The House met at 1330.

Prayers.

ESTIMATES

Hon Ms Lankin: I have a message from His Honour the Lieutenant Governor, signed by his own hand.

The Speaker: I have received a message from His Honour the Lieutenant Governor, signed by his own hand.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CRAWFORD ROSE

Mr Beer: In the past week in the town of Aurora, Ontario lost an exemplary citizen. Dr Crawford Rose was one of those selfless people who labour tirelessly for their community throughout their lives, often with little or no public recognition. He died last week at the age of 92, after a long and full life of helping others. He was celebrated in and around Aurora, not only because of the good work that he carried out but also because he was such a genuinely caring person.

Dr Rose and his family came to Aurora in 1942. In addition to his medical practice, Dr Rose also took part in political life. He was elected to city council in 1943 and served as mayor of Aurora from 1950 until 1955.

Some seven years ago the Rose family decided to sell its home to the board of the Yellow Brick House, a shelter for abused women and their children. Dr Rose took great pride in knowing that his former home was to be used to help those vulnerable women and children who needed a safe haven from violence. His spirit and dedication are reflected in the work of the Yellow Brick House today.

Dr Rose also had a long and productive relationship with York County Hospital in Newmarket. He was granted a lifetime membership with the hospital and wrote a book entitled York County Hospital: A Story of Faith. The book was dedicated to his wife, Julia, who died 13 years ago. In 1976 Dr Rose was also named Aurora's Citizen of the Year.

Dr Rose brought happiness to many people with his help and assistance. He was the kind of doctor who made house calls and the kind of person who made people happier just by the enthusiasm with which he lived his own life. Crawford Rose was a kind and gentle person, always willing to help the people around him. We will all miss him.

LAYOFFS

Mr J. Wilson: My statement is directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. In a press release issued last week concerning the sale of Harding Carpets to Soreltex, Ontario Development Corp officials said the phasing back in of Harding's Collingwood plant is under review.

Although I appreciate the minister's efforts to date on behalf of Harding Carpets, any sale which involves public money and does not guarantee jobs for Collingwood workers is unacceptable. Layoffs are occurring across the province, but the Collingwood situation is unique. Within the span of a year, the town has been forced to look on in horror as one third of its workforce joined the unemployment rolls courtesy of industrial layoffs.

The economic and social repercussions of this industrial downturn have been profound. As I am sure the minister is aware, after reading the numerous letters I have sent to his office asking him to address this problem, last week's sale of Harding Carpets guaranteed jobs for workers at the plant in Brantford. My understanding, however, is that the sale is not yet finalized, and I am asking the minister today to provide workers in Collingwood with the same guarantee of jobs that Brantford workers received. I would also ask the minister to provide a timetable as to when Collingwood workers can expect to be back on the job. It is unfair and immoral for workers recently devastated by a layoff to be left dangling as to what their fate entails.

TOWN OF EAST GWILLIMBURY

Mr O'Connor: It is with great pleasure that I speak today. The honour to represent the people of Durham-York in the first ever New Democrat government in Ontario as the first New Democrat elected in my riding is indeed a humbling experience.

With a large rural riding like Durham-York, I have found warmth and the willingness to help a neighbour that is quite easily overlooked in large urban areas.

Last Friday night I had the unique opportunity of being part of the opening of the new East Gwillimbury Civic Centre in Sharon. Last night I returned to the new civic centre to the town of East Gwillimbury's volunteer appreciation night. The East Gwillimbury Recreation Committee presented an award to Gail Roy as the Volunteer of the Year and also presented Ted Dodds with the Outstanding Volunteer Award.

As part of the evening's events, retired assistant deputy minister for recreation Bob Secord spoke of the importance and value of good municipal recreation programming.

The highlight of the evening was the recognition of the efforts and accomplishments of a local councillor, Paul Mainprize, and to honour Mr Mainprize with the Corps d'Elite Certificate of Recognition on behalf of the southern region of the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Recreation. He has added much not only to local recreation but also as a regional vice-president in the Ontario Municipal Recreation Association.

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT

Mr McGuinty: I am concerned about the NDP government's apparent lack of commitment to the integrity of the independent environmental assessment process. The previous government established this independent process, with funding for public interest groups, to review Ontario's electricity needs for the next 25 years.

Comments in recent days by the Minister of Energy, and specifically in response to my question of 22 November, have left the clear perception that the relevance and independence of the Environmental Assessment Board is being eroded and is in question.

In lieu of her statements regarding the future of nuclear energy in this province, the minister had two responsible courses of action open to her. She could have asked Hydro to amend its plans to make the non-nuclear option one of Hydro's top three preferences before the board or she could have directed her ministry to make a constructive contribution within the hearing process. Instead, the minister seems to have been gripped by NDP moratorium fever.

Why does the minister continue to prejudge the outcome of this independent and rigorous process? Does the minister realize what kind of precedent she is setting with regard to the independence of the entire environmental assessment process?

From the larger perspective, what is in question here is this government's commitment to a respect for due process. It is one thing for this government to pronounce on matters of policy, but it is another thing for such pronouncement to be perceived as an interference with due process.

AIR QUALITY

Mr Carr: My statement is on the Petro-Canada oil refinery. The Petro-Canada oil refinery has in the last five years been the object of concern and anger for many residents and ratepayers in my riding. They question the quality of the air emissions from the plant which are, at the very best, smelly and obnoxious and which may even be toxic. There is no doubt that these odours affect the quality of life for the people living in the area, and there is a high level of discomfort.

Despite numerous telephone calls and written requests for an appointment with the Minister of the Environment, I have not been able to meet with her to discuss this matter.

Both the Premier and the minister are aware of the situation, having been informed by various residents, former members of Parliament and ministry officials. I realize that the minister is concerned with high-profile issues such as the garbage crisis and the 3Rs, but possible toxic air emissions are emissions which affect the health and comfort of the people now, and this is an issue which should be taken seriously.

There is a public meeting on 13 December at the Queen Elizabeth Park School in Oakville and I invite the minister to attend. It would give her a chance to convey to the residents in the vicinity of the plant both her concern and the assurance that she will act to ensure they live in clean, unfouled air, which should be their right.

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HEALTH SERVICES

Mr Morrow: Mr Speaker, I wish to extend to you my congratulations on your historic election.

I thank the constituents of Wentworth East for electing me as their representative to this great Legislature. The riding of Wentworth East consists of the township of Glanbrook, the city of Stoney Creek and portions of the east end of the city of Hamilton. This region is one of the fastest-growing areas of the province. As a result of this growing population, there is an increased demand for many provincial government services.

The east end of Hamilton and Stoney Creek area of my riding have been neglected for years with respect to adequate health care services.

In the near future, the St Joseph's Community Health Centre will be opening in my riding to meet the needs of these people. I have recently toured the centre and was quite impressed. The facilities are excellent. The residents of this community will be able to take great pride in them. This health care centre is unique in the province as it will be very much a community centre and will rely a great deal on the participation of volunteers. I believe facilities such as these deserve the funding to make them a success.

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, Shirley Collins. I thank her for the work she has done over the past three years.

It is a great honour to be a member of this House. I look forward to working with all the members of this Legislature to help make this province a better place to live in.

DRUG ABUSE

Mr Ruprecht: In the next few weeks the Parkdale Focus Group for a Drug-Free Neighbourhood will be meeting with interested persons to discuss how our community can take back the streets and rid itself of drug pushers and those who are undesirable in the community.

There have been a number of community groups across Ontario, and a number of municipalities, which have made recommendations to the Solicitor General and the Premier -- in fact, to this government. I can think of a number of groups that are local to our area, such as the Bloor-Lansdowne Committee Against Drugs, the Parkdale Schools-Community Anti-Drug Committee and, as I mentioned earlier, the newly established focus group against drugs.

Our citizens are expecting that the new social contract this government is talking about will include a specific blueprint of action. That would necessarily mean that the recommendations that have come to this government should be at least somewhat implemented.

I can think of the recommendations made by Metropolitan Toronto council. I can think of the recommendations made by the city of Toronto anti-drug committee with Mr O'Donohue and Chris Korwin-Kuczynski at the head. I can think of recommendations that have been made by local organizations. What we are asking for here is to find out just when this Solicitor General and this government will act in order that we, as residents, and the rest of Ontario will be able to take back our streets.

LIVING WILLS

Mr Sterling: This afternoon I intend to introduce two complementary private member's bills, one called the Natural Death Act and the other An Act to amend the Powers of Attorney Act.

These bills deal with life-sustaining medical treatment decisions for the incapacitated terminally ill patient being kept alive indefinitely by artificial means. The Durable Power of Attorney Act deals with transferring a person's authority with respect to medical care decisions to another specified individual if the first person should become incapacitated. The Natural Death Act provides a less formal procedure, but it too is done with the informed consent of the individual. Through a living will, an individual can state in writing that if a terminal or irreversible condition occurs and he is incapacitated and cannot communicate, then treatment should be discontinued.

These bills are supported by the Canadian Dying with Dignity Association, the Alzheimer Society, and people who work in the medical profession and with AIDS patients, because modern medical technology has outpaced our body of laws and social realities.

These bills are not new to this Legislature. I introduced both of them during the 34th Parliament. Even though they were, for the most part. welcomed by the citizens of Ontario, the government of that day, while supporting one of the bills, blocked it from going to committee for further discussion. I hope this new government will not be so intent on playing partisan political games with such a sensitive issue.

CHILD CARE

Ms Haslam: I have chosen to talk today on an issue that I feel is very important. I would like to speak for the Marys, aged four, the Billys, aged two, and the Jennys, aged three, who die each year because parents have to take children to work and those parents work in an industry where heavy machinery is a necessity. Children are frequently found in this workplace because child care is not available.

I am speaking about farms and farm accidents. Farm accidents are a tragedy, especially when they result in a death and especially when the fatality involves a child. The number of children who have died in farm accidents this year averages one every five and a half weeks. As recently as last weekend, a child in my riding died in a farm accident.

Our rural areas need a viable system of day care. I am pleased to hear that the Ministry of Community and Social Services will be examining day care programs and targeting the north and rural areas. I look forward to a time when at the end of five and a half weeks there is no statistic of another child's death due to a farm accident.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

PROTECTION OF IN-CARE RESIDENTS

Hon Ms Ziemba: Today on behalf of the Premier I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Ernie Lightman as a commissioner to inquire into unregulated residential facilities in the province and to conduct a census of the vulnerable adults housed in these facilities.

This appointment is consistent with a key recommendation of the coroner's jury report on the death of Joseph Kendall. The report was released on 27 November 1990, just two days ago. The coroner's inquest into the death has revealed the appalling conditions in which some vulnerable adults live in this province.

In May 1985 Joseph Kendall was discharged from the Queen Street Mental Health Centre in Toronto to Cedar Glen Boarding Home in Orillia, a privately run home for ex-psychiatric patients and people with developmental disabilities. In November 1987 Mr Kendall died in hospital after he was assaulted at Cedar Glen.

This government will no longer tolerate such treatment as that suffered by Mr Kendall.

I am requesting that an initial assessment be provided by the commissioner after three months and that a final report and recommendations be completed after six months. As soon as possible thereafter I will share with the members of the Legislature what further action will be taken by our government to address these problems.

I am very pleased to announce that Mr Lightman is in the gallery today. Mr Lightman is an economist in the faculty of social work at the University of Toronto. He brings technical expertise and long-standing involvement in social service and public policy issues to this position. Mr Lightman holds a PhD in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and spent two years as a faculty member at the London School of Economics.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Hon Mrs Akande: This afternoon I would like to inform the House of this government's plans for addressing poverty in Ontario. This issue must be addressed interministerially. Today, I want to talk about four steps.

First, the government plans to accelerate the process of social assistance reform in Ontario. The foundation of this reform is the recommendations of the Social Assistance Review Committee in its report entitled Transitions. As stated in the speech from the throne, we are committed to reform of Ontario's social assistance system, and that includes a commitment to the major directions of the SARC recommendations. They provide the solutions that we must put into practice.

To accelerate this reform process, I have asked the Advisory Group on New Social Assistance Legislation. established six months ago by my predecessor, to fast-track its work. This government has funded it to do so. I have requested that the group report back to me in January 1991 with advice on those recommendations of SARC that could be implemented without legislative change. Its advice would be in time for consideration in the spring budget. As for the recommendations from Transitions that do require changes in social assistance legislation, I have further asked that the advisory group report back to me by the middle of next year with a blueprint.

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As I pointed out earlier, several recommendations from the SARC report go beyond the jurisdiction of my ministry. For this reason, a committee of relevant ministries will be established to co-ordinate the implementation of these recommendations in a comprehensive approach to addressing poverty. This committee will be led by the Ministry of Community and Social Services.

Second, while the reform of Ontario's social assistance legislation will take place throughout 1991, there is one very important step this government is going to take quickly to increase the incomes of all recipients of social assistance. My ministry will improve the previously announced social assistance rate increases that are effective I January 1991. Put simply, we have decided to increase the increases.

Instead of the 5% increase in basic allowances, the increase will now be 7%, and the increase in shelter ceilings will be boosted from 5% to 10%. These improvements will add another $91 million to social assistance benefits in 1991-92. For a single parent with two children, the impact of the January increases will result in up to an additional $104 a month.

Third, we realize that municipalities will pay 20% of the cost of general welfare assistance. They have not been given advance notice of this improvement of the previously announced rate increases. For that reason, for the 1991 calendar year only, the province will pay the estimated $7.4 million municipal share of the additional 2% in basic allowances and the additional 5% in shelter ceilings.

Fourth, this government will draw upon a $54-million fund announced by the previous government but never used. This funding will support employment programs for people receiving social assistance and for people with disabilities. This will involve a wide range of services that will focus on preparing and training people for jobs as well as creating work opportunities that will lead to permanent employment. The fund also helps with employment-related expenses such as child care for single parents or assistive devices for people who are physically disabled.

I believe these are all important and significant steps that demonstrate this government's commitment to address poverty in Ontario. This is real social assistance reform, making the system more fair for more people. Our determined course of action transforms a series of recommendations from words on paper to improvements in the quality of people's lives.

RESPONSES

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mr Beer: May I, on behalf of my party, state very simply that we welcome and support the minister's announcement today. This will have a real effect in helping those who are on social assistance, and I think everyone can take great solace from that.

I think it is important to note that these reforms the minister has announced build on a very solid foundation which the previous government brought in through the beginnings of the Social Assistance Review Committee, through the work of George Thomson and his colleagues. In 1989, as honourable members will recall, we brought forward some $415 million to provide direct and real help to those on social assistance.

Earlier this year, we set up the committee which the honourable minister has referred to, to look at bringing in new social assistance legislation, which in the SARC report had been underlined as being critical, so that we could enter the 1990s with legislation that would adequately deal with the kinds of problems those on social assistance face.

I want to say that the whole question of the rates that are received by those on social assistance is a key one in the work which the committee is going to do, and I applaud the initiative that this committee has been asked to fast-track a number of these issues, because clearly the problems, even over the last six months, have become greater. It is going to be very important to look at issues such as adequacy. How do we go about determining what indeed are adequate and fair rates? I think that will be an important question for the committee to deal with.

I think one of the key things that the minister is going to have to deal with is how to effectively develop employment programs so that those on social assistance can get off social assistance. As George Thomson said in his report, one of the things that the people on assistance kept saying was, "Help us break down the barriers so that in fact we can gain useful employment."

The supports to employment program, STEP, which we brought in a year ago, has, as I think the minister knows, produced some real benefits in that some 80% of those individuals receiving social assistance now see higher levels of earnings than they did before. We want to continue with that because it is in everyone's interest that those who can work and want to get back into the workforce will be able to take advantage of the various work programs that will be developed.

I recognize that the Ministry of Community and Social Services cannot do that by itself. It needs to work with the other ministries. My only caution to the minister is that I think, as the lead ministry, it is terribly important that she ensure the work of that committee proceeds at a rapid pace, so that the kinds of programs that are required will be put into place.

I think also that, as the minister is looking at other areas that need to be altered and changed, one of the ones that we felt required a very close look and action was that of the children's benefit. This again was mentioned in the SARC report. Some work has already been done on it.

I have raised that with social service ministers across the country and with the federal minister, because I think, recognizing the number of children who in fact are receiving social assistance, we have to find better ways of dealing with child poverty, and a children's benefit is one of them.

I am glad to see that the minister is going to be funding the municipal share in 1991. That is important. I would ask her simply to move as expeditiously as possible with the provincial-municipal social services review.

I end as I began. We welcome these changes. They will make a difference, and we will work closely with the government to ensure that further changes are made.

PROTECTION OF IN-CARE RESIDENTS

Mr Phillips: I would like to respond to the statement by the Minister of Citizenship, to lend our support overall to the statement, but to have one suggestion, if we might. I think it is a good move, the appointment of this particular individual. I do not know Mr Lightman myself, but I am told he is an excellent individual who by all accounts will do a fine job.

An Agenda for People did spell out the intent of the government to establish in law regulations around this area. I might suggest we could make Mr Lightman's work more effective if we gave him that as the direction, that it would be the intent of the government to establish in law regulations and that that should be part of his explicit instructions in terms of his study. But overall we are in support of it and we would make that one suggestion.

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SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mr Jackson: I was pleased, as all members in the House were today, to have an opportunity to read in the Toronto Star the minister's announcement. I am starting to believe that, like the former government, we are going to be seeing an increased number of these announcements through the pages of the Toronto Star. If that is the case, perhaps the Speaker might be interested in renaming ministerial responses as Letters to the Editor.

However, on that point I wish to suggest that on the issue of the support for the poor people of this province, there is absolute unanimity from all three political parties represented in this House. I think all parties have distinguished themselves on the issue of support for the Social Assistance Review Committee and the SARC report. Where we vary is that we disagree on how we are to achieve those ends for the citizens of this province. It is clear that from this government in the announcement today we have some positive initiatives. However, we do question this government in terms of its approaches in certain key areas.

Yesterday we heard an announcement that this government is going to further entrench the universal nature of rent control in this province, and yet the Thom commission very clearly supported the recommendations that are also contained in the SARC report that the universal nature of rent control in this province harms and hurts the poor of this province more than anything else. So I am not surprised to learn today that the minister is reacting not with the solutions that her leader spoke of while he was on this side of the House but with the rather expensive Band-Aids that she now is able to extract from cabinet now that the NDP is the government.

