The House met at 1000.

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

POWERS OF ATTORNEY AMENDMENT ACT, 1990

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

NATURAL DEATH ACT, 1990

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

The Deputy Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 94(c)(i), the honourable member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Sterling: "Freedom is one of our most precious values. As we mature, the freedom to make decisions for ourselves, by ourselves, is a special value. As adults we strive for autonomy.

"But as we age, we become increasingly worried, indeed terrified, that this freedom will be wrenched from us. An accident, a sudden catastrophic illness, or a more insidious progressive dementia may leave us incompetent, unable to make decisions about ourselves.

"These decisions are further complicated by the alternatives available to us. Many of these alternatives were made possible by the recent advances in science and technology.

"Over the past decade, the proportion of elderly has increased throughout the world. This is forecast to increase at an accelerating rate over the next 50 years. At the same time individual autonomy is now given greater and greater value.

"The question, 'What would they have wanted?' is being asked more often by professional care givers, family and friends of the patients robbed by age or disability of the ability to let others know what they want."

The foregoing is a quote from the foreword of a booklet by Dr David William Molloy called Let Me Decide. Letting the individual decide for himself or herself is what Bills 7 and 8 are all about.

As a matter of interest, this is of special interest to us in terms of the process, because I believe this is the first time the Legislature has ever given the opportunity to a private member to have two private member's bills considered at one time. I want to thank each and every member of this Legislature for giving unanimous consent for me to be able to bring both of these bills to the Legislature at this time. These bills are companion bills. Both of them deal with the furtherance of our individual rights, the right of the individual to make his or her own choices regarding medical treatment should a person become terminally ill or incapacitated. Bringing the two methods of ensuring one's choices are honoured forward at the same time seems most appropriate.

I hope that the co-operation which the members have indicated to me by allowing me to bring both bills forward at the same time is an indication that this legislation will go forward, that it will be viewed as a positive move for all of us and that it will not be considered as a partisan matter.

I think it is important to understand that these bills do not change our laws as to what a person can or cannot do with his or her life. Presently, any person who does not want to receive medical treatment can have such treatment terminated. That is clear in our Ontario law. Bill 7, An Act to amend the Powers of Attorney Act, only transfers this right to another specific individual when the person receiving the medical treatment can no longer speak for himself. Bill 8, An Act respecting Natural Death, allows a person to state his wishes in a legal document, often referred to as a living will, so that there will be no doubt about his decision should he no longer be able to express himself.

If Bills 7 and 8 pass second reading and are, I dearly hope, referred to a standing committee of the Legislature, it will provide, for the first time, a public forum in Ontario whereby people will have the opportunity to express their opinion on this issue.

It is vital that any legislation dealing with choices on future medical treatment not be buried in an omnibus health care act, because they are usually only known and considered by health care givers and hospital personnel. This legislation, if passed, would be used by a wide cross-section of the public. It therefore needs to be out front so that when an individual is at his lawyer's, assigning a power of attorney or making a testamentary will for the distribution of his assets after death, he will also consider giving a durable power of attorney dealing with medical concerns, or he might prepare a living will to state that if an irreversible condition occurs, he wants such treatment terminated under certain circumstances as outlined in his living will. I feel that if this legislation is too far removed from the ongoing business of most Ontarians, it will not be utilized in the manner that is intended.

I have indicated my openness and my willingness to entertain amendments to improve this legislation. For example, I can assure members that if they read Bill 8 and look to the penalty section, it provides a jail sentence for a doctor who does not follow the wishes of a living will. I have heard, because I introduced these bills a year and a half ago, some objections from physicians on this. I am not convinced that we need to threaten doctors with a jail term in order to follow or comply with a living will and would entertain, in committee, an amendment which would delete that penalty.

It has been suggested that these bills should include a provision for regular updating, such as an annual witness signature, to ensure that the designated person who has made the will still wishes that the "living" in fact be in place. I would like to hear argument on that and would accept whatever the committee decides in that regard.

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I agree that there are word changes here and there which could improve this legislation and I am most amenable to hearing the public and members of the committee talk about this. This morning, however, I hope that we can get full agreement from this House to pass these bills in principle and then move on to full and open discussion. If we do not, if this initiative gets bogged down in political game playing, as it did, unfortunately, a year ago, or if the door is slammed shut simply because one feels these bills need some specific change, then we lose this window of opportunity to deal with death and dying in a humanitarian way.

Every day we hesitate means some individuals, families and health care givers are suffering needlessly, are wrought with indecision over providing treatment to someone who does not necessarily want that treatment but cannot communicate that wish or opinion. Sometimes members within a family have conflicting feelings on what is to be done when faced with this horrendous decision. I believe that either document, a power of attorney or a living will, would give a great deal of comfort to family members and the attending physician. These documents would provide a clear direction of a dying person's wishes.

In 1983, when I was a member of cabinet and the Provincial Secretary for Justice, I carried an amendment to the Powers of Attorney Act which enabled people to give their power of attorney over to someone else because of mental incompetency, but this only dealt with business assets. Prior to that, if a person lost his mental competency, the power of attorney ended when he lost his competency. That change was as a direct result of consultations with the Alzheimer Society and the recognition of the difficulty faced by people with this disease. However, these past changes only dealt with business assets; they did not deal with the choices of medical treatment.

Bills 7 and 8 will provide the same kind of protection, that the individual's opinions and choices will be honoured, even if you should become incapacitated or incapable of telling somebody those wishes at the appropriate time. They would allow one to die a natural death, with dignity.

I believe most people fear death far less than they fear the loss of control over their existence. They fear a loss of autonomy. This is something which often comes with increasing years, with illness or purely by accident. In any event, individuals should have some control over the quality of their life, particularly if that life is dependent on artificial means. Being able to make these decisions when one is capable to do so will provide comfort and a certain sense of security. I believe Ontarians should be granted the freedom to make their own decisions on their own future health care.

Mr Winninger: I rise in the broad spirit of non-partisanship to support Bills 7 and 8, An Act to amend the Powers of Attorney Act and An Act respecting Natural Death. I use the words "broad" and "non-partisanship" judiciously, because it was the member for Carleton who spoke against my private member's public bill, Bill 18, before Christmas. Now I am confident that in the fullness of time the member for Carleton will reverse his ill-conceived views, particularly when he can see what kind of assistance that kind of heritage legislation can be to him in his own riding.

Bills 7 and 8 authorize a donor to name a person to consent to medical treatment, or the withdrawal of medical treatment or to have a living will, and with this proposed legislation I believe that the member for Carleton has made a strike for the right of people to control their own lives in the event of incapacity.

The actuaries tell us that four to five times as many people are as likely to become incapacitated as, say, to die prematurely, so these kinds of provisions are crucial to determine what happens to a person when he or she becomes incapable. There is a pressing need for these reforms so that a person can plan sensibly in the case of incapacity.

The living will is an instrument that has already been introduced to other jurisdictions, including the United States, and it is time that we had a similar provision here. Heretofore, a person could name an attorney to deal with his or her property in the case of incapacity, but not to deal with these essential personal care decisions that have to be made. If anything, perhaps this legislation does not go far enough. Certainly it deals with medical decisions; it does not deal with nutrition, hygiene, clothing and safety. For example, someone may become incapacitated and be given a diet that offends his religious code. This is something that also has to be addressed eventually with appropriate legislation.

The kind of legislation these bills anticipate would avoid the costly, time-consuming and rather cumbersome procedures to declare a committee for a mentally incompetent person under the Mental Incompetency Act. This is something -- a rather cumbersome procedure, as I said -- that unfolds where a person becomes incapable and a person has to be appointed to make decisions on that person's behalf, involving an application to court, involving the production of affidavits from all kinds of medical practitioners and nurses and friends and relatives citing the incapacity of this individual. This allows a donor to name a power of attorney to make these essential health care decisions in the event of incapacity and thereby avoid a rather onerous procedure under the Mental Incompetency Act. This would allow the donor to direct, for example, the use of life support systems, by making his or her wishes known to friends or relatives. This could also extend to blood transfusions, which would affect Jehovah's Witnesses and others who may be opposed to blood transfusions.

I support the bills with these reservations: There must be adequate means of ensuring that the donor of a power of attorney has capacity at the time that the donation of the power of attorney is made, and it is essential that there be some criteria as to who determines incapacity -- and that is certainly a refinement that might be introduced to this act -- and, further, who scrutinizes the power of attorney to ensure that it is carried forth in an honest, valid and helpful fashion to the person who becomes incapable.

I have one concern, and that involves the exception to Bill 8 for women who are pregnant. I realize that this raises immense ethical considerations, but let's say, for example, that we have a two-week-old foetus, the mother is pregnant, the mother becomes incapable and could be suffering unendurable pain. The withdrawal of those life support systems could not be mandated in a situation like that, simply because of the exception provided for in the member's act. On the other hand, a foetus that is well advanced and viable outside the womb, through the induction of early birth or perhaps caesarian section, that foetus could survive and yet the mother would not have to endure what might be unimaginable pain. Yet because she is incapable, she cannot make decisions for herself.

I am also concerned that under the provisions of Bill 8 a living will can be revoked, not just in writing, but by the testator, if you will, indicating -- and I take the words from the act -- to someone "orally or by other non-written means" an intention to revoke.

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I would suggest that this is open to considerable interpretation. If someone who is incapacitated and lying on his or her bed of sickness or imminent death makes a gesture towards the attorney or someone else, that could be interpreted as a revocation of the living will which would then enable the health care providers to continue with life support systems. That would certainly be a concern.

Last, I note that "health care provider" is not defined under Bill 8. "Health care provider" is a term, a term of art, I suggest, that is referred to in the bill but not defined, as is the word "physician," for example.

I am also concerned that a health care provider who is unwilling to comply with the living will under the directives of this statute "shall, as promptly as is practicable, take all reasonable steps to transfer the care and treatment of the person to another health care provider who is willing to comply with the living will."

The problem might be, how is a court going to define the words "reasonable" and "practicable"? A physician who is opposed to withdrawing life support systems, who might be indisposed to transfer this patient to another physician who would pull the plug, could conceivably take a week or two to transfer this particular patient. I know there are penalties provided, but it is all very interpretative and I think this is an issue that the member for Carleton should look seriously at.

But all things aside, I support the spirit of these bills.

Mr Daigeler: Let me say first of all that I appreciate the opportunity to speak again on the bills the member for Carleton is bringing forward. The members who are new, and perhaps the people who are watching across Ontario, may not know that we discussed this matter in the last session, and as we had an election since then, bills like this die in Orders and Notices with the election and they have to be reintroduced.

I do think the member for Carleton has raised a very important subject and I think he is to be congratulated for that. I think the issue that he is raising is of profound importance, and as I indicated the last time when I spoke, I do support the basic premise from which the member is coming and I support the intention which the member for Carleton is putting forward.

The religious tradition I am coming from has always supported the idea that you do not have to prolong death by all and every means available, especially in view of our new medical technology. There is that distinction between what is called ordinary and extraordinary means of prolonging death, and in my tradition it is not necessary to use all the extraordinary means to prolong death.

I am quite insistent here -- and in fact that is a reservation I expressed the last time -- on using the term "prolonging death." What is at issue here, and what is being expressed in the title of the bill, we are talking about prolonging death and not really sustaining life. It is very clear, and I am sure that is the member's intention, that in situations where it is definite that death can no longer be prevented and it can only be prolonged through technical and artificial means, in that case the medical technology no longer has to be employed. But I think, again, what we are talking about here, and I raise that as a reservation and hopefully as a change that may be made in committee or in committee of the whole, we always talk about the natural death will and not the living will, because I think terminology in this matter is extremely important.

We are all aware of some of the events that happened in this century with regard to euthanasia. The member for Carleton has presented us with some background material and, quite frankly, in some of that material that distinction is not clearly made. There is the unfortunate historical precedent that euthanasia in an active sense was used, and is still being used, in fact. Just recently in Austria some nurses were in fact found guilty for using euthanasia, active euthanasia. We have that experience where people use euthanasia to end the life of people against their own will and end it in a way that all of us would agree is immoral and illegal.

I think that is why it is so important to use the proper terms and the proper words and not to speak about life-sustaining but death-prolonging to make very clear that what we are talking about is prolonging by highly artificial means a process that all of us will suffer at one time in our lives or other. I think if the member would consider that in the debate in the committee, I certainly would feel much more comfortable about his bill.

Also, he has, perhaps unwillingly -- I think in section 7 of the bill he is putting forward, Bill 8, he is referring to the fact that the withdrawal of death-prolonging procedures "shall be deemed not to be a suicide." Again, I think this is rather questionable language. I do not think we should make any connection at all, even in words, with suicide and the intention of withdrawal of artificial death-prolonging procedures. I think it is very clear what the member's intention is, and I think that should be expressed in the words in the bill and should be very carefully made clear to the public.

I am also a bit concerned about introducing too many laws and too many legal provisions in this area. As several members have said before, the practice of these wills is already happening in Canada and in the United States as well and other parts of the world, but I am somewhat uncomfortable about legalizing and introducing even more and more possibilities of litigation in these very, very difficult moments of life. I think we perhaps should leave a fair degree of discretion to our medical staff and to relatives in the way that is presently being done, that you can in fact put forward such a will and you can indicate what your wishes are, but to put the force of punishment and putting it into a legal definite framework, I have some questions about it.

Also, there is the fear that if somebody does not fill out a will, a natural death will, all others will then be treated and their death prolonged by all means because they have not signed this will. Again, while this is not the intention of the member, I think we should be very clear that all of us should be allowed to determine the treatment that is being given to us, and again, that is a basic principle of medical ethics that we should be allowed to decide the treatment that is being given to ourselves, and that all of us should not be forced through unnaturally prolonging means of keeping away that last moment on this earth that we will all be facing one day.

I think the member for York Centre will be adding some comments later on as well.

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Mr Arnott: I would like to at this time rise and indicate my intention to support Bills 7 and 8, introduced by my colleague the member for Carleton, and I would like to congratulate him on these bills. I think the member for Carleton has gone to great lengths, over the past number of years in promoting this idea. It is something I feel very, very strongly about. The living will concept in principle is an excellent idea. I feel certainly there are moments when senior citizens or anyone can find themselves in a situation where they are unable to make their own determination about what their fate should be, and if they are allowed to transfer that responsibility over to someone they love and trust, that is a great improvement in our society.

As I mentioned earlier and the member for Carleton has alluded to earlier, this is not the first time that this idea has been brought forward in the Legislature. I would like to go back to Hansard of 26 April 1990, when my colleague and friend the member for Markham said in support of these ideas:

"I think the strength of what the member for Carleton has brought forward is it allows each of us to legislate what we want to have done for ourselves. That is a democracy at work. It allows freedom within society where there is a framework where that freedom shows great respect for each human being."

I feel very strongly and agree with those sentiments from the member for Markham.

I feel very strongly that we have to allow individual members of our society as much freedom as possible. In this area, it gives us an opportunity to extend freedom to the people in our society in a way that is so fundamental: towards the end of their life, or at some point to make some determination as to how they want their death to occur, and to allow them a death with dignity. I feel very strongly in that respect.

In my opinion, I do not feel that it is appropriate or reasonable to assume that this intention in any way encourages or legalizes euthanasia. I know that some groups have brought that view forward. I would fundamentally reject that view. I think what it does is just allow for a death with dignity at the end of the road.

I know there is broad-based support across the province for this initiative. There are groups in rural Ontario certainly, called women's institutes, that most members I think will be familiar with. They are most strong in rural Ontario. I have about a dozen of these groups in my riding. They have taken up this cause and assisted the member for Carleton with this endeavour, and they have done an excellent job of promoting it across the population of Ontario, and I would commend them for that.

I would like, on a personal note, to talk about my own family. My grandmother about 10 years ago contracted something called ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is the name of the disease. It is commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. For a family member watching, in my case my grandmother, contract this disease and to see her deteriorate the way it was, it is the most incredible, heartbreaking experience.

It is a debilitating nerve disease. What happens if you contract it is that you lose control of the nerves in your body in different areas. First it was in her tongue and she had difficulty speaking and she had difficulty eating. Then it became in her legs and she had difficulty walking. It graduated to the point where she could only communicate with notes.

The really tragic part of the disease was that her mind was as sharp as it ever was. She was in her mid-70s; her mind was very, very sharp. When I was in university I was able to visit her on the weekends when I came home, and it was incredible. We would talk and communicate, she making notes and me of course talking to her verbally. She would each time remember the most minute details of my last visit. She obviously had a great deal of time to think and reflect about things.

It was just a very difficult time for our family to experience that while she was getting sicker and sicker. We kept her at home as long as possible, and when she finally had to be hospitalized about a month before she died, we were able to consult with the doctors as a family and, in conjunction with my grandmother's own wishes, to withhold heroic medical treatment to prolong her life, prolong her suffering.

I am concerned if a situation like that arises in other circumstances when there is not a family there to make that decision and to assist in that decision. If that is the case, I think it is very important that individual people have the ability to put that down in writing and make their concerns known, while they are of very sound mind as well as body, to make that known so that their wishes can be acted upon.

Again, I would just like to reiterate and congratulate the member for Carleton and the members for London South and Nepean, who have indicated their support. Personally, I was a little disappointed to hear the member for London South question the motives of the member for Carleton for the introduction of this bill. I did not think that was particularly appropriate. I know very well that the member for Carleton is putting forward this measure in a very sincere way to improve social law, I guess we call it, in Ontario.

I would like to conclude my comments by congratulating also the member for Carleton on this historic occasion when he is able to put forward two companion bills, which is I think a historic occasion in this House for private members.

Mr Owens: I would like to begin my remarks by commending the honourable member for introducing this piece of legislation, or I should say reintroducing the legislation. I would like to assure the member that with this piece of legislation there will not be any game-playing and there clearly will not be any doors shut. I plan to support this legislation and I am sure that my colleagues on this side of the House will be supporting this legislation.

This bill, Bill 8, is clearly about the right to choose the final moments or the final months of one's life, and it is very important that we as legislators think about that. The discussion of death is never a pleasant subject, but it is one that needs to be dealt with in an honest and forthright manner. We all seem to think that we are going to go on living, until something happens and our time is cut short, or the time of a loved one, and we are faced with decisions that we are often not ready to make. We are often not prepared to have at our hand the wishes of our loved ones or to hand our wishes to other family members if it is us who are involved.

As the previous speaker noted, I too have had some personal experience with this issue. I lost three of my close family members within four years. Part of my job when my younger brother died, if one wants to call it a job, was to sit with him when he was 27 years of age, to talk to him about his death, to make him aware that, contrary to his belief, he was not going to leave the hospital, and to ask him how he wanted his affairs to be settled. It was a very difficult time for him and for myself as the sole surviving family member.

I think the honourable member's legislation will make this process easier for people to deal with at a time when we are not faced with the eventuality, the oncoming event that sometimes hits us square in the face like a two-by-four.

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I do not have any profound quotes from philosophers about the right to die and the right to choose one's death as one feels is appropriate. I can say that after the events in my family, I got involved in working with terminally ill patients and doing the kind of support and the kind of counselling that is often so important to people, again, as they face those last moments here on earth. But I can tell members about the hugs I received from the folks I was working with after they had had the opportunity to discuss how they would like to die. More important is where they would like to die. Not everybody wants to die lying in a hospital bed hooked to a resuscitator, with people pounding on his chest and drugs being infused in all parts of the body. This is not death with dignity. We need to start serving the human need rather than the systemic need that we seem to have served for so long.

The issue of euthanasia that was raised by the member from the opposition is clearly inappropriate. The opponents to this type of legislation raise this issue of euthanasia as a red herring to avoid the issue. Clearly, euthanasia and the right of persons who are compos mentis to decide how, where and when they are going to die are two different issues.

I agree with the honourable member that we should look at a way of updating the living will. There needs to be a period where the patient's wishes may change where people named in the will may or may not be available at the time, so we need to look at a mechanism for change.

I also would agree with the honourable member's suggestion that he accept an amendment to remove the penalty clause for physicians. I think in 1991 physicians are clearly becoming aware of the sociological change in our approach to the way people want to spend their last time and moments here on earth. Again, I would support that amendment.

In closing, I would like to thank the honourable member for his courage in bringing this piece of legislation back to this House, and I would like to applaud the member for giving me the opportunity to speak about what has been a very personal and traumatic experience for me. I am sure all members sitting in this House can relate a tale of a similar nature of how they have had to watch a family member linger in unnecessary pain, and with this legislation that may not have happened.

Mr Sorbara: I just want to begin by commenting and congratulating my friend the member for Scarborough Centre on his remarks on both the bills, Bill 7 and Bill 8, and appropriately, I congratulate the member for Carleton on bringing forward this legislation again. He is a feisty and persistent member. When he gets a project in his portfolio and before this House, he continues to press it with determination.

The last time he had this bill here we ran out of time in Parliament. Actually, we did not run out of time, but we decided Parliament would come to an end. Who made that decision? Can we revisit that? So we are back here again. Probably we would have passed this bill and it may have become law, even though it is rare that private members' bills actually become law.

It seems to me, if I understand the speeches made in the House this morning, that there is little doubt this bill is going to carry through second reading and that my friend from Carleton will then be able to have an opportunity to press his views on this bill through the appropriate committee and then back for third reading.

I want to say to my friend the member for London South and my friend the member for Scarborough Centre that if they really do believe what they say, what they have said this morning in this debate, then I think an obligation falls upon them which goes beyond the speeches they gave in Parliament this morning.

This matter is somewhat procedural, Mr Speaker, but I hope you will bear with me. I want to say one or two things about the substance of the bill.

Having sat in this House for some seven months, they probably know by now that a bill that passes second reading here during private members' hour goes into a kind of limbo. Unfortunately, most of those bills die a natural death. It is interesting that we are talking about that in a bill that is actually called An Act respecting Natural Death. But there is a way to make this bill a living bill and part of the living law of the land; that is, if the members opposite, the government members, decide they really want it to happen, not just make it an opportunity this morning to make speeches about the importance of respecting the wishes of someone who is terminally ill or someone who wants to be able to die a natural death and not have the intervention of life support systems or the intervention of things that are against a religion or against a certain style of life.

They can do something more than give the speeches. They can prevail upon their caucus colleagues who sit in cabinet to ensure that the bill not only goes through the committee process -- it has the refinements my friend the member for Carleton was suggesting -- but also comes back to this place for third reading. That is when we really test the mettle of the government members and what they say they believe in. I think that should happen with this bill.

I do not think it is as easy as the sponsor of the bill, the member for Carleton, has suggested. I do not think it is as simple as has been suggested by some of the government members. When this bill does become part of the living law of the land, I think significant controversies will arise. After all, we are not changing the Hippocratic oath that governs the ethics of every physician and indeed every health care professional in the province. Their mandate is to intervene, in a sense, at all costs, to ensure that life is maintained.

There is no doubt that in the personal experience of all of us, whether with family members, with friends or acquaintances or in conjunction with our responsibility as politicians, every one of us has seen instances where the real desire of the individual was to let life slip away, not in some morbid sense, but because real life was no longer there. Life was being maintained through mechanical devices or chemical devices, but the real wish of the individual was to let the end arrive naturally. That is what this bill is all about.

Although I strongly believe that 99% of the work of this Parliament ought to be devoted to the rigorous support of life in our province, there is room for this addendum to that law, to acknowledge that our technical capacity to maintain life sometimes, in a few rare instances, will exceed the desire of the individual to have his or her life mechanically sustained.

Indeed, my colleague the member for Scarborough North, sitting right here beside me, refers to an instance in his own family where those hard choices had to be made and life support systems removed. It is not as easy as we think, as we talk about this bill. The decisions are terribly painful. Anyone who has had to make that sort of decision, participate in that decision or then watch life slip away after the systems have been unplugged, have been removed, knows the extent to which that is a difficult and heart-rending process to go through and to watch.

I want to add my congratulations to those we have heard from other members, to the member for Carleton for bringing forward this measure. Again, I have no doubt this Parliament is going to last long enough to deal with this bill through all of its phases, committee and then third reading. I want to reiterate once again, to the few government members who are sitting here this morning for second reading of this bill, that this bill is in their hands when this debate is over. We encourage them to make sure we see it again in this Parliament.

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Mr Carr: I wanted to rise to offer my support to the bill and thank my colleague for bringing it forward. I think the previous speaker said it very well. He is very tenacious and hardworking and we appreciate that. Sometimes in this House that is what you need to do, and I compliment him for that.

I also just wanted to take a quick minute to thank some of the members who have shared very personal and private situations with the House. It must have been very difficult to do that, but it does help add to the debate. I want to thank the members who have done that and shared that with us.

I also wanted to just talk a little bit about the last debate that went on and read a little of the copy from the member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, who is now of course the Minister of the Environment. Her statement on that day was: "I believe we will find, when we discuss it more broadly, that there is a broad general support for it and that the government will not drag its feet, will not try to reinvent the wheel by coming up with legislation that it can claim to be its rather than something that was introduced by an opposition member, but will move forward and proceed through the process of bringing" this bill, meaning that bill of the day. "As I say, I am very proud to support it."

I would hope some people on the government side reflect upon it, that we not leave the debate here and leave all the good ideas on the floor and that people will try to the best of their ability. I think the new members opposite will attempt to do that. We were all elected to try to improve the situation in this province, and I would encourage those people on the government side to push by whatever means are necessary to get this legislation through. There has been a lot of work done on it, there is broad support for it and I would encourage everyone to attempt to push this through so we can make some meaningful changes to the process in this province. Those are my comments.

Mr Silipo: In the few seconds I have left, I want to just simply express my support for these two bills for a couple of very fundamental principles which are, after all, what the second reading debate is all about, supporting things in principle. The principles that are in the two bills are the right of the individual to have control over his or her life and affairs, and to make decisions at a time other than a time of crisis, which I think is significant in both of these. Certainly there are improvements we can make in the committee process, but I would support it at this time.

The other is on the principle that I think a couple of people mentioned, which is that of support for private members' initiatives, of which I am a very strong supporter. I will certainly continue to do everything possible to make sure that the roles of private members and those initiatives get heightened, particularly when they deal with issues such as this. I regret that the previous government did not take some of those actions to support and expand those provisions, and I hope this government can do that.

Mr Winninger: Mr Chairman, on a point of personal privilege: In reference to remarks made earlier by the member for Wellington that I had questioned the motives of the member for Carleton, I would like to make it quite clear that at no time did I question the motives of the member for Carleton in bringing forward this bill, and that the member for Wellington was as wrong about my questioning the member's motives as he was about my riding.

Mr Jordan: It is my privilege also to speak in support of the bill and in support of my colleague the member for Carleton. I know him to be sincere in the presentation of this bill. I am not going to speak at length, but just to bring to the attention of the House the things that come to the fore, in my opinion, relative to this bill.

I think we are all aware of the changes in medical treatment, the new equipment that is available and the desire by the medical profession and others to try to use that equipment to the best advantage, and I believe sometimes -- I know my own personal experience has been, as many others have stated, the prolonging of life to the point that it becomes a mechanical life rather than a human life. I think it is important that we have at our disposal this type of legislation that would make a decision on ending those mechanical-type lives, or other types of prolonging the different kinds of diseases we are facing today, such as cancer and so on, where you are actually given the option that if you want treatment you can have three months of life, and if you do not take it you probably have a month.

These are the types of things families are dealing with today and I think the member for Carleton's bill will allow these discussions to take place beforehand and in an organized manner.

