leave the suggestion aside without making clear what happened there. Our ministry was working on fixing that code for a longish while. We were basically almost ready to announce it. When we heard that people were concerned about it, we announced it, and I think that was the right thing to do. I think that was exactly the right thing to do.

The member talked a little bit about the problems of some of our tenants in Metro Toronto Housing Authority. I understand the concern and I share it. Half of the people who live in our housing are seniors, and many of the people who live in our housing do not have easy lives. That is simply a fact. We know that. They do not have easy lives. They are there because they do not have a lot of money. People who do not have a lot of money have a hard time in this society. That is clear.

I think that we have tried very hard to be a much more responsive landlord and to deal with more than bricks-and-mortar issues. We have a whole branch called tenant support services, which I was asked about the other day and which I will talk about a little later in response to those questions, working to help tenants as much as we can.

We have community relations workers in almost every building, trying to provide the kind of support needed by the human beings who live in those buildings, to give them the help that they ask for and that we think we can give them, to help make their lives as reasonable as possible. I take seriously our responsibility to human beings and not just to bricks and mortar. I think that is normal.

We have 250,000 tenants; 250,000 people live in our buildings. It is never going to be possible to be perfectly adequate in the provision of every social service to every single one of those people. We do the very best we can. We are continuing to do better. The message from the Ontario Housing Corp. board and the local housing authorities is very clear: we want to be as responsive to our tenants as we can. We want them to be as active in their own communities as they can possibly be. We consider them our partners in making their communities reasonable places in which to live. Unfortunately, when you have 250,000 tenants there are going to be moments which are not terrific, in which bad things happen. We do the best we can and we are going to continue to work hard to make that even better.

As to the question of redesigning those buildings, I know there are some proposals out to redesign some of the buildings we have and make them better places. The reality is that those buildings are jointly owned by ourselves and the federal government. They are not owned entirely by the province. They were put up together with the federal government’s support, they are jointly owned by ourselves and the federal government and any major changes we make have to be made in partnership with the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and the federal government. That is simply the case. Whatever changes we work on have to take that into account and we have to get the agreement of the federal government to make them. I think we are doing some interesting things in that regard, of which members will be hearing more later.

The member mentioned the whole question of so-called privatization of Homes Now. That is simply not the case. Building 30,000 new housing units on top of the commitments we already have is a massive undertaking. It more than doubles the workload of the ministry. It is a very significant piece of work to undertake. We have increased our staff in the ministry significantly to take account of that.

Let me read the member a statement, made by him a year ago at estimates, in which he said: “For a lot of nonprofit groups, what they really need is a little bit of expertise, somebody who is familiar with taking something through that kind of process, somebody who knows what you have to do .... Is there any thought within the ministry about taking a proactive stance, of making a resource group available to advise a co-op or nonprofit group?”

I take very seriously everything the member says. I actually do, it is true. It seems to me the member has really said: “There are all those groups out there with varying degrees of expertise. Some of them know how to do this stuff; some of them are new at it. They need support. You can’t just send them out there to do a very difficult thing, which is to become a developer, a builder and a long-term manager of a building, without help and without support.”

We in the ministry have increased the resources to do that. What we are doing right now is taking a look at the possibility of how we can get even more resources for that purpose. We are examining the various resources that are available and we are going to see if the resources that are available outside government can help us to do this work in a reasonable, efficient and cost-effective way. We may use them; we may not.

No decision has been made about that, but what we are doing is examining the alternatives of the resources out there to make sure the nonprofit groups that are building housing all over the province -- and will be building even more with our new provincial initiative of building 30,000 more units -- get the support they need to do the job, because it cannot be done without that support. That is what that is all about. I am glad to be able to clear up the member’s misconceptions about this one.

The member’s concern about good, affordable housing being taken off the market is one that I share, except that it seems to me he is somewhat exaggerating the degree to which that is happening. One of the things we have done is -- the old Rental Housing Protection Act was reasonably effective at protecting housing stock and, in so far as it was not effective enough, I think the changes we have made in the new act are meant to take care of that and to make sure there is more affordable housing out there.

The member said he was concerned about the possibility of new kinds of mortgages. I think all financing options that would make housing more affordable should be looked at. The federal Minister of Housing is also interested in this question and is going to be doing some work on the same question. It is very important to do more innovative thinking about finances, so that we make more choices available to people, but the other side of that is there have to be homes they can actually afford to buy.