The truth of the matter is that if we look in the last decade in this province -- and I checked Hansard for 1982, when our province was experiencing similar financial difficulties with its economy -- the government of the day, with support from all three political parties. chose to support the poor. The combined support in 1982 announced by the member for Scarborough Centre, the then minister Drea, was 17.7%, and today we have a 17% average increase. The fact is that we must ensure that this program is implemented fairly and does not hurt certain groups in our society.

On that point, I wish to advise that on the issue of municipal taxes we have several communities now that have warned the government that they are in deficit positions because of growing increased welfare costs. Some municipalities, like my own in Halton region, are massively cutting programs in order to ensure that they have the moneys in order to pay perhaps the fastest-growing welfare rolls we have seen in a decade.

In fact, I hope that the Minister of the Environment will examine Hansard, because there are at least six major recycling programs that are being cancelled in Halton region as a direct result of finding the cash necessary in order to pay for the shortfall that is not included in the minister's announcement today.

I ask the minister, what will municipalities do in the second year? We know that there is a growing cynicism about the approach that governments take with first-year announcements, and then they let go of the hands of municipal taxpayers in the second year. Those total costs will be borne by what we know will be still rather large requirements for general welfare assistance.

PROTECTION OF IN-CARE RESIDENTS

Mr Jackson: If I may, very briefly, I would like to respond to the minister responsible for the vulnerable citizens in this province. Although I commend the appointment of a commissioner, I am concerned that the ministry officials who helped develop this report were very much aware of the circumstances which led to the need to make today's statement, and nowhere are we seeing a major policy statement with respect to advocacy and a commitment for regulating the very homes that these people find themselves in.

More important, as the Premier is in the House, I would ask the Premier to conduct yet another investigation of a report on advocacy for vulnerable adults. I wish to inform the Premier that I have acquired a copy of the David Weisstub report, which his Minister of Health withdrew from the public two months ago. I was able to acquire a copy, and the Ministry of Health has withdrawn it from public scrutiny. I would ask that in fact this government will release this report and let David Weisstub report to vulnerable adults in this province what their rights are in terms of being denied certain medical services.

ORAL QUESTIONS

NUCLEAR POWER

Mr Conway: My question is to the Minister of Energy and it concerns the energy policy of this government. Accepting, as I think we all do, the importance and value of energy conservation, of renewable energy and cogeneration, can the minister confirm, however, that it is the energy policy of this government that there will be no new nuclear power facilities built in Ontario beyond those commitments already made at Darlington?

Hon Mrs Carter: I can confirm that there will be no new nuclear plants built in the immediate future. We have no plans to build any. We are pursuing, as the member knows, a policy of conservation and energy efficiency. We have plans for other ways in which we can increase power supply if necessary. I would not, however, rule out absolutely the possibility of building new nuclear stations, although we do hope that will not be necessary.

Mr Conway: Mackenzie King would be truly proud of that response, which seems to be "Not necessarily nuclear but perhaps nuclear if necessary."

I want to ask the Minister of Energy, who made, I thought, quite a remarkable speech in the throne debate yesterday afternoon, what she would say to the thousands of men and women who work in Ontario in the nuclear industries, in communities like mine or in Peterborough or in Niagara Falls or in Cambridge, and what they are to make of her increasingly strident antinuclear position. What are we to say to those thousands of men and women whose jobs are at stake in this industry? What would she like those men and women to take from her comments today and, more especially, yesterday afternoon?

Hon Mrs Carter: There was nothing in my speech yesterday, I would like to point out, that in any way contradicted the speech from the throne. We have a lawyer's confirmation on this issue.

I would also like to point out that the life of a nuclear power station is 40 years. We are bringing new nuclear power stations on stream. All the Darlington power stations are being completed and will come on stream. There is no loss of jobs whatsoever as a result of our policies, no loss of jobs whatsoever for the foreseeable future, and our policies of conservation are going to create many extra jobs in this province. I reiterate: We are not destroying any jobs; we are creating jobs.

Mr McGuinty: Although I may be a lawyer, I can assure this House I am not a QC.

It is a logical inference from the statements that have been made in this House by the Premier and the Minister of Energy that their emphasis is on conservation. Essentially it is the people of this province who will be responsible for determining the need for nuclear power through their personal conservation efforts. The people of Ontario are looking for new programs and new directions. The minister has failed to bring forward any such new programs to save energy this winter. Can the minister inform this House today about the specific details of her energy conservation plan to be in effect this winter?

Hon Mrs Carter: I find this question rather strange. Nuclear power stations projected by the previous government and by Ontario Hydro would not have come on stream for another 12 years; so I fail to see what their relevance is to this winter.

It so happens that several power stations, including five nuclear power stations. have not been functioning recently. Some of the nuclear power stations have been less reliable than we had hoped. However, several of these stations are coming back on stream, having been repaired, at the beginning of December; more are coming back on stream in the new year. There is no likelihood of power outages this winter, none whatsoever.

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RENT REGULATION

Ms Poole: Yesterday, when I asked the Minister of Housing the status of uncompleted renovations due to his new legislation, he had not even considered a plan to deal with the problem. Let's talk about the plight of the tenants at 109 Jameson. The building is partway through a major renovation program, partially in response to city of Toronto work orders. The tenant advocates at Parkdale Community Legal Services have been involved to ensure that necessary work is done.

Yesterday, upon hearing the minister's announcement, the landlord ordered work crews off the job. What is the minister going to do to make sure that the tenants of 109 Jameson do not spend the next two years in suspended animation, waiting for the holes in their walls to be repaired and for the uncompleted construction to be finished?

Hon Mr Cooke: I very much appreciate the fact that the member has raised the plight of the tenants at 109 Jameson. I am sure the member understands that under the Liberal rent review legislation which the tenants of this province have had to survive through in the last few years, in the guideline that is set each year there is provision for maintenance and for some limited capital. The member understands the guideline as well as I do.

But does she also understand that the tenants of this building at 109 Jameson right now are facing a rent increase of 35% that would be effective 1 August 1989, which was applied for under the old rent legislation, and that another rent increase of an additional 50% was applied for by this landlord, which would have been effective 1 October of this year?

That is 85% in two years as a result of a building that was sold with financing costs to be passed through. It is a building that was bought by a landlord who knew there had been a lot of neglect. There are 31 outstanding work orders. I am surprised that a member like her, who has advocated for tenants for many years, would suggest that any rent review system in this province should reward a landlord like this.

Ms Poole: The minister does not seem to comprehend. I am not standing here in support of the landlord. I am standing here in support of the tenants. The reason that the Parkdale Community Legal Services has been involved is that a great deal of the work involved in that building was necessary. It was in a sad state of repair. The other thing the minister does not seem to comprehend is that, yes, tenants are very concerned about affordable rents, but they are equally as concerned about the maintenance of their buildings. It is their home. They want a decent and comfortable place in which to live.

Yesterday, when the minister made his announcement, he said that tenants will pay for increases in taxes, hydro rates and heating oil above and beyond the guideline. But when the boiler breaks down and there is no heat, who is going to pay for that new boiler so the tenants will not freeze? When the toilets overflow because the pipes have corroded, who is going to pay for that new plumbing?

When the electrical wiring becomes hazardous, who is going to pay for that new wiring? What advice does the Minister of Slums have for tenants?

Hon Mr Cooke: My advice to the member is that the philosophy she is enunciating here today is to institute a rent review system tenants would have had to live under that would reward landlords who deliberately neglect their buildings. That is exactly what she is suggesting by her approach. This building was clearly not properly taken care of. The current owner of the building bought the building in that state of repair. Because of the current rent review legislation, which says that when a new owner buys it he does not have to care about the ongoing neglect that occurred by a previous owner, now we are in this kind of circumstance.

It is our responsibility now to pick up the pieces that the Liberals have left this government, with a rent review system that is totally inadequate, and bring in a rent review system that offers real protection for tenants. We have accepted that challenge and we intend to deliver.

Ms Poole: It was a nice try by the Minister of Housing, but I was not talking about the tenants at 109 Jameson. I was talking about tenants all across this province who are relying on this government to show some leadership as to what is going to happen to major repairs and renovations.

The minister knows well that over 75% of the housing stock in this province was built prior to 1975. They are old buildings. Would the minister consider these things to be luxury renovations? No, they are not. They are necessary and they are not included in his announcement. Apartment buildings need new boilers now. Crumbling plaster needs to be replaced today. Apartment garages are corroding today. What is the minister's solution for tenants who need major repairs and renovations today, not two years from now?

Hon Mr Cooke: The solution is very clear. The rent review guidelines that the member's government developed include money for landlords to properly maintain their buildings. There are standards at the municipal level. There is the Residential Rental Standards Board at the provincial level. Those bodies will in fact continue to have the responsibility to enforce those standards. I hope we can look for the member's support for decent standards to be enforced and landlords to follow those standards. I hope we do not continue to get from her these types of questions which will reinforce landlords who have taken advantage of tenants and not met proper standards for tenants in the past.

GOODS AND SERVICES TAX

Mr Harris: I have a question for the Premier. I am sure he shares my view that voters are fed up with cynical election promises. I want to refer the Premier to his comments during the election, at which time he pledged categorically to lead a "national revolt against the GST." In fact, the Premier said he would rally the premiers of the other nine provinces to join him in this national revolt.

Since the Premier has been on the job for nearly three months, the only feeble effort we have seen to date is the Premier indicating that Ontario will join three other provinces in an ill-fated legal challenge that is already in progress. Given that the goods and services tax will be in place within the next few weeks, can the Premier tell me when he plans to begin leading his national revolt?

Hon Mr Rae: I think that on balance the leader of the third party should reflect on the following facts. As opposed to his position -- I am not clear what his position on the GST is -- we have been very clear on our position. The first bill we introduced in this House, on the day of the throne speech, was to state categorically that Ontario would not put its tax on top of the GST. That was the first thing we did. I cannot imagine a clearer statement than that.

Because of the fact that the federal government was not listening in any other way, the Ontario government has joined with the governments of British Columbia and Alberta in two separate constitutional challenges, one with respect to the stuffing of the Senate with patronage Tory appointments, and the second having to do with the simple fact that we feel the imposition of the GST and the way in which it has been done are an invasion of an important area that has been occupied by the province for a significant time.

I can also tell the leader of the third party that next week the Treasurer is going to Winnipeg to meet with the other ministers of finance and to discuss the question of the GST with them. The simple fact of the matter is that where there has been an opportunity for Ontario to speak up and to act, not simply to talk but to take the steps that are within our powers, we have done so and we will continue to do so. That is the position of the government. I think it stands in rather marked contrast to the position of the Progressive Conservative Party in this House and in Canada as a whole.

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Mr Harris: I do not know how introducing a bill saying, "Well, it's a fait accompli, so here's what we'll do to tie into it," is leading a national revolt. I found the Premier's GST revolt pledge report in the Thunder Bay Times-News on Friday 17 August. In the same article, and I would suggest the Premier must have had a busy day that day, he promised that the NDP would empower the Ontario Energy Board to bring in a one-price system for gasoline. The Premier said, "I really think consumers are being ripped off by the gas companies."

I want to ask the Premier, since we have had no indication that he plans to keep his one price for gas promise, can we now assume that after his election the gas companies suddenly stopped ripping off consumers, as he alleged?

Hon Mr Rae: I can only tell the leader that I do not have a sudden announcement to make for him today. I can only tell him that the subject is one which is under continual review by the government. The Ministry of Energy is looking at this on an ongoing basis. I would also say to him that as and when I have an announcement to make, I will make it in this House.

Mr Harris: I am sure the Premier is beginning to understand why the public is so cynical about us all. Believe it or not, the Premier also made another campaign promise on the very same day. One of those promises was that he would force Ontario Hydro to increase its uranium purchases from mines at Elliot Lake. At four, five, six or seven times the market price for uranium, this is what the Premier promised to do. Now, assuming that the Premier keeps this promise, and assuming he also keeps his throne speech promise to halt nuclear energy, what is the Premier going to do with all this expensive uranium he has promised to buy from Elliot Lake?

Hon Mr Rae: I may say to the leader of the third party that this is something that has been raised in this House on a number of occasions, including by the Minister of Natural Resources. Again, I do not have an announcement to make in that regard. I can only tell the leader that it obviously is a concern of this government that we have policies in place with respect to energy that make the most sense for the people of the province and that benefit the people of the province. That is what we are committed to doing but, as I say, I do not have an announcement to make today with respect to the question of uranium purchases in Elliot Lake.

Mr Harris: It was pretty clear in August that the Premier promised Elliot Lake he was going to buy more uranium from them.

GOVERNMENT POLICIES

Mr Harris: My second question is to the Premier as well. Would the Premier tell this House if it is the policy of his new government that only unionized companies can do business with the government?

Hon Mr Rae: To be very direct with the leader of the third party, I honestly do not know the answer to that question. It is not something which has been discussed in cabinet. It is not something which I have participated in any discussions about. If he has a zinger as his second question, I will wait for it, but it is not a subject I have discussed since taking office on I October.

Mr Harris: I thought it was a pretty straightforward question. Is it a policy or not? I guess the answer is that the Premier does not know what his own policy is in dealing with awarding contracts.

On 14 May 1990, an Ontario carpet company was awarded a contract to lay carpet at the Ontario Labour Relations Board offices. Would the Premier explain why, following the election of his NDP government, this contract, properly tendered and properly awarded, was summarily terminated solely on the basis that the company was not unionized?

Hon Mr Rae: Again, I honestly cannot give the leader an answer to the question as to whether what he says is a fair characterization of what has taken place or not. I do not know. But obviously now that he has raised it, I will look into it and I will report back to him as soon as I have an answer.

Mr Harris: In the interests of the two thirds or so of the workforce that is not unionized in this province and of the companies that have been able to bid on government contracts, I hope he does look into it very quickly.

As he is looking into it, I would like the Premier to know that the company had already measured the offices at the labour board; it had purchased the carpet and it had scheduled the work. In fact, the carpet is now sitting in a government warehouse, unused but totally paid for by the taxpayers.

Yesterday we discovered that the Ontario Public Service Employees Union is making decisions for his Ministry of Community and Social Services. Today we find out that organized labour is dictating who and what companies will do business with the province of Ontario. I ask the Premier to investigate as well who is calling the shots over there, he and his cabinet ministers or OPSEU and the big unions.

Hon Mr Rae: I appreciate the question. I can simply tell the leader of the third party that I, as Premier of the province and president of the executive council, consult widely with people and then we make decisions. I have promised the leader of the third party that I will investigate the particular incident he has raised. I would simply say to him with respect to his characterization of matters with regard to social services that I think his characterization is extraordinarily unfair and inaccurate, and I would simply leave it at that.

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION FINANCING

Mr Daigeler: My question is to the Minister of Colleges and Universities. Unfortunately, the throne speech said nothing or practically nothing about the government's plans for colleges and universities. I guess that is hardly surprising since the New Democratic Party's An Agenda for People was silent on this matter as well.

I also noticed that the minister last week at Mohawk College said that money is not available for post-secondary education: "The whole funding question is very much a wait-and-see attitude. We will be lucky this year if we can give the system anything more than inflation-level funding."

Finally, I found it rather significant that at the 8 November rally by the Ontario Federation of Students, the minister sent the parliamentary assistant for the Ministry of Skills Development, rather than attend himself or be represented by his parliamentary assistant for the Ministry of Colleges and Universities.

I would like to ask the minister whether his absence at the OFS rally and the absence of higher education in the throne speech is an indication of his government's support for colleges and universities.

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Hon Mr Allen: I am delighted to answer the question because it concerns the funding and the attention that needs to be devoted to the long-neglected post-secondary system in this province, which I inherited at the level of ninth out of 10 provinces in terms of the operational grants funding per student when measured against the other provinces in Canada.

If the member wishes to know exactly what I was doing when that rally was taking place, I was visiting Lakehead University and Confederation College. I was especially interested in the quality of education of post-secondary students in the north and the northwest, and I was especially interested to discover what was happening with respect to access for native students in both those institutions.

I will continue to underscore in my ministry an overriding concern for both access questions and the quality of education at the universities of this province as long as I am minister.

Mr Daigeler: I just would like to say to the minister that his absence, and certainly the absence of his own parliamentary assistant, was noticed by the students, who otherwise were mostly supportive of his side of the House.

In spite of the minister's assurances, on which we have seen no evidence so far, universities are taking their own steps at present to ensure the future of higher education in this province. You will have read last week in the newspapers that the University of Toronto business school is considering a proposal that would, in effect, privatize the MBA program and require students to pay the full cost of their studies.

Can the minister explain to the House what his government's position is with regard to such plans and specifically to the MBA program at the University of Toronto, and whether he has communicated his views to the university and how he is going to prevent them from proceeding with these plans?

Hon Mr Allen: With regard to the question that is specifically asked about the University of Toronto and the MBA program, that is an ongoing program that has been there since 1982, and only minor adjustments are being proposed with respect to it; so if the member has concerns now, I suppose he has had them for the last three or four years.

The decision is to be made this week at the university whether the readjustment of that program will continue. There is a very serious question at the heart of it, and that is how universities and colleges may provide what might be called contract services to private interests for training and professional services and professional education. That is the question or the issue that has to be addressed, which has been left again to this portfolio and which this case calls attention to. We are examining that question and will have some answer to it. But I have to tell the member that the specific proposal in question opens the way for further registration, in point of fact, for about 60 more students in the undergraduate program.

RENT REGULATION

Mr Tilson: I have a question for the Premier. I refer the Premier to the fall 1989 issue of the Tenants' Bulletin. In that publication there was an interview with Michael Melling, who was then chair of the Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations. In that, the Premier stated in answer to a question about how to get private rental stock out of the hands of the large owners: "You make it less profitable for people to own it. I would bring in a very rigid, tough system of rent review. Simple. Eliminate the exceptions and loopholes. There will be a huge squawk from the speculative community and you say to them, 'If you are unhappy, we will buy you out.'"

Is that really the Premier's policy? Is that his hidden agenda? Is he really going to buy them out?

Hon Mr Rae: The policy that was announced by the minister yesterday is the policy of the government. The purpose of the policy is to provide fairness for tenants and to put an end to speculation. The purpose of the policy is to allow security of tenure for tenants and to recognize that their homes and apartments are as valuable to them as residences which are privately owned.