Mr Sterling: If I could use the time remaining to my caucus, four minutes-plus, and the two minutes together I would appreciate it. I would like to thank each and every member. It is amazing that when we are discussing something which is really an issue which has probably affected everyone's life in the Legislature, we can have eight speakers express in a very succinct amount of time their support for what I consider very important pieces of legislation.

I was very touched by the member for Wellington and the member for Scarborough Centre in relaying their personal cases to the Legislature. I saw many members nod in agreement with them and thinking probably, as I was at that time, back to a personal experience which I have experienced.

I was very much interested in the member for London South's remarks when he talked about the various issues raised by the various sections in the bill. To be quite truthful and blunt, I am not certain of all of the decisions I made when I put those provisions in the bill, but I put them there so we would have a long and a fruitful discussion when and if we -- and I believe we will -- get to a standing committee. I would like to hear those arguments. I want to hear what the real feelings of members of this Legislature are on each and every section of this bill. I will no doubt have my opinion. I went down the list of choices and made my choices at that time.

As each and every member of this Legislature knows, when they draft a private member's bill they do so in some isolation from other members. Therefore, if and when we get to the stage of amending this bill, I look forward with great anticipation to the opportunity to hear what people from the outside want to deal with, their general overall feeling, and what the general consensus of 12 or 13 members of this Legislature would be on each and every issue which the member for London South in particular raised here.

Quite frankly, when this bill gets out to a committee, I think it will probably be one of the most exciting experiences for members of a committee of this Legislature to have in committee because they will have the real opportunity of having their input and say into a law. When we vote on the various different sections, I hope we will not vote along party lines. In other words, my party normally has two members on that committee. I would not expect them to vote in concert on each and every amendment or each and every section. I would hope each and every member will bring their combined wisdom to the bill, so that when we work the bills through the committee level, we will have a consensus of all 13 members, regardless of what political stripe they might or might not wear.

I point out to the member for Nepean, who expressed some concern about having too much legislation dealing with this matter, that the reason I bring the matter to the fore is so there will not be confusion in the public's mind as to what is or is not valid as a living will, or what is or is not valid as a durable power of attorney. I use the legislation to bring forward issues which are in the public's mind or which would be in the physician's or the health care giver's mind who is faced with that decision. I want those all out in the open so that we can draw the proper conclusions in dealing with these very important documents.

I also would hope that when the committee comes down to the final document, we will try to keep it as simple as is possible. We will have to make some decisions which will perhaps not be perfect, but that is the way all legislation is. But it is very important in my view that whatever we do come out with, the public is able to understand what our intent is and what the rules might be surrounding these two particular documents.

I would also like to thank the member for Dovercourt for his succinct and very pointed remarks on the bill. I think he makes two very valid points, and I congratulate him on how quickly he can do that. I would also like to thank both the member for Oakville South and the member for Lanark-Renfrew for their participation in the debate as well.

Last, I would like to thank five individuals with Dying with Dignity of Canada who are sitting in the members' gallery. These people have been travelling across this country and telling the story of these two bills along with their full efforts to allow people the right to die with dignity. I would like to recognize Don Elliott, who is the president of Dying with Dignity of Canada, Isabel Dunning, Irene Birch, Jean Skelhorne and Marilynne Seguin, who is the executive director of this very important association. There are thousands and thousands of people behind you. The members can assure you of that.

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WETLAND PROTECTION

Mr Wiseman moved resolution 10:

That, in the opinion of this House, the standing committee on resources development should be asked to review the current effectiveness of governmental efforts to protect wetlands in southern Ontario and in particular study the following matters:

1. The circumstances and the frequency of wetland loss, with special emphasis on the pressures created by urban development on such wetlands and watersheds as those found in the Altona Forest, Frenchman's Bay, Carruthers Creek, and others that are experiencing similar impacts;

2. The adequacy of governmental laws, policies and programs for ensuring that there is no net loss of this valuable resource;

3. Whether there is a need for a comprehensive wetland protection statute in Ontario;

4. The need for education programs on the value of wetlands;

5. The desirability of establishing a provincial office for wetland protection in order to centrally administer, monitor and enforce all governmental laws, policies and programs;

6. Ways to promote the creation of new wetlands;

7. Ways to resolve conflicts arising from farm activities that impact upon wetland viability; and

8. Any other matter the committee considers relevant to wetland preservation.

The Deputy Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 94(c)(i), the member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Wiseman: I would like to just take some time and review a little bit of the history of this topic in the House. In May 1986, Mr Knight, who was then a member, I think from Burlington or southern Ontario, also moved a resolution that was asking for wetland protection and looking for the government to move on wetland legislation. I think perhaps that was brought forward in a climate that was not quite as aware of environmental issues as we are today.

Since that time, we have had a number of reports that have been written. We have had the Brundtland report, we have had the first stage of the Crombie commission come out, we have had the second stage of Watersheds come out, an awful lot of work done by the Federation of Ontario Naturalists and other environmental groups who are interested in protecting wetlands. We have recently a study on preserving the Great Lakes wetland and environmental agenda, which I will talk to, if I have time, at some length. We have had back in 1986 an evaluation of wetlands. We have had in 1980 a study done by Michele H. Lemay, a thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of master of arts on regional planning and resource development that talks about the history of wetlands and their erosion in southern Ontario. We have had a large compendium of research put together and we have had many publications by naturalists and other organizations on wetlands. So I think we are well into understanding what wetlands are and how wetlands develop. But I would like to take just a moment to define what a wetland is.

Basically a wetland is an area of land that is covered with water for all or part of the year. They occur, as their name implies, at the intersection of land and water as small inland marshes along lakes or streams or as part of the vast northern peat lands. Wetlands are characterized by hydrophilic soils and specific types of flora and fauna especially adapted for wet conditions. In general, four types of wetlands are found in southern Ontario: marshes, swamps, bogs and fens. In this document there is a good definition of each of those. I do not have time to relay the definition of each, but for the members who are interested, this information is available.

I would like to take a couple of minutes to look at the positive aspects of wetlands and why they are important. Much has been written about wetlands. In the past, people have seen wetlands as an area that should be drained and developed. In my own riding, for example, Carruthers Creek has been seen as an area that should be dredged out and turned into a marina, with surrounding lands turned into marina complexes, hotels and condominiums. What we lose if we do this kind of development is what the Brundtland report called sustainability. There are positive aspects of a wetland, and I would like to turn to those for a moment.

They support diverse species of waterfowl. Wetlands have ducks; in my riding, for example, we have ducks, we have swans, we have geese and all sorts of different types of birds. I am not going to pretend for one second to be as conversant with the bird population in my riding as some of my friends are in the Federation of Ontario Naturalists and the Pickering naturalists, but there are large numbers of various types of birds that live in these areas.

Wetlands also protect water resources. I have been told that a wetland will filter water, will make it purer than it was when it started out, and that it cleanses, it takes out heavy metals, and it will actually act as a filter and a filtering agent for the lakes and for the streams.

They support coastal estuaries, fishery resources. For example, they are the source of spawning. Many various types of fish are spawned in these waters and then move from there into the deep lake where they then are part of the resource base. I will turn to that in a moment.

They protect shorelines from erosion and wave actions. They are nursery areas for young shellfish and crustaceans. They function as a solar-powered water purification system, as I described. They can modify acid precipitation and sulphur, heavy metal impacts on aquatic ecosystems, and they can act to trap pesticide residue.

Equally, they form a wonderful opportunity for young people to become more in touch with nature. On more than one occasion, I know from the school where I used to teach, we on a regular basis took the students to canoe in the marshes and the wetlands and to get up close. There is nothing more pleasurable than to trudge along the shoreline of a wetland and look at the flora and fauna and the birds, and there is nothing more exciting for young children to see than fish migrating up the streams to spawn. I think we need to continue to protect that aspect of our heritage.

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I would like to speak for a moment of economic reasons why we should protect our wetlands. Wasaga Beach, for example, has a commercial tax base of $20.86 million. We need to protect these beaches with wetlands as well. For example, Long Point and Point Pelee marshes in Ontario are priceless natural reserves, but they also generate $5 million a year in tourist revenue. In Ontario, estimates are that wetlands-related tourist activities account for $853 million annually, plus another $11 million for licences and fees. All in all, Canadians spend upwards of the astonishing figure of $4.2 billion annually on wildlife-related activities, many of which are connected with wetlands, so important as a habitat. These figures are from a recent Environment Canada survey.

In Ontario, crops of fur, wood and wild rice have been valued at $300,000 annually. In 1980, muskrat harvest in Manitoba fetched $2 million; marsh-hunting in BC, $43 million; in Alberta, $38 million.

Another study revealed that an acre of wetland was worth the following: $1,054 for sport fishing, $1,040 for fish production and $720 for waterfowl breeding and feeding. Adding the utility values produced a total of $4,700 an acre. So members can see there is a good economic reason to support the protection of wetlands.

Unfortunately, there are many impacts on wetlands that are eroding and causing the amount of wetlands to be reduced. Agricultural development is one of these. I think we need to investigate the possibility of rewarding farmers for keeping wetlands as wetlands, instead of putting restrictions or putting roadblocks in the way of farmers being able to do that.

Sewage treatment plants -- in my riding and in southern Scarborough, we have lost wetlands to the construction of sewage treatment plants.

Cottages and resorts, warehouse and docking facilities, dredging and filling for harbour expansion -- in fact, 85% of total marsh acreage loss in the early years, prior to 1931 was due to urbanization.

Parking lots are particularly hard on wetlands, because they speed up the runoff of water into the river valleys and then there is an unnatural gush of water through the wetlands that creates a huge problem for spawning fish and for the waterfowl, and then at the other end of the year, when there is no rain, the rivers dry up and there is not this continuous influx of water. So we have a problem where we have to consider the impacts of urbanization on wetlands.

Drainage of storm waters, as I have just said, is a large issue.

I am running a little short of time, but I think that what we need to do is to move forward with this resolution so that the standing committee on resources development can investigate all of the issues, all of the documentation that is present, and come up with a comprehensive legislation and a bill which can be introduced to the House for all members to peruse. I think we should do this as quickly as we possibly can and move forward in an expeditious manner. I think a lot of the work has been done, so I would like to see some rapid movement.

Mr Ramsay: I would like to applaud and support the member for Durham West's resolution this morning. I want to tell him that I support that. I have a couple of provisos I would like to speak to this morning, but I really support his interest in this topic, a topic that is extremely important to the ecosystem of this province and to this continent.

I appreciate his beginning remarks. He started to define what a wetland is, and I want to talk a little bit to that. I want to talk in a little more detail later on about the implications of wetland with regard to the agricultural industry. As you know, Mr Speaker, the agricultural industry has been a direct threat to the survival of wetlands, and I think it is very important that we think anew with regard to wetlands and agricultural application. I would like to touch upon that a bit.

I think it is important that we get on with this. I appreciate the member's listing all the reports and all the studies that have occurred over the years, and I must say -- and I hope he is in contact with the Minister of Natural Resources -- that there is a wetlands policy sitting there ready to go. The previous government had worked on this. The draft report has been released and further consultation has taken place with a number of groups across the province. In fact, approximately 250 submissions have been received back from the government, from such groups as the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, the anglers and hunters of Ontario, the AMO and other individual conservation groups.

I must say that the release of the approved final policy statement was expected this fall. I really cannot understand why we have not seen this yet, and I certainly do not want to put any roadblocks in the member's way of having our committee -- a committee of which I am a member as the Liberal caucus Natural Resources critic -- because I think it is important that we look at this. But I just do not want to see this additional look-see, if you will, of all the data that are already out there put any roadblocks in the progress of getting the government, getting this Legislative Assembly moving forward on adopting an Ontario wetlands policy. I think that is very important and we have got to be working together here in the goodwill that I know is possible in this House.

Why do I say that time is of the essence here? I would just like to give a couple of examples of what has happened in the last few months in southern Ontario with regard to wetlands. We have had golf courses established on class 1 and 2 wetlands. We still are having residential subdivisions within class 1 and 2 wetlands; retail and commercial facilities within a class 2 wetland recently; a landfill and waste incinerator within a class 2 wetland; and of course, roads and bridges and infrastructure of all sorts across this province are still being built on class 1 and 2 wetlands. I think the member would agree that this has to stop. We have to have a new appreciation of the value of wetlands. So I would like to talk to that a bit.

Before I go on to that I would like to say to the member that in his resolution he really has not referred to our greatest wetland resource. That, of course, takes place, as the member for Cochrane North will know, mostly in his riding, in northern Ontario, because the James Bay wetlands are the largest wetland reserve in the world.

While I am on that, I would like to talk about what a wetland is in maybe just a little more detail for the people who are watching at home, because our sense in the past has always been that if the land were wet, what we had to do was drain it, that somehow wetland was a waste of a resource, that it was useless and therefore, in order for personkind to prosper, we had to drain a wetland. Of course, we understand now the valuable resource that it is.

But what is a wetland? And I guess the question is, why is it wet? It is wet because it is a reservoir. What nature has developed is a reservoir system for fresh water on our planet. It is a tremendous reservoir that holds water in times of tremendous rain accumulation, but also in time of drought. What it is basically is a sponge. The reservoir is a sponge that holds that fresh water resource, and we in Ontario happen to be blessed with the largest wetland in the world. From that a lot of prosperity has flowed, because we have this fresh water resource in our province.

Also, and I think more important today, is the way we have been treating our environment. The wetlands are also a filter and what we receive from the wetlands with regard to fresh water is clean fresh water. It filters out the impurities, and I think that certainly has to be addressed. Of course, the member had mentioned the other important aspect of wetlands. It basically is that wetlands are the home of a total ecosystem which it is very important for us to be preserving.

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I would like to mention one aspect that I would hope the member would bring to the attention of the Minister of Agriculture and Food. It is something I have been working on, and that is with regard to the Drainage Act. The Drainage Act was one of the first acts that was established in this House. It was established in the 1800s and it was a very good act for its day. It was an act that really opened up the farm land in southwestern Ontario, and primarily it was designed for southwestern Ontario.

That act is out of date. The Drainage Act needs to be brought up to date, with the awareness that we have today for the environment. We have to be looking at its application. What we have seen with the Drainage Act is, yes, some farm land that is a bit wet being drained and added to the tremendous productivity of Ontario's agriculture. But we have also seen in that application some tremendous disasters. We have seen some tremendous erosion disasters caused by Drainage Act construction and maintenance. We have also seen wetlands and woodlots being drained by main drains going by these tremendous resources. We have to make sure that we have an environmental assessment process established, tagged on somehow to the Drainage Act. That is something that has to happen.

In the other regard, we may have to make sure that we have cost-benefit studies mandatory on every drain petition that is brought before every municipal council under the Drainage Act. That is extremely important, because we have had horrendous projects that have done tremendous environmental damage and have also been costing the people involved along that drainage land, causing a tremendous financial impact.

There is much to do and I would encourage the member to push his government, as we are over here in the Liberal caucus, to move on the implications of the implementation of wetlands policy for this province. He will get a lot of support in this House from all parties if he does that, and we welcome the discussion that will accrue, from this resolution today, in the standing committee on resources development of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

Mr McLean: I am pleased today to have the opportunity to comment briefly on this resolution. It would have been nice to have had the Minister of Natural Resources here to listen to the comments and to participate in this bill.

Wetlands are areas that are seasonally or permanently covered by shallow water, as well as lands where the water table is close to or at the surface. The presence of abundant water has caused the formation of hydric, or waterlogged, soils and has resulted in the development of hydrophytic, or water-tolerant, vegetation.

The four major categories of wetlands are swamps, marshes, bogs and fens. The province of Ontario accounts for approximately 23% of Canada's remaining wetlands, the most of any province or territory. Seventy-five per cent of Ontario's original wetlands south of the Precambrian Shield have disappeared. In parts of southwestern Ontario, over 90% of the original wetlands have been lost. Conversion to agricultural land is said to account for an estimated 85% of recent losses. Cottage and urban development have also contributed to wetland destruction.

At one time, wetlands were considered to be of little value and were frequently drained to create fertile agricultural land, but it is now recognized that wetlands are a critical component of the natural environment and drainage has become unacceptable.

As my party's critic for Natural Resources, I am well aware of the importance of this province's wetlands. They are vital to Ontario's economy. Wetlands maintain and improve water quality, help control flooding, provide habitat for fish and wildlife and contribute substantial social and economic benefits. These benefits include outdoor recreation and tourism advantages from such activities as hunting, fishing and birdwatching, amounting to over 53 million user-days per year for more than seven million residents.

Wetlands were described by early settlers as impenetrable, mosquito-infested, God-forsaken swamps. The notion that wetlands were a nuisance persisted until only a few years ago, when the Progressive Conservative government of Ontario pointed out that they could provide a number of important benefits that can be grouped into three categories: ecological, social and economic. Until that time, Ontario's wetlands had been considered on the basis of their value for such uses as agricultural, commercial, industrial or residential development and little consideration had been given to their value when left in a natural state.

In January 1989 the Liberal government released its draft policy statement on wetlands planning in Ontario. The draft policy was circulated for public review and comment, and analysis of the draft policy indicated that it was completely inadequate in responding to the need to protect Ontario's wetlands. The policy statement and the implementation guidelines were too vague to be meaningful and would do little to save Ontario's remaining wetlands.

I would like to spend a little time to outline some of the concerns I had about the Liberal draft policy statement on wetlands planning in Ontario. I think it is important to do so when we are here today to consider this related resolution. The policy merely protected class 1 and class 2 wetlands which are provincially significant. According to experts, only 40% of this province's wetlands fall into these categories. That means that under the Liberal policy, 60% of the remaining wetlands would be sacrificed. This would include regionally and locally significant wetlands that may be vital habitats for rare plant and animal species.

The Liberal proposal was not binding on municipalities. It provided guidance and suggestions to municipalities on how to deal with wetlands. It is possible that some municipalities would ignore the province's directives, either because of development pressures or because of a lack of expertise in wetland planning.

The Liberal policy stated that northern Ontario wetlands would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. As there is no formal evaluation system in place, this could lead to arbitrary decision-making, further jeopardizing northern wetlands, and I think we have already seen one example too many of arbitrary decision-making from the Minister of Natural Resources. I am referring to his recent arbitrary decision to allow unrestricted native hunting and fishing in Algonquin Provincial Park.

Finally, the Liberal draft policy enshrined the concept of compatible development, which would allow development on or adjoining wetlands so long as the wetland was maintained or enhanced. To determine if the wetland has been maintained or enhanced, the wetland evaluation system would be used for southern Ontario wetlands and this evaluation system would not adequately take into account the hydrological value of a particular wetland, and as a result, very important wetlands would be lost. I think members will agree that far from being a step forward in the preservation of Ontario's vulnerable wetlands, the Liberal wetland draft policy was really just a step sideways.

While we are debating this resolution today, I think we should all be asking ourselves the following questions: Should wetlands be protected by the province? If so, should wetland protection be enshrined in legislation, rather than a non-binding policy statement as proposed by the former Liberal government? Should a non-development approach be adopted in relation to all wetlands, or just to those which are evaluated as provincially significant? Should the wetland policy be extended to cover at least class 1, 2 and 3 wetlands to be consistent with the conservation land tax reduction program?

Are there some wetlands that could be considered dispensable? Should Ontario move to implement an evaluation system for northern wetlands? Should the evaluation system be upgraded so that the hydrological value of a wetland is as important as its value in terms of flora and fauna? If so, should the province commit funds to the development of technology which will allow for the evaluation of wetlands on hydrological grounds? These are many questions that need to be answered.

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I want to relate a letter I got from the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority and it has to do with land tax rebates on conservation land. "Under the previous administration we had a 100% tax rebate on land such as the Minesing Swamp. The indication that I am getting now is that this government is wanting to change that, to be reduced to a 75% land tax rebate."

I think that is unacceptable. I think that when we are looking at a policy on wetlands that allows people to make sure that it is under the conservation program, that 100% taxation rebate should still be there. I do not believe it should be reduced, as the minister and the government at this time are proposing to reduce it. so I congratulate the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority for bringing it to my attention so that I can relate this to the minister and express the feelings here when we are dealing with this very important issue, wetlands in Ontario.

Mr Waters: I am going to be quite brief on this. I would just like to make the point that I would even like to see the legislation go somewhat farther than is being asked for here. As a member of the standing committee on resources development, we have been talking to some extent about purple loosestrife and the type of invasion that is going on in our wetlands by this type of thing that we as a society have introduced, with no regard or forethought to our wetlands.

I think that we should in some way include this type of thing in legislation and work towards the eradication of this, as well as stopping the urban sprawl and the encroachment by farming on wetlands. They are very important to us, and if we do not do something in the near future, we will be losing more valuable acreage of wetlands.

Mrs Sullivan: I am pleased to join in this debate and to recognize the initiative of the member for Durham West in bringing the issue of wetlands preservation policy before the House. I am going to be supporting this resolution because I think it affords members an opportunity to explore that part of our heritage and that part of our future which is embodied in a policy or approach to wetlands preservation. The more that people know about these issues, members of this House included, the more they will be taken into account, not only in our private lives but in public policy as well. For those reasons, I think this is a useful resolution.

But I will tell members frankly that if this resolution passes this morning, and it appears that it will, and the resources committee has an opportunity to review these issues in some detail, members of that committee will expand the mandate which the member for Durham West has included in this resolution. There are three specific areas where I see expansion to be of some value.

One would be to explore choices affecting wetlands preservation in northern Ontario and not limit the committee's review to a southern Ontario scope.

Second would be -- and I think the member for Durham West has to a certain extent addressed this, I think in section 2, the inventory section -- to incorporate a practical and pragmatic approach to the examination of the competing influences which bear on the development and maintenance of wetlands policy, whether that competition comes from power generation requirements, pressure of urbanization, landfill sites, agricultural practices or other areas which have been mentioned by other speakers. I think that we have to look not only at where competition exists, but where that competing activity can be taken out of the contest and where it in fact can be made complementary to preserved wetlands in an area.

Third, I think that the discussion in committee ought to take place within the context of a final wetlands policy document from the Minister of Natural Resources, around which there would be a framework for the examination of public policy actions.

In preparing notes for this debate, I went back to my files and I reviewed the original draft wetlands policy statement and implementation guidelines which were issued under the Planning Act by Vince Kerrio, then Minister of Natural Resources, and John Eakins, then Minister of Municipal Affairs. That document was released in January 1989. Those documents were sent out for public review and over a period of time received widespread comment from some 250 individuals and groups.

The member for Simcoe East has indicated that the response in fact demanded stronger action than was proposed in those documents and suggested that the proposals, from a public point of view, did not go far enough. But there certainly was an expectation that there would have been a final wetlands policy issued in the autumn of 1990. Those members who have an interest in these things may remember that I asked the Minister of Natural Resources a couple of weeks ago through a member's statement when we could expect to see a statement and some progress made on legislation.

The Federation of Ontario Naturalists and the Canadian Environmental Law Association have requested that statement by the end of this month and in fact that legislation would be enacted after discussion and input from those groups by 1992. I think that it is vital to have that kind of statement of direction from the minister so that all members can place the discussion within a context and then move from there.

In section 1 of his resolution, the member has called for an inventory of the circumstances and frequency of wetland loss, and of the particular influence of urban encroachment, with reference to specific sites. There is considerable evidence that in days past most of the area which includes that which he represents, through Metropolitan Toronto, through the area, that I represent in Halton, down to the area represented by the member for St Catharines and into the Niagara Peninsula and further on up into the Greys and Bruces, was all bog, fen or marsh.

There have been special preservation efforts that we know about, and I think particularly of areas such as the Luther Marsh or Beverley Harbour, Jordan Station, the Hillman Marsh and so on -- Beaverdale Fen may be another one -- which have recognized the value of those wetlands, and the special ecological influences of the area have been maintained, sometimes by accident but frequently by design. I suppose what we are all looking for is a context and a definition of the design. That is why we need a document from the minister.

I want to speak to section 2 of the member for Durham West's resolution. I believe that he is correct: There should be no loss of wetland function and no net loss of acreage in Ontario. There is little doubt that an examination of the adequacy of government laws and policies and programs for ensuring protection would be useful. However, it seems to me to be obvious that the priority that is being placed on this issue in the public sector in fact is behind the demands that are being made from the public. I think the current minister ought to see those demands for what they are and bring forward the strategy so that we can get on with the job.

I think as well, as we review the question of no net loss, that what we have to review are the competing factors surrounding those issues: How do you deal with the need to protect food and raise livestock without infringing on wetland areas? How can those be made complementary? How do you preserve wetlands while still providing for the housing needs of an expanding urban population? How do you determine which wetlands have specific priority? Many have been designated as matters of international and national interest. Certainly provincial interest in many areas has been defined, and areas of local interest. There is a hierarchy for areas. How do we continue to ensure that the hierarchy is established and maintained at all levels, no matter what the interest, whether it is international or local?

I think the other question we should be looking at is what lengths we should go to to restore wetlands or to recreate a natural habitat for endangered species. I am concerned about whether our priority should in fact be to concentrate on protecting what we have rather than perhaps moving the other way. I think that would be a very useful contribution to the debate.

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I would also like to suggest that the committee could look at how we bring areas of jurisdictional interests together so that there is a melding of interests, whether it be the Ministry of Natural Resources, conservation authorities or whatever other body deals with these issues. We need a comprehensive wetland strategy. I compliment the member on his work.

Mr Villeneuve: I too want to spend a few minutes to participate in this debate.

I am, to some degree, disappointed that the Minister of Agriculture and Food is not here this morning, because I think this bill, both directly and indirectly, will adversely affect many farming operations.

I can cite examples that we have nuisance beaver across the province of Ontario. This bill intends and purports to promote the creation of new wetlands. To the member whose private bill we are discussing this morning, we have beavers, that are doing exactly that. They are not only flooding farm land; they are flooding some very good land on which trees are growing. If you allow that to occur for any length of time and you have already killed the trees that are on there, you have created wetlands. There is no doubt about it. The beavers, as I know them -- and I speak from firsthand experience because we have to destroy dams on an annual basis -- do know where to put them where they are the most effective of all.

The other area of great concern is the desirability of establishing a provincial office for wetlands protection. In other words, we would have bog or swamp cops. I think the Ministry of Natural Resources, indeed, could improve some of the ways it operates to be more effective without creating an additional bureaucracy, and also in so doing, I am sure, could slow down the process whenever we have flooding coming from nuisance beavers, that farmers would probably have to go through this swamp or bog police office. If indeed it takes as much time as some of the other ministries do to make a decision and then to put it into action, I can tell you that farmers would be lacking income tremendously.

I want to quote, from the most recent edition of Farm and Country, one of the headline stories, "Protected Wildlife Attacks Farm Income," and it speaks of George Lunan, who resides along the St Lawrence River between Glen Walter and Summerstown in Glengarry county, where he says he loses from between $5,000 and $10,000 a year to deer doing damage, particularly to his dwarf apple trees.

We have in Bruce county a man called Ken Kelly, who says the balance of wildlife has been upset by Ministry of Natural Resources policies. This man farms at Paisley, and he says that trapping restrictions have led to an overabundance of coyotes in Bruce county, drastically reducing the yearling deer population. They, of course, feed on that. Mr Kelly is not very kind when he says, "The swamp lovers and tree huggers are prevailing over common sense and reason," and that tends to have some degree of truth. I would be very, very nervous to implement the bill as it is presented this morning.