However fancy the financing gets, at some point they have to pay for them. Whether they pay for them up front, pay for them in bigger mortgages or pay for them for longer periods of time, they have to be paid for. What we really want to do is to make sure that there are more such homes that more people can afford. That will make it easier for all of them and make it possible for more people to have a reasonable place to live that they have some ownership in.

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The member said something about the whole question of transportation, and of course we always consider the relationship between housing and transportation. I am very attracted to various European models that perhaps are less accepted here in North America. One of the ones that I am most attracted to and is very European is intensification, using the land we have better, because that will make an enormous difference.

The cost not only of infrastructure but in time of simply spreading out for ever is very high. I think more people are now willing to consider living in a smaller space for the tradeoff of being closer to work, especially as family sizes and housing forms and the way in which we live together have changed.

The member talked a little bit about enforcement of the Rental Housing Protection Act. Let me say that we have put a number of changes in the act. We are very serious about enforcing the new act and a number of the measures that we put in will improve enforceability: the extension of the limitation from six months to two years; the authority to order a reconversion, which I think is very significant; and various other changes in the act which I know the member has been paying attention to, so he knows they are there.

It seems to me we have signalled our seriousness about this. I do not know how we could signal any better than in the kind of legislation we have brought forward and in our making sure that the supply of affordable rental accommodation does not go down from what it is right now. I think that is very significant and I am very pleased that we have done that.

What I would like to do at this point, if I may, since I think I have responded to almost all the issues the member raised, certainly the ones I noticed as he walked through them, is that I have some responses to several questions which were raised by my colleagues on the last day. If it would be acceptable to the member, I would like to answer them. May I do that? May I respond to the questions that were raised on the last day?

Mr. Chairman: Are there any further questions on the estimates?

Mr. Breaugh: Just one little thing. I have never had a briefing note handed to me before, but somebody has now done that, and since I do not have staff to do that I presume it came from one of the two fine gentlemen who have been attending to the minister all afternoon.

I will do what the minister does when she gets pieces of paper handed to her; I will read it. It says, “Has Breaugh commented on the fact that the price of housing is such that the Housing minister cannot live up to her campaign promise of moving into the riding of Oakwood’?” I do not know what it means, but that is the question.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The question is, “Are housing prices very high?” Yes, indeed, they are very high.

May I respond to the questions that were asked the other day?

Mr. Chairman: Go ahead.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: One of the questions was from the member for Beaches-Woodbine. The question was is provincial government assistance available to upgrade rooming, boarding and lodging houses to meet fire and safety regulations? The member should be pleased to know that eligibility under the low-rise rehabilitation program has been extended to owners of rooming, boarding and lodging houses just recently, if they comply with program criteria. The owner of the building has to make application to the local municipality in order to do that.

There was a series of questions asked by the member for Markham (Mr. Cousens) the other day, I assume because the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) was unable to be here to ask questions after he made his fine intervention on estimates the other day. One question was, “How many units are being created under Project 3000?” The answer is 3,000 units, and of these, about 1,100 are now both finished and occupied.

The next question was, “How many nonprofit units were completed in 1988?” The answer is 7,746 units were completed in 1988 and the total since 1986 is 11,925.

The other question was, “How many of the 20,000 units promised in December 1985 are completed?” The answer is 20,510 have been completed under nonprofit housing, Renterprise and convert-to-rent programs, as was planned.

There was a question of how many of the 6,700 federal-provincial nonprofit units were completed in 1988. The answer is 7,747 of those units were completed. It should be noted that the program started in 1986 and that a nonprofit project can take from 10 months to two years to build.

A question was asked about how I will meet the 30,000-unit target date of 1993. We have made some allocations already. There will be substantially more made in the next little while, followed by commitments in 1989 to 1992. Without unforeseen impediments, we should be able to complete our target.

The question was asked about how many nonprofit groups have applied for mortgage financing through this program. At the moment we are in the development stage of this program and so far 400 projects have applied for mortgage financing as part of their initial application.

I was asked how many dollars in subsidies we paid nonprofit corporations in 1988. The answer is that $73 million was paid in subsidies for the fiscal year 1988-89.