The member refers to a statement which he quotes from an earlier publication. I can only say to him it was the policy of the previous government, as well as, if I may say so, of other governments, that if it is possible to create policies over time which will perhaps allow tenants to be involved in the purchase of their own buildings on a nonprofit basis, if we can convert residences which are owned on a non-profit basis, that strikes me as a good idea. That strikes me as something which would be good, to allow tenants to have that security and to make sure that buildings are no longer in the speculative stream, which is where they are right now.

Mr Tilson: In that same interview, the Premier is further quoted: "You can't talk about rent review till you talk about the structure of ownership, and that. to me. is what needs to change in the rental housing field." Is that still the Premier's policy? How do these sorts of comments square with his commitment of fairness? Does he not agree that the moratorium announced yesterday by the Minister of Housing discriminates against responsible landlords?

Hon Mr Rae: I really believe that the member had better get a handle, and I am sure he will over time, on what the experience of tenants has been over the last several years. We have had buildings flip after flip after flip after flip. We have had tenants pay and pay and pay and pay again. We now have the spectacle of landlords saying that rents that have gone up by 5% and 6% and 7% a year over the past several years are not going to be used for basic repair and maintenance of buildings. We have landlords saying, "Unless we get increases of 30% and 35% and 40%, then we're not going to bother to maintain the buildings."

Something has to be done to put this in perspective, and that is what we are determined to do: to ensure that tenants have security, that tenants have fairness, and to make sure there is in place a structure, a range of ownership across this province, which allows tenants to have security and which makes sure that people's apartments are taken as seriously as places to live as private residences. That is what we are all about.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Mr Duignan: Let me extend my congratulations to you, Mr Speaker, on your election as Speaker.

My question today is to the Minister of Housing. Given the failure of the previous governments to honour the commitments to deal with the affordable housing crisis in this province -- witness the fact that fewer than 6,000 units under the Homes Now program have been completed -- can the minister ensure this House that the remaining 24,000 units will be completed?

Hon Mr Cooke: Right after the time that we were sworn in as the government, we started discussing in the ministry exactly how we could take advantage of the Homes Now program that was initiated by the previous government and make sure that the commitment of 30,000 units was a commitment that was delivered in this province.

I am pleased to inform the House that it is now the projection of our ministry that, through a process of reallocation -- we have reallocated housing which people and groups could not deliver in time with the deadlines to other groups that can deliver -- by the end of this year we will have 9,500 of the Homes Now units committed and ready to begin, and in 1991 we expect to be able to commit 20,500 units. We will put more social housing units on the market next year than ever in the history of this province.

Mr Duignan: On behalf of another 20,500 families that are going to receive affordable housing in this province, I thank the minister.

Can the minister indicate under what circumstances he has lifted the 31 March deadline in relation to the Homes Now program?

Hon Mr Cooke: We decided that in order to facilitate the construction and the allocation of all 30,000 Homes Now units we would reverse a policy the former government had. We changed the 31 March arbitrary deadline the previous government had put in place and have allowed for circumstances by which there can be exceptions; they will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The bottom line is that if the sponsoring group can have the units committed and begun by the end of September 1991, then they will keep their allocation because we want that housing on the market next year.

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OAK RIDGES MORAINE

Mrs Caplan: My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs. I would like to congratulate him on undertaking this very important and significant portfolio. I know the municipalities in this province are expecting, and I think rightly so, significant things from this new minister.

The Oak Ridges moraine is part of our natural resources and our heritage and is crucial to the clean drinking water supply of the residents of the greater Toronto area. A number of important reviews of the moraine have been undertaken, including the Kantor report as well as the Crombie report. The former Liberal government declared a provincial interest in this area under the Planning Act to protect the moraine from inappropriate land use. Can the minister today state his commitment to protecting the Oak Ridges moraine?

Hon Mr Cooke: I must say that after the experience of the past few years of asking the member many questions, there are many things with which I am tempted to begin the response to her question, but I will not.

We are trying to develop a well-planned system in this province -- innovative and creative -- that will deliver to the needs of the people of this province. However, on this particular issue I can indicate to the member that I have spent a little time with my ministry staff reviewing the issue. Because of other pressures in the housing field, I have not been able to spend a lot of tune. We are obviously interested in taking whatever steps are necessary to protect the area. There will be a more comprehensive response when the minister responsible for the greater Toronto area also responds to the Crombie report.

Mrs Caplan: I would ask the minister to be more specific. Will he or will he not today reaffirm the provincial interest in the Oak Ridges moraine that was declared by the previous Liberal government because of our commitment to ensuring that the greater Toronto area had a clean water supply for the future? Yes or no to the sustained provincial interest that was declared in July 1990.

Hon Mr Cooke: There is no change in policy at all. There is a provincial interest. That has been declared. We are certainly continuing that policy. In terms of other questions dealing both with the Crombie report and other policy questions we have to respond to, I cannot give the member anything more than that today.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION

Mrs Cunningham: My question is for the Minister of Education. She and I will know and I think many of our colleagues in this House will understand that all of us spoke at some time during the most recent election about the need for technological studies and technical education in our school systems. We want to be competitive in a global economy both in Ontario and in Canada. I am sure the minister is aware of the recent Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation report subtitled "Technical Education in Ontario High Schools is Facing a Crisis." It was released this September, and the same report was released last September. It is not new that I am standing here asking this question. The minister is aware of it. What are her plans to face this crisis of a teacher shortage in technological studies courses in our school systems for next September in Ontario?

Hon Mrs Boyd: It is quite true that the OSSTF released a similar report last year, which was found to be highly overstated in terms of the number of teachers that were available. In fact, the overestimate of shortages is by about 25%. It is quite clear that this is a projection again and not yet a fact; it is speculation.

There is no question that our letters of permission in terms of technological education have been reduced significantly this year, I believe from 173 letters of permission during the last school year to 57 during this year. We are very pleased that the program now ongoing, particularly the summer program at Queen's University, has done a great deal to improve the availability of technological teachers.

We have a problem with distribution; there is no question about that. It is difficult for us to attract teachers in the technology field into the high-cost Metro area and also into the isolated areas of the north. That is creating a distribution problem. It is our intention to encourage Queen's, and Queen's has indicated an interest in continuing the summer program next year. It is our belief that this will be of great assistance in handling any kind of shortage.

The other issue, of course, is the whole matter of the ongoing curriculum review in terms of technology and the teacher education issues that arise out of that. That is part of the ongoing restructuring that was begun under the previous government and to which we have committed ourselves.

Mrs Cunningham: I appreciate the minister's response. I think I can speak on behalf of many parents and students, certainly members of this House, to encourage her in her work.

The shortages that were relayed to the minister may have been overestimated; I do not know. But I do know one thing: They are not new. They began in the early 1980s. As a matter of fact, a report was commissioned in 1985 and released in 1988 which also supported the real concern about matching the needs for technological studies with the availability of teachers. It is also true that this is not good enough, just the technical education courses in the schools. We are also looking to get skills training out in the workplace in apprenticeship programs.

My question now would be, what is the minister doing with the Ministry of Skills Development other than the pilot programs we all know about? We know there are six or eight pilot programs. What is she doing with the Ministry of Skills Development to work towards getting more industry and business involved in the apprenticeship training program? Is that ministry actually helping the minister and assisting her and encouraging her in the very important work she has to do in providing training and skills for young people?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We certainly are working interministerially; that is a commitment of our government. We recognize that in this area unless the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Colleges and Universities and the Ministry of Skills Development work very closely together to ensure that there is articulation between the various levels of education and unless we work to make that a continuing process, we are not going to be able to deal with what we regard to be a crisis in terms of the growth of skilled trades and technological expertise in this province. This is a party that has long been concerned about the lack of emphasis in this area of education. We are certainly committed to improving the record of the last two governments in this regard.

POLICE SERVICES

Mr Wessenger: My question is addressed to the Solicitor General. As he is probably aware, eight municipalities in Simcoe county will be amalgamated on 1 January 1991. The three new towns will be the amalgamated town of Alliston, Beeton, Tecumseth and Tottenham; the amalgamated town of Bradford and West Gwillimbury; and the town of Innisfil, which includes the former village of Cookstown.

Can the minister tell me who will be responsible for policing this restructured area of south Simcoe county?

Hon Mr Farnan: The County of Simcoe Act defines policing responsibilities for each of the three towns. The municipal police force and the OPP will continue to police those areas they were responsible for prior to amalgamation. However, each of those municipalities will have three options following 1 January 1991. To expand the municipal force, they will have to choose either to contract their service to another municipality or to contract to the OPP. What I should stress, however, is that after 1 January, if it is contracted to the OPP, then they will have to pay for that service.

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Mr Wessenger: Is it not true that the existing policy and protocol for contract OPP policing were designed to address the requests from small municipalities seeking an alternative to a municipal police force and do not address the sensitivity of all police staff affected by amalgamation? If so, when does the minister expect to be able to announce a new protocol, and will it be in place to meet the immediate needs of my community?

Hon Mr Farnan: Indeed, the protocol has been a concern. In order that we would develop a protocol that was effective, we met with the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, the Ontario Provincial Police Association, the municipal police authorities, the Ontario Provincial Police authorities. Indeed, I am happy to inform the House that as a result of these fine consultations we have developed a protocol that will indeed fit the needs of the small municipalities as we face the future. We look forward to working with them and the new protocol.

POLICE LEGISLATION

Mr Curling: My question also is to the Solicitor General. In the minister's recent remarks at the Ontario Police College, he applauded the leadership shown by the Liberal government, and justifiably so. He was applauding it in the development of the passage of the Police Services Act. At that time he described the Police Services Act as leading edge legislation and indicated that he was preparing for full proclamation of the legislation by year-end.

My question is, will the minister reaffirm this commitment to proclaim the Police Services Act by year-end?

Hon Mr Farnan: I am happy to answer the question. I should talk just very briefly about the Police Services Act. The reality of the matter is that I believe we have made a lot of progress. However, I often think that as politicians we get carried away by our effectiveness.

In reality, many creative advances were made in policing. The old Police Act was not changed since 1940. In fact, the Police Services Act in many ways recognizes the advances that have been made in policing, advances that we can continue to work on through the regulations.

I am happy to inform the member in this House that we are working very diligently to proclaim the act by the end of this year.

Mr Curling: I am very pleased that the minister was so precise that we will have the proclamation by the end of the year. However, as the minister will be aware, prior to the proclamation of any legislation, it is normal that regulations to the act are drafted and passed by cabinet. The minister will also be aware that in the case of the Police Services Act, these regulations are crucial in the management of the day-to-day activities of the police and how they interact with the public.

I am also sure that the minister will be aware that his leader, now the Premier of Ontario, and his caucus, which is now the government of Ontario, strongly argued that these important regulations be developed in an open, public way and that the regulations be reviewed by a committee of the Legislature prior to proclamation.

Will the minister commit to the development of these regulations in an open, public process advocated by his own leader, or will the minister make the important decision behind closed doors with no input by the public?

Hon Mr Farnan: How could the honourable member think otherwise? Let me assure the honourable member that indeed there will be extensive consultations with our partners in policing, that there will be extensive consultation not only with police services personnel but with the public that is affected by policing. Indeed, we intend to develop these regulations in a very particular manner and we intend to have the opportunity for input all across the board.

BUDGET

Mr Stockwell: My question is to the Treasurer. According to the Provincial Auditor's 1990 annual report, there are some suggestions that the previous Liberal government in fact knowingly manipulated the provincial government's books for two reasons -- hard to believe -- (a) to more closely mirror its 1990 projected budget and (b) to remove $884 million of debt from the fiscal year 1990, thereby decreasing the deficit from $3.4 billion to $2.5 billion. The auditor said:

"There is a perception that the government is, in reality, managing and adjusting its actual results so they will more closely parallel its" operating results. "This in turn raises serious doubts concerning the integrity of the accounting process."

Does the Treasurer consider this to be an acceptable approach to fiscal risk management? When did he learn about this and how does he propose that financial gamesmanship such as this never happens again?

Hon Mr Laughren: I would like to welcome the member to this House and trust that he will find the adjustment from municipal politics to provincial politics without too much hardship.

It is a fair question, a legitimate question. It was no secret that what they call preflows were being done. That was a very open process, as I recall it. The Provincial Auditor does not like it when Treasury preflows from one fiscal year into another year. I might say, though, that there are people who do like it, such as the hospitals and the schools and the universities and the colleges, where they are able to get money sooner than they would otherwise have done so.

In his report this year the auditor has asked us to consider changing that policy, and there is no question that we are actively considering changing the policy. I do want to have a little more time, however, to think seriously about the long-run implications of just saying flatly, "No, there will be no more preflows from one fiscal year into the next." I do not think it is a deceptive process when it is done very openly, that it is what you are doing in order to advance funds to a particular sector of our economy.

Mr Stockwell: The auditor suggests that it is manipulating the operating results and that it casts doubts about the integrity of the accounting process. Obviously this is very much a concern of the auditor. Clearly it is not something that he would approve, and I am asking the Treasurer today how he would ensure that if this in fact does happen again, it is sent back through the process to one of the standing committees so that we can do the job we are elected to do. It is very difficult as it is now to compare year to year; if there are preflows, it makes the job next to impossible.

Hon Mr Laughren: I want to assure the honourable member first of all that the possibility of preflowing any cash in the next couple of years is extremely remote, so it is not going to be an immediate problem for us. even the temptation of doing it. I want to assure the member that we are doing exactly what the Provincial Auditor is asking us to do in his report. He says he wishes us to consider the policy because he simply does not like the accounting aspects of it. I am not quarrelling with the Provincial Auditor in that regard.

All I am saying to the member is that I really do want to take a careful look at the long-run implications of simply saying, "No, we will never preflow any funds." It is quite conceivable, for example, that there could be an adjustment of funds coming from the federal government as a result of one of our tax-sharing agreements that would come in very late in the year that we might very well want to preflow. As a matter of fact, I believe that is exactly what happened last year when almost $1 billion came unexpectedly from the --

Interjection.

Hon Mr Laughren: All right. Anyway, almost $900-million came from the federal government to the provincial government late in the fiscal year and therefore a decision was made to preflow it into this fiscal year.

The member is quite right and the auditor, of course, is quite right that it does alter either the deficit or the surplus figure in the following fiscal year. So we are actively doing exactly what the auditor asked us to do: to consider the policy.

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GOVERNMENT POLICIES

Hon Mr Rae: Mr Speaker, on a point of order: I want to advise the House that I have just received some information relating to a question which was put to me by the leader of the third party with respect to carpet installation at 400 University Avenue. With the permission of the House, I wonder if I could answer the question, if that is okay, or would you like me to do it at the end of question period?

The Speaker: Do we have the unanimous consent of the House?

Agreed to.

The Speaker: In fairness, I will ask that the clock be stopped.

Hon Mr Rae: My advice is as follows: It has been the practice of the Ministry of Labour since 1983 -- which is, of course, when the Conservative Party was in power -- to use unionized labour on contracts for leasehold improvements at 400 University Avenue.

On 21 August 1990, the Ministry of Labour requested the Ministry of Government Services to issue a contract for the purchase and installation of carpet on the sixth floor of 400 University Avenue. The contract was awarded through a competitive process to provide such goods and services at fixed unit prices.

Subsequent to the award of the contract but prior to the commencement of the installation work, the ministry was advised that the installers were non-union workers. Since it has been the practice of the Ministry of Labour since 1983, under a Conservative administration, and continued through from 1985 under a Liberal administration, for a union contract to be used for the installation of the carpet, the ministry requested that the installation be done by unionized installers. The project has been reactivated and is going to go forward using union labour in the Ministry of Labour building. The vendor will be compensated for any out-of-pocket expenses incurred as a result of the ministry's request. The carpet was purchased and fully paid for. It will be used and installed in the Ministry of Labour once union installers have been contracted.

If I may say to the member from North Bay, all of this was done without any intervention by any minister of this government, and as I understand it, or any intervention by any minister under the previous government. It was done as a matter of basic Ministry of Labour policy with regard to the installation and the use of union labour on the property at 400 University Avenue. That is the beginning and end of policy. Since it was established by the Conservatives in 1983, it seems to me that there are some Conservative traditions that are worth preserving, and that is one of them.

Mr Harris: Normally in the House when time was given for answer to a previously asked question, there was always a supplementary granted. I am assuming that is still a practice and would like to take that opportunity.

I would ask the Premier if he now knows the answer to the first question I asked, which he did not know when I asked it. That is, is it government policy that all companies doing business with this government have to be union? I was surprised the Premier did not know one way or the other.

Second, could he explain why the contractor, the successful bidder, who when he was contacted, when he offered to supply union installers, was told: "No, you can't do that. You've just lost it. We'll take the contract away from you"?

Hon Mr Rae: No, I cannot explain that. I will look into that on behalf of the leader of the third party. I am reluctant to sort of rattle on about things I am not fully aware of, but so far as I am aware, there has been no change.

Mr Sorbara: There's a change of policy. There's the first good news we've heard from this government.

Hon Mr Rae: That is a first change. That is a major change. That in itself is a change of policy. I think I am going to stick to my previous answer and say that as far as I am aware there has been no change with regard to the basic principles of competitive tendering. There should be no change, as far as I am personally concerned. There is no need to, except in an instance where the Ministry of Labour has felt that as a matter, as I say, of preserving certain Conservative traditions in the province, there was a need to continue with that one. I will look into the particular question with regard to the particular contractor. If the member will send me the name of the contractor, I will make inquiries with the Ministry of Labour to find out how it happened in that way.

ASSISTED HOUSING

Mr Mammoliti: My question is to the Minister of Housing. On 1 February 1990 the Ministry of Housing -- more specifically, the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority -- adopted a new policy. That policy is called the secondary wage earner policy. In a nutshell, the policy forces secondary wage earners to pay rent as well as the leaseholder. This poses an obvious disadvantage. There is no incentive for them to leave the MTHA complex and to save money and perhaps to buy a home of their own. Is the minister aware of the problem? Is he concerned about it?

Hon Mr Cooke: I certainly appreciate the question. I think all members of the Legislature who have had tenants from the Ontario Housing Corp call them have heard of the concern of how rents are calculated for dependent children or children who are still living at home with their parents in the OHC.

I can indicate to the member that, yes, I am aware that the policy was changed in September by the Ontario Housing Corp. I am also aware that there are concerns being expressed that the reforms simply do not recognize the situation of parents who cannot collect rent from their children who are still at home. We intend, along with the Ontario Housing Corp to review the policy and see if the policy can be reformed further to reflect needs of families in OHC units across the province.