Of course we know that wetlands are most important. They recharge the hydrological system in certain areas, and in certain areas it is an outlet for the surplus underground water and it acts as a filter and it is very much essential to life. However, common sense must prevail, and once we set in bureaucracies that are almighty, it tends to have the minorities taken for granted, and I speak of those people in rural Ontario who try and earn a living at agriculture, which is not easy in this day and age.

The article goes on to state: "The problem here is that no one seems to know the rules. Farmers are allowed to destroy beaver dams but they are not allowed to destroy the beavers." You hire a backhoe if you are able to get to the dam, and if you are not then you have got to get somebody to dynamite it, but it will be back up in the next day or two. That creates a major problem out in rural Ontario.

"Predators are not the only source of trouble," says Alfred Vogel, a corn farmer in Glengarry county. "The beaver dams are blocking municipal drains, they are killing off a lot of our good timber stands and indeed creating havoc."

I think the member brings this private member's bill to the House with all sorts of good intentions; however, I think it has to be looked at very, very closely. AMO, for example, has a report here asking for more local municipal autonomy. The ivory towers are running things and they do not always bring common sense to the situation.

I have a number of other editorial comments. They basically speak of a commonsense approach by the Ministry of the Environment, by the Ministry of Natural Resources, and of course the affected ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and the 2.5% producers across the province of Ontario will be bearing the brunt of such things as this private member's bill should it go through. There is an environmental bill of rights on the horizon that will again create all sorts of problems for our people in rural Ontario trying to earn a living and who feed this province very well.

Mr White: I rise to speak in favour of the resolution put forth by my colleague the member for Durham West. In areas such as ours, where the pressures of development are strong and we are in danger of losing any separation between our urban and natural areas -- presently in my riding there are two beautiful wetland areas, quite large ones, which border Lake Ontario. These marshes are constantly threatened, as they are fragile environments. Ironically, these fertile, supportive environments with abundant flora and fauna could easily be devastated simply because of their proximity to our communities.

Separation means that they be protected from that devastation. Separation of these few remaining natural environments means that they can be appreciated, that our children will have a natural legacy that will be accessible and intact. My children and I have often walked along the shores of these marshes. We have often enjoyed the rich variety of plants and of birds and seen many other naturalists there, including Dr Suzuki. My older two explore on their own, while the youngest is often in delight at the minutiae of natural life. I am constantly amazed at the quiet respect that they accord and at the awe that they show the natural world. They are splendid times, but not just for children. We adults also regain a sense of agape that only this natural communion can bring. As my wife would say, nature can sustain and console as no human artifice can ever hope to do.

Just as the wetlands need separation from urban encroachment in order to survive, so we as citizens need a separation from urban travails that only wetlands and other natural spaces can afford us. Likewise, it is important that our development allow for separation and preservation of natural space that is accessible here and not in preserves for the wealthy that are hundreds of miles removed from our cities. As the Crombie commission recently pointed out, even the GTA has a natural context and is in a natural environment.

In the town of Whitby, which I have the honour of representing, there are massive developments presently being planned which border upon one of these large marshes. These developments include a prestige industrial site, institutional redevelopment of the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital, other institutions, high- and low-density development for some 14,000 people, and commercial sites. Care has been taken in the planning process to ensure that there will be as little runoff as possible and that the area directly bordering the marshes will be given additional protection and in fact be in a created conservation area. The care that has been taken to produce an effective environmental management plan should be commended. Equally, the work that local volunteers and natural activists contributed should be commended. Their work ensured that these wetlands would not be neglected in the planning process.

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In our area of the province a great deal of attention has been devoted to this issue. In Durham, the Crombie commission heard many submissions and a great public concern regarding the preservation of our wetlands and natural environment. Both the member for Durham West and I presented before that commission. That commission came down with several preliminary recommendations regarding wetland preservation.

I think it is incumbent upon us to ensure that such care is taken throughout our great province. Our provincial government should take the lead by ensuring the adequacy of the protection of wetlands. The people of this province have expressed these concerns in many ways and on many occasions. We need to take effective leadership in conservation and environmental protection. We have a clear mandate to do so. I urge the members present to support my friend's resolution and to give it the full weight of this assembly.

Mr G. Wilson: I am pleased to rise in support of the resolution by my colleague the member for Durham West. I think he should be congratulated on initiating a well-informed debate that I think bodes well for the work of the committee in focusing this issue so that we can get the needed legislation to protect our wetland watersheds.

I want to make the point that probably all areas of the province need this kind of legislation. Certainly our area, the Kingston and greater Kingston area, is no exception. We have class 1 and class 2 wetlands that are under threat by development. It is ironic that one of the, I guess, most prominent areas to view the watershed is seen from Highway 401, and I certainly want to welcome members of the Legislature to the Kingston area to view the greater Cataraqui watershed from Highway 401. But it highlights the need to make sure that the development that occurs in these areas is done in a sensitive way that will preserve the watersheds, as many of our colleagues have said, for not only their environmental value but for the heritage that they represent for coming generations.

There are a couple of points I want to highlight, though, in the member for Durham West's resolutions including the need for co-ordination. Several members have already said that there are area councils, for instance, working at cross-purposes in trying to bring development to their area that affects this watershed, and that the wetlands, of course, do not pay heed to the boundaries we draw. They involve several of the ridings, and the co-ordination that has to occur among the various levels of government is essential here.

The second point is the need to expand the wetlands to include the marginal areas; that we cannot have development going right to the edge of the wetlands, because that will damage them just as much as development occurring within them. So there has to be some kind of marginal buffer area of about 100 metres at least, to make sure that the wetlands are preserved in as much a natural state as possible.

I think, then, that raises the question of education, which the resolution also raises as its fourth point. As already has been mentioned, there are conservation authorities working in this area. Certainly the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority has been doing very good work in our area to further the cause of making people aware of what the wetlands include, but this should extend to the schools as well, schools at all levels, so that our citizens will be aware of the need for preservation of the wetlands.

With those points, I would like to, again, congratulate the member for Durham West for his all-encompassing resolution and wish the committee good luck in its focusing on this issue so we can get the legislation that is necessary to preserve our wetlands.

Mr Wiseman: I would like to review some of the comments that were made. The member for Timiskaming raised a very good point. I have absolutely no objection whatsoever to having the wetlands expanded to look at all of Ontario. I believe that we must take a long, hard look at the James Bay wetlands and how they fit into the ecosystem of Ontario. I believe he raised some other very good points about class 1 and 2 wetlands. I would hope that the committee would take a look at the criteria that go into defining what a wetland is, with a view to perhaps expanding those criteria to make them even more encompassing so they would catch with a broader net and protect even more wetlands.

I am also pleased that this resolution has sparked some debate. I would like to return to a couple of points made by the member for Halton Centre. As usual, she makes some well-thought-out and pointed comments. The notion of exploring northern Ontario, again, I have no problems with that. The idea of competition, what is in competition with wetlands, and to review how the competition is impacting on wetlands is a very real point, because the three examples I have put in from my own riding speak to that competition. The Altona forest, for example, is the watershed for the creeks in the area and it is now being proposed for massive subdivision development which will, of course, change the watershed as it exists. Frenchman's Bay has always been under pressure and is now under pressure again from silting up, from upstream development and from developers who want to put townhouses right on the bay and close to the wetlands. Carruthers Creek, I mentioned earlier about a subdivision and also a marina, and also in my riding is Duffin Creek. All of these watersheds are under impact, because you cannot just look at the wetlands in a narrow definition. It is a broad, watershed definition, and I think the member for Halton Centre has raised that point and has made some very good input to this debate.

Also, we have the competition of livestock, of farming, and how do we balance that? But I think what we need to do, as the member for S-D-G & East Grenville has shown, is make sure that when we examine the issue we do take a look at the ecological balance that is necessary. I think the Brundtland report and subsequent reports that have come out have told us that we have to strike that balance. There is no alternative now; we cannot continue to go down one road, so we must look and say that we are all within an ecosystem and ask how we can make that ecosystem work in its most efficient and best way.

To the member for Simcoe East, I had the opportunity to peruse his comments from the 1986 debate. Again, he has raised some excellent points, very good questions, and I think that he has contributed to the discussion this morning, which I found very valuable. I agree with him we must look at class 1 and 2 farm lands: What are they, how do they fit into the ecosystem, and what are we going to do with them?

In closing, I would like to comment just briefly on two points, and that is the ecosystem and on how I see the debate proceeding. The Crombie commission talks very forcefully and directly about us looking at our entire ecology in an ecosystem way, that we are dependent, one species upon the other, for survival. I had the honour of making a presentation to the Crombie commission, as did my learned friend the member for Durham Centre. I have shared a stage with Mr Crombie and he speaks eloquently of this need for discussion among the various levels of government and for concrete proposals and for concrete, clearly defined legislation or guidelines that will direct our development in these areas.

In closing, I would like to say that I do not see this debate as being just one more debate going down the road. I really feel sincerely that this committee and the work of this committee should kick off a movement towards creating legislation that has clear definitions and clearly defines the direction that we want to take in this very important environmental issue.

In closing, I would like to thank all of the speakers for their participation in this debate. I will review Hansard, because I feel the questions they raised are important and excellent questions that we should look at in terms of defining the legislation in the future.

POWERS OF ATTORNEY AMENDMENT ACT, 1990

The Deputy Speaker: Mr Sterling has moved second reading of Bill 7.

Motion agreed to.

Bill ordered for standing committee on administration of justice.

NATURAL DEATH ACT, 1990

The Deputy Speaker: Mr Sterling has moved second reading of Bill 8.

Motion agreed to.

Bill ordered for standing committee on administration of justice.

WETLAND PROTECTION

The Deputy Speaker: Mr Wiseman has moved resolution 10.

Motion agreed to.

The House recessed at 1204.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The House resumed at 1330.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CHILD CARE CENTRES

Mrs Sullivan: Long before this government was in a position of making decisions, it stated, "New Democrats would ensure decent wages for those who care for our most vital resource -- our children." It is obvious to me and to the people of Ontario that they no longer hold that view.

The Minister of Community and Social Services has made that blatantly clear in her recent pay equity announcement, which discriminates against people employed in commercial day care centres. This is a government that talks about fairness and equity. What is fair or equal when a government deliberately sets out to undermine a certain sector of our workforce?

In Halton, my area, seven out of 10 children from birth to five years old who are in child care are placed in commercial centres. Close to 40% of those children receive subsidized care. Where will these children be placed when commercial centres are forced to close? The approach of this government makes that inevitable. Operators of commercial centres in my area tell me they will be out of business in three to five years. The investment they have made in the community will go with them. People who work in those centres, mainly women, will be put out of work.

My party supports future investment in the non-profit sector, but demands that the vitality of the existing commercial sector be protected and maintained. The Premier has said he would work for all of the people of Ontario. It is clear that he meant all of the people except those people, mostly women, who work in commercial child care centres.

HUNTING IN ALGONQUIN PARK

Mr McLean: My statement concerns the recent decision by the Minister of Natural Resources to allow unrestricted native hunting and fishing in Algonquin Provincial Park.

Let me begin by saying there is no doubt in my mind that we have a substantial debt to repay to the members of the first nations. That is a fact that I do not, and in all good conscience cannot, argue with. However, I do object to the minister making this decision without involving all interested parties in native resource agreement negotiations with this government, as he promised. I do object to his decision when he is withholding the Algonquin Provincial Park master plan, which was supposed to be released last fall. I do object to a decision that was made in advance of hunting, fishing and land claim negotiations with the Algonquins of Golden Lake, which are not scheduled to get under way under 15 June at the earliest.

As I said earlier, I do not object to repaying the debt we owe the members of the first nations, but I do object to a government that does not keep its promises, withholds important documents and then makes an arbitrary decision that will jeopardize Algonquin Park's environmental integrity. I say to the minister that by not keeping his promise of extensive consultation he has threatened Algonquin Park's role in providing a wide range of tourism and recreational opportunities, its contribution to the social and economic life of the region and the protection of its unique historical and natural values. I hope that the concerns I have raised and the public outcry generated by the minister's ruling will result in his reversing his decision.

SHELTER FOR WOMEN

Mr O'Connor: I rise today to support and applaud the efforts of CADA, the Community Against Domestic Abuse committee. This is a committee of the Georgina Community Resource Centre that was formed to establish a shelter for victims of domestic violence in the Georgina area of York region. This shelter is critically needed. There is only one shelter for abused women in all of York region, and that shelter is over 50 kilometres away from Georgina.

The Georgina area has witnessed a very dramatic increase in violent episodes involving women and children. This area has the highest incidence of domestic violence in all of York region. Families are suffering a great deal and CADA has a group of dedicated service providers and community residents determined to provide a shelter for these women and children right in Georgina.

I am pleased that the government of Ontario has provided initial funding of up to $5,000 for this shelter to allow the committee to complete its submission, to access the capital funds under Canada Mortgage and Housing's Project Haven program.

The plan for the shelter is for approximately 12 beds to service a population of 25,000 people, which includes service to the native people living on and off the reserve.

I am pleased to support the CADA group in its efforts to obtain this shelter for battered women and their children in the Georgina area. It has been my great privilege to commend them for their very hard work. We can all be proud of the dedication of the members of the Community Against Domestic Abuse committee and of all the staff of the Georgina Community Resource Centre for their outstanding efforts in prevention of wife assault through community education and this shelter for domestic violence victims.

COMMUNITY POLICE CENTRES

Mr McGuinty: On Tuesday of this week, I had the pleasure of attending the opening of an Ottawa community police centre in my riding. This is the second in a series of four and possibly more community police centres to be opened in Ottawa and Vanier.

With Chief Flanagan acting as their catalyst, the Ottawa police have developed a comprehensive and innovative plan to establish the concept of community policing in their jurisdiction. The community police centre is an integral part of this plan. Each centre, located in a different community, serves not only to allow our police to stimulate the development of the traditional neighbourhood crime prevention programs but, more important, it enables our police and the neighbourhood community to work as a team to solve local problems.

The structure of the community police centre is made up of a civilian committee and an Ottawa police inspector who is supported both by a constable assigned to the centre and a beat officer to work the streets adjoining the centre.

I am pleased to report that our community police centres have been extremely well received by our communities and that the number of volunteers has greatly exceeded the most optimistic expectations. In addition, over $120,000 in cash donations and equipment has been donated to the Ottawa police to assist them to open and equip the community centres.

On behalf of the people of Ottawa South and, if I may be so bold, on behalf of the people of the cities of Ottawa and Vanier, I congratulate Chief Flanagan, the Ottawa police, our police services board and our community volunteers who have participated in the creation of a project which makes tremendous gains in advancing the cause of peace and security in our neighbourhoods. I commend this project to all of the members of this House and to their communities.

EDUCATION

Mrs Cunningham: The Corporate Higher Education Forum is an organization of senior business executives and the presidents of a number of Canadian universities.

Forum members believe that Canada and individual Canadians stand to benefit from an informed and extensive debate about educational values, goals, means and models. They also believe that the place to start is with our schools, the foundation of lifelong learning.

Over the last couple of years, forum members have become increasingly integrated and concerned about the quality of education at the primary and secondary levels in Canada. The forum recently published an advisory, titled To Be Our Best, Learning for the Future, which provides some background on the quality of education together with the views of forum members and suggested actions which business people may take.

The forum makes a number of recommendations. I would like to emphasize recommendation 3, which states, "That students, their parents and all constituents of the communities in which they live must come to recognize that education is the key to meeting the challenges and seizing the opportunities of a knowledge-based society."

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the forum for their hard work in producing this report. I urge the ministers associated with this report to take a serious look at its recommendations and I look forward to discussing them with them.

We are very fortunate in Canada to have this kind of forum that shows such leadership. I hope we will take advantage of their good advice.

SIGNS OF HOPE CONFERENCE

Mr Waters: I am pleased to have an opportunity to inform the House about a conference on education and the environment that will take place in Huntsville on 15 April.

The Muskoka Environmental Educators Association has done an excellent job of arranging an impressive array of workshops, displays and speakers. The conference theme and title, Signs of Hope, rests on the belief that knowledge and commitment from educators and students in the present will have a positive impact on the future of our environment.

The keynote speaker will be Dr David Suzuki, a prominent environmentalist of world renown, who will bring a message of hope to humankind and will respond adequately to our ecological predicament. Author and journalist Warner Troyer and Chief Gary Potts, as well as 30 other distinguished speakers, will make representations.

I ask all members of the House to join me in support of the Signs of Hope conference on 15 April in Huntsville, for together we can become part of the solution.

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QUESTION PERIOD

Mr Phillips: Mr Speaker, I think I speak on behalf of many members in the House that I think we can do a better job in question period. I will be sending you some recommendations on how I think we might improve the productivity of question period. As I am sure you have probably noticed, each time the opposition asks a question of the government on action, we tend to get one of, I think, five standard responses, and they are the same responses each time.

Perhaps to make question period more productive, Mr Speaker, why do we not simply have you get a copy of these five standard answers and have them provided to each of the members of the House. The minister who is being questioned simply needs to respond by quoting the number of the appropriate standard answer. I think we could greatly speed up the proceedings and save the embarrassment all around of hearing the same answer repeated over and over again. To give you an example, Mr Speaker, I think I have written down the standard answers.

The first one is on inaction for the Agenda For People. This, I think, is the Treasurer's own answer. This is the one that we suggest he use and it goes something like this: We ask a question on the Agenda for People. The minister simply says it is answer 1 and we read the answer. It says: "Surely the member can appreciate that when we prepared the Agenda for People we had all the answers because we didn't know exactly what we were doing. Now that we know what we're doing, we don't know what the answers are."

I think that was the Treasurer's response, but I have suggested the other four standard answers and I appreciate your consideration, Mr Speaker.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Mr Tilson: Yesterday a consultant's report was released that indicated Ontario had a dire shortage of affordable housing. It went on to recommend that the Ontario government construct 27,000 non-profit and co-operative housing units. If the government proceeds, it will cost $3 billion to build the units and another $298 million in annual operating subsidies over 35 years.

All three parties recognize that Ontario has a rental housing crisis on its hands, but we contend that the current situation has been created by government regulation of the housing market. As a result of rent controls, the private sector no longer builds rental accommodation; the taxpayer is financing virtually every new unit that is being built.

The Liberals committed $3 billion to construct 30,000 units under the Homes Now program, with an additional $300 million in annual operating subsidies over 35 years. As the Homes Now, Project 3000 and Project 3600 units come on stream, operating subsidies will reach over $875 million by 1993-94 with a mature annual cost of $1 billion, an increase of over 300% from the Ministry of Housing's 1985-86 budget of $243 million. These skyrocketing costs are all before the Treasurer allocates an additional $3 billion.

We cannot afford to build every rental unit in this province. The NDP must recognize that taxpayers have been pushed to their limits. We must work with the private sector to build additional rental housing stock. I urge the government to rethink Bill 4. It will only make things worse.

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY

Mr Malkowski: This morning I saw with much disgust and dismay a cartoon on page 10 of the Toronto Sun depicting a blind police officer on the workforce. It is reprehensible that any media would allow material for publication demeaning the efforts of employment equity and all that it stands for. This is particularly a profound and offensive insult to the blind people who do not even have the advantage of seeing this pictorial for themselves.

The concept of employment equity is to assist disabled people to participate fully in society and change the negative attitudes which have been too long-standing. Employment equity is a concept which removes employment barriers; identifies and removes discriminatory policies and practices; seeks the goal of fair representation for all Ontarians and Canadians, in particular women, aboriginals, disabled persons and visible minorities; and promotes economic development through the full utilization of talents of all people.

This is a human rights issue, a non-partisan issue. Affirmative action should be addressed in an affirmative fashion. We are all proud that affirmative action is represented here in this House and is a positive model of this concept, and I would encourage all members of this House to express their views and demand that the Toronto Sun make a public apology immediately.

TIME ALLOCATION

The Speaker: Yesterday, the honourable Leader of the Opposition and the House leader for the third party both presented a point of order with respect to the government notice of motion 16, which appears on the order paper under the name of the government House leader.

I would like to thank them, as well as the other members who contributed to these points, for their thoughtful and well-presented arguments. I have had time to consider them and I will now give my ruling on both points.

The point of order raised by the honourable Leader of the Opposition is an important one. He and others have argued that because of our notice provisions the House has, in a certain way, been taken by surprise by the government House leader's notice of motion.

The rule of notice is one that is found in various applications in most Parliaments and its purpose is clearly to make sure that members of the House should not be surprised by a measure being proposed to them and for which they would not have had time to prepare to debate adequately.

Until 1970 in the Ontario Legislature, the rule that applied to notice was the following:

"Two days' notice shall be given of a motion for leave to present a bill, resolution or address; for the appointment of any committee; or for the putting of a question; but this rule shall not apply to bills after their introduction, or to private bills, or to the times of the meeting or adjournment of the House; such notices to be laid on the table before 5 o'clock pm, and to be printed in the Votes and Proceedings of that day."

Members will have noticed that this rule specified that two days' notice had to be given for substantive motions.

In 1970, this House decided to change that rule, and it is the one that guides us presently and reads as follows:

"All notices required by the standing orders of the House or otherwise shall be laid on the table or filed with the Clerk of the House before 5 pm and printed on the Orders and Notices paper for the following day."

What happened in 1970 was that the House decided to remove one of the days that applied to notice. It is also important to point out in this matter that our standing orders prescribe only one rule with regard to notice and does not distinguish between various types of substantive motions.

In the House of Commons in Ottawa, they have kept the two days' required notice for substantive motions, but in giving themselves a specific standing order related to allocation of time, they have seen the necessity of only one day's notice being required.

In this case the Chair has no alternative but to find that according to our standing orders, the notice of motion on the order paper is in order. Under standing order 51 it requires only one day's notice, that is to say, it must be filed before 5 o'clock the previous day, and on the first day that it appears in the Orders and Notices it can be moved. If there was to be a change to this, it would have to come about in the normal way that changes are made to the standing orders, that is, by a motion brought before the House in order to amend the standing orders.

The second point of order, that raised by the honourable member for Parry Sound, is also a very serious point, especially in a House that does not have a codified time allocation procedure.

While considering all of the arguments raised and comparing them with the precedents created by this House since 1982, I have found that no really new arguments were raised yesterday that had not previously been dealt with by my predecessors in my chair.

A time allocation motion is a valid procedure. It attaches itself to a specific subject matter before the House and stipulates how it shall be dealt with. It is in the form of a motion which is fully debatable under our rules, and once it is passed, constitutes an order of the House stating how a certain piece of legislation is to be further studied. Notice of motion 16, presently before the House, is in order and conforms in every way with the practices and precedents of this House.

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STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

WAGE PROTECTION

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I am pleased to tell the members that I will be bringing forward today the government's employee wage protection program. This program represents a major achievement in strengthening the rights of workers in Ontario. It is in difficult economic times such as we are experiencing today that we have to increase protection for workers and ensure that they do not become victims of circumstances they cannot control. This program, set out in the Agenda for People and announced by the Premier in October, forms an integral part of our government's comprehensive approach to labour adjustment. It will allow workers owed money to reclaim that money in a timely and efficient way.

The employee wage protection program will be one of three major amendments to the Employment Standards Act which I will be introducing today. First, as the Premier promised last October, we are establishing a program that will cover workers whose employers have failed to pay wages, vacation, severance and termination pay. Second, in cases where an employer does not or cannot pay, we will amend the Employment Standards Act to enable employees, or the government on their behalf, to obtain the money owed to them from the directors and officers of the company by extending the liabilities that presently exist under the Ontario Business Corporations Act. Finally, we are establishing new, quicker appeals procedures for both workers and employers to deal with all aspects of the Employment Standards Act.

I would like to give the members the details of these amendments that we are proposing.

Ontario's employee wage protection program will be retroactive to cover workers affected since 1 October 1990, the day this government took office.

The employment standards branch of my ministry has already received more than 12,000 potential claims for compensation from workers since the Premier announced our intention to create this program. These workers are unable to collect their earned wages and other entitlements due to their employer's insolvency, closure or simple failure to pay.

Considering the severity of the current recession, my ministry officials estimate that in the first 18 months of the employee wage protection program, more than 50,000 workers will benefit. Employees qualified for compensation from the program will be able to collect earned wages, vacation, severance and termination pay to a maximum of $5,000. We feel that the $5,000 in compensation for wages and other earned entitlement does provide a substantial measure of protection, especially to the most vulnerable workers in the province.

Even with this $5,000 ceiling, we estimate the cost of the program to be some $175 million in the first 18 months of coverage. In addition, the legislation does allow the government to increase the maximum compensation from time to time through changes in the regulations.

It is our intention to have the employee wage protection program operating as soon as possible following the proclamation of this legislation. The government hopes for full co-operation from all members of the House to ensure speedy and expeditious passage.

When the employee wage protection program is operational, employees who have been unsuccessful in obtaining wages or other money owed them by their employer will file a claim with the employment standards branch, as is the current practice. These claims will then be investigated for validity, once again, as is the current practice.

Presently, where the employer is insolvent, it is often impossible to collect the money owing, despite the best efforts of the branch. With the establishment of the employee wage protection program, when entitlement is established, employees will be compensated from the program, even if the employer is insolvent and unable to pay.

If, for whatever reason, a solvent employer does not meet his or her obligations, those affected employees will also have access to the program.

The amendments I am announcing today will also provide for enhanced enforcement. We will take the liability that currently exists under the Ontario Business Corporations Act for directors' responsibilities for debts, extend it to officers, and apply it to the Employment Standards Act. Officers and directors may be liable for up to six months' wages and twelve months' vacation pay.

Because of these changes, officers and directors will have a three-month grace period from the effective date of the legislation to obtain liability insurance if they wish to.

Finally, the amendments to the Employment Standards Act will create new, more efficient appeals processes for both workers and employers. Appeals initiated by employers, directors or officers or by the director of employment standards must start within 45 days of the application, and an approved adjudication process will be set up for workers. Our new streamlined appeals process will allow workers to obtain quickly money they have earned, while providing the employers with a speedy right of appeal.

I want to emphasize that the government expects employers to continue to live up to their obligations to their employees. By setting out this legislation, we are strengthening the power of the employment standards branch to ensure that these responsibilities are carried out. In addition, we are creating the backup security that workers need to obtain the money owed them by their employers, especially in cases where the employers are unable to meet their financial responsibilities due to insolvency.

In the consultations on this legislation, workers and the employer groups agreed that wage protection measures would be of real benefit to workers by removing the uncertainty and fear of non-payment of wages, especially in these difficult economic times. In this government, we believe it is absolutely necessary to pay people the wages they have earned for the work they have done, and we believe that these employees should be paid their money promptly, without undue or unforeseen obstacles. For these reasons, the employee wage protection program will offer workers quick recourse to their entitlements.

The wage protection program is a measure that this government is proud to introduce today. I trust we can count on the support of all members of the House to ensure that deserving employees recoup their wages as expeditiously as possible.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not thank the members of the ministry, the members of my own staff and legislative counsel for the large amount of work, including overtime, that they have had to do over the past weeks in preparing this particular complex piece of legislation.

BUSINESS PRACTICES

Hon Ms Churley: I wish to announce that a binding order has been issued against the Ontario Science Centre for violation of the province's Discriminatory Business Practices Act.

The action results from a ministry investigation into a contract signed between the OSC and the sultanate of Oman for the provision of a children's museum.