The member for Markham asked the question about what the tenant support services did. I have said that the tenant support services people did a survey that indicates that up to 40 per cent of our tenants in public housing receive some form of support services from the housing authority. Since we have about 250,000 tenants in housing in the province, 40 per cent of that should not be too difficult to figure out.

The issues that the tenant support services program deals with include: development of race and ethnic relations training for our staff, development of a comprehensive antidrug strategy, development of a community development strategy for public housing, establishment of a pilot project for a community-based skills development recreation program for the children in public housing, establishing linkages with community mental health agencies and development of three pilot projects, together with the Ministry of Community and Social Services, to incorporate child care facilities in social housing.

When I mentioned the tenant satisfaction survey, which is the source of some of our information about how our tenants use tenant support services, the member for Markham -- acting, I assume, on behalf of the member for Nipissing -- asked me if I would table the survey. I have copies with me and am pleased to provide them to the member for Markham.

Those are the answers to the questions that were raised the other day. I am pleased to answer any other questions anyone has.

Mr. Harris: I would like to take a few moments, if other members of the committee would allow me, to ask a couple of questions and to put a couple of things on the record with regard to rent control and rent review that I did not get on the record last Thursday.

The minister alluded to the fact -- and I notice with interest in the Hansard she alluded to the fact about three times -- that I was unable to stay right through till six o’clock last Thursday. She mentioned it again today, I think a couple of times, in her remarks. That is quite right. I was unable to stay right through to the end. I would have thought the minister would have understood, being part of a caucus of 94 and one who was away from this House for the first week of January when we were all back here, that being part of a caucus of 17 and House leader, trying to represent my party around this province and in the House and being critic for a number of portfolios, of which I know she considers Housing to be the most important -- and indeed I do not consider any that I have to carry to be more important than Housing either, but I do have the odd other responsibility in my role on behalf of my caucus and as the member for Nipissing.

I appreciate that she thinks it is important to point out at every opportunity that I cannot be in the House for every minute. It is part of the attitude problem that I brought up last Thursday as to why I think she has difficulty in getting along with the various players in the various groups, be they political, be they on this side of the House, be they from other parties, or be they in the housing industry; be they developers, be they indeed the tenants’ associations, which increasingly are expressing to me their very grave concern that, “This minister doesn’t listen, this minister doesn’t pay attention to us, this minister does whatever she wants.”

I put that on the record today, not that it is my nature, and indeed it is not, but by way of explaining why I was not here from 5:30 to 6 o’clock last Thursday, I had to travel to Windsor to try to keep track of the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. Kerrio), who has completely alienated the various interest groups. I had to speak to the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters.

I wish I could devote my full time to housing, but there are other responsibilities that this government is totally fouling up, where it is totally out of control, and one of them is the Ministry of Natural Resources. That is where I was from 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday.

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I want to put a couple of things on the record, with the rent review system in particular, that I did not have an opportunity to do on Thursday. I did not want to take the full amount of time. I wanted to provide enough time for the minister to respond while I was still here. As I have already indicated, I was here for most, but not all, of it.

Perhaps I could talk a bit about the rent review system in particular. There is a crisis situation in the rental housing market. Thousands of people are lined up on public housing authority waiting lists across Ontario. There are more than 16,000 rent review applications backlogged in the rent review system, a number that I suspect will probably go up and be substantially higher once landlords, and tenant associations as well, get some sense that there is some reason to go ahead and file and that it will be quicker than two or three years before they are dealt with. I suspect that a number have been held back for that very reason.

Landlords who face rental increases face a process that is so complicated and difficult to follow that John Bassel, president of the Fair Rental Policy Organization of Ontario, has said: “The time and money landlords waste just reading the set of instructions provided by the Ministry of Housing, let alone trying to fill out the forms, is appalling.”

Those are dollars, time and effort that the private sector is forced to expend that are not going in to providing affordable housing. Who picks up those dollars? They are added on to the cost of doing business. Of course, when something is inefficient and complex and difficult to understand, it not only creates additional backlog problems but also adds to the cost. It adds to the cost just as a lot levy does, just as the cost of material does and just as -- of course, we all know the big one -- the cost of land does.

I believe it is appalling for the landlords to be faced with this type of situation. It is just as appalling for the tenants, of whom many, if not most, would find it very difficult to go out and hire the expertise required to understand the legislation. There are not many things that landlords and tenants agree on, but this indeed is one of them, that the existing rent review system does not work.