Mr Mammoliti: I am concerned about it, seeing that the concentration of the MTHA is just under 20% in my riding. Would the minister be prepared to let me know whether he is prepared to do something in the immediate future, and if so, when?

Hon Mr Cooke: Yes, I will let the member know as soon as we have a policy decision. I would certainly invite him and all members of the Legislature who have opinions on this important issue to contact my office. I would be glad to discuss it further.

CONDUCT OF CABINET MINISTERS

Mr Mahoney: Can the Premier tell this House under what standards his cabinet and caucus are operating? Does he have guidelines for the conduct of his cabinet and caucus colleagues, and will he table them in this House?

Hon Mr Rae: I am currently drafting and working on those guidelines. They will be publicly available very shortly. They will be discussed with the leaders of the opposition parties.

In addition to that, I have already discussed with leaders of the opposition parties the fact that I think it will be a good idea for a committee of the House to look at the broader question of conflict-of-interest laws in the province. I am going to be presenting the House and cabinet and the public with guidelines with respect to the conduct of cabinet ministers. I am going to be doing that shortly. I expect to be able to do it before Christmas.

The Speaker: Time for oral questions has expired. Members may recall that we even stopped the clock for a while to handle a question and an answer which normally would have run. I am sure the intense interest will bring you back to the building on Monday.

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PETITIONS

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Mr Eves: I have a petition addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"Request that the province of Ontario declare December 6 as Women's Remembrance Day. We request 14 seconds of silence be observed in schools, workplaces, institutions and media to commemorate the 14 women massacred at École Polytechnique in Montreal on the same date in 1989, and all women victims of violence in Canada."

This petition is signed by some 60 concerned constituents and I am affixing my signature thereto.

WATER AND SEWAGE UTILITY

Mr Wiseman: I have a petition here signed by 3,719 residents in Ajax, and they petition this House, the Legislature of Ontario, as follows:

"Through your resources and agencies, to prevail upon the regional municipality of Durham to reverse its decision to significantly expand the water supply plant located on the Ajax waterfront and locate it in a more suitable industrial zone. We are all citizens of Ajax who are committed to the preservation of waterfront park lands for the enjoyment and use of present and future generations. The proposed project is one we fear may well, if sanctioned, be the beginning of yet a further desecration of the wonderful community asset, truly the jewel in Ajax's crown. We urgently appeal to you to prevent this desecration."

I also have affixed my signature to this petition.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

RESTOULE SNOWMOBILE CLUB ACT, 1990

Mr Eves moved first reading of Bill Pr9, An Act to revive Restoule Snowmobile Club.

Motion agreed to.

LA CAPANNA HOMES (NON-PROFIT) INC ACT, 1990

Mr Ferguson moved first reading of Bill Pr48, An Act to revive La Capanna Homes (Non-Profit) Inc.

Motion agreed to.

ALARM SYSTEMS ACT, 1990

Mr McLean moved first reading of Bill 5, An Act to regulate Alarm Systems.

Motion agreed to.

HERITAGE DAY ACT, 1990

Mr McLean moved first reading of Bill 6, An Act respecting Heritage Day.

Motion agreed to.

GODERICH-EXETER RAILWAY COMPANY LIMITED ACT, 1990

Mr Klopp moved first reading of Bill Pr22, An Act respecting Goderich-Exeter Railway Company Limited.

Motion agreed to.

LORDINA LIMITED ACT, 1990

Mr Eves moved first reading of Bill Pr45, An Act to revive Lordina Limited.

Motion agreed to.

POWERS OF ATTORNEY AMENDMENT ACT, 1990

Mr Sterling moved first reading of Bill 7, An Act to amend the Powers of Attorney Act.

Motion agreed to.

Mr Sterling: This bill basically gives the right to a person to give to another person the right to make decisions on his or her behalf, should he or she become incapacitated. This bill would specifically give the person the right to transfer to another person the right to withdraw medical services or medical treatment, should the person who has been the donor of the power become incapacitated.

NATURAL DEATH ACT, 1990

Mr Sterling moved first reading of Bill 8, An Act respecting Natural Death.

Motion agreed to.

Mr Sterling: This embodies the concept of a living will in legislation. As opposed to the previous bill which I introduced, this bill gives a general direction to the world or to a doctor as to what a donor might like done, should he or she be placed in a position of not being able to speak for himself or herself. Therefore, what it embodies is a kind of structure that a person would draft a document whereby he or she would describe certain circumstances under which he or she would want the withdrawal of medical treatment or medical services so he or she could die a natural death.

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ORDERS OF THE DAY

OPPOSITION DAY

GOVERNMENT SPENDING

Mr Harris moved opposition day motion 1:

This House, noting the increase in the number of jobs lost through layoffs, the rising unemployment rate, the increase in the social assistance case load and in the cost of social assistance programs and noting the deterioration in the province's financial position, urges the government to abandon the tax-and-spend approach to financial management which has dominated the province's fiscal policy for the past five years, an approach which has added to inflationary pressures and reduced the competitiveness of Ontario's industries, and to adopt a policy of restraint to control costs and to provide the opportunity for tax relief.

Mr Harris: I introduced this motion because I felt it was essential to impress upon the government our view that it simply cannot continue to follow the doctrine of tax and spend which has served as the foundation of fiscal policy in this province for the past five years.

I thought it was important to do this for three reasons: first, because of my personal conviction that the fiscal policy of the government of Ontario over the past five years is in part responsible for the current severe economic downturn; second, because I am concerned that the new NDP government is poised to repeat and compound the errors of its predecessor; and third, because I am convinced the control of government expenditure, the element of policy too long ignored by governments in this province, is vital to the achievement of long-term fiscal stability, moderate tax rates and a development of an aggressive, productive and competitive economy that is capable of generating new wealth and therefore creating jobs.

I appreciate that there are members who will reject my contention that Ontario fiscal policy is in part responsible for this recession. I am aware, for example, that the current interim leader of the official opposition sent a spirited letter to Ottawa just a few months ago, disputing this claim to Ottawa.

I would say parenthetically that I suspect my honourable friend has fewer reasons to communicate with the federal government in his new capacity. However, I fully expect some members to pass the buck, to engage in some enthusiastic finger pointing in the direction of the federal government, to spend more time and energy trying to fix the blame than trying to fix the problem. Some members can always be counted on to play the old political game.

I would remind those members that the results of the last election clearly show that the public is thoroughly fed up with the old political game, with the old politics as usual, and if we are to be brutally frank, with politicians as usual.

Playing the old political game has eroded confidence in government and public institutions, with public opinion surveys showing that almost half of Canadians believe that none of the political parties really stands for the things that they believe in. Further, according to the numbers I read in The Big Picture, a recent survey of trends in Canadian opinion, playing the old political game has also reduced public trust in politicians.

Today nearly 60% of the population think we are unprincipled, 81% think we are more concerned with making money than with helping people, 65% think we are incompetent, while apparently only 32% can think of anything good to say about us all, regardless of party.

If members want to reinforce these perceptions, if they want to convince the public that this place is occupied by hacks driven only by the search for partisan advantage, then I say play on.

I would also reassure members that the claim that Ontario fiscal policy played a role in causing this recession and in limiting the competitiveness of our economy is not a product of some Tory fantasy.

I would call members' attention, for instance, to the 1990 pre-budget submission of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce wherein the chamber stated, "The Ontario government, through its actions and activities, has been a major part of the inflationary pressures that have led to the current economic slowdown."

I would also remind the members of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto's submission to the former Treasurer, who is in the room, in which the board warned that Ontario "major league taxes" were hampering and jeopardizing our industrial competitiveness.

As well, the Canadian Manufacturers' Association reported just last month that we have slipped from second to fifth among industrialized nations in terms of our manufacturing productivity and that, if the current trends continue, the competitiveness gap between us and our major competitors in the G-6 group will continue to widen. In Ontario, in the past year, some 77,000 manufacturing jobs have been swallowed up in that competitiveness gap.

The members could also examine the findings of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business' recent report, entitled Taxing Ourselves to Death: The Small Business Tax Burden in Canada. The CFIB analysis found that among the four most industrialized Canadian provinces, that is to say among Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia, "Ontario has no equal when it comes to imposing taxes on businesses in all three size categories." The CFIB also concluded that, "Ontario's heavy tax burden unquestionably contributes to the highest provincial business bankruptcy rate in Canada."

As for the province's payroll tax policy, no less an authority than the government's own Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology warned that the imposition of a payroll tax would make it more difficult for the small business sector to create and maintain jobs. I find it ironic, and I am saddened as well, that since the implementation of that tax last 1 January, it also corresponds almost to the day with when we began to seriously lose most of those 79,000 manufacturing jobs.

So, these experts -- not me, not my party, but these independent experts -- tell us that Ontario's fiscal policy has been inflationary, that it has undermined competitiveness, that it has increased bankruptcies and that it has discouraged job creation in this province.

The effect on the province's financial position has been equally negative, as anyone who has reviewed the Treasurer's statements and the quarterly financial reports can attest. The purported surplus in this year's budget, largely manufactured to begin with, as we argued last spring and as the Provincial Auditor confirmed only recently, has evaporated. In its place we have a $2.5-billion -- and growing daily -- deficit.

This year, as in the past five years, the government will again overshoot its budget plan expenditure target, a record which begs the question of why the government bothers to develop a budget plan in the first place.

In short, the fiscal policy of the past five years has made us the most heavily taxed jurisdiction in North America, increased our public debt, raised the expenditure base to a level which cannot be sustained in the absence of an economic boom without either another round of tax increases or another runup in the debt.

Regrettably, antigrowth and countercompetitive policies have not been limited to the fiscal policy field. As Professor Richard Lipsey, director of the economic growth and policy program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, noted in his address to the Vancouver Institute, the province of Ontario has been following a discredited policy path similar to that taken in Europe in the 1960s, a policy path out of touch with the realities of a highly competitive and globalized market.

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We have pursued policies which result in stories like the one I read the other day in the Globe and Mail about an Ontario high-tech company -- in this case Stetron International Inc of Markham -- which is trying to decide if it can afford to stay in Ontario or if it has to move to Buffalo, New York, to stay competitive. The article noted that Stetron was not the only company pondering its future in the province and that, "With the rapid deterioration in Ontario's international competitiveness during the late 1980s, to stay or to go is a decision that more and more businesses in Canada's industrial heartland are facing."

Governments both here and in Ottawa must accept a large measure of responsibility for taxing away the competitive advantage of our industrial base. I wish I could say that all of that is behind us now and that the voters have turfed out the scoundrels before they could do even more damage to our economy. Personally, I find little comfort in what would normally be a very encouraging development, because as I mentioned at the outset, I am very concerned that the current NDP government is going to lumber down that same discredited policy path which the Liberals followed, to their eventual defeat.

I say that because I have seen nothing in the government's election platform, I have seen nothing in its throne speech and I have heard nothing in this House to show that the government is prepared to make the tough decisions necessary to achieve fiscal stability, long-term prosperity and jobs for Ontarians.

What I have seen are some disconcerting headlines such as this one from the Toronto Sun, 20 November, announcing, "NDP Could Double Deficit." The goods news is -- get this -- that our current Treasurer would not allow a $10-billion deficit. I do not know if this means that the Treasurer could comfortably live with a $9.5-billion deficit or not, because I believe I have heard that his comfort zone is somewhere in the $5-billion neighbourhood. But I fear that our colleague the member for Nickel Belt is in danger of becoming the Carl Sagan of fiscal policy, since he seems to only relate to numbers in the billions and billions of dollars.

In any event, we shall see the results in a year or two because I suspect, and I am very comfortable going on record today to say it, that the Treasurer is well on his way in the next year and a half or two to a $10-billion deficit.

Another gem, this one from a CBC press release on a profile of the Treasurer on the people's network's Monitor program: The release dated 19 November was headlined, "Ontario Treasurer Says He'll Raise Taxes," and pointed out that the Treasurer, while acknowledging that his party did not run a campaign of raising taxes, strongly disagrees with people who suggest that the NDP does not in fact have a mandate to raise taxes.

Our current Treasurer seems to have come down with what I like to call the Liberal disease, which causes those who suffer from it to equate a majority government with a blank cheque signed by the taxpayers.

I would remind the Treasurer that the members of the last majority government in Ontario, which did not run on a campaign of raising taxes and then proceeded to raise them some 32 times, are currently warming the benches only recently vacated by the Treasurer and his colleagues. There may be a lesson in that for the Treasurer and for the Premier.

Another headline, another sign of things to come: "Ontario Considers New Gas Tax." Of course, like the Liberal government they helped put in office, our resident greenies are not considering hiking the tax merely to fatten the Treasurer's coffers. They will tell us that a gasoline tax hike or the introduction of a new carbon tax will be good for the environment, that if we really want to hug a tree, we will have to mug a taxpayer. We have heard all this before, but I thought the special status of green taxes like the tire tax had gone up in smoke along with those 13 million tires at Hagersville.

One final headline, this one from the Financial Post of 19 September: It reads, "Rae to Spend Way Out of Recession." I am forced to conclude that the NDP government is determined to be as shortsighted as its Liberal predecessor; that is, reserve the right to play tweedledumber to the Liberal's tweedledumb. Since the Liberals taxed and spent our way into a recession, the new kids on the block will try to fix it by taxing and spending our way out of it.

However, the one thing I have never heard from the current Treasurer during his brief tenure, nor from the honourable interim leader of the official opposition when he held that portfolio, is any serious discussion of the need to control expenditures, of the need to more effectively and efficiently manage government spending and the need to cut out the substantial fat and waste in government.

Government seems to be wearing blinkers on this issue. It seems to me that the words "save" and "restraint" have vanished from the government's vocabulary. But surely after massive tax hikes imposed during a period of sustained economic expansion have failed to eliminate the deficit and balance our budget, and after achieving the highest level of expenditure growth of any Canadian jurisdiction without achieving a commensurate increase in the level and quality of public services, the time has come to take a long hard look at our expenditures, to acknowledge that some questions about the way we spend money surely are in order.

The time has come to acknowledge, as an expert witness before the standing committee on finance and economic affairs of this House told the committee, that: "To ensure continued prosperity, Ontario policymakers must adopt a more prudent spending agenda and refrain from tax increases. A co-ordinated streamlining of existing programs is needed to make room for new requirements. Attempts to pay for new programs and to offset a softer revenue trend with more tax increases will be self-defeating. Such action will simply encourage the relocation of activity and jobs beyond provincial borders."

I hope that the Treasurer is listening because the bottom line is that a continuation of tax-and-spend policies will lead to the piecemeal dismantling of the Ontario industrial base. It will lead to a steady erosion in our standard of living. It will perpetuate a public policy environment inimical to the growth of what the Canadian Manufacturers' Association has called the aggressive economy. According to the CMA, sound public policy is one of the four pillars on which an aggressive and competitive economy is built. The public policy environment which encourages competitiveness has a number of features, but the two most relevant for our purposes are that it is a policy designed to control spending and to limit the tax burden. It is, in short, a policy designed to do precisely what we have not been doing and to achieve objectives which do not appear to be of even marginal interest to the current administration.

During the recent months and over this next period of time, it is obvious that government must reduce its demands on our economy. The prosperity of our society, the range of opportunities available to our children, the quality of public services do not depend either solely or primarily on the compassion of government, but do depend on the competitiveness of our economy and the ability of our economy to support them.

I invite all members who care about securing the opportunity for growth and all members willing to do more than simply pay lipservice to this goal of achieving a future for this province as prosperous as its past to join in support of this resolution.

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Hon Mr Laughren: I am pleased to rise in my place and defend my honour in this debate. I appreciated the member for Nipissing, the leader of the third party, putting this motion in Orders and Notices. I think it is appropriate to have this debate at this time, early in this session. It is also, I think, a good signal for the official opposition as to the intent of the third party on economic matters in the next several years. It is certainly a good shot across the bow from the leader of the third party.

However, I found the member's remarks somewhat pessimistic about the Ontario economy. I do not share that pessimism. I found, quite frankly, that when I was in opposition with the leader of the third party he was more fairminded and evenhanded than he is now, but perhaps that is a natural course of events.

I must say that some of the words in the motion that is in Orders and Notices are indeed appropriate. We are indeed in a recession, as I said before, and we are indeed going to be facing a deficit of $2.5 billion this year. We are still determined to live within that deficit. I must say, though, that we part company most profoundly on the way in which we should deal with the recession. For the member for Nipissing to try to convince us that the way out of the recession is to cut back even more, to cut taxes and cut back on expenditures --

Mr Nixon: Didn't it work for Herbert Hoover?

Hon Mr Laughren: It did not work for Herbert Hoover, it did not work for Ronald Reagan and it did not work for Margaret Thatcher. What the member for Nipissing is laying before the House, and I appreciate the stark way in which he has done it, is simply supply-side economics. You might find other words to describe it, but that is basically what this motion is; it is a commitment to supply-side economics. I feel most profoundly that is not the answer to a recession.

We saw what happened in the United States. It was Ronald Reagan's firm belief that if you cut taxes and cut government expenditures you would encourage people to spend and invest, and therefore the problems would be resolved in that manner. We know that has not happened. There is a record indebtedness in the United States now as a result of those policies. There have been all sorts of bad things that happened as a result of supply-side economics in the United States. We know, for example, that there is more homelessness in the United States now than there has ever been. We know that the education standards are declining in the United States and I would attribute a lot of that to supply-side economics. We know that they do not have a health care system in the United States along the lines that we have here.

There are all sorts of things that happened in the United States. Deregulation is a part of supply-side economics, in my view. We saw the disaster that brought to the savings and loan corporations in the United States, for example. It also leads to things like the proliferation of junk bonds. They have totally gutted the health and safety regulations in the United States. I could go on and on and on about supply-side economics.

We on this side feel very strongly that the approach we have taken is the right approach to getting ourselves out of this recession. It is admitted, of course, that we will have a deficit, but I can tell members that this deficit is not caused by anything that we have done so far. We know -- the numbers are all there for all members to see that as we headed into this recession the retail sales tax dropped dramatically, corporation income taxes dropped dramatically, and welfare case loads shot up dramatically -- and the member is right, they are growing daily. We know that is a serious problem.

At the same time, for the member for Nipissing to say that the answer is to cut back even more seems to me strange indeed. That is not the answer to getting ourselves out of this recession. That is why we made a very deliberate decision to do something to stimulate the economy to get ourselves out of it, at the same time making a long-term investment in the public infrastructure in this province. I do not mean this as a particularly partisan shot, but a lot of that public infrastructure has been allowed to run down by the preceding two governments.