The binding order includes the following measures: The OSC has acknowledged it violated the Discriminatory Business Practices Act; the OSC will make public documents related to the contract with the sultanate of Oman; the OSC will not discriminate in future business practices; the OSC will revise its administrative practices and other policies and procedures to ensure compliance with the Discriminatory Business Practices Act; the OSC's board of directors must approve all future international contracts and submit them to the director responsible for the Discriminatory Business Practices Act for review before they are signed.

The investigation concluded that Mark Abbot, the director general of the centre, in 1990 signed a contract with the Sultanate of Oman which contravened the Discriminatory Business Practices Act. The board of the Ontario Science Centre was not apprised of the contents of the contract prior to its finalization. The contract was signed despite concerns raised by the lawyers in the Ministry of Culture and Communications.

The Discriminatory Business Practices Act contains a provision prohibiting a person or organization from entering into discriminatory transactions. It was passed by the Ontario Legislature in 1978.

The Ontario Science Centre incident was most unfortunate and one that serves to highlight the importance of eliminating discriminatory practices whenever they occur. I believe the decision taken in connection with this incident has been appropriate and will best serve the public interest. My ministry will monitor the situation with the Ontario Science Centre to ensure full compliance of the binding order. I am tabling in the House today a copy of the binding compliance order.

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COMMUNITY JUSTICE WEEK

Hon Mr Hampton: I would like to take a few moments to inform the members of the Legislature that 15 April marks the beginning of Community Justice Week in Ontario, an annual event reaching out into local communities across the province to foster understanding and involvement in the justice system. Sponsored by the Ontario ministries of the Attorney General, the Solicitor General and Correctional Services, Community Justice Week demonstrates our commitment to a more accessible, more affordable and, perhaps more important, a more humane and understandable system of justice.

Understanding, having a sense of responsibility for and a desire to participate in institutions which provide legal services will only arise from concerted efforts to open and improve information to the public. Increasing public access to justice services can be achieved through improved public knowledge of those services. Community Justice Week will help to give to people a greater appreciation of how the justice system actually works in Ontario.

Discussion at the local level is also an important contribution to our efforts to ensure that the justice system is more responsive to the needs of the people and more reflective of the society it serves.

This year's theme, "Justice: We All Make It Happen," is intended to bring to the people of Ontario a sense of ownership and participation in the justice process.

Community Justice Week is being celebrated in various ways across the province. Crown attorneys, the police, correctional staff and others whose work contributes to the justice process will be meeting with groups to provide information and encourage community co-operation and involvement in the administration of justice.

The Canadian Bar Association -- Ontario, for example, has organized a number of activities for Law Day, which will be held on 17 April. This year, the Ministry of the Attorney General is providing support for a number of the CBAO's activities, such as mock trial competitions in Ontario high schools, court tours for junior high school students and the association's essay contest, which is open to students in grades 10 through 13.

Highlighting this year's activities are a number of video presentations taking place throughout Ontario. Through joint sponsorship of the ministries of the Attorney General, the Solicitor General and Correctional Services, the video Just...For You will be presented to students and members of the public.

Through a fictitious case involving two young offenders who are alleged to have stolen a car, the video illustrates the various steps in the justice process by tracing the incident from the initial contact with the police, through the court system, to a view of some of the dispositions available for young offenders.

To showcase the video, there will be numerous panel presentations across the province with representatives of the three justice ministries and the CBAO fielding questions from the students after the video is shown.

By focusing on how people can help make justice happen, we hope to strengthen contact and dialogue between the justice ministries and students who may not be touched directly by the issues. By fostering a better understanding of the justice system at an early age, future generations will find the system more understandable and hence more accessible.

In keeping with the spirit of Community Justice Week, I encourage all members to participate in events held in their communities. We need everyone's co-operation to best demonstrate how we all help make justice happen in Ontario.

RESPONSES

WAGE PROTECTION

Mr Nixon: I think it is appropriate that I respond to the Minister of Labour, since I have been somewhat critical of the delays he has been responsible for in bringing forward this material. Having said that, I want to tell him we welcome it into the House and look forward to seeing the legislation and perusing it. In so far as it responds to the recommendations from the Premier's Council that were tabled last summer, we will have no trouble supporting it, but I know the minister and his colleagues will have additions to that which we will look at with care and interest.

The honourable minister is aware, of course, that while this compensation is important and much sought after, he has indicated 12,000 people have already indicated their interest by their application. Still, it does nothing to improve the provision of jobs in this province, which is a matter of serious proportions and which we deal with from time to time in question period and in the general debates here.

I was interested in the prospect of the cost, of course, with 12,000 applicants at a maximum of $5,000 each. While there might be about $60 million required for this interim period, he indicated that the Treasurer was probably thinking in general terms, since it is coming from the consolidated revenue fund without any other revenues earmarked to support it at this time, and that he might have to allocate as much as $120 million. If the Treasurer's economists indicate that the recession may lengthen and deepen, naturally there would have to be even more money involved, so this is a program of some considerable proportions.

We are also interested in the way it relieves the banks and those others who would be creditors of the bankrupt companies from fulfilling their specific responsibilities. I know the minister and his colleagues would be very anxious to see that this money was going into the pockets of the working people, and not necessarily relieving any financial responsibility of those other people responsible for the financing of the bankrupt endeavours.

We will have something further to say about putting more onus on officers as well as directors. Certainly, having quicker appeals is always worth while because naturally a fair and equitable government applies both to workers and management. Anything that can speed up the ponderous aspects of the bureaucracy under the minister's control would be well worth while.

We welcome the legislation and we look forward to seeing it in print, considering it in our caucus and debating it in the House.

Mr Sorbara: Before I respond to the statement of the Attorney General, just let me remind the Minister of Labour that he needs to strengthen substantially his employment standards branch if he is going to be able to honour the commitments he has made today.

COMMUNITY JUSTICE WEEK

Mr Sorbara: In response to the statement by the Attorney General concerning Community Justice Week, let me begin by saying that the one small benefit I thought we would have as a result of the election of last 6 September was that this new, progressive NDP government would rid itself of the self-congratulatory weeks and stop making statements about what a great job it is doing. I think they are unnecessary. I thought they were unnecessary during our time in government and during the time of the Tories' government.

It is really unfortunate that the Attorney General, who has been in his office now for some seven months, can tell us no more than that we are going to, once again, for another year, celebrate Community Justice Week. His new theme is "Justice: We All Make it Happen," except for the thousands and thousands of accused who are not going to trial, whose cases are being dismissed because the courts are backlogged, the thousands and thousands of people who are finding, because of expense or because of the unavailability of legal aid, that they simply do not have access to the justice system.

My friend the Attorney General was talking about a more humane and understandable system, but he has been there for a very long time now and he has not brought in one measure that would do anything to make our system of justice more accessible. I invite him to do that. When he does that, I can tell him that Her Majesty's loyal opposition will be very anxious to hear his statement and very anxious to support his measures.

I think, for example, of the case reported just a few days ago of the sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl. That case was dismissed; it did not get to trial. There are thousands and thousands of victims out there who will not be attending his Community Justice Week because they think he has not done a good enough job.

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WAGE PROTECTION

Mrs Witmer: I support the need for employees to receive wages in the cases of bankruptcy and abandonment and I am pleased that this has been introduced today. However, it is also time for this government to recognize that Ontario is again leading the way. We are leading the way in the introduction of this legislation. Only Manitoba and Quebec have similar legislation at this time.

However, we are also leading the way in the loss of jobs. At this time, we have lost in this province three quarters of all job losses in Canada. One out of two employees who has lost his job has been permanently laid off. I say to the Minister of Labour, what is he doing to retain existing jobs? Although this legislation may ease the pain of employment temporarily after the plants close, it is not going to create one single new job.

What is the minister doing to make Ontario competitive again? What is he doing to create an economic climate that encourages job creation? What initiatives will he be providing to business to move to Ontario and create new jobs in order that dependency on this fund will eventually decrease?

This is a major initiative, and I would suggest to the government that it allow sufficient time to study and analyse the impact of this proposed legislation and allow an opportunity for all those involved to be involved in the discussion.

COMMUNITY JUSTICE WEEK

Mr Harris: I want to comment on the statement by the Attorney General on behalf of the Solicitor General and those involved in the justice portfolio.

First of all, I want to congratulate and pay tribute to the member for Carleton who, back in 1982, as the Provincial Secretary for Justice, inaugurated a week as Community Justice Week. This has been an annual event since that period of time. It was 1982, when the justice ministries were co-ordinated under a Provincial Secretariat for Justice, and the left hand knew what the right hand was doing. Correctional Services knew what the Attorney General was doing and the Attorney General knew what the Solicitor General was doing and all of the ministers actually knew what was going on in their departments.

Those were the good days for justice. That was when justice was a priority of the government of the day here in Ontario. For the Attorney General to stand up today and talk about I do not know how much money -- I would like to know -- going into all these videos, supposedly -- well, they are probably a bunch of NDP firms that affiliated with producing the videos too. As long as they affiliate and donate to the NDP, I guess they get to produce the videos; I do not know. Maybe that is why the members opposite are so sensitive.

The minister says, "This week will give people a realistic appreciation of how the justice system actually works in Ontario." Nothing could be farther from the truth. The justice system in this province is not working. We are seeing that day after day after day.

[Applause]

Mr Harris: The member can applaud for that. We are finding that the resources to the justice field are declining year after year after year, and under the Liberal administration the percentage that went to the justice field went down each and every budget year. I venture that it will go down again this year if and when the Treasurer can figure out when he is going to bring in his budget. Because of the lack of resources the police have, the bottom line of it is that the odds of getting caught are now slimmer than they are of getting away. Once you are caught, because of the Askov case, the odds of actually going to trial and being convicted are less than they are of actually coming to trial. If by chance you beat the odds and you are found guilty, the penalty is you get to play volleyball.

ORAL QUESTIONS

JOB SECURITY

Mr Nixon: I have a question for the Premier pertaining to the sale of de Havilland announced yesterday. I would like to ask him about the situation where the Premier or the government announced a special committee to review this matter, a working group chaired by the Deputy Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology himself, a very competent person who has the confidence of the government and many people in this House, probably everybody, and yet this went forward under the circumstances that, according to the union representatives, 1,700 jobs will be lost and a recourse to research and development might very well be impaired.

During the two months that this working group was in operation, I understand they reported to the Premier and some members of cabinet at least once. Can the Premier report what their recommendations were in this regard, whether they now favour the sale and, if not, what recommendations they have given to him and the government to stop the sale of de Havilland to these foreign interests and how can we save these jobs?

Hon Mr Rae: I know that all the members of the House, and I certainly know the Leader of the Opposition, would share what I think is a fundamental concern of the people of this province, and that is that a company which has contributed as much as de Havilland has and will in the future must receive all the attention and focus that it can for its future. We believe there is a strong future for de Havilland in the province of Ontario, that there are not only new jobs, but high-tech jobs, well-paid jobs, that will produce exports and that will be long-term jobs in the province, that can and will be there. We are going to do everything we can to see that is exactly what happens.

Mr Bradley: Consumers' Gas, Varity.

Hon Mr Rae: I want to tell the Leader of the Opposition very directly, in answer to his question, first of all, that the working group which he has referred to consists of members of the government, members of the business community who on a voluntary basis have contributed their time to giving us advice -- both Mr Blundell and Mr Corcoran, who are very senior and helpful, have been very, very helpful in our work -- as well as members of the trade union involved who obviously have a very strong stake in the future of the company, and Mr Pecaut, who is with the Canada Consulting Group which was very much involved with the previous Premier's Council, so I am sure he is familiar with his work and capabilities. The working group is still very much at work. They are obviously waiting, as we all are, for any particular details of the sale and the nature of the contract that has been signed between ATR and Boeing.

But I would say to the Leader of the Opposition that the direct answer to his question is no. The working group has not, under any shape or form, approved of the deal. They have not even seen it. Certainly, all the advice I have received from the working group so far has been to stress the importance of this company and these jobs to the province and to Canada -- not just to Ontario but to the whole country. I would remind the Prime Minister of that simple fact of life when it comes to these jobs and say to the Leader of the Opposition that we are going to be doing everything we can in a constructive and positive way to see that these jobs and this company have as strong and as creative a future as is humanly possible.

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Mr Nixon: I believe I heard the Premier this morning on CBC. He said he had some reliance on Investment Canada and that its feet should be held to the fire. I am not sure that that is the exact quote, but there was an indication that he felt they were going to do something about it, although, as you would know, Mr Speaker, Investment Canada has reviewed 900 takeovers since it took its responsibilities four years ago, and has stopped none of them. So there is not really much to hope for there.

However, the Premier, on the first day of the last election campaign, went out to de Havilland, which was an appropriate backdrop for some fairly strong statements, although he did back off when he said he was not a socialist that day, for some reason, as I recall. He went so far as to say he would support government ownership of the plant if that was required to save the jobs.

Now, it is interesting that he, through this question period, has sent a message to the Prime Minister of Canada indicating the importance of this business to Ontario and Canada, because the Prime Minister of Canada used their question period to send a message to this Premier. Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that he "would entertain very seriously an offer from the government of Ontario to take over the de Havilland operation."

I think we should be aware that de Havilland received $1 billion in government grants over the period of its development. The government of Canada then sold it to Boeing for $150 million and gave Boeing about $150 million in grants. In other words, they paid Boeing to take it off their hands even though its capability is world-renowned.

This is a very difficult situation for us all, but I would suggest that the Premier's feet are getting a bit toasted at the present time. He said he would take it over. The Prime Minister said he would seriously consider a move by the Premier to take over de Havilland. I wonder if he would clarify his thinking in this important matter at this time.

Hon Mr Rae: I will be glad to, and I will be glad to very directly.

I think the comment the Prime Minister made yesterday with respect to these jobs shows an insensitivity to a company that is profoundly important to the future of this country and of our economy. I say to all members of the House that this is not a moment in which the government of Canada should be turning its back on the workers at de Havilland or on the company or on the research and development future of this province. This is a moment when the government of Canada should understand that these workers deserve attention and deserve some understanding, as well as others in the country. That is what we expect from the Prime Minister of Canada.

I can simply tell the Leader of the Opposition this: this government, on the advice of the working group, which is going to be looking very intensely at exactly what is being proposed by the consortium as well as what alternatives are there -- there may be other purchasers, there may be other partnerships; all of these things are possible and all of these things will be discussed. But I say to the member that the Prime Minister of Canada and Investment Canada have a responsibility to the workers of this country and have a responsibility to jobs and science and technology, and so do we. We intend to live up to our responsibilities and I hope that Brian Mulroney lives up to his.

Mr Nixon: Mr Speaker, interjections have already brought to our attention the position taken by the Premier in allowing Varity to leave Canada and go to Buffalo after he made a statement in that regard, and they remember his position on Consumers' Gas, having been stated clearly, and that was sold out to foreign interests.

Now, Ontario has a great responsibility here and the Prime Minister, I suppose, is being unfair when he remembers that the Premier said that to save the jobs he would contemplate taking over de Havilland. A very extreme step indeed. And probably it may be irresponsible and extreme for the Prime Minister to add to his answer in the House of Commons something that did not have much to do with the question, that he would take the Premier's offer seriously.

I do not know whether the workers are caught in a bit of cross-fire here or not, but I am afraid that as both these first ministers back away from their responsibilities, those 1,600 workers may find that there is no one left to speak for them.

Now, there is a very strong quote from the Premier about Investment Canada. He said, "Investment Canada's reputation is riding on its ability to maintain and develop de Havilland in Ontario." We know the federal government's record. They put $1 billion in this. We know that Investment Canada is a weak reed, probably a useless reed. Perhaps the only hope these workers have and that Ontario has is that the government of Ontario come forward with a workable, usable plan, hopefully in conjunction with the government of Canada, and not taking long-range political shots between the socialists and the arch-Tories in Ottawa.

I would like the Premier to try once again, realizing many people are watching, but let's be serious about this: What can he do, other than berate the government of Canada, and perhaps, God forbid, repeat what he did with Varity and Consumers'?

Hon Mr Rae: If the House will permit, and if the Leader of the Opposition will permit, I will try to give him as clear an answer as I can. What we will do is based already on what we have done, and let me remind the House of what we have done. As the plans for a sale were announced, and as it became clear to us that these negotiations were proceeding, we brought together a group, a group of business people, a group of workers, government people and outside consultants who know something about the industry. I have met with a number of people, as well as with the working group, in terms of looking at what other alternatives there might be and how serious those business alternatives really are. I can tell the Leader of the Opposition that I intend to work with that group and intend to work with the government of Canada and with anyone else on a non-partisan, non-ideological basis to ensure the future of that company.

My concern about the comments of the Prime Minister yesterday was that he talked about this as some great foreign investment. ATR is going to be sending a cheque to Seattle, Washington, and that is not what I would call new investment creating new jobs in the province of Ontario. So it is important for us as a government to recognize that there are some very practical, hard-headed things we can do in making the kind of assessment of the company, in providing assistance to those who want to make other kinds of offers and in making the strongest possible case to the federal government and to Investment Canada as to what is required for a deal to be done which will in fact be in the best interests of all the people of the country. That is the test, that is the law, and that is exactly what this government intends to do.

The Speaker: New question.

Mr Nixon: In the case of Varity and Consumers', the Premier had the means to stop the sales, but still the interests were sold out to foreign interests. Perhaps that is the test that should give us the most concern.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr Nixon: I have a question of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, if I may. The minister will be aware of the findings of the Conference Board of Canada survey which shows that Ontario is bearing the brunt of this recession. Some indications are that the unemployment increase is twice as large in this province as in any other province and in general almost twice as large as the unemployment increase in the rest of Canada, excluding Ontario. The report noted that in 1981 and 1982, 118,000 jobs were lost, and in the last year, 226,000 jobs were lost. Comparing the recession at the beginning of the decade of the 1980s with the one now in Ontario, it is twice as bad here now as it was then, and as I pointed out in the first part of my preamble, if they will permit, it is twice as bad here now as it is elsewhere.

Does the minister have a specific plan to use the responsibility of his office and the budget that he presently has, plus any additions that the Treasurer may make available in the next few weeks, not just to help those people who have lost their jobs, which we all agree is important, but to see that we can start the growth of the Ontario economy again and create new jobs which are so desperately needed?

Hon Mr Pilkey: I suppose if I start to respond to the question by laying much of the fault on the fiscal policies of the federal government, it will evoke a rather loud response from the members opposite, but I must in fact do exactly that. If they do not care to listen to the claims from this side as legitimate, I might quote to them, emanating from the same article that I believe is referred to, from a Mr Gignac, senior economic adviser to the National Bank of Canada, where he suggests in the context of the free trade agreement, "It is not surprising that people are going to invest elsewhere."

We have this federal free trade agreement that has hurt Ontario and much of Canada. We also have a high interest rate policy which has put Ontario industries in a very uncompetitive circumstance. We also have a very high dollar, pegged by the Bank of Canada through John Crow, and he continues, as I said yesterday, to head towards a 2% inflation factor by the year 1995, and that will create more pain, more suffering, more business closures and more unemployment in this province.

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We will continue, as we have in the past, to try to reshape the federal government's thinking, but we know how difficult that is, as evidenced by the previous question to the Premier with respect to de Havilland.

Beyond that, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology will continue, through its domestic policy group, through its trade group, through its international offices, through the Premier's Council, through the very excellent work of the Ontario Development Corp, which has supported by way of loan and loan guarantees small and medium businesses in this province, to assist them in every way that we can to maintain their position as viable companies and employers in this province.

As well, we are establishing a new circumstance --

Mr Mahoney: Give him the hook. We want an answer.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Yes, we appreciate brevity; supplementary.

Mr Nixon: The honourable minister had the good grace to be apologetic about blaming the federal policy since that applies all over Canada and it is twice as bad here as anywhere else. There is some sort of a lesson there. He also indicated that he had a number of structures in place to assist, but those are the same ones that were in place during the time when we were creating 700,000 jobs, not losing 1,600 jobs a day. This is special.

Can the minister not give a single indication of what he and his colleagues are doing to make Ontario more attractive for international investment, which is so seriously needed here in order to create permanent jobs in place of the jobs that are being lost?

Hon Mr Pilkey: I appreciate the admission of the Leader of the Opposition, for if they are the very same policies that he suggested were in place before that are in place now, I do not think they are policies that perhaps he should stake too much claim to.

This province, through the creation of its $700-million anti-recession fund, through the worker protection fund and many other measures is attempting to cushion the impact on Ontario citizens who have felt the painful brunt of these federal policies.

In addition to that, we look forward to the budget at the end of this month or the beginning of next, when the Treasurer brings forward many new initiatives that this government has been working on and will establish, which will be the basis of the new strategy for Ontario development.

Mr Nixon: The Minister of Finance for Canada, like the minister who has just spoken, has also expressed his concern about the budget, and we are all interested to see what sort of an egg will be forthcoming. I would like in fact to break the question up and direct this to the Treasurer, but I know that is not permitted.

I would like to bring the minister's attention to a statement made by the Premier, who I find has a very good statement on almost every issue that comes along. On 10 December 1982, in a situation somewhat similar to what we are now experiencing, the present Premier said:

"Does the Treasurer not understand or realize that there is a substantial and growing consensus within the business community itself that there has to be a major act of faith, optimism and investment in and through the public sector to help get the economy going?"

It is twice as bad now as it was then. What is the difference except that in those days Frank Miller had a program that was geared to the needs of the people in the community and not just designed for a little third-rate publicity? Why does the minister not come forward with programs that are going to be useful?

Hon Mr Pilkey: I am sorry I do not have a more appropriate response to the decade-old question of the Leader of the Opposition.

PUBLIC SAFETY

Mr Harris: I have a question for the Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services. Yesterday an article appeared in the Hamilton Spectator alleging that the weekend inmates at the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre are given credit for time that they have not served. In fact, fully two thirds, it was reported, of the intermittent inmates do not spend any time in jail at all because there is no room for them.

I would ask the minister why this situation is allowed to develop and, second, would he not agree with me that there is a terrible lack of co-ordination among the justice ministries today? Does it seem appropriate to him to suggest that judges can sentence people and allow them to serve their sentences on the weekend -- obviously they have some understanding and sense that there will be a place for them and they actually will be able to serve it that way -- when in fact there is no space for them and they are not serving any time at all?

Hon Mr Farnan: The leader of the third party speaks of an issue close to my heart. It is important to have an integrated justice system.

Unfortunately, over the past 10 years, through benign neglect, there was a backlog building up in the courts that was simply allowed to accumulate and grow. This was something that took place during those Conservative years, followed by the next administration, but it is a challenge for us. It is a challenge that we are determined to face and indeed the Attorney General has made some very courageous steps. New judges have been hired, the 212,000 backlog of cases is being addressed and, within Correctional Services, we are attempting to deal with the clients who are sent to our system.

This provides challenges for us, challenges that have to have creative decisions. We are having blitz courts. We are having intermittent sentencing. All of these are things we are doing to cope with the challenge ahead of us.

Mr Harris: In the meantime, these so-called clients, ie, convicted criminals, are not serving any time at all and obviously they know it. They are aware of how much of a deterrent it is if they actually get caught and somehow or other actually do come to trial and then are sentenced.

On 25 March my colleague the member for Oakville South brought to the attention of the Premier the fact that convicted criminals were playing volleyball instead of performing community service. This is another way of handling the fact that we have no room in jails. There is no room to get them in on the weekend, so we punish them by giving them community service.

The Premier at that time promised to raise the issue with the minister. We have not heard anything back since 25 March, and I would ask the minister what he has done and why he has not reported back to this House as a result of this question on the status of this con game.

Hon Mr Farnan: Again, I am delighted to answer this question. The one program the leader of the third party is speaking of was a rather unfortunate situation where in fact people on community service orders were playing volleyball. Now that was happening for seven years, under the Conservative administration and under the Liberal administration, and under the NDP we cut it out; no more, period.

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Mr Eves: The same guys have been playing volleyball for seven years? Is that what you said? That was the question and that was your answer.

Mr Harris: Clearly the Canadian Olympic volleyball team will want to see these people who have been practising for seven years.

The bottom line is that the minister knew nothing about this, that the justice ministries do not seem to know what one another are doing, that sentences are obviously inappropriate, because they cannot facilitate and accommodate them, and when they do, there is no follow-up, nobody knows what is going on anyway.

Yesterday my colleague the member for Leeds-Grenville was forced to raise the gruesome case of a convicted rapist serving only two months of a two-year sentence. I was away yesterday but I was shocked last night as I was reviewing the events of the day to find out that the Solicitor General was not even aware of this appalling situation.

Criminals are roaming the streets with seeming immunity while the Solicitor General and the Attorney General and the Minister of Correctional Services and those involved in justice seem to be roaming the halls. I would suggest to the members that perhaps the biggest threat to safety in our community is this government's inaction and inability to know what is really going on.

I ask the minister straightforwardly and simply -- I understand now he seems to know about this case since the member for Leeds-Grenville brought it up to him -- why is it that this was allowed to happen? Why is it that he did not know about this? Would he at least admit to this House that he really does not know what is going on in the justice system throughout this province?

Hon Mr Farnan: Let me just simply say that in the case of Mr Uloth, who is the individual the leader of the third party is speaking about, a judge determined that Mr Uloth -- at the time of arrest he was released from court on bail and remained in the community for seven months until he was returned to court for trial. Also, after he was released, he went to a community residential centre that has an outstanding record, and let me say that never in the past in this community residential centre has an individual who was a sex offender violated that probation at that placement.

Because of the special circumstances and the genuine community concern, I have ordered that Mr Uloth be placed at the Ontario Correctional Institute for a review to see if his placement in the community residential centre was indeed appropriate. That is in recognition of community concern.

Mr Runciman: My question is also to the Minister of Correctional Services and it again deals with the Uloth case. Certainly I will commend the minister for taking prompt action in response to my inquiries yesterday in this Legislature, but I, as well as my leader, am very much concerned that he was unaware of this situation and that in fact he appears to be, in the preamble to his announcement, defending what is indeed the indefensible: the fact that an individual responsible for the rape of a 12-year-old girl was out in the streets of the same community in which that girl resides after only two months of, as I have described it, soft time.

I would like the minister to perhaps provide the House with a more lucid explanation and a more acceptable explanation to the public at large as to why this individual, and who knows how many others across the province, are out in the streets of communities right across Ontario after serving a very minimum period of time in the provincial institutions.

Hon Mr Farnan: The temporary absence program is one of the most successful programs we have. Let me say to the member that the reality of the matter is that professional individuals -- social workers, psychologists, all of these people -- are involved in the assessment. In the case of this particular placement, in the agency to which he was sent there has never been a case where the individual has violated a trust at that placement. This individual he is talking about has not violated a trust at that placement, what we are saying is that we are going to be condemning an individual although he has not broken the trust of the placement. We are sensitive to the issue, we are sensitive to community concerns, and we are going to review and see if that placement is indeed appropriate with a second opinion. I believe this is fair, it is just, and I believe this is the right direction in which to go.

Mr Runciman: That is a pretty dreadful and shameful non-explanation of why that individual and many others across this province are out on the street. I want to say about breaking a trust that I was a member of Brockville city council when that halfway house was put in place, and the people of Brockville were promised that no sex offenders would be housed in that halfway facility. So the government has already breached a trust of the public.