The minister says she is proud of her legislation. I do not think she has to say that, because it was not her legislation. But I respect the fact that, as a minister of the crown, she is supportive of the work that was done by her predecessor and, indeed, by the government. She has said on a number of occasions that she is proud of the legislation because it balances the needs of both the landlords and the tenants. The only balancing it does is it makes it equally difficult to understand and equally inaccessible for both. It does not indeed serve the needs of both groups. The existing system of rent review serves the needs of neither the landlords nor the tenants.

In my view, the minister and her predecessor and this government have created a huge bureaucracy in an attempt to make what are proving to be unworkable laws work. They have set up rent registries, established the Residential Rental Standards Board, created guideline rates for annual increases -- all laudable, applaudable goals and objectives. But what are the results? The system now costs more than $40 million to administer, an increase of $32.6 million from what was in place before. The minister can argue that what was in place before was not as broad. Maybe there were some things that did not work very well, but a $32.6-million increase, to a total of $40 million, is getting close to a 500 per cent increase.

The response of this minister and of the former minister has been to throw more money, more staff, more civil servants and more resources at this problem, I guess on the assumption that if you are able to throw enough money at the problem, eventually it may work. Landlords and tenants are united that the problem is not money, that the problem is not the number of staff, but the problem is that the legislation itself is flawed. I think the record has been virtually that the more money that has been thrown at it, the worse the problem has become.

I would suggest to the minister that instead of continuing to defend that particular piece of legislation, perhaps one or two of those additional hundreds, I guess, of civil servants might turn their attention to, “How can we make changes to the legislation if it’s still necessary to see if we can’t make it work a little better?”

There are a number of things that need to be addressed. Is the rent review backlog really declining? Is the commitment of much more resources giving the result that one would expect? We are dealing with a rent review process that allows for an award to be higher than the amount asked for. My colleague from the New Democratic Party has raised this very issue with the minister on a number of occasions. The member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh) has talked about decisions of the Rent Review Hearings Board awarding rent increases higher than the amount applied for by the landlord.

Each time that question has been asked, the minister has the pat response -- I will try to paraphrase it or come out with it as best I can -- that the process is intended to consider all the relevant information and make a decision which is both fair to the landlord and the tenant. I understand that is the goal of the process. But the crux of the matter is whether this minister feels that it is appropriate, in a general way, that the rent review process, under this current legislation, increases the rent more than the landlord has requested.

Let me give the minister a specific example, not an actual example but to specify: A landlord serves his tenant with a notice that his or her rent will increase by 15 per cent. The landlord says: “Indeed, the guideline of 4.6 is not enough for me to operate this building in an efficient or acceptable manner. I require 15 per cent.” The tenant thinks this increase is unjustified and begins the rent review process. By means of the rent review process, after considering all the pertinent information, the maximum rent is determined and the rent increase is set at 25 per cent or 42 per cent.

We have examples where this is happening. The landlord is saying: “I don’t need that much money. I don’t want that much money. I’d like to be free to charge my tenant less money. This is the amount of money that I think is appropriate.” If, instead of fighting this and going through all the processes, the tenant would say, “I agree this is the amount that should be there,” then presumably the two of them can make a case that it should be 15 per cent. But the tenant under this legislation says: “No, I’m going through this process. I want to find out what’s going on.” And what happens? He or she is now faced with an increase substantially higher than the 15 per cent. Is that the way the legislation is supposed to work?

I, for the life of me, do not think that is the way life in general works. If two people can come to an understanding on rent and the government, with this legislation that is designed to protect tenants and presumably to keep rents lower, comes along with the mechanism it put in place and says, “No, the rent should be higher than that; I know the landlord might be happier with less, but it should be higher,” then I think there is something wrong.

We have a system in place that has taken common sense, among a lot of other things, completely out of the marketplace. But just on that one specific example, I could not understand how the minister could not at least agree with my colleague the member for Oshawa when he raised it: “Yes, there’s something wrong here. That is not the intention of this process; and yes, I think I should be looking at that and we should be looking at those situations. Clearly, we don’t want those situations to occur.”

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I do not think it is right, I do not think it is fair; and I do not think the minister would agree it is right and fair, but she has to acknowledge that. She cannot just give the pat old answer time after time after time. We know that the legislation is designed to be fair to tenants and landlords. We know that. We do not think anybody intentionally drafted legislation not to be fair. Even I, one of the staunchest critics of this government, of this Premier, of this cabinet, of this minister and of the former minister, do not think they intentionally are trying to draft legislation to cause further problems.