By implementing our $700-million antirecession package on short-term capital works we are going to improve the capital infrastructure and the public infrastructure in this province. It is long overdue. I am glad we have this opportunity to do it. I regret that it is because of a recession that we are doing it. At the same time, it is an opportunity to put some much-needed capital into our public infrastructure.

When the local levels of government become involved in that antirecession package, we are talking about a $1-billion incentive into the economy within the next year. We think that is a major attempt and a very positive way to try to combat the recession. To simply batten down the hatches, as someone said, Herbert Hoover style, I think would really be counterproductive at this time.

We have every intention of managing the economy in this province in a prudent way. We know that we have to examine existing programs if we are going to introduce new programs. It is not simply a case of for ever adding programs on top of other programs. Certainly, management of existing programs is part of any kind of sensible management of an economy. We, of course, have already indicated to the various ministries that we expect that to happen as we head into the budgetary process for the 1991-92 year. I know that the present leader of the official opposition had built into the budgetary process for this year some constraints on programs in the various ministries to start with. So we know that is ongoing.

I just am a little taken aback by the leader of the third party blaming us and blaming government spending for a recession. That I do not understand. Also, putting the blame for inflation on us is ridiculous. Ontario, as we sit here this afternoon, has the lowest inflation rate in Canada, and that is what makes no sense about what the federal government is doing to us too. The federal government has said that in the province of Ontario we are causing inflationary pressures. At the same time they are bringing in a goods and services tax, or at least they want to, on 1 January that is going to add a minimum of 1.3 points to the consumer price index. We think it will be even more than 1.3; we think it will be about 1.5 points on the inflation rate.

So for the federal government, and through them to the member for Nipissing, to say that Ontario is adding inflationary pressures, I think is just fundamentally wrong and they should be pointing --

Mr Sterling: When the spending has gone up by 150% in the past five years?

Hon Mr Laughren: For the members opposite to say that Ontario is responsible for inflation is wrong. Ontario has the lowest inflation rate in the country.

Mr Carr: The western premiers said it too.

Mr Sterling: Speak to the western premiers.

Interjections.

Hon Mr Laughren: I do not expect them to agree with me. I would ask, however, that they put the deficit figure in some kind of perspective. The deficit for this fiscal year, $2.5 billion -- we still believe we can stay within that number -- is less than 1% of the gross domestic product of the province, 0.9%. If you go back to the deficits, the last time this province had a recession, back in 1981-82, the deficit as a percentage of the gross domestic product was higher than the deficit of $2.5 billion this fiscal year. I have not just picked out one measurement. If you measure that deficit as a proportion of the total government expenditures, it is also less than it was back in 1982.

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I confess that the recession was deeper in 1981-82 and that it rebounded much more dramatically than we think it is going to rebound next year. At the same time, I think that the leader of the third party should be somewhat more fairminded when he talks about the deficit being $2.5 billion and being concerned about that. Better that we recognize that we are indeed in a recession -- a recession, I might add, that the Conference Board of Canada, which is not exactly an NDP front, even claims is a made-in-Canada recession and clearly points the finger at the monetary policy of the federal government. It is plain and simple.

If members want to look at where we are being hurt the most in the province of Ontario it is in manufacturing and construction, and high interest rates and the high value of the Canadian dollar are hurting us a great deal. I hope that the leader of the third party will take the time to sit down with his federal counterparts in Ottawa and tell them that we are hurting in Ontario. Ontario is feeling the brunt of this recession more than any other province. We would all be well served if the leader of the third party would talk to his friends in Ottawa and convince them of the wrongheadedness of their monetary policies; they are simply not working. It is time that interest rates were lowered so we can get on with reinvesting not just in the Ontario economy but all across this land.

I do not want to take a lot of time this afternoon. I simply want to express my appreciation to the member of the third party for putting the motion in Orders and Notices. I think it is appropriate that we have a debate. I am very pleased that my parliamentary assistant, the member for Hamilton Centre, is going to play a major role in the debate this afternoon. His advice is the kind I usually take; he is being of great assistance to me.

Mr Eves: Boy, this must be a new Floyd.

Hon Mr Laughren: It is absolutely true. I am looking forward to his role in this debate this afternoon.

I would conclude by simply saying that while we are in a recession, while we are heading for deficits, the Ontario economy is basically sound. It is going to take us a year before we start coming out of the recession, but we are surely going to do that. There are some unknowns we have to cope with, such as the US economy, such as the Gulf crisis and the price of oil, but we are a healthy, basically sound economy, and we are going to come out of this recession. We have been through worse recessions than this before, and I trust we will manage the economy in a way that all members will applaud at the end of the day.

Mr Nixon: Mr Speaker, may I first offer my congratulations to you, sir, on your elevation to the position of the Deputy Speakership. We have enjoyed your supervision in the past. We know you are a most intelligent and moderate person, and we look forward to serving under your direction in the future as well.

An hon member: Is he running for the leadership?

Mr Nixon: Well, maybe he will, but this is a good job he has.

I also am glad to take part in this debate, because I think it is a useful thing to do. I can recall five years ago, as the new government took office, that the circumstances were substantially different; we inherited a deficit which we inflated as much as we possibly could. It came in at just over $3 billion; that was in a budget of about $23 billion. The honourable Treasurer, having done his magic on a balanced budget, has come up with $2.5 billion in a $44-billion budget. We are prepared to live with that, as we have no choice other than falling on our swords again. Once is enough.

Five years ago the economy was growing rapidly. I was not nervy enough at the time to take credit for that, because the economy all over the world was expanding. Many people said it was Ronald Reagan's tax cuts that did it. Many people indicated it was Margaret Thatcher's iconoclastic leadership; the icons in that instance were the labour unions and they were blasted. The whole world was going forward.

Over those five years dramatic changes occurred, and we in Ontario benefited from them enormously. We had a rate of growth higher than any of the other economies in the western world. We had a very high rate of increase and expenditure, as the leader of the third party has indicated in his comments. I suppose our justification at the time was that we were filling in for the inadequate commitments to infrastructure from the previous government, exactly the same arguments we are hearing now in this House. In fact, the requirements of the community were growing very rapidly and there were not very many people in this House, even in the Conservative Party, who were voting against more money for schools and hospitals, roads and environmental programs, development of the north and job opportunities for our young people.

As a matter of fact, as Treasurer I used to note very dramatically that the Progressive Conservatives in those days would decry additional expenditure in almost the same breath they would call for more services. They are not much more rational now, but they are elected and they are here, so what are we going to do about it?

I would say that during the five years, the deficit, even though the Provincial Auditor and the honourable member for Scarborough West feel it was somehow manipulated, even though it was done by the Progressive Conservatives in 1974-75 just before an election, and done, I believe, in 1979-80 by the saint of the Tory Party, Frank Miller, that great Treasurer, with the support of the present leader of the third party, who for a few brief moments was fluttering in the limelight of being a cabinet minister -- just before his wings caught fire and he dived into northern Ontario only just recently to be heard of again. During these five years, the efforts of the Liberal government created 560,000 new jobs. The honourable leader of the third party feels that most of those were created in the civil service; he thought we were hiring all our friends. Actually, we made a mistake and hired mostly NDPs; there is more truth to that than fiction. In fact, the growing economy was creating jobs at a great rate. I do not take credit for that any more than I blame the present recession on the NDP, but I think people should know that since the NDP took office, the net job loss in the province has been 160 jobs every day, seven days a week. What a record. Even the Minister of Labour is turning red; his hair is turning grey. We will get around to their abject failures in correcting this loss some time in the future.

I want to say also that when we talk about civil servants, at the same time as the number of civil servants was growing, our population was growing, our service was growing. If the members look at the statistics put out by Statistics Canada -- totally independent, although there is a federal Tory government -- the actual number of residents per civil servant is the lowest in this jurisdiction of all the provincial jurisdictions and, of course, far lower than the government of Canada.

I think those statistics are interesting to compare and should be borne in mind when the troglodytes of the far right start saying that we are hiring too many people and that somehow the civil servants should be working harder and working better and that sort of thing. They can have that policy all to themselves. We are not going to squeeze in on that, because we believe the civil servants are working hard, that there are demands out there, and that the province is served effectively and efficiently. We will be looking for efficiencies in government, which is our duty just as it is for not only the members of the PC party but for all members of the Legislature.

It is interesting to note that while we are castigated for having tax rates that are too high, the important tax rates are low, lower than most other jurisdictions. For example, at present we have the lowest effective personal income tax rate in Canada for middle-income families with children. Those are the people who pay a lot of tax.

As a matter of fact, during my brief time as Treasurer, our policies actually removed over 600,000 low-income people from the tax rolls. These are people who pay income tax at the federal level but do not pay here. I wish we could have done more. One of the things I firmly expect in the first NDP budget, if the government lasts that long -- I was predicting it would not last until Christmas; we shall see -- is that one of the major additional expenditures will be to increase the number of people at the low end of the income spectrum who will be removed from the personal income tax rolls entirely. I certainly will not criticize the Treasurer if he does that. I wish we could have done more, but we removed more than half a million people from paying personal income tax which, I guess, at least in politics, is a step in the right direction.

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Mr Harris: You removed half of them by throwing them out of work.

Mr Nixon: No, sir. The average income went up faster here during our years than at any time in history, and we created jobs at a faster rate in this province than at any time in history. Just in case the honourable leader of the third party, who was out washing his hands briefly, forgot all the statistics I presented to him, I want to tell him again that during our years we created jobs at a rate of 300 new jobs every day for five years. No one can take that number away, because it is correct. Even the leader of the third party has simply got to accept it.

In the environment, we raised the expenditures, the commitments, by 128% over five years. We brought in the blue box program, which did more to reduce the waste stream than anything else. I am a great fan of the present Minister of the Environment, as I was of her predecessor. I supported him as I support her, as do all members, in their efforts to reduce the waste stream. It will be interesting to see how successful the current minister's efforts are compared to the former minister's. Their commitments are the same. I would say that the blue box program, which was recognized internationally by the United Nations, is an outstanding one and one we should all be proud of.

I am not apologizing, for example, even for the tire tax the honourable member mentioned. It is bringing in $40 million to $45 million a year. That money, while it goes into the consolidated revenue fund, obviously is used to support environmental programs. I sincerely wish that there had not been a tire fire, but there was. I hope the present Minister of the Environment, as she finds her feet and gets an opportunity to bring her attention to this important matter, will get support from her colleagues, as she certainly will from here, in bringing forward the proper approach to cleaning up the mess of old tires. We are getting 11 million new old tires, if you want to put it that way, every year, and "something must be done." I did my little bit by whacking on a tax of $45 million. That money should be considered an environmental tax; we did, and I believe the new government will and must as well.

I want to say something about the health budget. I am only going to take about five minutes more, I say to those people who are getting ready to speak. We increased it from about $8.7 billion to $15.3 billion, and it has gone up beyond that. The elimination of OHIP premiums is probably the accomplishment I was associated directly with in which I have the greatest pride. People do not like to pay the new health care tax. That is too bad, but we have a lot of money to pay in this connection. Most people recognize that it is a fairer and more appropriate way to fund medicare, at least in part. Please remember that this tax pays only about 14% to 15% of the medicare costs.

Hospital funding, particularly capital funding, rose dramatically during these years. Our spending on home care tripled. I would suggest that the new Treasurer and all of us in the House will be asked to support an even faster escalation of the costs of a totally new approach to home care, which was the policy of the past government, which was certainly provided with excellent leadership in the public service and I believe will go forward without any equivocation and I hope without any delay.

It is interesting also in health that the hospitals are lobbying so dramatically the Minister of Health, who seems to bow under every pressure; members may have noticed that themselves, having worked with her themselves in the New Democratic government. Hospitals are coming forward in this strong and effective way, demanding more money. Naturally, as Treasurer and still as interim Leader of the Opposition, I support their requirements as strongly as I possibly can, I really do, but I think it should be borne in mind that last year the increase in the commitments to the hospitals was just under 10%, one of the largest; I believe it was about 9.7%.

There is some thought that no appropriate money was made available for pay equity and for the payment of the new health tax. Of course, there is no money made available specifically to pay nurses or to buy iodine or whatever it is they use, or anything else. They are given an amount of $6.6 billion with which, under the direction of their own boards, they provide the services that are required under the hospital act and under the direction of the Minister of Health. So it is an extremely important issue that must involve all of us in this House.

In education there were substantial advances. We provided enough money so that school boards can pay our teachers at a rate that is generally accepted to be among the highest in North America and in the world. They are the only group I know of in the teaching community with a fully indexed pension at 70% of the average of their best five years. Naturally, this is totally unsatisfactory. Just like members of this House, who also have an inadequate pay scale and an inadequate pension, there is a minor degree of dissatisfaction. Perhaps, even though these pay scales and this pension that has been determined are still inadequate, we will see what the Treasurer does with that as he moves forward in meeting the problems he faces.

I simply want to say in closing that rather than the province of Ontario interfering with the nation's economy -- and the policy I put forward as Treasurer was supported by my colleagues in the government and in the Legislature -- we felt that taxes should increase sufficiently to pay the costs of our programs. The costs of the programs did go up during our years from about $23 billion to about $45 billion; in fact. a bit more, now that the Treasurer has moved next year's payments into this year's. We could debate that some time.

I think at the same time you need only look at the record, not only for the improvement of our services but for the fact that we paid the bills. For the last fiscal year we not only paid the bills, and that is 100% of capital, but for the first time since 1948 we actually reduced the provincial debt.

It is strange that the leader of the third party should criticize that. I see he has gone out to wash his hands again, but I think it is important that being a fairminded person himself and a Progressive Conservative, he should be aware that it is the Progressive Conservative debt in Ottawa which is rapidly leading us towards a $500-billion national debt and that it is the high taxes of the Progressive Conservative government in Ottawa, the new goods and services tax that is being imposed on us by the Progressive Conservative government, that is really ruining the economy of Ontario and the nation.

It seems the leader of the third party is somehow hanging by his heels from the chandelier, because he has everything wrong, he has everything upside down. On that basis, there is no way that the thoughtful, moderate, Liberal Party would ever think of voting for this particular motion.

Mr Stockwell: We got everything wrong, apparently, but I am pleased to have this opportunity to participate in this debate on the first opposition day before the House in this 35th Parliament.

I believe the motion is very timely, as the economy is under considerable stress and the province's financial position is deteriorating, and I believe the government of the day is determined to pour gasoline on this fire.

None of this was supposed to happen. Let's remember back a year or so ago when we were debating the previous budget. The last budget projected that it would have a slower real economic growth of 1.7%, an unemployment rate of 5.6% -- and remember when they had a surplus of $30 million? We all remember those heady days, do we not? Well, given our experience to date, I think the Treasury department should get its water tested, because clearly something is in the water that is making these people live on Fantasy Island. None of those things happened, none of them came about.

What was so interesting about that debate was that in Ontario I recall the former Premier boasting during the general election campaign that Ontario was virtually inflation-proof, that back-to-back balanced budgets left the province with enormous flexibility to cope with the high interest rates, a high dollar and a sharp decline in the economic growth. We are inflation-proof; there will be no recession in Ontario, according to the previous government.

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Something went very, very wrong, and given the shape our economy is in today and given the shape of the provincial government books, we know the only enormous flexibility that existed was in the then Premier's perception of the facts and the former government's accounting methods. I know that hindsight is 20/20, but what the heck was the man talking about when he said that Ontario was virtually recession-proof? I do not know and I am not sure they know. They will not take credit for this recession, yet they are prepared to take credit for all the jobs, all the new moneys and all the programs. They cannot have their cake and eat it too. So here we are today suggesting to this Liberal government that stood in here for five years that it spent and spent and spent and that today we are feeling the economic wrath of that spending.

The deficit was not paid down. The deficit was increased over five years. Those are the figures that you do not get. Our unemployment rate, adjusted, is running at 6.7%, up 2.2% from the rate a year ago. The youth unemployment rate is alarming. It is up 3.8% to 11.8%. The forecast modest growth has not materialized and the latest forecast from the Conference Board of Canada projects that our real gross domestic product will actually decline by nearly a full point. Those are dangerous numbers. It will be the second quarter of 1991 before we will experience any real growth in our economy.

Over the first 10 months of this year, some 2,278 businesses have gone bankrupt, in Ontario a 63% increase in levels experienced in 1989. The number of layoffs is currently running ahead of the rate experienced in the 1981-82 recession, and by the end of the year the number of layoffs could be as much as 71% higher than 1982, the last recessionary decline in this province.

The cost of welfare and social assistance programs has ballooned, along with the growth in unemployment rates and the increase in the number of layoffs. Last month the family benefits assistance case load stood at 219,773, an increase of more than 26,000 compared with October 1989. As of September of this year, there were an additional 96,780 people receiving benefits through the general welfare assistance program. We do not need any more statistics to prove what we know: we are in a slowdown and a recession. The slowdown in the economy has exposed the fragile nature of the province's finances, as the projected $30-million surplus has proved to be the product of wishful thinking and fun with numbers.

The $2.5-billion deficit we face in this province today stands as an indictment of the shortsighted policies of the government, which frittered away the boom dividend and which used taxation to avoid making tough decisions on spending. And make no mistake about it: those were boom days, those were boom years. The Treasury's coffers were full and the spending continued. New taxes were introduced, and year after year we lost total control of how money left this building. We lost total control of the number of civil servants who were hired. We lost total control of the decision-making that led to this mess we are in today.

Clearly, if a prudent government were elected, it would know full well that during the good times, during the times when you have a boom economy, you put money away. You put it away because when the bad times roll around, you need it. The bad times are here and there is no money in the vaults. The size of the deficit must have been a bit of a surprise to the new Treasurer, who must feel somewhat cheated. Certainly I do have some degree of sympathy for them, because I feel the Grits did the partying and the NDP ends up with the hangover.

The leader of my party has already detailed how provincial fiscal policy contributed to the recession, and rather than review the abysmal record of the former government, I want to take a few minutes to speculate about what we can expect from the present administration. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, I expect that we are going to see more of the same.

First, the NDP and the Liberals are both soft socialist parties, and they have adopted a very similar approach to government. It is very difficult today to tell the difference between the present NDP government and the old Liberal government. For example, both like to say one thing on the campaign trail and another in office. We have already seen major reversals on Varity Corp and Consumers' Gas.