I want to bring to the attention of the minister that I was contacted today in respect of the temporary absence program. I want to indicate that a directive was issued by this ministry, by the assistant deputy minister of operational services, to superintendents of adult institutions, 1 February 1991 -- so the minister cannot blame this on any previous government -- ordering that all non-security screening factors for the temporary absence program were to be discontinued.

Some of those screening factors were: no temporary absence program until one sixth or one third of sentence served; temporary absences granted only after every 30 days; no temporary absences until 60 days of assessment or 60 days in the institution. All out the window because of the directive of an ADM in this ministry. One of the effects of this is that someone can be theoretically considered for a temporary absence after only six hours in a lockup. Unless there are concrete reasons not to give a TA, officials feel compelled to give it. They no longer take into account the seriousness of crime and its impact on the community.

I was advised by Ministry of Correctional Services officials that they have been keeping their fingers crossed that nobody finds out about what has happened. There has been no public consultation whatsoever. We have had a dramatic and dangerous shift in policy, and this government, which goes around telling people, "We want to consult," has not said one word to the public. They have kept it completely secret. How can the minister justify that?

Hon Mr Farnan: The member will know that in a bail program, for example, an individual can be released into the community without ever having been in an institution. The important thing is that: We have to approach this in a calm, rational, reasonable way. These are important, substantive issues. We have processes, and always at the basis of our decisions within the Ministry of Correctional Services is the safety and security both of those in our custody and of the community. We will continue to have the safety and security of all as the basis for all our judgements.

Mr Runciman: My leader made a point earlier on that this minister does not know what is going on with respect to his ministry. Perhaps it is because he has two ministries and has too much to do. I do not know. But this is a very serious issue. We are talking about public safety here, and this minister apparently did not even realize that an ADM in his ministry issued a directive in effect to shove these folks out back on to the streets. Shove them out on to the streets: It does not matter how serious their crime is, whether they are sex offenders, whether they have histories of violent crime or not. Push them back out on to the streets. Let's relieve the jail overcrowding situation and free up beds.

I do not know how this minister can stand in this House in good conscience and address this Legislature, let alone the people of Ontario, and say that is a right thing to do. Let him stand up and admit he has made a mistake and get on top of things and be concerned about public safety in this province.

Hon Mr Farnan: We will make the commitment that we will continue to work for the safety and security of all the people of the province. We have in place decision-making processes and we have checks within that process in order that we can review decisions. That is what happened in the Uloth case and that is what we will continue to do for the future. The Ministry of Correctional Services will provide the best possible services that are available to us.

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UNEMPLOYMENT

Mr Bradley: I have a question for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. The most recent unemployment figures for Ontario reveal that the largest increase of any area in this province has taken place in the Niagara Peninsula, where the rate has soared from 7.9% in February to over 14% in the month of March, with layoffs this winter, as the minister may be aware, at Niagara Structural Steel, Tri-Sure Products, Ford Glass, Gerber Foods, Alo Canada, Nabisco, General Motors, Hayes-Dana and TRW among many others.

The minister should be aware, because he has been the mayor of a municipality, that the figures do not reveal the actual misery people are going through, the desperation, the concern, the anguish that is experienced not only by those who are unemployed but the families of those who are unemployed, and those people who remember the NDP promises of prosperity and full employment in the province.

What specific programs has the minister initiated and is he initiating to put people in the Niagara Peninsula back to work?

Hon Mr Pilkey: I have responded to that question to the Leader of the Opposition. The calamity that has befallen most of these companies our federal government induced by its fiscal policies in this nation. I will recount very briefly for members: the free trade agreement, which was enacted without the proper notification or time for companies to react to the US competition; the high interest rates, which are considerably higher, four or five percentage points higher, than those of their US counterparts; and the high Canadian dollar, which has made it very difficult for Ontario industries to compete. Also now we face the prospect of a trilateral agreement with the United States and Mexico, which again will not put us on a very level playing field, which will put even more Ontario-based industries at jeopardy.

I indicated earlier as well many of the things that this government is attempting to do to cushion the impact for those affected, and I also advise that we will be announcing further industrial strategy through the budget that the Treasurer will bring forward in a very few weeks.

Mr Bradley: The only answer I have heard so far is no answer, or I think it was answer number four in the categories produced by the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, who suggested that the minister would blame the federal government for all of these. Not only are my constituents in St Catharines and people throughout the Niagara Peninsula worried about temporary layoffs, which of course limit their ability to meet their obligations, to pay their mortgages, to pay the loans they have made and to put food on the table, but they are concerned that their jobs are going to disappear permanently; not just temporarily, permanently.

I ask the minister: What is he doing to encourage new jobs to come to the province of Ontario, to encourage people in this country and other countries to invest in new jobs in our province, and to retain those jobs which are here at the present time?

Hon Mr Pilkey: I can advise the member that we have engaged in a number of consultations with business and with labour to try to forge new partnerships to create a circumstance where we can be more productive and more competitive in this province of Ontario.

I do not wish to recount and be repetitive of the comments I made earlier, but I might cite one particular example the member might know of. We just created 250 jobs in his own riding for the Pelee Island ferry, and while he was Transportation critic he wanted those jobs to go to the United States of America.

Interjections.

Mr Bradley: People in my riding will be glad to hear that smart-assed answer.

The Speaker: The member for St Catharines, I think knows full well what is smarting the ears of the Speaker right now and may wish to reconsider one small phrasing of his. I appreciate the intensity of feeling around the issues that are raised here, but at the same time -- yes?

Mr Bradley: I certainly do not recall what it was, but anything that you consider to be offensive I would withdraw.

The Speaker: And now perhaps the member for Parry Sound, who has been waiting patiently, can place his question.

HEALTH CARE

Mr Eves: I have a question of the Minister of Health. During the past fiscal year, $221 million of Ontario taxpayers' money has been spent by her ministry on health care in the United States of America. Do we not have adequate health facilities here in Ontario to treat these people?

Hon Ms Gigantes: As I have indicated in past answers to questions on this subject, there are areas, for example, in the treatment of people with acquired brain injury, in which we feel we do not have adequate services yet in this province, and we are undertaking the planning and the program measures that we hope will provide those services before much longer passes.

Mr Eves: That may be true with respect to that one particular aspect of health care, but the minister will also know that treatment for substance abuse is sadly lacking in the province and that many of these patients have gone to the United States for cardiovascular surgery because they cannot receive it in Ontario close enough to home or in a short period of time.

Now I understand that her ministry has hired an American-based consulting firm, Hansen Associates, to negotiate, according to an official in her ministry, "preferred financial arrangements" to expand even further her cross-border health care shopping.

The minister's party is against cross-border shopping, but it is not against cross-border health care shopping. In fact, it has hired a US firm to look into the expenditure of its money in the United States of America. To quote a Windsor doctor, "Isn't that kind of like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop?"

Hon Ms Gigantes: The doctor in Windsor was not the one who invented that phrase. I think it was the former member for Sudbury East. The Health critic for the Conservative Party will be aware from previous statements I have made on behalf of this government that there are various measures which the government has already undertaken which we hope will help reduce the cost of the existing outflow of patients to the United States. Among those measures he will have noted, I am sure in the past, that we indicated that the Ministry of Health was hiring assistance from an insurance company -- I believe it is an insurance company -- in the United States familiar with the pattern of American-based insurance companies which managed to negotiate preferred rates with the American private-profit hospital system in the United States.

We see no reason why, when American private hospital corporations are seeking Canadian business, we should be paying rates above those paid by people who are insured through private companies in the United States.

Other measures which we hope will divert the flow of patients to the United States are the real core of the program needs that we have. What we are doing is developing policy which I hope to bring before this House in a very short period of time, which in fact will stop that outflow of patients and make sure we are providing services here and employing Ontarians to provide those services.

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PORK INDUSTRY

Mr Hansen: Tomorrow night I have a meeting with the Niagara North Pork Producers' Association. I have a question for the Minister of Agriculture and Food regarding the continued moves by the US government against Canadian and Ontario hog and pork exports to the United States. What is the minister going to do to resist such harassment of the Ontario hog and pork industry?

Hon Mr Buchanan: I am very pleased to respond to that question. We have had considerable discussion about the free trade agreement in this House today. The pork producers put a lot of faith in the free trade agreement. They thought it would allow them to export Canadian and Ontario pork to the United States. They were faced with a countervail duty which is very significant to them. They felt it was unfair. They have been fighting it for some time with assistance from the provincial and the federal governments. About a month ago, the US International Trade Commission ruled on that countervail, said it was unfair and in fact that the duties would be returned. Since that time some of the pork producers in the United States have lobbied their government to take a second look at that, which we feel is very unfair to our producers and does not live up to the spirit of the free trade agreement.

I have written my federal counterpart, Mr Mazankowski, urging him to take very strong intervention and make our voices heard in Ottawa. I am encouraged that Mr Crosbie is starting to speak out against this intervention. We will work with the industry to do as much as we can and encourage our federal counterparts to take very strong actions.

Mr Hansen: I understand the political pressure on the US government to maintain the duties for further review is immense. What action is the minister considering if the duties remain in place?

Hon Mr Buchanan: If the duties remain in place, we are going to have to continue to fight co-operatively with the federal government and the industry. I believe that it may be important that if Mr Crosbie and Mr Mazankowski cannot be heard in Washington, perhaps we should join with the pork producers and the processors; perhaps we should go to Washington ourselves with the producers and make our voices heard in Washington.

UNEMPLOYMENT IN NORTHERN ONTARIO

Mrs McLeod: I found it offensive that there was only one brief sentence of support offered to northern Ontario communities and their beleaguered single-industry towns in what is now a long-forgotten throne speech. But I find it even more offensive that since that time this government has done nothing to alleviate the hardship being felt in those northern communities and has done nothing to create initiatives that would bring about new permanent jobs in northern communities.

If I can reference, in a question to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, the community of Atikokan, in the riding held by the Attorney General, where 515 people were laid off recently at Atikokan Forest Products and at Proboard -- this is 37% of the private sector workforce in that town -- I would ask the minister, what has he or his ministry or this government done specifically for the people in Atikokan to save these jobs, to create new permanent jobs to give this community some long-term stability?

Hon Mr Pilkey: I would like to refer the question to the Minister of Northern Development.

Hon Miss Martel: I appreciate the question raised by the member. It is the same kind of concern that has been raised by my colleague the Attorney General.

I would like to say to the member that we in this government have put in place a $15-million sawmill adjustment fund that we have been trying to use in order to reactivate those communities and in particular those businesses that have been hard hit both by the 15% softwood lumber tax, high interest rates and the high value of the Canadian dollar. There are many across northern Ontario that have been hard hit.

The problem in Atikokan in particular we have been trying to address with the owner of the company. The chairman of the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp asked what kind of assistance we could provide. We are looking at providing assistance both through the heritage fund and through the Northern Ontario Development Corp, but the problem we have now is that there is a fairly significant amount of working capital that has been requested and we are not clear at this point in time if in fact this government can provide that working capital to that particular employer.

Mrs McLeod: I recognize the fact that the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology has referred this question now to the Minister of Northern Development, but I must say, in asking my supplementary question, that this also gives me very great cause for concern. We believed, when we formed the government, that it was the responsibility of all of the ministers of the cabinet to be concerned about northern Ontario issues, just as they would be concerned about issues across the whole of the province.

I would remind the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology that he is the minister responsible for industry in this province, in all of this province. That means he is the minister responsible for dealing with the very serious questions and concerns that face our forest products industry and our mining industry and our steel industry, and I would hope that in the future that minister would be prepared to deal with the questions related to the future of the industry and the creation of new jobs in any part of the province.

In a supplementary question to the Minister of Northern Development, I would simply ask again, what new initiatives, not necessarily in response only to those specific industries and specific jobs, although we are clearly concerned about those, but what new initiatives can she point to at this point that will have helped to create and support initiatives that would bring about new permanent jobs?

Hon Miss Martel: I am pleased to respond on behalf of the government. I would like to make the point that all of my cabinet colleagues, and indeed all of my caucus members, are very supportive of northern Ontario. I saw that even in the announcement. I might point out to the opposition that of the $700 million that was allocated by the Treasurer in the anti-recession fund, fully 30% went to northern Ontario. I am very proud that my colleagues saw fit to do that and I am proud that we lobbied for it.

I want to raise two other points. As I have said very clearly to the member, we have put in place a $15-million fund that is being jointly administered through MITT and my ministry to look at adjustment measures in sawmill communities and those companies that own sawmills. Second, we have provided $15 million to the community of Elliot Lake for diversification efforts. Third, we have entered into negotiations with the Algoma Central Railway and have provided funding to ensure that it can continue so we can continue the employment in Sault Ste Marie with respect to the hospitality industry and with respect to Wawa, because those jobs in Wawa are very dependent on that train continuing to operate.

I say on behalf of the government that we are doing the best we can in northern Ontario. They are very difficult times -- times, I might point out, that have not been helped by federal government policies or continued years of neglect on behalf of both the Liberals and the Tory government.

PORNOGRAPHY

Mr Jackson: I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. On 25 March both the member for Leeds-Grenville and myself raised the issue in this House of the existence of X-rated pornographic material which has been recently approved through a change by the Ontario Film Review Board.

At that time in this House, the minister stated the following, and I quote from Hansard:

"I do not know enough about the issue to be able to answer today. I want to be able to give a clear and concise answer." She wanted to talk to the film board "tomorrow." "It is a very important question and I take it very seriously.... I will be getting to this very soon. It is a personal priority of mine...and I will be looking into it very, very quickly."

Those were the minister's words. What has the minister done in the last three weeks about this?

Hon Ms Churley: The process for the classification of films, as the member knows, is done by the Ontario Film Review Board and there is a criminal law role for the courts and the police in enforcing the obscenity provisions of the Criminal Code, which comes under federal jurisdiction.

I just want to point out that the film review board does not censor films; it classifies films. It operates under the Theatres Act and it has specific guidelines. Part of the problem right now is that the issue is before the courts and the film review board is having to make some difficult choices about what it classifies. However, they do have some guidelines right now that they are applying to what they are classifying.

We are all waiting for the results of the case that is right now before the Court of Appeal, and when that becomes apparent, when we know the answer to whatever comes out of that decision, it is going to have some impact and some influence on how the film review board classifies films. We are still waiting for that answer and in the meantime the review board is classifying according to the guidelines which it operates under.

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Mr Jackson: It sounds that in three weeks the minister has been able to locate a briefing book. What I was hoping was that we would take her at her word that she was going to meet with the film review board and that she was concerned, as she indicated in Hansard, about the proliferation of this kind of material.

The minister would be aware, as I know the Solicitor General is aware, that the police in Metro Toronto have confiscated off the shelves of these video stores material that has been classified by the film review board but is prohibited under the Criminal Code. This information was shared with the minister yesterday. These films involve women, with simulated sex acts with animals, bondage and violence. Yesterday, when she was advised of this by the CFTO News reporter Peter Durrant, she indicated to him that was not true. When pressed by that same reporter from CFTO News, she said, "Well, that's what my staff tell me."

We in this House who are receiving a lot of calls, the police force that is asked to press charges, the crown attorneys who have to go to court and prosecute, all have expressed concern that this province is doing nothing on this issue. So we ask the minister again, what is she doing about this issue, rather than simply waiting for the appeals of the Judge Locke and Judge Humphrey cases, which are a year old? When is she going to do something about this filth and this material which is degrading to women in this province and which she and her government are allowing to stay out on the streets?

Hon Ms Churley: First of all, I would like to say, as I said yesterday when I was asked this question and which unfortunately was left out in that repeat of a statement I made, that I am confident and that I know and have been assured by the film review board that it does not approve films which depict the kinds of acts that have just been described by the member opposite. I have spoken to the Solicitor General about this and he is going to be looking into this. I can clarify to this House today that in fact the film review board is not classifying films that depict these kinds of acts. It is an issue that I take very seriously, as I said yesterday, and we are looking into it now.

RACE RELATIONS

Mr Owens: My question is to the Minister of Citizenship. Last week she announced the anti-racism secretariat and in yesterday's Toronto Sun columnist Christie Blatchford wrote a column on that very secretariat. Now the columnist is taking this government to task by saying we are just doing the same old thing. I would like the minister to explain to the House and to the columnist how different the anti-racism secretariat is from the race relations directorate that was set up by the previous government.

Hon Ms Ziemba: There are many differences between our anti-racism secretariat and the race relations directorate that was in place when I took over. Some of the differences are that there is going to be community involvement, there is going to be core funding for communities to start to address racism. There is also going to be a very mandatory policy to look at how racism is depicted as it is right now in various forms, whether it is in the private or public sector. We are also having an advisory council that will be advising us and guiding us, especially with the native people, to make sure that we can get rid of racism.

I was very disturbed by the article depicted in the Sun, because we see that racism does exist, and misunderstanding of racism, in this province. As my colleague stated earlier today, it is very alive and well when we see cartoons depicting the bias and the prejudice and the attitudes that exist in our society, and we must stamp it out.

Mr Owens: Further on in the column the quote is: "The assumptions behind the anti-racism strategy are huge and childishly naive. 'Negative, intolerant attitudes towards racial groups are still widely held.'"

I would like the minister to explain to this House the kind of consultations and experiences that she undertook before (a) developing this strategy and (b) implementing it.

Hon Ms Ziemba: We did a lot of travelling around the province. We visited towns in the north, where racism against our first nations exists very strongly. We talked to various community groups in the greater Toronto area and Hamilton, and I talked to my colleagues on the opposite side who have experienced racism themselves and who told us how it is hard to overcome those biases and prejudice and how it remains with people. We are trying to make sure we can address those problems by having an advisory council that will make sure they tell us their experiences and their problems so that we can address the issue.

Again, I must say that the Toronto Sun has completely missed the point. We are not a negative government, but what we are doing is admitting that there is a problem, as we all want to admit that there is a problem. When there is a problem we admit it and we make sure that we try to address it. I am very proud of this government because we have said, "Yes, we are against racism."

PETITIONS

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION

Mr Abel: I have a petition with 367 signatures and it reads:

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows: to recommend to the Minister of Transportation the undertaking of a full review of the 403-Lynden Road extension and interchange, as previously supported and planned by the Ministry of Transportation, with a view to its implementation and construction as soon as possible, as well as commencing an Environmental Assessment Act review in the interests of the safety and convenience of the public at large."

I have another petition signed by 184 people from the riding of Wentworth North. It reads:

"We, the undersigned, are residents of the village of Linden and surrounding area. We strongly oppose the construction of an intersection at Highway 403 and the extension of Lynden Road across from the Haley farm. The dramatically increased traffic between Highway 8 and 403, especially trucks, would jeopardize the safety of our children, subject us to noise and pollution and would seriously disrupt our village way of life. For example, the one similar village of Morriston on Highway 6 is now a truck thoroughfare between 401 and 403. The village has been nearly destroyed. We object to our peaceful and friendly village coming to a similar fate due to an extremely costly and unnecessary link between two truck routes. Surely the 11-minute or 15-kilometre drive between the two planned exits will be adequate for any sensible lifestyle."

I sign my name to this petition.

ANIMALS FOR RESEARCH

Mr Malkowski: I am pleased to present a petition to the House signed by approximately 15,000 concerned citizens requesting a stop to the unnecessary and irresponsible use of animals in painful laboratory tests for cosmetic and household products. I also support this petition.

LANDFILL SITE

Mr Hayes: I am presenting a petition on behalf of the Canadian Auto Workers environment committee, together with local residents, who object to the current application by BFI to amend the Ridge Landfill Corp site certificate of approval to remove current restrictions on the service area in Ontario served by the site and to the potential expansion of the current landfilling limits. It says:

"We, the undersigned, support the subject committee's request for an environmental assessment hearing under the Environmental Assessment Act to allow a complete and full review of all the issues regarding this matter, consistent with our government's open-door policy on waste."

It is signed by 34 residents of Kent county, and there are 300 more yet to come.

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INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

EMPLOYMENT STANDARDS AMENDMENT ACT (EMPLOYEE WAGE PROTECTION PROGRAM), 1991 / LOI DE 1991 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES NORMES D'EMPLOI (PROGRAMME DE PROTECTION DES SALAIRES DES EMPLOYÉS)

Mr Mackenzie moved first reading of Bill 70, An Act to amend the Employment Standards Act to provide for an Employee Wage Protection Program and to make certain other amendments.

M. Mackenzie propose la première lecture du projet de loi 70, Loi portant modification de la Loi sur les normes d'emploi par création d'un Programme de protection des salaires des employés et par adoption de certaines autres modifications.

Motion agreed to.

La motion est adoptée.

Hon Mr Mackenzie: This is a major new initiative that we are pleased to move today that does provide a measure of protection for workers that has not been there before in the province of Ontario, and I do hope, given the comments of members on all sides of the House, that we will have support in getting this through so that workers already entitled to their wages can collect the money that is owed to them.

The Speaker: Introduction of bills, the member for Scarborough-Agincourt.

Mr Phillips: Introduction of bills: I did not have a chance to do this properly a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to introduce Bill Murdoch, who is the member for Grey. I do not know him well, but I think he is a fine fellow, what I do know of him. His daughter is with him today in the gallery, so I thought it was appropriate under introduction of bills to more formally introduce Bill Murdoch.

The Speaker: The member's introduction is out of order. None the less, I believe he is the only Bill in the assembly and of course now he has been properly introduced.

LAURAMAR HOLDINGS LIMITED ACT, 1991

Mr Henderson moved first reading of Bill Pr3, An Act to revive Lauramar Holdings Limited.

Motion agreed to.

REPRESENTATION AMENDMENT ACT, 1991 / LOI DE 1991 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LA REPRÉSENTATION ÉLECTORALE

Mr Tilson moved first reading of Bill 71, An Act to amend the Representation Act, 1986.

M. Tilson propose la première lecture du projet de loi 71, Loi portant modification de la Loi de 1986 sur la représentation électorale.

Motion agreed to.

La motion est adoptée.

Mr Tilson: The purpose of this bill is to rename the electoral district of Dufferin-Peel as the electoral district of Dufferin-Caledon.

TOWN OF OAKVILLE ACT, 1991

Mr Carr moved first reading of Bill Pr24, An Act respecting the Town of Oakville.

Motion agreed to.

Mr Carr: The purpose of the bill is to enable the town of Oakville to prohibit and/or regulate the placing or dumping of fill in the town.

The Speaker: I draw to members' attention that on private bills we do not normally have any introductory remarks, but the fault was the Chair's, not the member for Oakville South.

CITY OF TORONTO ACT, 1991

Mr Silipo moved first reading of Bill Pr64, An Act respecting the City of Toronto.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

OPPOSITION DAY

Mr Elston: I wish to commence today just by reading this, because I know that the people who are out in the audience are not able to participate in the same way by reading the resolution and I just want to bring it to their attention in the following fashion.

I do believe that we split the time, as I understand it, so if we could have some assistance with the clock to tell us exactly where we are about to be headed, that would tell us how long each of us will be speaking.

JOB CREATION

Mr Elston moved opposition day motion 1:

That, in the opinion of this House, since the New Democratic Party has taken power, Ontario employment has fallen by 282,000 actual jobs, which is at the rate of 1,600 for every day. Ontario has fallen from its traditional position as the province with the lowest unemployment to the fourth behind Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. Ontario has the worst job creation record of any province in Canada, based on monthly employment figures. All this government has offered for its seven months in power is a $34-million anti-recession fund for capital projects, which amounts to about $4.8 million per month on job creation projects, whereas the province takes in over $120 million in revenue every day, and since this Premier and Treasurer have turned from being defenders of the people to defenders of the status quo and have failed to provide the leadership and active government necessary for the province of Ontario in a period of severe economic recession, therefore, this House calls upon the Premier and the Treasurer to assume their leadership responsibilities in a government which has promised much, and delivered little, and undertake a comprehensive job creation program addressing all aspects of economic life in the province.

Mr Elston: It is necessary to get down to the hard facts of the situation that confronts the people of Ontario. We have some speakers who wish to follow me and my remarks will be relatively brief as we commence.

Needless to say, when we put the material together, from a statistical point of view, it was as accurate as the current statistics would have allowed us to be at the time. This motion was originally filed a week ago but unfortunately was delayed because of the missing of the time for filing the resolution with the table, and hence the extra days that have passed between the original presentation of this resolution to the table and now would mean there has been an increased accumulation of job losses in the province of Ontario and still no action.

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We noted yesterday with some interest and some amusement, only 24 hours before we were about to address this assembly on this extremely important and critical aspect of the New Democratic Party's failure in its role as government, that there was a recitation of events and reannouncements by the Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet. Although she tried to make the best of a very thin program, she was unable to convince us or any others in the province that they actually had put their minds to any way of creating permanent employment in Ontario and actually doing something which would be of assistance to those people in communities which have been reeling under the weight of plant closures, and not just closures that are temporary in nature but the closure of plants for all time in the foreseeable future.

Those towns and villages in my part of the province and right across Ontario will never open again to provide employment for the families who have chosen to live in those communities. That is a sad comment on the material presented by the Chairman of Management Board yesterday.

In addition to that, we are interested to some degree to see today -- the very day when the opposition is leading the debate on the need for the creation of permanent jobs for the province of Ontario and for instilling in the economy and in those people's minds who invest in Ontario the sense that there is reason to provide for permanent employment for permanent jobs right across the province -- that the Minister of Labour stood in his place after seven or eight months of being in government and doing nothing, threw up his hands and said, "We admit that all we can do is provide a maximum of $5,000 to those people who have not been paid the remaining amounts due to them under their contracts."

He did not say the people who were going to be helped were those people who had lost jobs, because that just is not so. People could be paid up, as is required by their employment contracts, could be paid every penny that is owed to them and still be permanently out of a position, permanently unable to provide for their families, for their futures and for their retirements.

The program announced today in this House by the Minister of Labour, who used to rant and rave over on this side of the House all the time about how he was going to protect the people of the province, amounts to a very unhappy scam on the working people of this province. He says 12,000 people will be assisted with this, up to a maximum of $5,000 as it is currently settled back to 1 October 1990. That may be so, but do members know what is interesting about that 12,000 number? The 12,000 employees who are going to participate in this program match almost exactly the 14,000 people who are to be employed under what is described as a $700-million job creation program by the government of Ontario.

Is it not ironic, when you add to those 12,000 people the 1,700 people who are about to lose their jobs at de Havilland because this government has broken its promise and commitment with respect to its role, promised by the Premier of this province when he was the opposition leader and at other times, that it would look into buying de Havilland. You have an exact match between these two programs and a clear admission of failure to come to grips with the need to do the utmost these people can do to protect and salvage jobs in Ontario and create new jobs. That is their obligation.

Where are the government's failures most evident? Its failures are most evident right across the province where there are single-industry towns, like in northern Ontario, where there are small communities which have had traditional industries which no longer now make the products for which they became renowned, places like Wingham, where I grew up, where they used to make doors at Stanley door, where they used to make doors at Premdor, formerly known as Lloyd-Truax. All of those places are now closed. Harriston, where they used to make dairy products at the Canada Packers factory, is now closed. People are out of work there. The municipality is without income. I think the amount of income suggested now being lost to that community as a result of the closure of Canada Packers is some $78,000; not an insignificant sum for a place the size of Harriston, Ontario.