When those questions are raised, whether it is me or whether it is somebody else, we are looking, as I think the landlords and the tenants and the people of Ontario are looking, for a minister to seriously accept our questions and concerns and to seriously want to sit down and address them. That is what I think the people of Ontario are entitled to. That is what I think tenants and landlords and those who have a vested interest in the housing situation, be they providers or be they consumers or potential home owners, expect and that is what they deserve, I believe, and I have been somewhat critical that I do not get the sense that that is what they are getting.

If I am wrong the minister undoubtedly will correct me, but I suggest to her that there are a number of groups out there that do not feel that they are being listened to and that they are being appreciated or being understood and that best efforts are being made. It may be that they are, but that is not the perception. I think the minister would agree with me on that and I think that is an important thing that must be addressed by this administration and, I would suggest, by her.

The Rental Housing Protection Act is a tremendous disincentive for private sector involvement in the housing field. Very often there are conflicts that come into play.

Many would say speculation tax is un-Conservative, and yet it was a Conservative government that brought in a speculation tax because it recognized a problem that was there and it recognized that this problem was accelerating faster than it had planned for -- faster, for whatever reason, than it had been able to cope with -- and that, as a temporary measure, it was required to give some time to get to the real problems.

I am not a great proponent of substantial intervention in the marketplace, save and except we are here to serve all Ontarians and when there are severe problems, intervention in the marketplace is required and I acknowledge that. In the type of intervention such as the speculation tax that was brought in by my predecessors, before my time by a Conservative Party, certainly the reasons for doing so were legitimate at the time to get at the problems, to get time to solve the problems.

I suggest to the minister that through a number of the actions that this government has taken over the past three and a half years it has not provided solutions to the problems, it has in fact compounded the problems; it has been part of the problem itself.

Unless it is willing to identify and acknowledge those problems, unless it is willing to work constructively with all the players -- because I think we would all acknowledge that if it is going to drive, inadvertently I am sure, the private sector completely out of the affordable housing market, it must examine the reasons why the private sector feels alienated, why it is being driven out and how to get it back in; or the government must do it all itself. I do not believe, particularly given what I have heard from this current Treasurer, that this government believes or has any sense that it is going to have the resources to solve these problems all by itself.

I suggest to the minister that in the whole rental problem, which I did not have an opportunity on Thursday to spend as much time on as I would have liked, there are also only two options: you either buy something or you rent. Whether you buy a single-family home, a duplex or a condominium, be it a row-type condominium or whether it is a co-op you actually own, or whether it is a co-op where you are a tenant as well as the manager, or whether you are a tenant, clearly what is happening is that all of these problems are getting worse.

The options are getting less and less affordable. We have driven vast sums of money, developers, builders, the whole private sector right out of having any sense that -- I think they want to be involved, I think they would like to be involved. I think they would like to be part of the solution; but they have not felt they are wanted or needed or are going to be given an opportunity to be part of the solution.

I do not think that the minister intentionally does that or that the Premier intentionally does that. It may be that there is some philosophical bent rampant throughout this current administration that unavoidably causes this to happen. I suggest, in the interests of this administration, that if that is the case it had better change that bent, had better change that attitude, because the problems will continue to get worse and worse. Indeed, I do not think it has enough money to solve the problem alone as a government.

I offer those suggestions and comments, and a few questions, I guess, that I have asked along the way in addition to those I raised on Thursday.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am pleased to welcome the member back from his trips following the Minister of Natural Resources around. I am glad he is back on Housing. I am delighted to see him here.

He was talking about rent review and commented about some of the problems he sees in the legislation. Let me say to him that, yes, we have spent a lot of resources on making sure the administration of the legislation goes more quickly. It is as a result of the resources we have spent and the effort we have made that we have reduced the backlog from more than 25,000 applications to 16,000 applications. I am happy to see that change. It represents an enormous amount of work, an enormous amount of commitment and a significant outlay of resources.

The alternative would have been not to protect the tenants of the province from unjustified rent increases, not to protect the tenants of the province from the possibility of having rents raised more than once a year, not to protect the tenants of the province in relation to key money, not to protect the tenants of the province in relation to having buildings turned into suite hotels and not to protect the tenants of the province from unreasonable maintenance standards.