For instance, on Varity Corp the Premier told the Financial Post on 7 July, "We believe Varity has to live up to its obligations and contracts it has signed, and we intend to do what is necessary to enforce them." The Premier later decided that doing what was necessary to enforce these contracts was a crap shoot and he negotiated a getaway package with yet another Ontario corporate refugee. Some things change, particularly when they get elected.

When the former government suggested last summer it was prepared to negotiate some sort of settlement with Varity, the NDP opposition flew off the handle. The current Minister of Housing almost had a heart attack when the government of the day intimated that compensating displaced workers would make up for breaking promises to keep them employed. Frankly, when the Premier made what the Financial Post described as "his remarkable policy reversal on Varity," I expected the government would have to hold its cabinet meetings in an oxygen tent, because I thought this about-face would have left them breathless with outrage. But I was wrong. They applauded the decision. The only thing that left them breathless was the energy they expended on self-congratulations.

Not long after Varity flew the coop, the Premier changed his mind on the British Gas purchase of Consumers' Gas. Consumers' Gas was a company which the Premier thought should be a public utility and publicly owned. They have held that position for light years. I can only suggest that at every level of NDP government, be it federal, provincial or municipal, they have always expounded on the fact that we have to get more government intervention into the major corporations. A perfect opportunity, and the Premier thought so. But he changed his mind. He told them, "I think it would fit very nicely into the British Gas empire." He changed his mind after being elected.

The Toronto Star, that famous Liberal-NDP accord, editorialized on 9 November that the message to Ontarians implicit to the Consumers' Gas decision was that they were sadly mistaken if they thought the government would live by its word. It did not take but a week.

We have seen one policy on rent control in An Agenda for People, only to find the minister here yesterday backpedalling from citing the realities of the marketplace, the same realities he did his best to ignore in his announcement yesterday. Obviously, it is time for the minister to get real. We are witnessing a public backstroke on this particular issue, and the people are at risk, the financial institutions are at risk and the landlords are at risk.

At least one minister should develop a consistent definition of reality so that the landlords in Ontario will know which reality the minister is responding to -- the reality of the marketplace or the reality that there are more tenant votes than landlord votes.

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Not to be outdone, the Minister of the Environment, whose mental gymnastics on waste management issues could earn her the title of the Olga Korbut of policymaking, announced on 21 November that she was suspending the Environmental Assessment Act exemptions on the proposed Whitevale and Brampton sites, suspending both those environmental assessments.

A day later, on 22 November, the minister was back saying that in case of an extreme emergency -- an extreme emergency that we all know will happen -- it would be possible to use the two greenfield sites, 6P and Pl, without a full environmental assessment hearing.

If there is one party that I can give a few months of honeymoon to, if there are any parties that this can be given to -- it could be given to a whole bunch of them, it could be given to all kinds of them, because a lot of them need time to find their feet and understand the issues -- but if there is one party I have great difficulty in giving any honeymoon period to, it is the NDP, because it has consistently told us over the past number of years that it had instant answers to financial concerns, it had instant answers to the concerns of the people of Ontario and when it got into power it would implement them. As we see here today, they are not doing that. They have no honeymoon. What happened to their answers? Two months ago they knew everything. They have forgotten everything they learned. It is astounding.

In making a pronouncement, the minister ignored two important things. The first was the extreme emergency that would likely result from her own totally unrealistic waste management strategy. The waste management strategy consisted of -- we are still not sure. The waste management strategy still is not before this House.

Metropolitan Toronto council has to deal with the waste management strategy today. The strategies that were passed at Metropolitan Toronto council were adopted. They have a strategy, but the provincial government has not got a strategy.

Hon Mr Philip: Where's your answer?

Mr Stockwell: The provincial government member yells across the floor, what is our strategy? My goodness, has he not learned yet? They won the election. When are they going to do something?

The second was, three months ago the minister's leader stood on the Maple site and made a solid commitment there would be no environmental assessment extension. It is clear that the Environment minister is having the same trouble with reality as her colleague in Housing. Perhaps we should have her fitted with lead shoes so that she could walk around on Earth for a while.

None of these kinds of decisions, none of these proposals have any sense of reality; the same with their fiscal and financial approach to government. At least, in this tenor and style we have already seen a number of disturbing parallels between the former and current governments. The former government compiled a depressing list of broken promises and commitments, ranging from school funding to auto insurance, and this current crop seems determined to break that record. I suspect that these parallels will also extend into more substantive matters, such as fiscal policy.

In point of fact, the campaign platform of the current government was very much like the fiscal policy of the former government in that it followed the doctrine of tax and spend with a vengeance. On the tax side, this government promised a new corporate minimum tax to soak an additional $1 billion a year out of the economy, a spec tax for a housing market that is not only dead but in the advanced stages of rigor mortis and a succession tax which assumes that all rich people in Ontario got that way from being stupid.

On the spending side, they are committed to increasing the provincial share of education costs to 60% over five years, though we have yet to learn how they will do this. But accumulative costs suggest it is going to be $7.6 billion. Where do they plan to raise this money? Where do they plan to find this kind of money? They suggest it will be through their Fair Tax Commission that is not reporting back for, in their determination, at least 18 months. Yet they have five years' worth of promises out there at $7.6 billion. Their addition does not work. When are they going to start dealing with the realities of the situation and understand they cannot approve these election promises? They were not worth the paper they were printed on. They can throw them in the garbage, go to the landfill site and see how well their recycling program is doing by counting the number that come back.

They have promised to establish a public auto insurance system but have yet to say how much it will cost -- another typical approach by this government. Here is the approach of this government: "Let us decide to do something, implement it and then get some cost-benefit analysis." Is that not an interesting way to do business? Obviously, businesses do not do it that way because they would be out of business. This government has interesting concepts.

We note that the Osborne Report of Inquiry into Motor Vehicle Accident Compensation in Ontario regarding public auto insurance suggested the cost would just be absolutely enormous. Those are not factored into the election promises. There is no concept of the cost that these promises will have on the taxpayers in the province. They are just promises.

As I stand here today, the members know full well that this government will not meet its 60% guidelines on education financing. They will not do it. They know it and we know it. Now they have to break the news to the school boards. They do not have $7.6 billion and they will not have it in the next five years, unless, of course, their Fair Tax Commission comes back with a machine that prints money.

We estimate that over a five-year period their day care commitments would cost at least $720 million and that a five-year tab for their non-profit housing promises could run to $1.7 billion. They made these promises. Their leader stood in this province in various locations, and as these promises came into his head, they came out of his mouth. That is as much thought and process as they gave these. They will never, ever approve this kind of expenditure unless they are going to tax this province to death. Maybe they will do that.

The taxpayers had better hope that much of An Agenda for People is never, ever implemented, because they will end up paying a very heavy price. What is really frightening is that the NDP in opposition thought the economic and fiscal policies of the former Liberal government were -- get this -- too conservative. It is mind-boggling.

They thought the Liberals' ideas of spending were too conservative: a government which hiked tax revenues -- and we never hear this from the leader of the official opposition, we never hear these kind of numbers -- by more than 130%, which increased its spending faster than any other government in this country, which increased the debt -- he is saying he is paying down the debt -- by 30% during one of the strongest and most sustained periods of economic growth in this province in 50 years.

He oversaw the expansion of the public service, and to be called conservative by anybody is unbelievable. If that record is an indication of what the NDP considers a conservative policy, then who knows what its liberal policies will look like?

Long-term economic and fiscal health requires more emphasis on spending controls and efforts to control the size of government. Be forewarned to this government. Government never created a single job. Every time it hires a new employee, it is simply another form of tax. That is the kind of spending we have to look for, line-by-line reviews of spending. Interdepartmental budgets have to be looked through. Those are the kind of expenditure cuts that they have to look at.

If we are going to address the issues that most of the people of this province want us to address, I found that the number one concern they had when I was campaigning was taxes. Taxes were the big issue, and a line-by-line review of how we get out of people's lives.

I own a small business. I know the recession is here. Just two weeks ago I had to lay off four people in my business. Is that not a shame? Four people who are out of work, four people who do not have a job to go to this week and four people who cannot feed their families because they are going to have to go out to look for a new job. Why? Because of taxes -- taxes on top of taxes on top of taxes; spending on top of spending on top of spending.

The government should wake up, deal with the issue, get out of the people's lives, get off the backs of business and realize that the best thing they can do is stop spending money.

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Mr Christopherson: I think that it is important that the third party recognize that its simplistic ideas on taxation were dealt with rather thoroughly in the last provincial election, especially since it was the only issue it seemed to deal with in the last election. The people had an opportunity to listen to what that party had to say about this simplistic idea that its taxation ideas will solve everything and they rejected it out of hand.

I would also remind the Leader of the Opposition that his party was re-elected with its majority government after its accord with us. When they ran on their own record, when it was their own record that mattered, look who has the majority government.

I found the speech by the leader of the third party to be very curious, curious indeed. One of the things he talked about was that the words "save" and "restraint" have vanished from our vocabulary, yet it was very curious that the third party supported the announcement today of the increases in spending on social services. In fact, they bragged that they did something similar back at the beginning of the recession they faced in the early 1980s.

They cannot have it both ways. They cannot talk to us about playing politics on issues. That kind of spending has to be made right now because, if it is not, an awful lot of people in this province are going to be hurt and hurt even more than they otherwise would be, because of a made-in-Canada recession led by the same party that has the same simplistic ideas about taxation that the third party does.

The leader of the third party also talked about and made reference to polls and studies that are saying people are tired and fed up with politicians who play old political games. I say there is nothing older in terms of old political games than the kinds of consultation, supposed consultation, that took place in the past, both with the previous government and the government before it.

The reality is that nobody in this province honestly believed that they were being listened to. It was a rubber stamp. It was just a process to go out there. Most people believed the decision had already been made, and that was one of the key things that brought the previous government down. It was that they were not really listening.

The third party and the official opposition are spending a fair bit of time trying to ridicule us because we are talking a lot about consultation. I find it interesting that following our throne speech, which articulated our commitment to consultation, to reaching out and talking to people, in the Hamilton Spectator on 21 November -- and I say clearly that this is in response to the throne speech -- Lawrence Rotenberg, chairman of the economic policy committee of the Hamilton and District Chamber of Commerce, said, "We welcome the consultative approach the government is taking and look forward to working with them." He further said, "If ever there is a time to use a consultative approach, it is during a recession." It is worth pointing out that he is a tax lawyer. I want to be fair to this gentleman. I do not suggest for a minute that he is endorsing everything in the throne speech but, with regard to the consultative process, there is a lot of support right across the province because they know we are serious about it.

One of the key things we are going to consult on is the whole question of fair taxes in this province. When I was going door to door in the election and people raised the issue by saying, "Look, you've got promises out there. The current government has promises out there. How are you going to pay for them?" I did not tell them there would be no tax increases. I did not say, "You can count on us to never, ever raise a tax." What I did was I acknowledged that one of the things we would do is to revamp the tax system in this province so that it was fair, that it was based on people's ability to pay, that it did not continually hit the people who can least afford to pay.

I believe they bought that because they know that to meet the needs in this province for education, health care, social services, infrastructure, these things are going to cost dollars and, if there are any increases, they only ask that we at least be as fair as possible. Our Fair Tax Commission is all about that. The consultative process that we have committed to is going to ensure that everybody gets heard, not just those who want to receive the money. We will give an opportunity for tax experts like the person in my community and anyone else across this province who wants to have some input. The decision will not be made ahead of time. We will be listening to what people have to say and from that we will determine what is fair in this province.

I also found it curious to hear the leader of the third party suggest that there would be a lot of enthusiastic finger pointing on our part, that we would be spending more time trying to blame somebody for the situation we are in rather than dealing with it. I reject that totally out of hand. In fact, this government has been particularly careful, I believe, to ensure that we are not just throwing our arms in the air and saying, "It's all the fault of the past government; therefore, we're not going to do anything and it's all your fault." What we have said is that by the same token, when we are dealing with the issues in front of us, members should not try to negate the situation we are in.

We are not spending all our time pointing fingers like a certain federal government we know that spent more than a year saying the cupboards are bare and blaming the government before it. In fact, I just heard it's leader on television yesterday; he is still blaming the Liberal government for some of his woes. We have not taken that approach; we will never take that approach.

Rather we have said that we are going to take action to combat the recession we find ourselves in. One of the key things we have said we are going to do is to spend the $700 million that the Treasurer has said will be committed to improving the infrastructure of this province. With cost-sharing, that will reach close to $1 billion. That is solid action. That is not running from responsibility; that is not pointing a finger and blaming someone; that is taking some action.

The next thing we were faced with was the GST. There was a commitment on the part of the previous government that it was going to put its tax on top of that Tory tax. I do not recall exactly what the Tory position provincially was on a tax on a tax but, since Tories seem to love the GST, and they are the only ones, I suspect they would have done the same thing.

What happened when the NDP formed a majority government and people said, "Aha, what are you going to do about the half a billion dollars it is going to cost you to keep your promise on not taxing a tax?" One of the first pieces of legislation that landed in this place was a bill to ensure that this tax on a tax did not take place. We met that promise. We did not even blink. It is there right now.

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Let's not forget the other actions that have been taking place almost every day since then. The announcements of the wage protection fund -- again strong counterrecessionary actions -- the announcements made on the transportation improvements, the announcements made on the social service improvements today -- all of these things are meant to attack the recession, to ensure that we can respond when the recovery begins and that we make this affect real people as little as possible, as little as we can, given the situation that we do have.

Let me also state that we have got to bear in mind that while a lot of economists are saying the middle of next year, 1991, is about the time we can expect the economy to turn around, we also have to be aware there are a number of things on the horizon that could change things very dramatically. If war breaks out in the Middle East, aside from the human issue and the human cost, the effect to us economically speaking could be horrendous; also if the overvalued dollar continues, if the high interest rate continues. We do not know what effect any kind of trilateral trade agreement with Mexico might have. Everybody seems to be trying to fast-track it. That is something else that is a wild card. If the American economy continues to weaken, that could affect us also.

It is quite possible that the situation we now see could get worse. We do not believe it will. We are staying optimistic about our economy. But again, to quote Mr Romanko in the same article talking about the approach we are taking, he says, "The government seems to be taking a responsive and responsible approach."

In light of everything that is in front of us, in light of the possibilities that we must realistically look at, I would suggest that the main thing that is happening right now in both opposition parties is that they are worried. I have heard them say what they are worried about. They are worried about an NDP government that has said: "We've got four to five years to govern and when we're done, this is going to be a better province to live in. The quality of life will be better, and then you are going to have to face us in a re-election."

My last comment is that the only real shame in all of this is that Ontarians did not have the opportunity to benefit from an NDP government in good times. We intend to see that they get that chance.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Haslam): I find it necessary to remind the House that we are here for speaking and listening.

Hon Mr Pouliot: We are being provoked here, Madam Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: I am afraid I do not agree. May I remind you in the remaining time to think on these things.

Mr Kwinter: I am delighted to participate in this debate. There is a phrase that we used to use quite regularly both in the 1985 Legislature and in the 1987 Legislature -- I do not know who coined it first, but the phrase was "passing strange." Every once in a while --

Mr Villeneuve: Sam Cureatz.

Mr Kwinter: Sam Cureatz. Truly, I find it passing strange that we have a resolution before this House in the name of the leader of the third party that really condemns the present government, and by implication the previous government, on the economic situation facing us in Ontario.

The reason I find it passing strange is that if there is one thing that most businessmen and many economists are virtually unanimous on it is that notwithstanding that we go through cycles -- and those members who are students of economics will know that the economy goes up, then dips a bit, then goes back up again; it is quite regular -- we truly have a made-in-Canada recession that is a direct result of the federal government's policy on interest rates, which in turn has driven up the value of the dollar.

I would like to offer some advice to the government which is gratuitous. They can take it or they can leave it. But I would also like to set the stage for where I think we are, one of the reasons we got there and how we have to address it. We have just come through seven years of unprecedented economic growth. Just to put it into context for those members who may not have been observing it as intently as I did in my previous responsibilities as the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, the Minister of Financial Institutions and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology -- all economic portfolios -- members should know that for the last seven years we have really had the most vibrant economy in the industrialized world. That is quite a statement to make, absolutely phenomenal. We have all benefited from that particular activity. All members have to do is look around and see what is happening.

Economists had been predicting for at least the last three years that there was going to be a recession. Every year, whether it be 1987, 1988 or 1989, some economist would stand up and say, "This is the year that we're going to have a recession because it is inevitable." Every year the economy would keep growing, and again in the jargon of the media we were into an extremely heated, and in Metropolitan Toronto an overheated, economy.

Economists will tell you that 4% unemployment is full employment. There are always people who are either changing jobs, looking for jobs or saying they are out of work but do not really want a job; so 4% is full employment. In Metro we had 3.5% unemployment. All you had to do was walk into any shopping centre, any retail store, and there would be a sign in the window, "Help Wanted: Full-time, Part-time." People were desperate. I had businessmen coming to me on a regular basis saying: "The greatest crisis I have to face is the fact that I can't get skilled labour. I am trying. Our labour pool has dried up and it is unfortunate."

Again, many members here in this House are children or grandchildren of people who left their homeland because they perceived that opportunities were better in Canada. They came with their skills, with their trades, to set up a new life here and contribute to what is one of the finest jurisdictions in the world.

That has changed, and the reason it has changed of course is that the economies of some of these other places are now growing faster than ours is. They are saying: "Why should I dislocate my family? Why should I leave the United Kingdom? Why should I leave Germany? Why should I leave Italy? Our economies are booming. There are ample opportunities. We can make a life for ourselves where our roots are, where our families are, and we can thrive." That was not the case, so what we have is a very acute shortage of these skilled people who came to our shores and we benefited.

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In that kind of context, and we are now into a globalization of economies -- as Marshall McLuhan said, we are into a global village -- we now have a situation where the federal government negotiated a free trade agreement. I do not want in any way to rehash that particular debate, but it is important to know that when that debate was joined, a perception was put out by the federal government, by the federal cousins of our friends in the third party, that if we could only negotiate this agreement, we would have an economy that would be bountiful, that would grow. Peace would reign throughout the land and there would be two cars in every garage and three chickens in every pot.

What they did not say and what they would not admit was that at the time the agreement was negotiated, 80% of all the trade in goods and services between Canada and the United States was duty-free. There was a perception -- I do not want to impute motive but there was a perception -- that once we negotiated this agreement, this 250-million-person market was going to open up to us and we were going to have all of these benefits, when in fact 80% of it was already open to us. So what they have done is they have negotiated to have the 20% that is still dutiable reduced over a period of 10 years.