What is the response? There is no response. There is a happy coincidence that these people have accelerated the placement of new roofs on schools. There is the happy coincidence that they have escalated the rate at which they are going to put some blacktop on highways. There are some good program moneys going into building new outhouses in parks, some even in my own riding. But the length of time that employment is going to exist in the riding of Bruce, Huron, Perth or Lambton or any of them is very short. There are no permanent jobs in those. There is not a creation of new jobs in those, only perhaps the preservation of some jobs that may not have been picked up as early this year if this program had not been announced, but no new permanent jobs.

There is no strategy with respect to the manner in which this government is going to create an investment climate which makes jobs, new jobs, available to communities like those I have talked about. There has not even been a summary of a plan. There has not even been a skeleton laid out upon which we can debate the issues of the day, about whether or not there is merit in any of their proposals for the economic revitalization of Ontario.

Far from protecting Ontario, these people have stood or sat or slept through an entire depopulation of the manufacturing sector in some parts of our province that is in fact worse than at any other time in our history. These people are really laissez-faire Tories. These people are really not in the game at all. They have refused to take up the challenge that the people voted they should accept on 6 September. They have refused to do it. They will not even let us into the game in terms of understanding what their preliminary deliberations are.

We will have a budget, but do the members know what the budget is going to entail? It will have the Treasurer who sits over there smiling under the responsibilities of office. It will indicate that he will not be told by Michael Wilson what to do. That is a bit of a joke because we know that Michael Wilson had him down in Ottawa in February and he got his marching orders along with everybody else. Mr Speaker, do you know what happened? Michael Wilson says 3% for the public service and --

Hon Mr Laughren: Did I follow his marching orders?

Mr Elston: No, you gave the public service more, but do you know who did get 3% transfers, Mr Speaker? The community agencies got 3%.

Hon Mr Laughren: That's not true.

Mr Elston: That is what we have been told by a good number of them. The Treasurer is certainly --

The Deputy Speaker: Order. The debate is not between two individuals. The debate is through me, and you address the Chair, please.

Mr Elston: Mr Speaker, the debate may not be between individuals, but through you to the individual who is debating, back through you to me, I can tell you he is not doing very much to create the climate in which Ontario will have successful investment. There are so many things that could be done, but I do not want to take up too much more of the time now except to reserve a couple of minutes at the very end for my wrap-up so that my colleagues can tell the people in this province what these people have not done, what they could do and what they should do.

We have seen no action and we want a commitment today from the Treasurer with respect to the critical need to develop this plan. The Premier does not see that this is important enough, neither does the Minister of Northern Development and neither does the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology. We want a commitment from the Treasurer, who is really the person in charge now because the next three-week lead-up is critical to his budget and he can tell us he is going to have a job creation program, a job investment strategy which will allow us to have permanent jobs in place in this province.

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Mr Carr: I am pleased to rise to speak on this occasion on a very important motion regarding the economy.

As we start off, I guess I am a little concerned that it comes from a party that has made us the most heavily taxed jurisdiction in all of North America. In fact, their actions have made us the worst-taxed in all of North America. I am a little upset when we have a government, the previous government, that has been able to double and triple spending at a time when individuals and groups like families and so on have had to balance their budgets.

As we sit here and I look at the NDP government with all its self-serving sensitivity, trying to see if it is really responding to the human realities that touch people where they live and work, quite frankly, I see that it is not. We have a program that comes in -- announced today, as a matter of fact -- where they say we are going to have something to help the laid-off workers. Really what they are doing is taking a look at the symptoms instead of trying to find a cure. Instead of saying, "We're going to try to make sure those people don't have jobs," they say, "We know we're going to lose them and we know they're going to go out, so we'll try to help them." We need to be able to say, "How are we going to stop those people from losing their jobs?" I would have hoped the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology would have come up with an announcement very soon to do that.

One of the things we have to realize, in this day and age in the world of international markets, is that if we are not competitive we are going to lose markets. When companies and businesses lose markets, guess what happens? People lose jobs. Nothing has been laid out that is going to end that cycle of making us uncompetitive. I was thinking even a broken clock is right twice a day, and yet we have seen nothing from this government in any way to make us more competitive.

The Globe and Mail article that was published on Wednesday talks about the job losses in the province and compares this recession to the last recession. It is interesting to note that British Columbia and Alberta actually had an increase in the number of jobs. Guess what, I ask members on the other side? They have the same federal government we do. The federal government is the same one for Alberta and British Columbia. Do members remember that?

It is interesting to note that in 1981 and 1982, when the Conservative government was in place, Ontario was the best of all the provinces in terms of jobs lost. It is interesting to see, when you compare it with the recession in 1981 and 1982, that Ontario did a pretty good job versus the rest of the provinces. Unfortunately, today we are not doing a very good job. I suspect some may call it luck that it was a Conservative government at that time. I tell the members, people look at the results and during that period of time we fared much better.

As the Treasurer knows, as we sit here we spend about $12 million a day just to pay the interest on our debt in this province. That is not to pay back the principal; that is $12 million a day just to pay the principal loan. Unfortunately, it is going to be my children and probably even my grandchildren who are going to have to pay off this debt.

The Treasurer said that deficits do not scare him. They might not scare him, but statements like that scare me because deficits are nothing but deferred taxes. What we need is to get rid of the simplistic challenges of single issues and have long-term planning.

I reflect on a report here that talks about competitiveness in Canada. It talks about some of the competitive measures that need to be taking place in this particular day and age. It talks about labour skills. We need to increase the amount of labour skills. I say to the Minister of Labour, let's look into doing something in that area so that we improve. It talks about the tax structures. I say to the Treasurer, who is preparing the tax position with the next budget coming up, that we do not need any new taxes. This is being confirmed by companies around the rest of the world. He is giving me the signal, "Maybe, maybe not," so hopefully we will be able to convince him. It also talks about the regulations. It talks about the fact that our industries in this province are the most highly regulated. It talks about new technology. As I sit here and reflect on all the things that the experts say we need to do, what are we doing? Are we moving in any of these areas? Are we moving in the area of labour skills? No. Are we moving in the area of making sure taxes do not rise? Maybe we are, maybe we are not. We will see in the budget. I hope we do. Are we moving in any way to decrease the amount of regulations? No. Anything on technology? No, nothing in that area. We are setting up a fund to help the laid-off workers but we are doing nothing to make sure those workers keep their jobs. We have no long-term plans in place.

I say to the government across that it is not how much it spends, it is how it spends. As we sit here, we need to get rid of the self-styled sensitivity and start getting some action, because that is how the government is going to be judged. It is not going to be judged on its promises. It is not going to be judged on how much it spends because, quite frankly, all the opponent I beat in the election kept saying was, "We spent more on health care." Yes, but we got waiting lists. "We spent more on the environment." But the environment was worse under them. All he did was talk about the amount of money that was spent, but people want results.

When we look at the figures, the results that are here are very, very clear. At a time when the province in the last recession was managed properly, guess what? We fared better than any other province in this country. In fact, when we look at the statistics, it is even dramatic. As we sit here today, we see that Quebec, which in terms of size is almost equivalent to our economy, has only lost 2.6% of the jobs. Ontario's rate has been double that. So we are faring worse than all the other people.

Why is there all this blaming of other governments and assigning the blame and saying: "It's not our fault. We got elected, but it's not our fault. Blame those other guys"? As I said before, if the members opposite really thought it was a federal issue, why did they not run federally when they had the chance? Why did they not run federally if it is so important? If members come to this House and they are provincial politicians, guess what? They worry about provincial issues. If members want to run federally -- and I am sure the federal leader next time around might want to have some of the members run -- but if it is really that important then get up to Ottawa and fix it up there. Do not blame them. Get up there and do something. That is what happens with municipalities and that is what should happen with provincial governments. We have to end this mindless finger-pointing, although the former Treasurer came in; maybe we can start finger-pointing a little bit towards him. No, I will not.

As we sit here today, we have absolutely nothing in place to be able to make jobs in this province. If, as has been the case, blaming other governments would be helpful, then the jobs would come back very quickly because we are very good at that. But when it comes to real action, I say to the members opposite who are here that we have to be results oriented, not activity driven. We have to have results because, quite frankly, that is what they are going to be judged on. They are not going to be judged on saying, "We spent more on this program," $50 million or $20 million, because people are not going to realize that. They are going to take a look and say, "Where were we when your government took over and where are we now?" That is going to be the criterion.

The judgement is going to be the number of jobs. It is going to be the deficit. The line has already been drawn in the sand. That is where the deficit was, where we left it. Now it is going to be taken from there. The tax structure is already in place and that is what people are going to judge the government by. It has four years to do it, maybe four and a little bit, whatever the amount of time is. That is what it is going to be judged on.

As we sit here today, some of the members are saying, "What would you like to see?" Unfortunately, these people were elected with a lot of plans about what they would like to do and yet, when they come in, absolutely nothing has happened.

Now, like most people, we figure: "We'll give them a little bit of time. They have to find their way around, but eventually they are going to be able to get in there and find out how it works and how it operates." Now what has happened is all the people are saying, "We can't do anything for the budget."

The Treasurer has pushed it off and said: "Wait for the budget. Wait for the budget. Wait for the budget." The budget gets put back, and I know it has been a long process putting that together. Quite often I meet the Treasurer late at night on the streets going home, so I know he is working hard on it. But starting on that date, that is going to be when people mark what needs to be done. That is the time when people are going to say, "Okay, up until then, you have had your chance." Now when the budget comes, guess what? The ball is in the government's court.

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As we sit here now my big fear is that it is going to take four years for the members opposite even to figure out what needs to be done, let alone come up with solutions. As we sit here, we have seen absolutely nothing. I think people wanted to be fairly complimentary to the government to start off, but unfortunately nothing has been done, nothing has been done. As we sit here, nothing has been done.

This opposition motion talks about job creation and what we are going to do. Unfortunately, over the last little while we have seen absolutely nothing but the same old rehash of, "We spent $700 million and that is how we are doing it." But unfortunately we keep going farther and farther back. So do not start talking about how much we spend, because people do not really, quite frankly, care. They want to see the results. The results are what we have got to be after. At the end of the day if we can see the results, we will be pleased. In fact, I will be the first person to stand up and congratulate the government on it.

But we have a Treasurer who says during this period of time the exact opposite of what needs to be done. He has not ruled out tax increases, and he is going to probably run up the deficit to how high we go -- the exact opposite of what needs to be done. At a time when the individuals have to cut back in their spending and watch every dime and every penny and every quarter, we have a government that continues to spend, and there are no controls in place. The other day the Treasurer was asked what controls were in place. There are no controls in place.

Municipal governments are going through the budget process and trying to cut and look for ways to restructure things, but when it comes to provincial government it is inflation plus, inflation plus, inflation plus: "Continue on; we'll find the money somewhere." Well, I think the members opposite have found the cupboard is bare. There is no more money left. There were some members opposite who when they came in here thought the money would drop out of the ceiling. I honestly, truly believe there were some members who thought the money was going to fall out of the ceiling.

I do not particularly think the Premier or the Treasurer thought that, because they had been around a long period of time; the Treasurer some 20-odd years, I believe, and the Premier -- who is a bright guy, a Rhodes scholar -- I do not think he thought it was going to fall out of the ceiling. But some members, I think, honestly, truly did feel the money was going to be there. Well, guess what? It is not there any more. They have come home to the reality. They were driven by their ideology. Now they are confronted with the reality that there is no money left.

As we sit here, I encourage and I hope that we are going to have some action, some results that are going to take place rather than a lot of rhetoric.

My background before I came to this fine House was one of a business person, and one of the things that has been so upsetting to me is the fact that we do not get anything done here. We have eloquent speeches, and believe me, everybody is great at that. We are great at talking, but we never move forward. Of all things, that has been the most discouraging part that I have faced here: the fact that we sit here, we debate it, we talk about it, but nothing seems to get done. I think what we need to do is to start to move a little bit quicker in a lot of these areas.

For those members opposite and the Treasurer, I would get him to take a look at some of these statistics that are in a book like this by some of the brightest and most brilliant minds around on what to do to make us competitive. In fact, the accounting firm that produced this -- and I will not publicize them -- actually says you can have briefings and you can have as many copies as you would like to have. The Treasurer is asking for one. He definitely can have it.

In here it outlines some of the things that need to be done. It also tells what some of the rest of the world has done. It talks about what the Japanese have done, what the West Germans have done, and I hope we will take some of those actions as well.

So those were some of my thoughts on the issue, and I would like to at this time wind up my remarks by saying that people are out there expecting action. We need some action, not rhetoric.

Mr Christopherson: I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this important resolution. I think it needs to be said from this side of the House that it is an important issue for us to be talking about. In fact, from the day this government took office, our Premier and our ministers have been saying that the number one issue for us is the economy. I think that it is important to send out the message, not only from this government but from the opposition benches, that indeed all of us accept and respect the fact that the economy is indeed the number one issue. I am pleased that that is the matter for today's debate and I appreciate the opportunity to join in that debate.

I have some difficulty with some of the positions put forward by members of the opposition, not the least of which is that continuously the opposition party, the official opposition, wants to have it both ways on the issue of the economy and the forecasting of the economy and who knew and who should have known what and when. Our Treasurer has clearly said that we do not believe there was any wrongdoing on the part of the previous government vis-à-vis bookkeeping or presentations of information, because it is not reasonable, once we got into office and looked, for anyone to expect that a government could have seen at that time the depth, the breadth of the recession and just how devastating it would be. None of the indicators were pointing to that. Our Treasurer has indicated that. Members of the opposition have acknowledged and quoted those remarks in their own defence, and I offer that up again as being the position of our government, that we do not think there is wrongdoing there.

However, what becomes difficult to accept is that having accepted that position, the official opposition then thinks we should have to be answerable for the fact that we did not know in the middle of the election in the summer, at the same time frame we are now talking about, that we were heading into that same kind of recession and the same kind of depth. That, I think, from a fair-minded point of view, shows a clear inconsistency on the part of the opposition. I think they would like to have it both ways. I do not think that is fair and I do not think the public accepts that having that both ways is the correct way to view that particular issue.

Another member of the opposition talked about our whole approach being a scam. I think that was the word that was used. I would just like to say for the record that what I think is a scam is the fact that the previous government feels it has legitimate grounds to criticize what it says has not been done by this government and what we have done since we have taken office. I say that based on the fact that a review of recent history points to a very different story.

If go back to 1985, and I believe I have my years correct, when there was the change of government under the accord, that was probably the most successful period of time for that government. Being parochial in this statement, I would suggest that was because it had a game plan and a blueprint that represented the needs of Ontario and it had the measures necessary to put in place legislation that would correct that. It was that accord, it was the NDP agenda at that time, that gave the Liberal Party the kind of votes in the next election that gave it a majority government, in fact the largest majority in the history of this province. Then, when it was on its own and did not have the benefit of NDP thinking and an NDP agenda, when it had to drive it itself, at the end of the day when the people passed judgement, look what happened.

I feel very confident saying that at the end of the day, not in another day or two or a week, but at the end of the day of this term in office, after at least four budgets by the Treasurer, not just one but four, and once we have had a chance to do the things that we have said we will do and the things that we will do, I am convinced that when the public reviews that agenda, we will indeed be back here again. I honestly believe that and I think history has shown that is about to happen.

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Interjections.

Mr Christopherson: I know that members of the opposition are expressing that they are tired of hearing about what we have done, but I guess when members opposite are being beaten down with success, it is not surprising they do not want to hear about it.

The fact of the matter is, regardless of how much noise we may hear from the opposition benches, the anti-recession program in this province has been effective, it will be effective and it will do the job that we wanted it to do, because we did not just throw money at the recession. There was a lot of thought and a lot of care taken. These measures, the money that is being spent is being spent on the infrastructure of our municipalities and of our province and that is an investment in the future of this province, not just money being thrown at a problem without a good return.

Next, very much care was taken to be sure that we were not spending the money after we began to come out of the recession, because that would not be smart economics. The money needed to be spent within a time frame of the recession so that it was helping the province, helping cushion the effect of the recession and putting in place those measures that would allow us a strong recovery from the recession. I believe the care that was taken to put together that program will show itself to be of great benefit to the province as time unfolds, and I am prepared to stand behind those remarks, as I know my good friend the member for Etobicoke West, when he reads Hansard, will remind me, should that not be the case.

There has also been reference to what happened in 1981 and in 1982 and how different it was and how terrible things are now. The reality is, and it needs to be said, that the difficulties we are experiencing now are not the result of a change in government in a recent election. I would suggest to members that the depths of this recession would be at least what they are -- and if I were parochial I would say worse, but I will not -- at least what they are if it had been the previous government that stayed in office. Why? The reason is that we have a different kind of recession.

We have different things happening in the economy and fair-minded, objective individuals in the province have said publicly, in front of our committee during the prebudget consultations, that, to repeat myself, no one was expecting the recession to hit the way it is, but people are acknowledging that Ontario was hit sooner and harder than any other province in this country and that is unlike anything we saw in the early 1980s. That is not even to talk about the details of the restructuring, which again will show us a very slow climb out of this recession without the kind of automatic job return that we saw in the early 1980s.

The response we have to take cannot be just a knee-jerk reaction for a short political gain; it has to be a measured response that puts in place the pieces that will allow us to re-establish as a strong economy. I believe we will do that through things like the anti-recession program but also through a number of other measures, many of which will come out in the budget and others which will flow from budgetary measures.

I am talking about things such as a recognition of the need for a competitive and strong economy, a recognition that a strong economy is tied to our skills development, to an investment in our universities as well as a new relationship with municipalities and other funding partners. I am falling back now on my previous experience as a municipal councillor when I say that in many ways quality of life issues are decided at the municipal level. All of those things are going to come together during the term of this government to build a stronger Ontario and to address the very pressing needs that we have right now.

I would like to close my comments by again acknowledging the fact that while it is not the position of this government to say all of the Ontario woes are the fault of the federal government, it needs to be said as often from this side as it has from the other side that those measures have had a significant, serious, damaging effect on the economy of this province. As long as we have a federal government that works at odds against this provincial government, it makes our job that much more difficult, and if it takes a change of government federally to do the trick, then maybe that is what ought to happen. But that is not helping us. We need a partner federally, not somebody who is hurting our activities and our measures.

Mrs Fawcett: I very much want to put some remarks on the record concerning this important topic. Earlier this week, when I rose in the House to ask the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology a question about the plant closure of Cooper Tools in my riding in the town of Port Hope, he did not give a very good answer. Cooper Tools had just celebrated 100 years of manufacturing in the town and it had been home to three generations of employees. I asked this question, hoping that I would see indication from this government that it realizes action is required to help these victims of yet another plant leaving this province.

But instead of action, I received the same type of rhetoric this government has used for the past seven months. The minister totally avoided the question and tried to provide solace to these families by saying he was building an industrial plant in Cobourg and somehow this anti-recessional industrial plant would create jobs, perhaps the jobs they were losing.

I say it is fine to put up a building and call it an industrial plant, but what industry is going to move in? Is there an announcement forthcoming? This government has done nothing to encourage any type of industrial expansion. In fact, since this socialist government has taken office, we have seen nothing but an exodus of industry from this province. We have seen the number of people unemployed increase by over 180,000. We have lost more than 110,000 manufacturing jobs, and I say "lost" because they have looked at the socialist government and decided to relocate elsewhere, never to come back again.

Like Cooper Tools in Port Hope, the doors on these factories are being locked and will not be reopened because not only have they left the province, but they have left the country. I remind the members opposite of their Agenda for People. Do they remember their promise to establish a jobs protection board that would determine whether plant closures are justified? Where is this protection board? How many of these plants like Cooper Tools have they determined are justified in closing their doors? What does the government say to the people of Ontario who are suddenly put on UI and ultimately on to the welfare rolls? I can tell the government that welfare rolls have doubled in Northumberland and are on the increase.

I suggest to the government that its almighty anti-recession package has not opened one door. While in government, we put in place the eastern Ontario community economic development program. Many communities -- from Cornwall to Cobourg, from Ottawa to the Otonabee River -- have made use of this program to enhance their industrial parks, to develop their economic strategy and to encourage industry. Coupled with the eastern Ontario cabinet committee, we were successful in addressing the needs of this most vital part of the province.

I ask the member for Kingston and The Islands and the member for Frontenac-Addington, whom I see present in the House, and the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings -- I think he was here but perhaps he has gone now -- where is the cabinet committee for eastern Ontario? What are their colleagues the member for Hastings-Peterborough and the member for Ottawa Centre doing to put the issues of eastern Ontario on the cabinet table?

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The town of Port Hope has just passed a resolution for the enrichment, enhancement and extension of the eastern Ontario community economic development program so as to adequately address the needs for economic and sustainable development in eastern Ontario. What will this government's response be to that? I hope not just another patchwork package of policies and programs that do little to meet the very real needs of eastern Ontario.

Mr Ruprecht: They are still consulting.

Mrs Fawcett: Probably they are.

Another large segment of my riding that is suffering greatly from these very tough economic times is the agricultural community, and I am sure, Mr Speaker, this is of interest to you. It is one thing to be frustrated, but it is another thing to be completely demoralized. The farmers that I speak to tell me that they just cannot take any more. They only ask that they see a fair return for the countless hours they spend trying to make agriculture a viable industry.

Keeping in mind that agriculture is directly or indirectly responsible for one out of five Ontario jobs, we have to ensure that our farmers can compete with our neighbours to the south as well as European markets. No other industry is at the mercy of the elements of Mother Nature like agriculture is.

Farmers need to feel secure that existing stabilization formulas truly reflect the economies of the day. They cannot tolerate the yo-yo syndrome any longer. Cabinet should reconsider its decision not to fund the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement, MISA, which was a major disappointment to the farm community. This program was the last hope for many commodities such as horticultural crops. The government's decision to ignore this part of the agricultural industry will have a significant negative effect on many farmers and related industries and businesses across Ontario and particularly in my riding.

Where is this government's vision for the farm community? Where are the long-term plans to put agriculture on a basis with some lasting financial stability? This government seems to think it can ignore its election promise of $100 million to support long-term lending and ask retired farmers to invest their savings instead.

As the numbers of farmers decline and the agriculture economy faces its lowest level of net income in five years, rural communities need to diversify their economies and farmers are looking for additional or alternative sources of income. Because they are seen to be looking in vain for this help, a number of communities in rural Ontario are facing stagnant or negative growth.

I remind the member for Hastings-Peterborough of something that one of the finest federal agricultural ministers this country has seen, my good friend Eugene Whalen, said: "When the land lies fallow, all other forms of life suffer." This is something we could all contemplate seriously.

Today is not very encouraging for the people of Ontario, who had such high hopes last September. They have looked in vain for the fulfilment of the promises they voted for, but instead they are stuck with empty pockets, empty cupboards, empty talk, meaningless promises. The people of Ontario deserve better than this. Answers like, "It is under review. We are doing the best we can. We are consulting on that," just do not slice it.

I implore the Premier to do something. I tell this government, "Your brothers and sisters are watching you." They are waiting for action as their factories come crumbling down around them. They are hoping the rug will not be pulled out from underneath them the same way it was pulled from the skilled tradespeople at Ontario Hydro. Just ask them, or perhaps let the member for Peterborough tell what happened to them in Peterborough. The Premier has not only let his family in this House down; he has failed to help those who put him there, and as they wait for action, so do all of the people of Ontario.

I close now and again implore this government on behalf of my constituents in Northumberland and the people of Ontario to do something before it is too late.

Mr J. Wilson: I am very pleased to rise and join the debate on the resolution put forward by the member for Bruce. I find it ironic that the Liberals have the audacity to introduce such a motion when they spent our province into oblivion and we became the highest-taxed jurisdiction in North America. Members have heard me speak very, very often about the town of Collingwood in my riding, where almost a third of its workforce -- 2,000 out of a total population of only 12,000 -- are now unemployed, not as a result of the free trade agreement -- and I hope the NDP members are listening across the way -- but as a result of the very high taxation levels in this province. It disturbed me greatly during the campaign when my local NDP candidate kept running around using the member for York South's phrases that we have to tax the rich and tax corporations. I tried to explain to him at many all-candidates meetings that you cannot simply continue to tax corporations, because if they do not make a profit they cannot pay taxes. It is a fundamental economic principle that we are having a very difficult time in the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party on this side of the House explaining to the members opposite.

The member for Hamilton Centre -- let's do a little bit of history here -- said that during the campaign back in September they were unaware of the recession. I would say that is bogus. You had to have had your head stuck in the stand not to know that the wild spending spree of the previous Liberal government would not lead us into hard times at this point in history. It seems to me that if the NDP in its Agenda for People, which I affectionately call the agenda for power, where it outlined a number of initiatives it was going to take -- in fact, my NDP candidate spent a great deal of time in the campaign promising the workers of Collingwood that indeed he would protect their jobs. The layoffs in Collingwood have occurred at Harding Carpets, Kaufman furniture, Goodyear hose plant, LOF Glass, Reynolds-Lemmerz and Bendix Safety Restraints, which packed up and went to Mexico.

So it is 2,000 jobs, and there is a quote here from the local newspaper. They quoted Mr Losereit, who was the NDP candidate, some of the phrases he used during the election campaign, and I will read the quote from the Collingwood Enterprise-Bulletin, which says: "It was Mr Losereit who said his colleagues, now making up the governing party in this province, would bring in tough plant-closing legislation, improve training and retraining opportunities and mobilize huge amounts of investment capital in Ontario to build our economy. With all the layoffs, layoffs at Bendix" -- and he goes on to list the number of layoffs -- "'The David Peterson government has failed to lift a finger to help,' said the NDP candidate during his campaign."

But reading further from the same editorial: "By putting its pre-election words into action, the NDP government must end its silence in one of the hardest-hit areas of the province. Public demonstrations by labour heighten public awareness but limit their scope considerably by strictly slamming the Conservatives. We ought to look at what is going on in our provincial capital where the politicians in power are conspicuous by their silence."

We have heard from this government that it has introduced a $700-million anti-recession program. We have heard that that will create some 20,000 jobs, but we have also had the Minister of Transportation admit, and I appreciate his honesty, that in many instances those will not be new jobs.

My own father is unemployed in Alliston and has been for quite some time, and he has no hope of finding a job because this government continues on the trend of the previous Liberal government to spend us into oblivion. They put out the false hope, which I say is a moral sin that the Premier and the New Democratic Party committed during the election campaign, the false hope to the poor and the unemployed that they would protect their jobs, raise their levels of income, and somehow this money, as my colleague said earlier, would fall from the ceiling.

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The false hope is premised on the assumption that politicians create jobs. I have not met a politician alive today or one in the past who has ever created one job. We do not and we should not tell the people of this province and the people of my riding that we create jobs. If you took a lesson in economics, you would know that our responsibility here is to create the economic climate so that businesses will once again want to invest in Ontario, and we have to stop the haemorrhaging of businesses leaving not only Collingwood but many other areas of Ontario.

The government has not taken one initiative to do that. In fact, its initiatives, I would suggest, do exactly the opposite. It paints us into a corner politically, and I will discuss that in a minute. We are losing 1,600 jobs a day, and the government has done nothing to address the tax structure in this province. It introduces things like pay equity -- or it is going to introduce some of these things -- extended parental leave, an environmental bill of rights, the wage protection fund -- the announcement the minister made today -- raising the minimum wage, and creating a new French-language school board in the county of Simcoe, which local people consider a tremendous waste of money because the need simply is not there. The government does these things which politically do not cost it much money, but they are costing jobs.