It seems to me we made a decision on the benefits and the costs that is defensible. I, too, wish we did not have such an enormous amount of work to do at one moment, as we did when the legislation was passed, but we took that responsibility on and it is now our responsibility to give it the resources to work through and do the appropriate administration of the legislation.

I have no idea what the member has been doing the past few weeks, but it seems to me that especially in these estimates debates there is a kind of lugubrious tone in which he raises his concerns. I have no comment to make about that, but let me tell him that what I think is important is that something like 80 per cent of our tenants in Ontario are facing rent increases just about at the guideline.

They believe, and say they believe, that they are glad to have that protection from unjustified rent increases. They are glad to know what their rents are going to be. In a situation in which prices for various forms of housing are going up very high, and we discussed this in the earlier part of the estimates debate, and in which ownership prices are going up in a way that is very distressing, the renters in this province feel, rightly, that there is protection for them through our rent review legislation. The vast majority of our tenants face increases at or near the guideline.

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The others who are going through rent review because the landlord has said there need to be some other expenses accounted for because of massive capital expenses or other kinds of expenses associated with the building are being treated as well as we know how, with as much energy and commitment as we know how to give. I think that is something that indicates the commitment of the province to the protection of tenants.

Earlier, the honourable member also mentioned that I was proud of some legislation. I am indeed proud of some legislation and I have said so very explicitly. I am very proud of the new Rental Housing Protection Act which we have brought forward. He says the people in the landlord community are distressed by that. I know that, because I talked with them, with people in the tenant community and with other interested parties.

Here was a situation in which we, as a government, had to make a difficult choice. There was no way in which every possible interest group could have been equally happy. We made that difficult choice. It is one of the jobs of government to make tough choices, and we made them.

The member himself said, if I may quote him, “We are here to serve all Ontarians.” I agree with that. We are here to serve all Ontarians, and we made a tough choice on the Rental Housing Protection Act, at a time of housing shortages in the rental area and at a time of very significant growth and pressures in the province, that the three million tenants we have living in rental accommodation should have the protection of knowing that their accommodation was not going to be turned into something else. They can live in those apartments with some degree of security and know their homes are going to stay there for them. For people who live in rental accommodation, that is their home. We have every reason to want to see them as protected as they can possibly be under these circumstances.

As to saying that the private sector has been driven out of housing, I do not understand where that comes from. We are talking about the single biggest industry in the province, construction, which in the past few years on the housing side has been, I venture to say, one of the most profitable places any business person could possibly be. They are building homes all over the province. They are building condominiums all over the province. They are making a lot of money.

I believe it is appropriate at a time of growth that the people in the building industry should be both building and making a living. It is their job to do that, and that is fine. But I think it is a little disingenuous to suggest that somehow the private sector has been hard done by. It seems to me the private sector is doing very well.

Mr. Harris: I said they have been driven out of the affordable housing sector.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The member mentioned that they have been driven out of the affordable housing sector. I do not think that is true. Let me just give him one example. We are building 30,000 nonprofit housing units in our own unilateral provincial program. Who is going to build those? The people who are going to build those are the people I meet regularly, who are part of the Ontario Home Builders’ Association and the Urban Development Institute, all the people who build. It is the private sector that builds this stuff.

Mr. Harris: If you are prepared to pay for them all, they will build them.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: The member says if I am prepared to pay for them all, they will build them. We are paying for them all and they are building them. It is the private sector that is building all this nonprofit housing. They are very glad to do so, as they should be, because it is good housing and they are doing a good job building it. I think we have a very clear indication that the private sector is happily involved in the building of housing, both profit housing and nonprofit housing, all over the province.

As to the question of the whole view of the development industry and what we are doing, let me just say that we have many interests in common with the development industry and we talk with people in it all the time.

Mr. Breaugh: You certainly do.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am in an interesting position, because the member for Oshawa complains that we are too involved with the private sector, and the member for Nipissing says we are not involved enough with the private sector. It seems to me we are in exactly the right place.