I think it is important that the members know that at the time the average tariff that was in place was between 7% and 10%. That was what we were talking about. We were talking about getting access for those products that had not been duty-free, to reduce that 7% to 10% average. I admit that some of the tariffs were as low as a 0.5% and some were as high as 50%, but on average it was between 7% and 10%. At the time the dollar was at 72 cents, which in fact was a non-tariff barrier because when you have one dollar that is 72 cents versus one dollar that is 100 cents, you have pretty good leverage.

What has happened since that agreement was negotiated is that the dollar has gone to 85 cents. That, of course, has taken that benefit away from our Canadian exporters, to the degree where it has gone from 72 cent to 85. Why is that important? I think it is important that the members know that for every dollar you have in your pocket as an Ontarian, 35 cents is there because of trade. If you compare that to our American neighbours, 10 cents of every dollar they have in their pocket is there because of trade. So, in fact, we are three and a half times more dependent on trade then our American neighbours.

We are one of the most trade-dependent jurisdictions in the world, and that is what gives us our economy and gives us our vitality. If we did not have that trade, if, God forbid, we should drop to the 10% -- we are a country of 27 million people stretched over a 3,000 mile border: effectively Canada is a country 100 miles deep and 3,000 miles wide -- we would have severe economic difficulties.

Trade is absolutely essential, particularly when you consider that 80% of our trade is with the United States. In Ontario it is closer to 90%, but Canada-wide it is about 80%.

What has happened? We have a situation where the federal government has decided that the number one enemy of our economy is inflation. Inflation without doubt is a serious problem in any economy, but what they have decided to do is to raise interest rates artificially to dampen inflation. It sounds great and it is a sort of classic economic policy, but what has happened is that what they have not taken into consideration, in my opinion, is that they negotiated us into a free trade agreement which by its very nature -- I still say it is not a free trade agreement; it is a bilateral trade agreement -- implies that there would be a level playing field. At the present time, there is approximately a 5% spread in the cost of capital in the United States versus the cost of capital in Canada. That, of course, is interest, which means that an exporter in the United States exporting into Canada on a tariff-free basis, without doing anything, has got a 5% edge on his competitor. That is the number one problem.

Number two is that interest rates are artificially high. It means that people who have money to invest look at Canada and look at the United States. They are not investing it in capital assets. They are investing it in financial instruments to get the benefit of that high interest rate. That has put pressure on the dollar and has forced it up artificially. So you have what I call a double whammy. You have high interest rates and you have a high dollar, which means that the companies we have in Canada, and particularly in Ontario, can no longer compete. That is the major problem facing this province.

With all due respect to all of my colleagues in this House, what we do, whatever way, is tinkering around the edges. The problem with that tinkering is that every proposal that comes forward to cabinet by a very gung-ho minister, particularly a new minister who wants to make his or her mark, says: "This is a great policy. It's terrific. It's going to get us great headlines. We're going to do all of these wonderful things." What they are really doing is doing it in isolation. Each one in itself is excellent. When you compound all of those things, all of them together create problems where we become uncompetitive.

What we are faced with right now in Ontario is a situation where companies are looking at Ontario and saying: "It's a great place. It's got a great quality of life." But we have to compare that with a jurisdiction in the Sunbelt, where they have no energy costs to speak of for heating. We have to compare it with other jurisdictions in other parts of both Canada and the United States, where the minimum wage is lower. We have to compare it in all of the aspects that, individually, make eminent sense, but collectively put us in a position where the decisions that have to be made -- the tragedy for this province and this country -- many of those decisions are being made outside Ontario. All they are looking at is the bottom line. They look at it and say, "It doesn't pay us to go there."

What we have to do is make sure that we provide the citizens of this province with the best quality of life we can, but we have to be mindful that we also have to have the economic activity. We have to have the ability to create wealth, and not necessarily jobs. I want to make sure that there is no misunderstanding. Wealth creates the jobs, whereas if you are just creating the jobs, you are just putting a Band-Aid on it. You have to make sure there is wealth generated in this province. We have to do it with research and development. Before I close, I want to spend just a minute on that because I think it is absolutely critical.

We are now into a global economy, as I said earlier. We have non-traditional competitors; they have become very traditional in the last little while. I happen to be old enough to remember that if you gave somebody a product made in Japan, it was perceived to be synonymous with cheap and shoddy goods. I am old enough to remember that. You would almost be embarrassed to give somebody something that said, "Made in Japan."

Hon Mr Philip: If you are that old, how come you have such a young looking body? Tell us that.

Mr Kwinter: I thought the member was going to say, "How come you've got such a young-looking wife?" Give me a break. Make some points so when I go home, I am going to have some kind of positive thing.

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Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that we have countries like Japan which have come from a world reputation of producing cheap and shoddy goods to a world reputation of producing the finest goods in a whole array of disciplines. Again, the Germans used to have total domination of the camera market; it has gone over to the Japanese. Who would have thought that the number-one-selling car in the United States would be the Honda Accord? Who would have thought that of the 10 top banks in the world, most are Japanese? Who would have thought that the largest securities dealer in the world, Nomura, is Japanese?

I am saying to the members that this is a very strong example of how the world balance in economics has changed, but there are other players out there as well. There is Singapore and there is Hong Kong and there is Thailand and Taiwan, and the emerging Europe of 1992.

We have to make sure that what we do is not being done in isolation. Particularly with the GATT round that is coming to some sort of conclusion -- we do not know what is going to happen in the next couple of weeks in Belgium -- but certainly we have to make sure that the decisions we make are made with an eye on what is happening around us, because we are going to be impacted by it.

We are going to have to compete, which means we are going to have to make sure our resources are directed to an area where we can compete. We are going to have to be mindful of the fact that contrary to the way it was in 1981-82, a lot of the plants that are closing are not going to open up again, because the economic situation dictates that if you cannot compete then you are going to have to get out of the game.

We have to do is make sure that we stay in the game, and I do not feel that the simplistic position put forward by the leader of the third party addresses that in any way. I am certainly going to recommend that we vote against his motion.

Mrs Witmer: I rise today to support the motion by the honourable member for Nipissing, calling on the government to adopt a policy of fiscal restraint to control costs and to provide the opportunity for tax relief.

I share the concern that has been expressed about the tax-and-spend approach to financial management which has dominated the province's fiscal policy for the past five years, an approach which has added to inflationary pressures and reduced the competitiveness of Ontario's industries.

Every day we hear of more and more businesses and companies throughout the province that are closing their doors or laying off their workers. Eddy Match Co in Pembroke, Niagara Structural Steel in St Catharines, Hayes-Dana in Thorold and Stelco Fastener and Forging in Kingston are only a few examples of companies which have announced layoffs over the past couple of weeks. In my own community of Waterloo, we have had business and plant closures including Seagram and B. F. Goodrich. The evidence that this province is no longer competitive and that our economy is in recession is overwhelming.

I believe this government has a responsibility to take immediate action to establish an economic environment that encourages job creation and provides an attractive investment climate for business in Ontario to grow and prosper. It must offer incentives to businesses to create jobs. It must encourage them to locate here or expand their existing operations. It must provide people with the skills and training to become productive employees. As well, this government must make every effort to reduce and control the tax burden on the citizens in our province.

We should be mindful of the 33 Liberal tax hikes of the past five years. These 33 tax hikes contributed to the loss of our ability to compete. Indeed, we should be particularly mindful of the detrimental impact of payroll taxes such as the employer health tax. It was this employer health tax that drove the final nail in the coffin of many small businesses. Payroll taxes are taxes on job creation and are completely counterproductive to any efforts to maintain and create jobs in this province.

I would urge this government and the Minister of Labour to reject the payroll tax when it introduces the wage protection fund for workers. There are a number of other issues that the Minister of Labour will be addressing in the weeks and months ahead which will increase taxation and the cost of doing business in this province and thus further impact on our ability to compete in the international market.

These include such initiatives as employment and pay equity and the increasing of the minimum wage. While these are all important issues, I would urge the Minister of Labour to carefully consider the economic consequences of these initiatives and the time lines for implementation. If we truly want to encourage businesses to stay or to locate in Ontario to provide those much-needed jobs, we must remember that the imposition of additional taxes and red tape will be counterproductive and will cost us those much needed jobs.

However, it is not only business taxation that hurts our economy. Personal taxation, either through sales tax or income tax, reduces the disposable income of individuals and therefore their ability to contribute to the economy as consumers. Most companies today are citing decreased sales as the reason for layoffs of their employees. Therefore, the purchasing power of consumers is fundamental to the health of our economy.

A policy of restraint to control government expenditure is not only important to the health of our economy; it will also impact on our ability to provide services to our citizens in the future. The Treasurer has stated publicly that he is not worried about the size of our deficit. However, he should be worried about our debt and the yearly deficits which increase that debt. As we all know, if we increase the debt we also increase the cost of servicing that debt. The vicious cycle of expanding deficits and debt that the federal government has put itself into should be a warning to us all.

Currently, the cost of carrying the provincial debt in Ontario consumes a relatively small part of the provincial budget, approximately 9%. I say relatively small as compared to the cost of carrying the federal debt, which is approximately 35%. Let us remember that the federal debt, which is so high, has already significantly reduced Ottawa's ability to provide needed services. If we are not careful in this province, we will soon be in a similar situation. We cannot continue to spend beyond our means. Eventually, the cost of carrying the debts will take up so much of our budget that we will be unable to provide even the most basic services for our citizens, yet alone the new services which this government has promised.

I am particularly concerned about the trend to increasing the debt load, because it is our children and our grandchildren who will have to pay for our failure to control our spending. As we all know, debts must be repaid. Reducing or eliminating our debt will not automatically happen when we balance our budget. It will require a number of years of surplus budgets to do so. I do not want to burden our children with the cost of paying for the services we now receive.

In conclusion, I ask all members to join me in supporting the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party's motion to adopt a policy of restraint to control costs and to provide the opportunity for tax relief. Only if we do so now can we avoid placing the burden of our debt on the shoulders of future generations.

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Mr Bisson: I rise to speak on this motion, because it is quite distressing sitting here on this side of the House --

Mr Elston: It's not that bad.

Mr Bisson: It is beautiful sitting over here. It is a great feeling.

In this motion we are asked to vote on supporting another sort of system, the Conservative fiscal policies that we have in place in Ottawa already.

We have all gone through a particular system for the past four or five years where we have had a government in Ottawa that has tried this type of thing already. They turned around, and what was the first thing they did? Let's see now, the first thing that happened, initially what they talked about was, "Let's dismantle the Foreign Investment Review Agency." That was the first thing. "Let's take away the ability for ourselves as a country to be able to determine how we do business in our own country." So we took that away.

Then there was a policy by which they started to encourage high interest rates. We all know what that is doing to us, what it is doing to the average Ontarian. They went through a whole process of trying to sell us in Ontario and across the rest of this country on the question of free trade.

We on this side of the House, along with some other people in this province and across this country, turned around and started saying what was going to happen with the effects of the free trade agreement. But they would not believe us on that side of the House. They said there were not going to be any effects of free trade.

Let me tell members about a couple of situations we have where I come from, northern Ontario. Two of the biggest iron ore mines in northern Ontario were closed down directly because of that agreement. We are talking about 300 people in each workplace, minimum. Those are 300 families who do not have an income. When those people do not have an income, they do not have the money to put back into the economy of this province. If they have not got that money, what basically happens is that the --

Mrs Cunningham: So what are you going to do about it?

Mr Bisson: Just hang on a second.

What basically happens is that we start to stifle the economy. I think what they are advocating is, "Physician, heal thyself." Tory financial responsibility or Tory fiscal policy is basically to turn around and say, "Listen, what we want to do is leave everything within the private sector," so that the government does not have any responsibility or any role to play in determining what we are going to do when it comes to the way we run this province with regard to the monetary possibilities.

What ends up happening is that we have tried that and it has not worked. What upsets the third party is that it looks at us on this side of the House, and we are saying that for once the people of this province are going to count, for once they are going to have a say. The average person on the street does not have to be a lawyer or an economist -- I cannot even say the word -- to understand the policies they are talking about, because we are living them today. We have had a government that has implemented that in the federal House and we are having to live with that stuff right now, and it does not work.

The member from the Liberal side of the House mentioned something that was interesting. He talked about the situation in Japan, and I have to agree with him, Japan has been a fine model with regard to what has happened in that economy. But there is a key difference. Japan did something at the very beginning that the member opposite does not recognize: It protected its markets. They protected their markets in order to allow them the time to develop the industry they needed and to be in a position where they could compete on a worldwide basis. The members opposite do not say that to the average person out there. What they are doing is voodoo economics. They are telling the people out there, "Here is a little piece of what we are talking about," and they are not telling them the whole story.

Japan did a couple of other things that are very interesting and something that this government is also attempting to do and we are going to succeed. They believe in the people. They say that in order to have a strong economy, in order to have industry that is strong, you have to have people who have proper education so that the worker out in industry is able to compete and able to adjust to changing times. That takes money, and it has to be done by somebody and it is the government that is going to do it. It is the NDP government that is going to carry out that policy over the next five years.

The other thing they do not say about what happens over there is that there is a much different relationship when it comes to labour, compared to what we have here in Ontario. We have just come out of a bad situation up in my own riding: of a six-month strike where an employer was able to keep employees out of their workplace because of being able to use scab labour. That is something that needs to be addressed.

When labour and management are able to sit down together on an equal footing, not management up here and the worker down there, but on an equal footing, then this province can go ahead and start to compete head to head with anybody.

We have this thing we call -- it really amazes me -- the level playing field. Yes, that is what it is, the level playing field. It was developed by -- what is that guy's name again? Brian Mulroney. He is almost history; I am forgetting his name. Margaret Thatcher -- I think he is following her somewhere.

So we have the situation where Brian says, "Okay we're going to go out and negotiate this deal." He says, "I am a good negotiator, and I am going to set up a level playing field." The theory is okay, there is nothing wrong with the theory. He says, "I want everything to be equal." It almost sounds like socialism, for God's sake. He says, "I want everything to be equal and I want to be able to have access into the American markets and coming back on an even playing field." Exactly. What ends up happening is something like this: We are now losing jobs in this province at a rate we have never seen before in the history of this province, directly associated with that deal. Why? Because those rules are not even.

Let's just take a little example of one thing that happened. Members opposite do not like listening to this because they do not want people hearing and understanding what is happening out there.

There is a little thing that happened as the free trade agreement was being negotiated that affected the communities in the north quite greatly, that is, the Americans wanted to impose a tariff on the softwood exports going into the American market. Why? Because Canadians were able to compete head to head with any American market. We were able to compete even though we were paying our workers better wages, we were giving them better facilities within the plant with regard to health and safety than in the United States. Our workers had more skills. Our workers had better benefits; if their families became ill they were taken care of. All of those things cost money, but we were still able to compete at a better rate with the Americans when it came to softwood export than anybody else, including inside the United States.

So the Americans said, "Let's put up this tariff so we can block" -- it is called protectionism, right? -- "the imports of wood coming from Canada into the United States." We have a tough negotiator in Ottawa, Brian M. What does he do?: "No, no, don't do it. We'll collect it for you. We have a new tax, another 15%, and we'll collect that so we can just be nice to you guys so you will not impose a tariff so that our free trade agreement will really look like a free trade agreement."

So what we have now is the system federally where they are imposing a tax on softwood exports. When we try to export our softwood stuff into the United States, we are not able to do it because of that 15% tax in the same way we could if it was not there.

So what are we saying we want to do? We are saying to our Conservative friends on the other side of the House: "Please help us. Let's pick up the phone and let's call Brian and let's call the rest of them and let's say to them, 'Listen, we have some real ills inside this economy.'" One of them is that we have to deal with the whole question of the 15% tax on softwood exports into the United States.

The members have the telephone number. Maybe they can call him and say, "Listen, there's a thing called the GST." They are going to be imposing a tax on this province and across the country that is going to add to inflation, and it is going to reduce the amount of money that people have in their pockets. It is very simple economics: If I make $100 a day working as a worker -- and I only have $20 here because I am not that rich -- I have $100 a day. If what we end up doing is taking more money out of my pocket because of things such as the GST, what is going to end up happening is that I am not going to have any more money down here to go out and buy the things that I want to buy for my family, and at the same time fuel the economy, put more money into the economy.

What we are saying is that there are some alternatives. We are saying that we have to be fiscally responsible within this province, yes, and that is exactly what we are doing and what we are planning on doing. But there are some other things we have to do at the same time. We must ensure that we have a good system of education to make sure that the workers and the people going into the workforce in this province are able to compete head to head with anybody. If we forget that, we are doomed in the future.

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We have to ensure that we have a good system within the province with regard to transportation and communication, so that it is good business to do business here in Ontario, and all of that costs money. But if we leave it strictly to the private sector, because that is what the members opposite are advocating, it is not going to get done.

We are saying quite simply that the government has a key role to play. I think what the people in this province did on 6 September was to look out there at what was available as far as ideology is concerned and what we can bring to this province. It is not to say that Tories are bad or Liberals are bad or New Democrats are bad. We all have something to add to this province; we all have views we can bring to this Legislature. They chose.

They said, "Listen, we realize there needs to be a bigger role played by the government within the province." That is not to say that government is going to go out and tell business what to do, but having a better co-operation than just leaving it to the one sector. That is what they are advocating: They are saying, "Leave it strictly to the private sector to make the decisions of what is going to happen economically inside this province." That is exactly what they are doing.

Mrs Cunningham: You are absolutely wrong.

Mr Bisson: Not at all. They should tell the workers who have lost their jobs in this province over the policies of our federal brothers. They will see.

We are saying there are a couple of key things that have to be done. People have to be able to share in the wealth of this province. One of the ways we can do that is by ensuring that the taxation of money inside this province is done in a fair and equitable manner; that it is not done in a way, as has happened in the past, where the taxes are coming from the people who can least afford to pay them.

At one time we used to have a middle class in this society. We are starting to lose it. Why? Because every time the government of the day decides it is going to levy a tax, it is put on the backs of the working people. That is not just the plant worker or the guy who works for the city or the woman who is a nurse or the doctor or whatever. It is also the managers within industry. It is all kinds of people.