We have not seen the studies from this government on what these wonderful programs, if we could afford them, are going to cost us in terms of jobs. It is difficult for us to argue that these programs will cost jobs when the government does not provide us with information and data and studies as to what effects these programs will have.

They are motherhood issues. The Premier, in many people's estimation in the province, in many people's eyes, has a corner on compassion. But I want to re-emphasize the words of my colleague the member for Oakville South, who made it very clear that under the Conservative government, some six years ago now, we had good management in this province. We did not have these problems that are very much out of control across the board. We took a commonsense approach to government. We kept taxes in line. We enjoyed a 9.6% tax advantage over Quebec. That has been wiped out right now.

The opposition talks about the free trade agreement, and I want to read a couple of quotes about the free trade agreement, because I do not think we should skirt the issue in this House. Those guys throw it back at us every single day. If we read the Western Report of 4 March 1991 -- and it is a lengthy quote, but I think it is well worth reading -- it says:

"Canada's manufactured exports to the US jumped by $4 billion during the first 21 months of the free trade agreement, the Canada West Foundation reported last week. Exports of Canadian raw materials and primary products declined. Overall, Canadian sales to American buyers rose about 7% after inflation is removed from the figure. Against that improved export performance, imports from the US remained static. These positive results directly contradict warnings shouted loud and long by self-styled nationalists before the free trade agreement was implemented on January 1, 1989."

There is also one from the Canada West Foundation in February which says:

"Plant closings and job layoffs tend to be highlighted in the Canadian media, while news of plant expansion and new jobs is usually not headline news. The Canadian Labour Congress recently suggested that 225,000 jobs had disappeared because of the free trade agreement. This is a clear misrepresentation. First, job losses in auto companies, airlines, fishing, breweries, trucking, railways, are being mistakenly and irresponsibly blamed on a trade policy which left these sectors exempt or untouched. These same sectors have also undergone substantial job losses in the US for the same reason as in Canada: sluggish demand."

It is a complete falsehood to keep blaming the federal government for the NDP's problems. They are the government now. We expect them to take some action. We expect them to put people back to work. The greatest dignity you can give an individual is a job, and that has to be the underlying premise.

Second, we have to regain our economic competitiveness. We met as a caucus with the poverty coalition that was here a couple of days ago. After some explanation to them, they too realized that the greatest dignity we could provide is a job, the opportunity for employment and the economic climate for new jobs and increased productivity in this province. We explained to them that the money does not come out of the ceiling; that companies have to make a profit, which is a dirty word for the NDP. They have to make a profit if they are going to keep investing in Ontario, if their plants are going to remain open in Ontario and if they are going to keep our constituents employed.

The Treasurer has made it clear that he is not really opposed to large deficits, but one would have thought that with the 16 years of socialism under Pierre Trudeau and the disastrous effects that had on this nation, those guys would have learned something over there, that they would have learned from straight economic fact that the $200-billion deficit that the federal government inherited in 1984 from the Liberal regime has now gone up to almost $400 billion; 80% of that is strictly interest on the original $200 billion, totally out of the control of the current federal government.

I am pleased that the Treasurer is here today. Surely he has learned from that socialism period we had under the Trudeau regime that he cannot introduce programs without a plan to pay for them. He cannot put new burdens on industry without expecting job losses.

We would expect to see from this government an economic strategy for Ontario. It has the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology who we know takes naps in the afternoon when he really should be sitting down, sharpening his pencil, meeting with industry with meaningful consultations, and we know that is not true, because we have also talked to the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, which feels it is being used as a scapegoat by his government. They should be sitting down as a cabinet and creating an economic strategy, not a program that supposedly creates jobs in the form of an anti-recession program but, as we have heard argued, they are not new jobs. I would have personally -- I cannot speak for all of my colleagues on this one -- preferred that the government had taken that $700 million and applied it to trying to get us back into a more competitive position with other provinces and other jurisdictions in North America.

You do not hear other provinces, like Quebec and the west, complaining about the free trade agreement, because they knew there were opportunities there, and immediately after the agreement came in Quebec did tax reform and readjusted its competitive position, an absolute fact of history.

The Liberal government at that time, David Peterson played politics with the people of my riding and with their jobs. He sat around and said, "Bad agreement, bad federal government, the worst thing that could happen to this country," and it is almost as if he wanted a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is almost as if he called that election early so he could go to the people and say: "Well, we're heading into a recession. Things don't look so great." Although he claimed to have a surplus, we knew -- I said very clearly, by reading the economic documents provided by the government itself -- that it was probably close to a $1-billion deficit. It was pretty easy to see pre-cash flows and prepayments in a document. But he ran around, pretended everything was great when he failed to address an agreement that was signed and agreed to by most provinces and he failed to do anything about it.

The government's challenge is not to blame the federal government, not to shirk its responsibility. Its challenge is to start putting down an economic strategy that we would be happy to help it formulate, discussing with business in a meaningful way how we can become more competitive and to create jobs, not directly by giving out handouts, but by creating the economic climate so that businesses will once again want to produce in Ontario.

I am also disturbed that Diane Francis wrote in the Financial Post yesterday that an individual in Ontario could earn up to $45,000 --

Mr Johnson: She's wrong.

Mr J. Wilson: Well, she makes a very good argument, because of the tax-free benefits under welfare and prescription drugs and dental, all great things, but the government has increased welfare payments by some 17%, but where is the money going to come from? It is a great thing during good times to put money into programs that help the poor and they certainly need help. In my own family, I have individuals who definitely need help, but it is absolutely astounding that an individual in Ontario is better off not working. The message that this article in yesterday's Financial Post sends out to the people of Ontario is that if you make under $45,000 a year you might as well quit work, you might as well just sit on your duff because the government is going to look after you. That is the wrong message to be sending out to the people of Ontario.

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One of the first things this government did was increase welfare payments; as I said, a great thing, except how are we going to pay for it? You cannot jack up the deficit any more because, as the member for Oakville South correctly pointed out, deficit is simply deferred taxes. Do members opposite want to know what they are supposed to do? They should sit down with us. We would be happy to help them get out of their socialist ideology. They are stuck in their ideology. The government knows how to distribute wealth but it does not have a clue how to create it. It does not have a clue what an economic strategy is and it has not written a business plan for a business.

We have a lot of talent in our caucus. We would be happy to help the government in that line before this province continues to slide down the spiral we have been on. They should take a lesson from the 16 years of Trudeau where there were all kinds of wonderful programs that he kept getting re-elected on, all kinds of wonderful programs introduced, but there was no concept and the actuaries at the time were actually telling us, "These programs are going to run out of money, folks," that the Canada pension plan in the year 2000 will be out of money. But Trudeau and his style of socialism said: "Don't worry about that. We're going to introduce the program anyway." Now the bills are in.

My worry is that the government is taking Ontario down the same path, that it has not learned from history. If spending in a recession was the answer, then why is this recession centred in Ontario? Those guys spent absolutely wildly, the Liberals. My constituents asked me, and they are asking me still today, "Where did all the money go that the Liberals brought in?" As the member for Oakville South pointed out, we have never had longer hospital lineups, we have never had poorer service in our field of education -- at least there is a great deal of dissatisfaction -- and at the same time we have never had higher taxes at all levels of government. Where did the money go?

This government's challenge is to create an economic strategy for this province. We would be happy to help them. My constituents know that is the need. I hope the government will take the time to address that rather than spend us into oblivion and repeat the mistakes of the past.

Hon Mr Cooke: I just want to take a few minutes to participate in this debate. I must say, just to comment very briefly to the previous speaker in this debate, that it is wishful thinking to think that we are not going to talk about the impact that the federal government policies have had on this province and on the people of this province. It would be rather simplistic to think that we are not going to talk about free trade, the level of the dollar and interest rates, because they directly impact on the competitiveness of the manufacturing sector of this province. Those factors, more than anything else, have devastated this province.

The Conservatives obviously are going to try not to talk about those matters, but when we are developing our tax strategy and our economic strategy we have to take into consideration the terrible economic consequences of the federal government policies. This is a very difficult time. If the member wants to come to see where the federal government's economic policies have had the most negative effect, he should come down to my community: 16% unemployment, substantial layoffs and many plant closures.

The member was trying to indicate a few moments ago that the auto sector has not been impacted at all by the free trade agreement. He does not understand the free trade agreement. He knows as well as I do, or he should know, that the free trade agreement eliminated the safeguards in the auto pact. The auto pact, which was established in the mid-1960s, had some very substantial safeguards for jobs and production here in Ontario. Those safeguards were absolutely eliminated. In fact, the most important was that we moved away from 60% Canadian content to 50% North American content. Anyone who understands the auto sector at all knows that 50% North American content has built right into it an incentive to move manufacturing sectors of the auto industry into Mexico.

What we have seen dramatically in our community is that the low-tech manufacturing aspect of auto has moved to Mexico and the high-tech is staying in the United States, so that we are being absolutely devastated in our community. No one in my riding is confused, as obviously the Conservative caucus is. Everyone in my riding understands very clearly that free trade, high interest rates and a high dollar -- and the high dollar was part of the free trade deal that was struck by the Mulroney government -- have had the devastating impact they have had on my community.

When the people in the Windsor area have gone to the federal government and said: "Help us out. We would like to revitalize our community," Mulroney and his cabinet's response has been, "You did not vote for the Conservative Party, so we ignore the community of Windsor." That is exactly what has happened: We have gotten zip from the federal government, so our government has responded, very substantially.

I hear from the Liberal caucus members, and it is obviously a case of feeling very difficult about the election, how bitter they are that they talk about our doing nothing in the 26 weeks that we have been in government. Let's look at some of the things that we have done.

The $700-million capital fund has been talked about, has been reported, is real. In my community, it means over $20 million of job creation in the Windsor and Essex area. In addition, to stimulate the economy the Treasurer made a commitment that the retail sales tax would not be on top of the GST, $500 million dollars of savings for the people of this province.

In my own ministry we have thousands of additional housing units, by reallocating the Homes Now program and making sure that instead of the 14,000 or 15,000 units that were going to be built under the Homes Now program, all 30,000 are going to be delivered to the people of this province -- thousands of jobs.

Mr Nixon: That was our commitment. What about your 20,000? What about your commitment for 20,000?

Hon Mr Cooke: The previous government's commitment was 30,000 and it was not happening, and the former Treasurer knows that.

There was a 7% increase in welfare. Sure, the previous government had announced 5% of that, but we increased it by 2% and we doubled the increase in the shelter allowance, a very substantial move by the government in the first 25 weeks of government. The employee wage protection program was announced today by my colleague the Minister of Labour. There is the initiative in my ministry on rent control to offer protection to tenants in this province. There is the family and child custody support legislation. When that bill is passed, potentially over $300 million will go to women and children in this province. There has been aid to farmers, $50 million worth of assistance to farmers in this province.

There have been transfers to the transfer agencies that I think were generous, given the economic circumstances of this province. Given the policies that are being adopted by the federal government and by the other provinces, clearly this government has sent a message: We have a different approach. During a recession you do not cut back on your transfer agencies, you do not cut back so that there are layoffs in the public sector; you help as much as you can and you engage yourself in other activities to create jobs as well, as we have done.

There is the employment adjustment program that the Minister of Labour announced earlier, several weeks ago, and the Fair Tax Commission, which also will have, as it makes suggestions and recommendations to the government to change the tax structure, a stimulative effect.

Those are only the items that I could remember in just the last few minutes in writing a few notes to myself, all of that in 25 or 26 weeks of government. When you compare that to the record of the previous government over its last three years -- that is right, they called an election last year. Once we got into power and we had our first few cabinet meetings and policy and priorities board meetings, one had to really understand why that election was called.

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I do not think all of this was a coincidence, but this government has taken the resources that we were left, minimal as they are with the huge deficit we inherited, and we are doing the best job we can to help the thousands of people who have been displaced by the Conservative Party's federal government.

I think that this party and this government and the people of this province are appreciative of the honesty we put forward in telling people why we cannot proceed with some programs now and are reshifting our priorities as a government and as a party to try to create jobs and provide assistance. I can only imagine what the previous government would have done if it was reacting now in government to this horrendous economic situation in this province.

We will continue to work in partnership with people in the communities and with people in the private sector, with the trade unions of this province, to try to develop that partnership to get us through this recession and reconstruct the infrastructure of this province so that we will be able to exploit as best as possible the recovery when it comes about. But we cannot do it alone. I would certainly encourage the Conservatives who are here today to talk to their federal counterparts, see if they can talk some sense to them, and together I believe we can make it through this recession and help the people of this province.

Mr Phillips: I would hope in the end that all members of the House might support the intent of this motion, that is, to suggest there is a need for a comprehensive job creation program addressing all aspects of economic life in the province.

I predict, actually, that the government will come forward with that. I think they are going to have to, and I think that perhaps all of us today might indicate our support for that, because the situation is extremely serious. We can have a lot of fun with each other today, but the fact of the matter is that I do not think there have been as many people unemployed, in the province of Ontario certainly, in 50 years. I do not have the numbers back to the Depression of the 1930s, but if you look at least in the last 50 years, I do not think there have been as many people out of work as there are right now in the province of Ontario, about 570,000 people. I almost hate to look at statistics, because we tend here I think sometimes to lose sight of the fact that it is not a number of 570,000, it is 570,000 individuals, and one of the challenges for all of us here is to never isolate ourselves from that cruel reality of the suffering that 570,000 people are going through in this province.

As I said earlier, I can predict that it will only be a matter of weeks, certainly months at the latest, before the Premier and the Treasurer will come to this House with a program. There will be a neat name on it, Jobs for the Decade Ahead or whatever it is. But I suggest to us Jobs for the Decade, and let's get on with it.

I know we have a little bit of fun blaming the federal government. Again I would say, though, in fact Ontario is bearing the brunt of the recession. If you look at the jobs that have been lost in the country nationally, 70% of them are here in Ontario. We are suffering in Ontario. Nationally, there are challenges, but here in Ontario we are facing the brunt of it. The unemployment rate in the past 12 months is up, as the Treasurer knows, from around 6% to 10% -- 10.5% I think it is -- and my understanding in listening to the Treasurer is that the expectation out of Treasury is that it is going to get worse before it gets better. I do not like the thought of that, because we all recognize that right now we are at a record number of people out of work, and if it is going to get worse before it gets better, obviously there are simply going to be more people in this province looking for work.

A particular aspect that worries me, and we have not talked much about it in the Legislature, is youth unemployment. If you look behind those numbers, that 570,000 I talked about, there are some extremely troublesome numbers around youth unemployment. If I might say, I think the $700-million program that was announced by the Treasurer probably touches relatively few young people. It deals normally, I would think, with people with seniority and what not. So if we look at the young people, I am particularly troubled about that number, and I would say to all of us that if the number is bad now, as the summer comes to us I think we are going to see very significant numbers. So again I would say I would hope we do not have to wait until June before, on an emergency basis, the government comes forward with job creation programs for young people. Let's not lose sight of those young people who are and will be without jobs.

Then if you look even more carefully within some of those numbers, males for some reason or other seem to be struggling particularly poorly. The number now is about 20% among young males, 18 to 24, and it is even more significant if we look at young people who are not attending school. The unemployment rate there is 28%.

As we all wrestle and struggle with what I think is a horrendously challenging problem, let's look behind some of those numbers and appreciate that we cannot let a generation of young people be lost during these challenging times.

I think we all have heard and seen the job loss in our manufacturing sector. Again, let's recognize the engine of Ontario is our manufacturing sector. It is 21% of our jobs, it is 35% of our gross domestic product and it is a huge part of our exports. As I think all members in the House appreciate, that is one of the two sectors that have been hit most heavily. We have lost in the past 12 months at least 10% of our manufacturing jobs. All of us have seen the statistics the Ministry of Labour prepares on the difference in this recession versus the 1982 recession. In the 1982 recession, I think for a variety of reasons, plants did not close; they severely curtailed their production, often down to skeleton crews. But once the recession was over and demand began to pick up, then those jobs were still there, the factories began to run again and we were able to recover from the recession quite quickly. As we all know now, plants are not simply slowing down and putting skeleton staffs on, they are closing. Consequently, what we face is a much more challenging situation as we try and work our way out of the recession.

The second big area of job reductions that we are facing is in the construction sector. I think, as the members will appreciate, a year ago in Ontario there were about 300,000 people working in the construction sector. That is now down to about 235,000 -- 66,000 fewer people in the construction sector. If I am not mistaken, the anti-recession program will create about 10,000 person-years of jobs. So members can see: 66,000 fewer people in the construction sector working now; the anti-recession program might create 10,000 jobs; we still see 56,000 fewer people working in the construction sector.

Both of those are tremendously hard hit, and I believe in the construction area there is still a fair reservoir of commercial space available, some reservoir of housing available still on the marketplace, and with the industrial sector, the manufacturing sector, severely curtailed, facing some real financial problems, you can see we should not count on our manufacturing sector to help pull our construction sector out as the economy recovers.

I hope all of us in the House appreciate we are facing an enormous problem. There is more unemployed now than at least in any time that I have seen in the last 50 years or read about in the last 50 years. The manufacturing sector, historically the engine of our Ontario economy, is severely curtailed and restricted. It is very nice to blame the federal government and say it is its fault. The fact is that Ontario has seen a dramatically disproportionate impact of the recession; 70% of the lost jobs in all of Canada here in Ontario. I said before, I think this is an issue where we can have some fun with each other, where we can point fingers at each other and say, "It is the feds; it was the last government; it is this government," but the facts are that I believe the government must come forward with a program that will create permanent long-term jobs.

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The $700-million anti-recession program will create 10,000 temporary person-years of work. That is important and that is a worthwhile initiative, but with 10,000 jobs in the context of 569,000 people out of work, members can see we have a much bigger problem on our hands. I can virtually guarantee it is only a matter of weeks, maybe months before the government comes forward with it, so why not do all of us today endorse this and encourage the Treasurer and the Premier to get on with it?

What should we do about it? It is easy to kind of criticize, I guess. I think the first thing is to recognize the seriousness of the problem, as I have tried to do today. I am afraid we are digging ourselves a hole that is going to take some significant time to pull ourselves out of. With all due respect, I am not aware of any announcement in this House since 1 October around permanent job creations. The Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology should correct me if I am wrong as he gets to his point in the rotation, but I am not aware of any time he has stood up and said, "I have today helped to conclude an agreement between company X and a union that will create X permanent jobs."

Mr Mancini: Not a word.

Mr Phillips: Not that I am aware of. I think we should all recognize the seriousness of it.

I think the second thing is to stop blaming others, and I have tried to outline my reasons for that. I realize, as the Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs said, "Well, we can't be quite that virtuous and we are going to blame the federal government," and we can have our fun, but let's get on to solve the problem. The Treasurer will be bringing forward his budget in the next few weeks. I would hope that that would be part of what we have advocated here and that is a comprehensive program to create jobs on all economic aspects of Ontario, as our motion says.

The fourth point I would make is one that a member from the third party made that I would suggest the members opposite really consider seriously. "Profit" is not a bad word. If you are someone who is looking to create jobs, it is a tough row to hoe right now. Why not take your money and put it into a bond? You will get 9%, 10% or 11% interest, essentially worry-free. Profit essentially is the interest that investors, entrepreneurs, people who create jobs look to as a result of their energy and their effort and their investment. I would say in all seriousness that members should not assume "profit" is a bad word. As they read the financial papers, they will be so happy to see companies actually making profit in this province they will begin to accept it as a good idea.

The reason I raise all this is that I have heard time and again in the House: "Well, we like non-profit child care. Profit child care isn't something we support. We like nonprofit housing." Yes, but what about profit housing? "We like publicly run government insurance. In the nursing sector we like the non-profit sector. We don't like the profit sector."

I am saying to all of us, particularly to the members across in their caucus, "Profit is not a bad word." In fact, people who are looking to create jobs have to have it. If they do not have it, they will do one of two things, one of three things perhaps. They will invest their money in something else that simply bears interest or they will take their capital and their energies and their creativity and they will go to another jurisdiction, maybe British Columbia. British Columbia's economy is growing now. Jobs are being created there. Maybe, as all of us are worried, they will head south.

I am just saying to the members opposite in their caucus that I think many of them have a responsibility to say: "Listen, maybe profit is not such a bad idea. Maybe if somebody makes 6% or 7% it is not all that bad, because they can make 10% if they invest it in bonds."

My last point is a personal one. As we deal with a global problem, I hope I am wrong, but I believe the Treasurer and the Treasury people are not anticipating we are going to pull out of this thing in the next few weeks. I think the hope is that we will at the end of the summer, but that we will not ignore the young people in this and not let a generation of young people or even a couple of years of young people suffer unduly without some focus of attention.

I am pleased to participate in the debate. As I say, I worry a lot about this. I watch very carefully what is happening in the employment sector. Ontario is going through an extremely bad patch. Some of the signs for recovery are not too clearly encouraging and some of the signs for our long term are not particularly encouraging right now. I would hope that we or the government would get on with the job of looking more broadly at job creation and that the members opposite might even consider supporting our motion to provide the necessary impetus to get on with the job creation.

Mrs Witmer: I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak to the motion that has been put forward by the member for Bruce. It has already been pointed out several times today that since 1 October, since the NDP took power in this province, we have been losing about 1,600 jobs a day. This is certainly in marked contrast to the situation in Alberta and British Columbia, where the number of jobs have actually grown.

Ontario has fallen from its traditional position as the province with the lowest unemployment rate to the fourth lowest. Ontario has the worst job creation record of any province based on the monthly employment figures. Unfortunately, all this province has offered in seven months is a $34-million anti-recession fund for capital projects. Indeed, the Ministry of Transportation acknowledged several weeks ago that some of the grants he gave out in the last week of March were simply to offset municipal costs on projects that were already set to go.

Hon Mr Philip: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: That is not true. If you are going to quote somebody, quote them accurately.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Villeneuve): Please. Interjections are out of order. The honourable member for Waterloo North has the floor. Please resume.

Mrs Witmer: This fund has not created all the new jobs that the government has indicated it would. For example, in Cambridge it was pointed out that only half of the anti-recession grant was going to be used to create jobs that were not already in the books.

It is also important to note that three quarters of the jobs that have been lost in Canada since last February are in Ontario. This is very different from 1981-82, when jobs disappeared right across this province and this country and only one quarter were in Ontario.

Of all of the unemployed people, one out of every two workers who have lost their jobs are on permanent layoff. They have no job to return to. This again is in marked contrast to the recession in the early 1980s, when only one in five workers was laid off permanently. It is important to note that two thirds of the job losses in Ontario have been in the manufacturing sector. It is in the auto parts makers, furniture, clothing and textiles where we have seen the most unemployment. These have been the hardest-hit sectors.

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However, it is time we recognize that workers want jobs and not handouts. It is time to stop blaming the federal government for the job losses in Ontario and recognize that if only the federal policies were responsible for the job loss, then the job loss would be the same in every province and not, as is the case, where in Ontario we have three quarters of the job losses.

Why is the job loss so severe in Ontario? In the past five years, 32 tax increases were introduced. This has certainly had an impact on the comparative tax advantage which Ontario corporations enjoyed, certainly in the case of the Quebec corporations. In 1985, we stood at a position of 9.6%. In 1989, this comparative tax advantage had been reduced to only 1.8%.

During the past few years the business community in Ontario has been faced with many, many new initiatives that are making this place a less competitive place to do business. We have had the employer health tax. We have had pay equity. We have had occupational health and safety legislation. These measures, combined with increasing labour costs, are some of the initiatives that have contributed to the decline in jobs and are making it difficult for Ontario business to compete on a world scale.

Unfortunately, if we continue to tax and if we continue to introduce new programs, we are going to be making ourselves less and less competitive every day and jobs will continue to disappear at the alarming rate of 1,600.

It is important to recognize that our Ontario manufacturers are going to face, in the next decade, the toughest competition they have ever faced. The globalization of world trade, combined with rapid technological change, will challenge manufacturers to adapt to rapidly changing markets.

This government must recognize that. This government must encourage the creation of an economic climate which is going to promote economic and employment growth. It must adopt the goal of making Ontario one of the most competitive and attractive investment destinations in North America. In order to do this, it must place a higher priority on the competitive impacts of all current and future legislation.

Ontario cannot afford any more tax increases. We are already more heavily taxed than our Quebec and American competitors. More taxes in the upcoming budget are going to undermine personal initiatives and encourage business to expand elsewhere, as is already happening. We see people going to the States, we see them going to other provinces, and now we have started to see them going to Mexico.

If we are to continue to enjoy the present high standard of living and our employment opportunities, and if we are going to continue to fund our social programs, it is time that government, business and labour worked together to ensure that we create an economic climate which allows Ontario to remain competitive.

Although the wage protection fund introduced today will provide protection for those who have lost jobs and will temporarily ease the pain of unemployment after the plant closes, it will not create one new job. What is this government going to do to provide incentives to business in Ontario? What is it going to do to retain and create new jobs in order that dependency on the wage protection fund will decrease in the months and the years ahead?

This government must recognize the fact that business no longer wants to locate in Ontario because this province is no longer competitive. This province is overtaxed and it is becoming overregulated. In all that we do in the future, we need to give careful consideration to the economic impact and how it may contribute to further job loss. We need to start to ask ourselves: "Can we afford this new legislation? Will it lead to further job loss?" That is the issue. It is not whether the legislation is good or bad, but can we afford it? What are the priorities?

However, if we are going to create a favourable economic climate in this province, we need to do more. Fiscal responsibility and reduced spending should not be the sum total of our economic strategy. Education and training systems are the key to provincial prosperity and corporate success in the future. Business and labour in this province have already recognized that they must help in this endeavour.

In an age of global competition, value added products, technological change and rising international productivity, the quality of Ontario's work force will determine whether we succeed or fail. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find enough educated workers to sustain the province's industrial competitiveness. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business reports that 59% of its members in Ontario face a significant problem in finding skilled workers. According to Employment and Immigration Canada, skilled jobs cannot be filled in 300 occupations.

Unfortunately, the government has failed to develop a coherent and comprehensive human resources strategy to deal with labour force management. It is imperative that we have an effective labour force training strategy to address the growing skilled labour shortages and ensure that Ontario industry can compete in the world marketplace.

At a time of mounting economic insecurity, at a time when people in this province are suffering from a very painful loss of employment and plant closings, at a time when businesses to the south are actively recruiting us and our businesses and offering incentives to our business, this government needs to focus on stemming the tide. It needs to focus on its efforts to keep existing jobs in Ontario as well as creating an economic climate that is going to create new jobs. We need to reduce the taxes, reduce our spending. We need to provide skills training and policies that will help to keep our industries competitive.

It is time for this government to stop blaming the federal government and to take action now to prevent further job losses in this province.

Mr B. Ward: I will watch the clock here, because we have a number of other speakers as well, but I have listened intently to the debate and I feel privileged to participate at this time in the motion.

To the member for Scarborough-Agincourt and the member for Bruce, who introduced the motion, I will say that I looked at it and I have tried to find a way to be able to support it.

When we sit on the finance committee, there is always a little bit of give and take. I always try to find a way to accommodate the concerns of the members who are present. However, I just cannot support this motion, for two primary reasons, and that is unfortunate.

The first reason: I know that the opposition and the third party, the Conservative Party, will not want to hear this again, but I believe it misses its mark. Its direction is at the wrong government for lack of action. We should be focusing on the federal government.