It seems to me also that the member should know that, yes, we have a lot of interests in common with the people who are home builders, but we do not have identical interests in common. Let me quote what the member himself said, “We are here to serve all Ontarians.” In those areas in which our interests and our values overlap we are very happy to work with them, but there are times when we disagree with them, where our interests are not the same. If they choose to represent that as not listening to them, I am extremely sorry, because we listen to them and we talk to them; we just do not always agree with them

The same thing is true with everyone else we listen to. The job of government is to talk to people and to listen to people, then in the end we have to choose; in the end not everyone will be happy. That is what it means to make hard choices. I am happy to continue to talk with all the people involved in housing issues in the province: landlords, tenants, builders, community groups. I am doing that; I continue to do that; I will continue to do that.

I learn a great deal from my conversations with the people across the province about what we could do better. We do the best we know how in terms of responding to those concerns, but no one should be under the illusion that talking and listening means that we will agree with everyone. We cannot; we cannot agree with everyone and act. If we are going to act, we are going to make choices and we are not going to agree with everyone. I think that is appropriate.

Mr. Harris: I have a lot of other questions to raise and there will not be time to do that today. but let me respond to the minister in this way: The minister indicates that people in the development industry and the builders are mad at her; I guess she also said that the Conservative Party seemed to be mad at her for one reason, the New Democratic Party for another reason, and therefore she was probably in exactly the right place.

Mr. Breaugh: Everybody is disgusted with her and she does not know the difference.

Mr. Harris: That is right. Because apparently everybody from both sides of the problem is mad at her -- be it a conservative party or a socialist party; be it a builder or a tenant -- indeed I would suggest to the minister that yes, there are tough choices to make, but she would want those groups to respect those choices. She would want those groups to say, “Here is legislation that does not favour one group or the other group, but indeed is workable.”

What she has is that everybody is mad at her. She had landlords saying the legislation is terrible -- it contributes to the cost; to the supply problem; it is not working -- and she had tenants who are saying the same thing, “We do not like this legislation.”

The other thing is, I do not understand why she is so defensive and why her government is so defensive about this legislation that landlords helped to develop and that tenants helped to develop, where there was certainly a hope that it was in fact going to be workable. Initially it had the support of both sides, so I think it was worth while trying and worth while proceeding with. But what happened was that those very players who were brought to the table by the former minister are now saying, “We were wrong.”

This government has a tremendous opportunity to say that it is not just its legislation, it is legislation that indeed involved both sides: landlords and tenants; builders and condominium people. Everybody was involved in it, so that those major players are now saying, “We thought it would work and it is not working,” and they are willing to come back and start to look at it. I do not understand why that is so difficult for the government to accept.

Second, the minister said that she is proud of having brought in legislation to protect tenants from key money, from rent increases, from renovations, from being kicked out, from losing their homes; to protect, to protect, to protect.

I understand the need for protection. What the minister and what this government really should be looking at is why we need legislation to protect tenants from key money. Why do we need legislation to protect these units from the owners wanting to tear them down? Why do we need protection for increases that may be excessive? Why do we need all that? That is the fundamental problem. Why are all these protections necessary? They are necessary because those people involved in providing apartments, in providing modest and low-income housing, say: “We cannot make any money at that. We do not want to be in that business. We want to be in a different business. If you will pay us, we will build them as builders, but we cannot afford to stay in that business.”

It is the why that I do not see any sense or sign that the minister or the government are interested in solving, and until we solve the why we need all these protections we will need these protections.

Given that the protections are not working and that both groups are unhappy with them, I think there are two areas that this minister has to work on.

Given the time, I will sit down so you can have this committee rise; I would be glad to do that.

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

The House adjourned at 6:02 p.m.

February 20, 1989

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

PROVINCIAL-MUNICIPAL RELATIONS

HOMEMAKERS’ PENSIONS

NATIVE PEOPLE AND THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

ORILLIA SOLDIERS’ MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

CAREERMOBILE

HOUSE PRICES

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

RESPONSES

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

ORAL QUESTIONS

PROPERTY SPECULATION

DRUG ABUSE

USE OF MINISTRY AFFILIATION

RAPE CRISIS CENTRES

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

PROPOSED GRAVEL PIT

PUBLIC SECTOR PENSION PLANS

ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE

BEEF MARKETING

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

FRENCH-LANGUAGE SERVICES

FUNDING OF SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCIES

TEACHERS OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

LONG-TERM PLANNING

PETITIONS

NATUROPATHY

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION

MOTIONS

ESTIMATES

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

ORDERS OF THE DAY

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HOUSING (CONTINUED)