We are all working people; the difference is that we have different jobs. But we cannot just tax that part of the economy. We have to look elsewhere. We have to turn around and say everybody has a responsibility. And if company X makes $1 million a year in profits, it should be paying the same kind of tax that I as a private citizen of this province pay, relatively in the same proportion. We should not have a situation where it is only the tax coming out of the pockets of the average working person and hardly nothing coming out of the corporate sector.

We are saying there have to be some fair taxes in order to raise the funds to pay for some of the things that need to be done inside this province. I realize that agitates the other side of the House, but that is the reality of what we have.

The last thing I want to say is that I want to challenge our friends on the other side of the House to help us in trying to convince our federal government to do something about the goods and services tax. My colleague on the same side of the House here raised a little while ago that the first thing we did when we came into this House was to say that Bill 1 shall be that we will not collect any money on top of the GST. We are saying, help us. The members have friends there. They are members of their own party; they must have some influence. Help us convince them that this tax is going to hurt this province and people across this country.

Help us do something about interest rates. The interest rates in this province and across the country are affecting not only the working people but also the people who are trying to invest money in this country with regard to trying to build within their own plants. If the money is being lent at too high a rate, there is no way one can afford to do business.

The price of the dollar: We have a situation where the dollar is sitting at a rate that makes it extremely difficult for Ontario and anybody across this country to compete in the US market.

There is no way that I myself am able, and I do not think anybody else on this side of the House is, to support the motion that the member for Nipissing has made, because what he is talking about doing is again going to voodoo economics.

This government is not going to shirk the responsibility of putting in place the legislation and policies that are needed in order to take this province and get it out of this recession in a controlled fashion, not just leaving it to the whims of private individuals.

Mr Mancini: I should point out to the House that the large gathering of people under the Speaker's gallery in the west section actually did not come here today to listen to me. They are here really to meet with our whip, Mr Mahoney; just by chance he mentioned to them that I would be speaking and they insisted that they wanted to be here.

I am anxious to participate in this debate, first, to dismiss the Tory motion. The motion put forward today by the Conservative Party is completely irrelevant. I am going to use this opportunity that has been given to us here in the House to talk about employment, unemployment and things that are actually happening in our community today. I am going to focus my attention on the southwestern Ontario area. I am the last Liberal member left west of London, actually west of Brant county, so I think it is going to be very important for me to be able to remind the government of the day, that represents so many constituencies in the southwestern Ontario area, about what is happening in their counties and in their ridings. I doubt that many of them will bring forward the facts to the Legislature or to the attention of the appropriate ministers here in the House in the manner in which I am going to do so this afternoon.

I thought I would first put on the record some of the plants that are closing and have announced closings and some of the numbers of people who have lost their jobs. Real people, not statistics, not make-believe companies, not make-believe families, but real companies who had employed real people who supported real families who are now without a job.

On 6 September the people of Ontario made a decision, and we cannot quarrel with the decision the people made. The people are always right and they chose to put in office a new government. On 6 September the responsibilities of government fell to the men and women who sit across the floor from us today. I want to tell them that they now hold the responsibility of power, that they are now accountable for what happens and what does not happen in our communities and they now have the responsibility to ease the pain of people who are losing their jobs, to ease the pain of families, some of whom for the first time are beginning to know what distress is.

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In Elgin county, according to the London Free Press, Therm-O-Disc of St Thomas is going to close. It was reported on 12 October 1990 that the president of Therm-O-Disc announced that 100 jobs would be eliminated over the next three months. The plant would cease production in mid-1992, putting a total of 300 people out of work. I want to know what the response of the government is to the tragedy that is facing these 300 people.

In Middlesex county, D and C Roussy Industries Ltd has announced that 62 London-area workers would lose their jobs. On 5 October, D and C Roussy Industries was placed in receivership and the workers were given their pink slips: 62 more real people put out of work, 62 more real families affected.

Somerville Packaging in London: On 10 September 1990, it was announced that Somerville Packaging's Crumlin Side Road plant would close on 30 November. Operations would be phased out, with gradual layoffs of approximately 150 employees. That plant had been producing specialty and industrial packaging for more than 40 years.

Commonwealth Hospitality of London: The Canada Employment Centre office in London informed me that the London regional office of this company is closing on 31 December 1990. Commonwealth Hospitality is the corporate arm of Holiday Inn. It will be consolidated with the Toronto office, putting 35 people out of work. We want to hear from the members who represent these communities just as aggressively today as we heard from them prior to 6 September. That is their responsibility now.

Travelaire Ltd of Strathroy: Travelaire's Strathroy plant closed on 12 October 1990, I want to tell the Minister of Labour. Some 90 people were affected by this closure.

Omstead Foods of Wheatley: The Canada Employment Centre office informed me that as of 16 November, the fish plant closed. Some 60 people are out of work, and I expect the new member for Essex-Kent to be fighting in cabinet for these 60 people who have lost their livelihoods.

Hon Mr Cooke: What are you doing?

Mr Mancini: "What am you doing?" one of the members across the floor asks. I am cataloguing for the new government the pain that is being felt by real people, the suffering that real families are going through, the bleak Christmas and the bleak new year that hundreds of families will be facing. Some of these people faintly remember the promises that were made by the new government during the last election campaign. I will continue to stand in my place and speak for these people who are suffering, who have received their pink slips, who have been told that they are no longer useful at their place of employment, for whatever reason. They will have a voice in this Legislature, and it will be up to the government of the day to ease the pain, to ensure that the promises they made before 6 September were not hollow promises but were in fact things that they had thoughtfully considered and knew they could put in place after they assumed the responsibility of power.

I wish the new government well. I want them to be able to look after the concerns of our citizens who are at the present time not having the best of luck, the best opportunity or whose futures look bleak.

Standard Tube in Blenheim: Standard Tube's Blenheim plant closed on 28 September 1990. Approximately 170 hourly and salaried workers lost their jobs.

The new government needs to act, and if the members already want to give up their responsibilities of government, it is easy to do so. They fought very hard to obtain the responsibility of government, exercise the power that the people of Ontario bestowed upon them. They should exercise that power. That is their responsibility. These people have lost their jobs. They have entrusted the government with their future. They expect it to look after them.

Closer to my home riding of Essex South and the Windsor area, I want to tell members that we have suffered greatly.

I will list the number of plants that have closed since 6 September. I will deal with Windsor first, because I know that the cabinet minister from Windsor has been a fighter for people from Windsor. He has been a fighter for the unemployed, and on a regular basis he stood on this side of the House, I say to my friends across the floor, and asked the government of the day to do what it could for people who received pink slips and whose futures were changed by decisions made by management or by others.

Canadian ASE has announced that 83 jobs are gone; Welles Canada and Wayne Canada, 100 jobs gone; Toledo Scale, 36 jobs gone; Kelsey-Hayes, which will close on 2 November, 300-plus jobs gone; Family Home Automation, closing in December, 68 jobs gone; the Ford plant in Windsor -- 14 December is the day for it -- 535 jobs gone.

Interjections.

Mr Mancini: Why am I being heckled so fiercely because I am presenting to the floor of the House actual data describing the plight of our people and their families in our communities? I cannot understand why it is so noisy from the other side, when all I want to do is put on the record of the Ontario Legislature the number of people and families that are suffering.

In Kent county: Hunt-Wesson closing 21 November, 60 jobs gone; Nabisco of Leamington, 90 jobs gone; Delta '70 Manufacturing in Harrow and in Kingsville less than two weeks ago announced their closures, 150 jobs gone.

I want to remind the government of the day that it has a grave responsibility. They control the Legislature, they have a sizeable majority, they have many experienced men and women in their cabinet -- maybe not experienced in government, maybe not experienced in sitting in the Legislature, but they have men and women sitting in their caucus and in their cabinet who have real-life experience that they could use to the benefit of the people whom I am talking about.

I say to those men and women who are in government today that we are counting on them; the people who have lost their jobs, the plants that I articulated here this afternoon that are closing -- those people and those families are counting on them.

I want to remind my friend the member for Windsor-Riverside what happened on 7 June 1990, when 2,000 people had demonstrated in Windsor against the government "because of lack of proper plant closure legislation." The member for Windsor-Riverside was in the Legislature and he said to the government of the day -- this is on page 1667, for all the members who would like to read those particular pages -- "Does the minister not realize that if he does not bring in up-to-date...plant closure legislation that provides for public justification," the situation will get worse, leaving the impression that a New Democratic Party government would be able to put in place plant closure legislation that could keep plants from closing. Many people believed the New Democratic Party.

On 8 May 1989, Hansard page 337, the present Minister of Labour stated, "There are a number of other bills I would commend to the House again, such as the one to amend the Employment Standards Act to provide a public audit board to require plant closure justification," leaving the impression that a New Democratic Party government would in fact, through this public audit board, have the power to prevent plant closures.

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During the campaign the New Democratic Party issued An Agenda for People, a pertinent page of which I have with me this afternoon on plant closures. The Treasurer nods that yes, this is the document he stood behind during the election. We say to him that we want him to stand behind that document today. It says, "A jobs protection board would establish whether plant closures are justified," meaning such a board could in fact prevent plant closures from taking place.

I know they do not like this, but I want to tell the new government members that people in my constituency who have lost their jobs like it even less. They like it even less.

I want to put on the record -- I have only a minute and 52 seconds left -- some of the things that real people have said in response to the plant closures, in response to their pink slips, in response to their walking papers.

Chris Rocheleau of Harrow was laid off from Delta Manufacturing only a couple of weeks ago -- but they are counting on the government to help them -- Gino Denunzio of the same plant; Gordon Beaudoin of Harrow, the same plant; Arnold Christian, the same plant, Delta Manufacturing; Mark Sniveley, Delta Manufacturing. These people have lost their jobs. They have got their pink slips. They are waiting for plant closure justification.

Gordon Beaudoin, a 50-year-old man, said finding another job will be tough if he cannot get his spot at Harrow back. "I've got 18 years seniority and I'm 50. Where am I going to get a job?"

The mayor of Harrow, Peter Timmins, said the closure is a big loss to the town. The mayor of Kingsville, Jim Gaffan, said his town does not need to lose another plant.

I want to tell members what the people who lost their jobs at Nabisco had to say and I want the new government members who are now eminently comfortable in their seats to listen, because these people are not comfortable.

Brenda Balkwill of Leamington, a 31-year-old unmarried mother of a small boy and expecting a second child in January, said --

The Speaker: The member's time has expired.

Mr Mancini: Mr Speaker, I want to wind up by saying that these people are looking for the government's help. They are looking for action from the New Democratic Party government.

Mrs Cunningham: I am not a bit surprised to hear the response of both the Liberal members and the NDP members this afternoon in their advice that they will not --

Mr Mancini: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I think it is highly unfair for any member of the assembly, when another member is talking about real people and real families who are suffering, who have lost their jobs, to send that member a pink slip. That shows a callousness that I have not seen in the Legislature for a long, long time.

The Speaker: The member is correct that it is not amusing.

Mrs Cunningham: I would like 30 more seconds, please. That is what we lost on the clock.

I am not a bit surprised to see that the Liberal members in the Legislative Assembly this afternoon and the NDP members will not be supporting what I think is a very clear policy that all of us in this House should be very concerned about. It simply says "to adopt a policy of restraint to control costs and to provide the opportunity for tax relief."

Later on this evening I am speaking to a small business group in London, Ontario, and the first sentence will be that this province today has a consolidated public sector debt of $71 billion. That is almost twice our budget.

I have young children in my family who want to get the jobs we have been talking about today. They are going to be faced, more than any other generation in the history of this province, with the biggest debt to pay back in a lifetime, and we stand here today smiling and laughing about a policy that says, "Let's have some tax relief for these same small business people who keep our children and our families employed and let's try to manage our offices efficiently."

I notice that the member for Essex South has left.

Mr Mancini: I'm here.

Mrs Cunningham: Oh, he is here. I do not have time to go through his list, but I will refer to the first two.

The first company he mentioned was Roussy from London. They went out of business. Why? I represent my constituency. They went out of business because the Liberals could not come up with a policy about the length of trailers. Their orders were cancelled and all those people lost their jobs.

Somerville Packaging is the next one. That is a paperboard company with offices right across Canada and the United States, and the union contract that was negotiated in London was the highest in Canada and the United States and it simply put them out of business -- unrealistic expectations from the workers. That does happen. Let's face it. The members know it.

From time to time we have a responsibility in this House to be responsible to the taxpayers of this province and to keep our people working. If we are not competitive, it will not happen. Those were two examples. We can spend more time.

During the last election, the public came before us and said, "We can't take it any more." The tax that really got the small businesses that I am going to be speaking to tonight was the employer health tax. That was one of 32 new taxes in the five-year term of the Liberal government in this province. Either face it or do not face it. I will tell members that it is the fact. We have to take more responsibility on what we ask little people to pay out of their paycheques, the sons and daughters of members, as mine, who have graduated from university and who are lucky, some of them, to get a job at $20,000. This government is taking something like $7,000 or $8,000 away from them. Worse than that are the young people who attend our school system, who cannot get the training programs we talked about today because we have not been providing them for the past 10 years.

All governments are responsible, and the New Democratic Party was elected for the first time in this province to come up with solutions. But they stood here in the House this afternoon as members of the government did, without providing solutions, which I must admit our party is going to try to do. We will help them if they will listen. They promised. They said they would listen.

I gave some solutions as did some of my colleagues in our questions this afternoon. The Minister of Education is nodding her head; others can speak for themselves. None of us are elected to this Legislative Assembly to poke fun at other levels of government. We have a responsibility.

This particular motion simply says, "Let's have a responsible solution for the former tax-and-spend approach to government of the Liberals." The government should be helping the public of Ontario, as government, in the next five years, and we will all be hoping that it really does.

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Mr Jamison: I am very pleased to be a newly elected member of this House, and I am pleased to be here to represent the riding of Norfolk. I am here to speak on the motion by the leader of the third party. The motion itself I consider to be one that is frivolous, on the basis that this province has elected a New Democratic government for the first time in its history to represent the people of this province in a different manner and to address the problems that quite simply have not been addressed in the past.

I have listened to the debate today. I find that I simply cannot help but comment on the motion itself, where it comes from and what it is about. The motion itself comes from a party that is trying to distance itself from a federal party that is on the way, with its policies, to the ruining of this very province and this country that we live in. Prior to my election, I could not find out whether the third party was in favour of the GST, opposed to the GST or whether it knew what the GST was.

It was also very quiet on the real effects of free trade on this province and on our ability to generate jobs and employment, subject to that uneven playing field we are experiencing today.

One of the previous speakers talked about us having a feel for working people. I do. I worked in a basic industry for 20 years. I would ask the member the same question. I am here to represent the working men and working women of this province. This motion was designed specifically to curtail our ability as the duly elected government of this province to do our job. Our job is quite simply to react to the situation in the time and space we find ourselves in. What we have done is we have put forward in a very few, short days some very, very forward-looking legislation.

I have sat quietly, listening intently to what the official opposition has to say and what the third party has to say. I cannot say it has been constructive at all. We are putting forward an agenda for people. Yes, we are. We have four and a half years, a mandate that the people of this province gave us, clearly to implement that agenda.

I know that the riding I come from really is a microcosm of this province -- fishing, basic industry, sub-auto-related industry, agriculture. I can tell members, by talking to people of my riding, that they are very pleased with the direction and the course we have taken. They are pleased that our Premier has taken the time to consider very carefully, subject to the time and space we are in, the direction we must take.

We have taken a direction to ensure that the infrastructure of this province is sound coming out of a recession. I congratulate the Treasurer for making that decision. We have taken the time to consult, which I can say very clearly at this present time I cannot recall being done very efficiently in the past in this province. Consulting and listening to people is part and parcel of the reason we are here. I am proud of where I came from. I came from basic industry. I have watched the devastation going on as far as basic industry's ability to compete is concerned under the free trade agreement, never mind small and mid-sized industry that seems to find it convenient all of a sudden to head for the border a year after the fact of free trade. I would like to compliment the Treasurer on his performance.

In referring to the motion put forward, we are very aware that unemployment is rising. We are very aware at the same time that the social assistance case load and the costs of social assistance programs are on the rise. We understand that the inflationary pressures are there, created by the policies of a government that is not in tune with the people of this country.

When I see the third party put forward a motion like this, I have to ask myself, if they are talking about doing the things that are right for the people of this country and this province, they would come out and stand up and be counted strongly against the impending GST. I have not heard that. They would be recognizing what has happened under the free trade agreement. They would be recognizing clearly what the root cause is, because we may be into a global kind of recession shortly. But it has been fully impacted further by the actions of the federal government.

This government will take the time to make sure that the things we do, under the restraint that we are obviously under with a $2.5-billion deficit, will have a real effect on the people of this province. Because of that, I know the motion will fail.

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The House divided on Mr Harris's motion, which was negatived on the following vote:

Ayes -- 15

Arnott, Carr, Cousens, Cunningham, Eves, Harnick, Jackson, Marland, Sterling, Stockwell, Tilson, Turnbull, Villeneuve, Wilson, J., Witmer.

Nays -- 82

Abel, Akande, Allen, Beer, Bisson, Boyd, Buchanan, Carter, Charlton, Chiarelli, Christopherson, Churley, Cooke, Cooper, Coppen, Curling, Dadamo, Daigeler, Duignan, Elston, Farnan, Ferguson, Fletcher, Frankford, Gigantes, Grandmaître, Haeck, Hampton, Hansen, Harrington, Haslam, Henderson, Hope, Huget, Jamison, Johnson, Klopp, Kwinter, Lankin, Laughren, Lessard;

Mackenzie, Mahoney, Malkowski, Mammoliti, Mancini, Marchese, Martel, Martin, Mathyssen, McGuinty, Mills, Morin, Morrow, Murdock, S., Nixon, North, O'Connor, O'Neill, Y., Owens, Perruzza, Philip, E., Phillips, G., Poole, Pouliot, Rae, Rizzo, Ruprecht, Silipo, Sola, Sullivan, Sutherland, Swarbrick, Ward, B., Ward, M., Wark-Martyn, Wessenger, White, Wilson, G., Wiseman, Wood, Ziemba.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon Miss Martel: I would like to advise the House of the business for next week.

On Monday 3 December, we will continue the debate on the speech from the throne. At approximately 5:45 there will be a vote on the motion for an address in reply to the speech from the throne.

On Tuesday 4 December, we will have an opposition day standing in the name of the member for Halton Centre.

On Wednesday 5 December and Thursday 6 December. we will begin second reading of Bill 1, An Act to amend the Retail Sales Tax Act.

The House adjourned at 1812.