Granted, the federal government, the Conservative government in Ottawa, through its free trade, through its deregulation, through its privatization, through its high interest rate, through its high dollar policies, has wreaked havoc on our Canadian economy. Michael Wilson, our Treasurer in Ottawa, when he stated that the economy was coming in for a soft landing obviously was incorrect, because the economy has dropped like a rock. But recognizing that, we should be looking at what can be done now.

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What has the federal government done? Michael Wilson has brought in a budget that is unfortunate. He has had a good career as a Treasurer, as some people may think, but I think he will go down as the R. B. Bennett of the 1990s.

I happen to have finished reading a book by Pierre Berton on the Depression of the 1930s, and this is exactly what the governments of that time tried to do, what the government in Ottawa is trying to do: cutting back, cutting spending. At a time when we should be stimulating the economy to try to put people back to work, they are doing the opposite, and that is exactly what happened in the 1930s.

I do not pretend to be a politician who is an MPP. I consider myself a worker who was fortunate enough to be elected by the people of Brantford to be their MPP. My friends in Brantford are working people and a lot of them are out of work, and it hurts because I know the pain that they are suffering. Working people in Brantford are proud people. They do not let on that things are troubling them, but I know they have mortgages to pay, I know they have families to feed. They do not let on that things are bothering them, but I know they do. I do not think that is right.

They know where the change has to come from. They

know that, come 1992 or 1993, the next federal election, Brian Mulroney and the federal Conservative government are going to pay for what they have done to them. They are going to remember. My advice to the third party would be to do what its party has done in Alberta and cut its ties with the federal government, if it wants to remain as a party at all. That would be my advice.

That was the first part of why I cannot support-

Mr Stockwell: We don't want your advice.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. The member for Etobicoke West, if you want to make any comments, you can take your chair.

Interjection.

The Deputy Speaker: So can the member for Simcoe West. The member for Brantford.

An hon member: Ask for your time back.

Mr B. Ward: Yes, I need that time back, Mr Speaker.

The second part of why I cannot support the motion, and again it is unfortunate, is that the Liberal Party, the opposition, is making references that perhaps it would be

doing more than what we are. I look at what is going on in other provinces in the country. Let's look at Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Quebec, Liberal governments in them all. What are they doing? Are they helping their working people? No, they are cutting programs. They are slashing spending.

They are not doing more to cushion the economic blows that working people are facing. They are doing less. They are doing exactly what the Conservatives are doing in Alberta and in Ottawa, and I submit that if in fact the Liberal Party was in power, it would be doing the same thing that they are doing in New Brunswick, in Newfoundland, in Quebec, in Alberta and in Ottawa: slashing and cutting.

Now let's look at what our government has done. I know members have heard this before but I am going to have to tell them again, as other speakers have, because obviously they have not heard enough. They keep asking what have we done and we keep telling them.

When we were elected we realized how bad times were, and I am not blaming the opposition party. I am not blaming them for what happened, but when we realized as a government how bad things were, our first priority was to battle the recession, and I think that is on the record. There are two ways to --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. I have difficulty listening to the member, and he is right close to me, so I would ask you to please reserve your comments. Give him a chance to speak. The member for Brantford.

Mr B. Ward: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Mr Ruprecht: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I did not get elected to this House to come here and listen to political propaganda.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you very much. This is not a point of order. The member for Brantford.

Mr B. Ward: If I may continue, Mr Speaker, what have we done? We look at the economy, at short-term solutions and long-term solutions. Short-term and immediate was to put the people of Ontario back to work to the best of our ability as a government. We implemented the $700-million capital works program which, I may add, is not simply to dig holes and hire people to fill them; it is to rebuild our infrastructure in our province which has been neglected for years.

My city of Brantford has received over $4 million of that anti-recession capital works program, and when you add that to the $7 million that the municipality chipped in, that is over $11 million of capital works that went to create short-term work. I think that is of benefit to the tradespeople who are unemployed, to the people who have faced possible unemployment because of the recession.

Next, we realize as a government that people fall off

the UI safety net and they fall into social assistance. That is the next layer. So what did we do in the short term? We bumped it up by 7% to attempt at least to put some money into the pockets of the people who are on social assistance. The wage protection fund was announced today by the Minister of Labour. I almost forgot about the $50 million in short-term interest relief to the farmers, which was duly recognized by the member of the third party, and I thank her for that.

What else have we done? In any recession, we have apprentices who are laid off. Unfortunately in any economy, apprentices are usually the last to be hired and the first to be fired or laid off in any type of downturn. We realize that what happened in the last recession was that the apprentices were drifting out of the system. Since they were no longer being trained, they were drifting out into other jobs or dropping out altogether, and when the recovery occurred, there was a lack of skilled workers to meet the recovery needs. So what have we done to keep apprentices in the system? We have announced a $6-million assistance program to laid-off apprentices in an effort to keep them in the system, to keep their training ability there so that the apprentices will be there when the recovery comes, and recovery will come.

Let's talk about some of the long-term solutions that we may have. Let's look at skills development. We realize as a government that the old ways will no longer work any more. The adversarial approach is no longer good enough. It has not suited our province, our country. We all have to learn to work together as business, labour and all governments. These are very tough times. What are we doing as a government when it comes to skills development? We recognize that to meet the new growth industries that are going to occur, we have to ensure that we have the skilled workforce in this province to meet that growth.

We cannot save all the plants. We have to recognize that some industries will die -- that is a natural progression -- but we have to figure out where the growth is going to occur. To do that we have to learn to work together: labour, business and government. That is what we are trying to foster, a new way of doing things, a new co-operation in this province which has been lacking in the past. What we hope to do is to develop a new way that skills will be presented in this province, and we think we can accomplish that in our term of government.

As well, we have announced the Fair Tax Commission to attempt to look at how taxes are implemented in this province and to give us ideas on how we can have a fairer tax system where everyone pays a fair share in this province. That has never been done either.

Those are long term. I would like to think that in this House during these tough times, perhaps we can learn to work together a little bit better than we are, because I really believe it is going to take the input and the give and take from both sides. I recognize it is the job of the opposition and the third party to criticize, that is fair game, but I hope they criticize in a positive manner and not just for the sake of criticizing. Give us some good ideas. We are listening as a government. We realize that it is going to take everyone's co-operation to pull us out of this recession. When times are good, perhaps we can go back to the old ways, but I hope we do not.

In closing, because we have other speakers who want to share the time, I reject the vision of the Conservatives in Ottawa and in this province that we should begin to dismantle our social network in this province and in this country, that we slash our programs, that we have an American-type society where it is dog eat dog: "I'm all right, Jack. Who cares about my neighbour."

I hope we will continue to build a society that was the vision of Tommy Douglas, one of our past leaders, a vision that was built on a society of caring and compassion for each other. I believe our government is committed to building that society and I know the people of Ontario are with us.

Mr Mancini: One barely knows where to begin. We have sat across from the government today in question period waiting for answers, we have sat across from the government all of this afternoon waiting for answers and we have received none. All we hear from the government, now that it has received the responsibility of office and power, is it cannot do anything and we have to wait the recession out.

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We will not be able to end the food banks, as they promised last summer. They were sure they could do it. They knew there was a recession on. Now they cannot end the food banks. They were sure last summer they could prevent plant closings. This afternoon, just a moment or two ago, we heard from the member for Brantford. We heard his own words. He said, yes, there would be plant closures, and we would have to accept it. Where is the legislation that has been promised over the years and specifically last year and all of last summer, which gave the impression to thousands upon thousands of Ontario voters that these people across the floor could pass legislation to prevent plant closures?

The economy is in a tailspin. It has been for a number of months and they have done nothing. I want to illustrate to the House who is suffering. The previous speaker's own riding is suffering. I want to remind the member across the floor that Solaray of Brantford closed on 21 December 1990, putting 120 people out of work. That company was a division of Sunbeam Corp. Did we hear from anybody about the Solaray employees who were turfed out on the street? Not a word from the New Democratic Party and its government.

The following are closures which were reported in the report on permanent and indefinite layoffs in Ontario for December 1990 that was compiled by the Ministry of Labour, their own department, so they know what is going on. They just want to hide from the facts. They know that in London Somerville Packaging is closed, 160 workers out of work. They know that Stanley Home Automation in Windsor is closed, 11 people out of work. They know that Therm-O-Disc (Canada) of St Thomas is closed, putting 100 people out of work. They know that the Hunt-Wesson plant in Tilbury has closed, putting 57 people out of work. In February of this year, they know that NHS Die Casting and W. G. Castings of Dresden are closed, putting 53 people out of work.

There are many whys. We want action from the government. It had all of the promises. It got all of the votes. Now it must deliver. They cannot run away from their responsibilities, and if they think we are going to sit here and let them cower and hide underneath this fancy red rug we are sitting next to, then they have another think coming.

Nabisco Brands in Leamington closed, putting 87 people out of work. My friend the member for Chatham-Kent has a lot to say this afternoon, except for the unemployed. Is he speaking for the Motor Wheel Corp, which put 191 people out of work? Have we heard from him about those 191 families that are suffering? Not a word.

Fiberglas Canada in Sarnia -- where is the member for Sarnia? -- put 191 people out of work. At Chicago Raw Hide Products in Brantford -- is the member familiar with this institution? Is the member aware that 133 people have been now put out of work? Did we hear anything about that during the member's speech? Did the member say anything? Did the member say a word?

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. Would the member for Downsview please take his seat? Thank you.

Mr Mancini: These people produced during the election campaign the Agenda for People. Let me read into the record what the Premier had to say in Windsor on 4 September 1990, just two days before a certain event: "Asked later to explain what he would do for unemployed workers, Rae repeated the NDP pledge to spend. He said he would spend $1.8 billion over two years on a 'detailed plan' to save jobs and turn around the Ontario economy." Where is the plan?

We want to know from the Minister of Industry, Trade and Technology, where is the detailed plan to save jobs, to turn the Ontario economy around? Can any ministers in the House tell us if they have been consulted on this plan? Can the member for Brantford tell us whether he has been consulted? How about the member for Chatham-Kent? Was he consulted on the plan? How about the member for Downsview? Was he consulted on the plan, the $1.8-billion detailed plan?

How about the Premier's promise to tear up the free trade agreement? Let me just inform the House. In the Toronto Star, 25 August 1990, the Premier was in the Port Elgin area. A direct quote from the Premier: "The free trade agreement would be torn up by the NDP." Torn up. That is what he said. Let me tell the House what else the Premier said during the month of August and on that particular day. The Premier said the following -- he had all the answers then; he said, "We would not in any way, shape or form be bound by the agreement and we would continue to provide assistance to industry and to farmers and to others."

Mr Bradley: Who said that?

Mr Mancini: The Premier said that. He said that around the Port Elgin area.

This is not the first time Ontario has gone through a recession. We have been through recessions before and governments in the past have dealt with recessions. During the 1981-82 recession the NDP at the time, now the government, released a number of documents about what it would do if it had the responsibility of government. It was during the last recession. I want to particularly remind the members who were here during that time and to inform all of the new members so that they understand what their obligations are: Their obligations are to keep their promise. Keep their promise; that is their obligation.

Just by coincidence I have with me a press release dated 5 July 1982 sent out by no less a person than the present Treasurer himself. I want to read into the record the Treasurer's view on what should be done during hard times, which have now become known as NDP times. The then member of the opposition said:

"Today I am introducing a bill in the Ontario Legislature to protect home owners when they are laid off, on strike or locked out. My bill would allow home owners to postpone mortgage payments for as long as they were on strike or locked out, plus three months after the strike or lockout had ended. In case of a layoff, mortgage payments could be deferred for the period of the layoff and three months after. If the layoff were indefinite or permanent, the moratorium would be in effect for six months."

The Treasurer stated at that particular moment: "It is time Ontario served notice that homes belong to the people who live in them, not the banks. Let's keep families in their homes." I want to know from the NDP government, the socialist government across the floor, what it has done to protect the people who have been laid off at a rate of 1,600 a day. What has it done in order to pursue the promise that was made to keep people in their homes and to keep the bankers out of their homes?

What have they done? They have done nothing. After seven months in office, they have completely abandoned their responsibility. All they were interested in were the votes. That is all they were interested in. They wanted the votes. They got the power. Now they are just sitting across the floor, very comfortable. They sit in those big chairs across the floor, very comfortable, and in a few minutes, after six o'clock, the ministers' limousines will line up at the east wing and they will all be whisked away because they have worked so hard today.

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Mr Stockwell: Remember what it was like? Jealous?

Mr Jackson: It took him so long to get one.

Mr Mancini: This is not a laughing matter.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Interjections.

Mr Mancini: Mr Speaker, I am losing all my time.

The Deputy Speaker: Will the member for Lake Nipigon take his seat, please, and the member for Downsview.

Mr Mancini: The member for Quinte, my colleague who sits next to me in the House, has asked the government on a regular basis to be more sensitive to eastern Ontario. His pleas for help have fallen on deaf ears. Yes, the government refused to listen; it refused to act. My colleague has reminded me of what the Liberal government did for eastern Ontario. He has reminded me that a new Sears plant went to Belleville. My colleague reminded me that a new Goodyear plant went to Napanee. My colleague the member for Quinte reminded me that a new Coca-Cola plant went to Belleville.

Now absolutely no attention is being placed on the affairs and concerns of the people of eastern Ontario. We have a situation here where the government is paralysed. We have a government that is paralysed into inaction by fear. They are afraid to move. They are afraid to implement their promises. They only respond when they have to, and at best very weakly.

We cannot wait much longer, day after day, for the 1982 promises of the Treasurer to be implemented. We cannot wait for the Agenda for People. My colleague the member for St Catharines tells me that document is now in the fiction section of the library. We cannot wait for ever. The unemployed cannot wait for ever for those people to get up the nerve to actually govern. They must assume the responsibility that they so much wanted only a few months ago. They visited community after community. They made promises after promises. We are waiting for them to deliver. We are waiting for the $1.8-billion detailed plan that was promised in Windsor.

I am going to give the Premier the benefit of the doubt. I am not going to do what the member for Windsor-Riverside did last year and call another honourable member a liar. I am not going to do that. I am going to give the Premier the benefit of the doubt. I believe he was telling the truth. I believe there is a detailed plan of $1.8 billion that will save and protect jobs and turn the economy around. What I want to know is when we can see this plan.

Mr Stockwell: I have a philosophical difficulty with the motions put on the order paper today by the Liberal Party. It is a difficulty with respect to job creation. We have had unemployment, plant closures and layoffs, and we have to re-evaluate our situation. There have been a lot of complaints about the job creation programs and the expenditures that this government has made.

The difficulty I have is philosophical. I do not believe that government can create jobs by itself. Government does not create jobs; it simply creates new taxes, in my opinion. Every time they hire somebody, it is another form of tax and they have to go back to businesses and individuals and ask them to pay for the person whom they have hired. What creates jobs is a healthy environment from a healthy economy, a healthy environment from a healthy tax base, a healthy environment from a good supply of workers. This creates jobs, this creates taxes, this creates quality of life.

The difficulty that I think this government has is that this particular Ontario economy is not healthy. Why is it not healthy? It is simply overtaxed, overburdened and people expect far more in the way of taxes from this particular business community than anywhere else in this country.

The programs that have been enunciated by the present government talk of a $700-million job creation program. My friends, that is not creating jobs. The people who create jobs are the private sector. The private sector creates jobs from opening businesses. That is called new wealth.

By the government simply taxing the public and redistributing it out in government work is not creating new dollars. The new dollars come from the business community. The business community can only flourish if it is allowed to flourish in a healthy economy, and healthy economies do not include new forms of taxes every time the government redrafts the budget.

The Treasurer, I am sure, will be coming out with new taxes and new deficit figures. This is going to be another nail in the coffin of the Ontario economic future. We have seen tax increases, double-digit increases, for the past five years. We are probably going to look at a government that is going to increase taxes and increase spending far more than the previous government, which does not create a healthy economy.

Folks, the government does not create jobs; it does not create any jobs. Any time the government wants to offer a new program that calls for new taxes, it is nailing another nail into that coffin that the private sector is having to face these days.

Hon Mr Philip: Tell that to Michael Wilson. Why didn't you tell that to your federal buddy Michael Wilson?

Mr Stockwell: Mr Philip, you continue to go on about your job creation programs, your job creation programs that you said publicly were not going to create any new jobs. What a farce. You have not created one job in your life. You continue sucking tax dollars out of the private sector, redistributing those and standing up and chanting about what a wonderful job you are doing.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Address your remarks to the Chair.

Mr Stockwell: I apologize.

It is not a wonderful job the government is doing. It is simply putting the private sector at an uncompetitive disadvantage to all other sectors around it. If we had a healthy economy, we would get relocation of jobs. If we had a healthy economy, we would get plant openings. If we had a healthy economy, the plants that are closing and leaving town would not be doing so.

It is a fool's paradise to think that we can create a healthy economy by taxing and taxing business to death. The one distinct difference between the government of the day and the previous government and this party is, when the government talks about job creation programs addressing all aspects of economic life, I believe if it wants to have a job creation program, wants to have a healthy employment level, wants to have a healthy tax level, wants to create a quality of life in this province, it has to get out of the private sector, quit taxing it to death, leave it alone, because for 42 years it was quite capable of keeping the people in this province employed until those people got in and started messing it up.

Mr Ferguson: If members are not confused at this point, then very clearly they are not paying attention to what is being said in the House this afternoon.

To understand where we are at this point, I think what we have to do is understand where this province has been. In the last election, this party did not bus and barbecue its way across the province of Ontario, giving out a promise a day the Liberal way. We did not undertake to the people of Ontario that we would dramatically reduce taxes, because we were up front with them and we told them that in fact to bring services to people in this province costs money and there are very few ways you can raise money other than taxes.

I think we were very up front with people, but we also undertook to do certain things upon being elected, and upon assuming office we were very straight with the people of Ontario. We told them that given the economic realities of the day, we would not be able to do everything as quickly as we would like to do.

What is important in this motion is not just what it says, but what is implied in the motion and what it does not say. What the motion implies is that somehow, magically, at midnight on 6 September 1990, this recession began. That is what is implied in the motion.

What the motion implies is that somehow magically at midnight on 6 September 1990 this recession began. That is what is implied in the motion.

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The other thing that is implied in the motion is that one should not have any regard at all for the deficit of the province and that we should go out and create jobs regardless of what the deficit could be. That is the other issue that is implied in this motion.

The third item that is inferred in this motion is that this national recession that not only this province but other provinces across this country find themselves in is somehow the collective responsibility of the province of Ontario. That is the other false implication in this motion.

They do not have to take our word for it. I ask the members opposite to consult with the president of one of the larger manufacturing concerns in my riding, the president of Epton Industries, an individual by the name of Michael Weedon. Recently this individual had to lay off 50 people in his plant, and he cited three reasons. He did not cite that, "We had to lay off people as a result of the New Democrats being elected on 6 September," but what he did say, very clearly, not only publicly in a news release but privately in conversation with me as well as privately in written correspondence, was that there are three main factors: the high dollar, the free trade agreement and the high interest rate policy of this country. Those are what he cited as the three main factors adversely affecting his industry.

This government recognizes that much has yet to be done, that in fact we do have many challenges ahead of us as a government, and in order to combat this recession what we have done is put forth a program that I think makes sense and creates meaningful employment in every area in every sector in the province of Ontario. Let me suggest to you that we do face challenges, and we are not finished yet. This is not the end, my friends, but this is just the very beginning of where we plan to go.

In conclusion, let me say that we, like every other province, have been the victims of the federal government's destructive, regressive, mean-spirited economic policy that fights the recession on the backs of the workers of this country. That is where we are at this point.

Might I also add that this party in fact is going to recognize the economic realities of today. We recognize the economic realities of today, but we are going to act very responsibly and we are never going to lose sight of the fact that we are the party of this province that has the social conscience.

Mr Malkowski: On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: A few minutes ago the member for Essex South made a comment about falling on deaf ears. I do not feel that is an appropriate comment in this House. He is the former minister of the Office for Disabled Persons. He should know better than to use terminology like that.

The Deputy Speaker: I am sorry to say that I did not pay particular attention to what the member for Essex South said.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. But I will make a point of reading the Hansard to see if there were any derogatory remarks, and if there were, I am positive that the member for Essex South would be the first one to apologize. Who is the next member?

Mr Callahan: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I would like just to say one thing. I think this entire debate is summed up in one --

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. The member for Essex South.

Mr Mancini: The member is correct. I did use those words and I was the Ontario minister for disabled persons for more than two years. During my time as minister I met the honourable member on a number of occasions prior to his entering partisan politics and entering this House. I met with hundreds of organizations across the province to push forward the needs and concerns of persons with all disabilities. Never, prior to my being appointed minister, during my term as minister nor since my term as minister, have I ever been accused of saying anything derogatory concerning persons with disabilities.

I believed at the time I was using something that was a colloquial term. It was not meant to be offensive in any way. If the member is concerned that I used those words, I regret that. I retract them without condition, and I can only say that if anyone else is offended, I sincerely apologize to each and every person who feels such an offence and in the future I will be more careful with the words I use.

As minister responsible for disabled persons, the honourable member will remember that I initiated and presented to the general public terms and references and words that could be used in describing issues that affect disabled people, and I hope the member recalls that.

The Deputy Speaker: As far as I am concerned, this matter is closed. Do you have a point of order?

Hon Mr Laughren: I wanted to express my appreciation to everyone who took part in the debate this afternoon. I know that I will embarrass him by saying it, but I wanted to pay special tribute to my parliamentary assistant, the member for Hamilton Centre, who has been such a help to me over the last six months.

I appreciate the fact that the member for Bruce put forward this motion as an opposition day. I think that it is an important motion, because there is no question that the most important problem facing the province today is the recession that we find ourselves in and the level of unemployment.

Mr Jackson: You just don't want to talk about the economy in Hamilton-Wentworth, do you: $200 million cancelled, jobs cancelled, you've got your best friend running for mayor.

Hon Mr Laughren: There is absolutely no question about that, and I only wish the member for Burlington South cared as much about it as some of his colleagues do, or he would not be nattering on the way he is now.

Mr Jackson: I care about you turning your back on Hamilton-Wentworth region and you know it. Stop being such a cheap Treasurer with Hamilton-Wentworth.

Hon Mr Laughren: If the member for Burlington South wants to make his cheap political points, he can do so, but I would suggest that he would be better off to take part in this serious debate about the level of unemployment in the province of Ontario.

The province of Ontario slipped into a recession in about the second quarter of 1990. Ever since that time the numbers have been disturbing, to say the least, and in the last year there has been a loss of about 260,000 jobs in the province. That is an extremely disturbing set of numbers, and what is even more disturbing than that, in the 1982 recession the loss of jobs was slightly less than that but most of the jobs in 1982 were temporary losses of jobs. About a quarter of the job losses 10 years ago were temporary. Today two thirds of all the job losses of those 260,000 appear to be permanent job losses, and that is an extremely worrisome aspect of the current recession.

I must say that last fall when the Legislature first met after the new government was sworn in, we acted as quickly as we possibly could. We took a number of initiatives. Some of the initiatives, to be fair, were started by the previous government but the legislation was never passed. There was the current cost allowance: The bill had been introduced but had never been debated and had never been passed, so this government decided it was appropriate to proceed with that current cost adjustment.

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Second, we decided as well that the accelerated, super research and development, the R and D allowance, should as well be put in place because that would encourage R and D at a time when it was most needed. The Ontario tax reduction program, which the previous government introduced, we also carried on. But I will tell members, the biggest thing we did was to immediately launch a $700-million anti-recession package. That program resulted in over 3,000 individual projects being undertaken; 22 different ministries were involved, 14,000 person-years of employment were created with that program. I want to tell members there is not another government in this entire country that had a program that even came close to being as aggressive as our anti-recession program, not one.

Of course, we understand very well that while an anti-recession package that creates 14,000 person-years of jobs -- as a matter of fact, it is closer to 20,000 when you build in the local component, the municipalities, the school boards and so forth that helped in those projects -- we know that with 260,000 job losses in the last year that does not go a long way to resolving the problems out there. We knew at the same time that we could not do it all. We knew that if we had tried to move much more quickly than we did, the members opposite would have been the first ones on their feet to say we should not be spending so much money, that the recession was temporary and that we should allow the recession to run its course, do what we could but not get the province in too deep hock. We think that we walked the proper line.

I must say at the same time that because of the unemployment numbers and -- I almost hesitate to say this because of the reaction it will provoke on the other side -- because of changes in the federal unemployment insurance program, we knew as well that the welfare rolls were going to be surging even more, even higher than they would otherwise be doing. So we needed to do a couple of things to protect not only people whose jobs would be lost, but whose unemployment insurance would run out faster than it would otherwise do. For those reasons, in January 1991 we increased the shelter allowance 10% and we increased the level of benefits 7%. There already was built in a 5% increase on the level of benefits and a 5% increase on the shelter allowance. We doubled the shelter allowance and increased the level of benefits by another 2%. That was to help alleviate the misery somewhat for those people who find themselves requiring social assistance.

As well, today in this Legislature I was very proud when I sat here and listened to the Minister of Labour stand in his place and introduce the wage protection fund. I cannot think of anything that sends a stronger signal to the people of this province that this government cares about people. When companies go out of business, we are there to help them at a time of need.

That is not all we have done. We have established a labour management adjustment committee. The Minister of Labour has announced a $7.5-million program for that. For retraining, education and literacy he has announced money -- $25 million. This government has not been sitting on the sidelines, as some members opposite would imply. I would challenge the members opposite to judge our actions in the face of a recession with any jurisdiction in this country. No one comes close to what we have done.

I understand very well the frustration of the members opposite and with the members of the official opposition. I listen to them day after day telling us two things: One, we are not doing enough, and two, we are not moving fast enough. I want to say it is fine for the members of the official opposition to rail against what we are not doing or what we are doing too slowly, but we are the ones who have to live with the commitments we make, not those over there. We are determined to move with prudence. We are determined that what we will do, we will do very carefully and we are more concerned with doing things right than we are with doing them quickly. That is a firm commitment we make to the people of the province.

I hear the members of the third party talk and I think back to another era. I actually think back, not to the 1980s, not the 1970s, not to the 1960s, not to the 1950s or the 1940s, I think back to the 1930s. That is what I think back to, because I hear members of the third party day after day saying that the answer to combating the recession is simply to make the recession worse. That is what they are trying to tell us to do.

We know the problems in Ontario are serious. We are prepared to roll up our sleeves and work with everybody in the province, the business community, the municipalities, the labour movement, to make sure we do what we can in the face of the worst recession we have had since the 1930s. It is important that we do not regard those people out there as our adversaries. We want to work with them.

I do not believe simply cutting back the way the third party would have us do, the way Mr Wilson and Mr Mulroney would have us do, is the answer at all. Do members know what the Conservatives believe in? They believe when you are in a recession, you climb into a bunker and you declare war on the public service in the province. That is simply not on. We are determined we can work our way out of this recession. We know as well that simply cutting back all of those services that are well in place in the province at the time that people most need them is not the way we intend to do it. That is not the way we are going to govern in Ontario.

I want to tell members I do understand the frustration opposite, I want to tell them we understand the problems of the province and we are going to work very hard to resolve them, but we are going to do it in a sense of partnership with people all across the province.

Ontario has an economy that is resilient. We know it is still the best jurisdiction anywhere to invest in and we believe the investment community believes in that as well. We have no doubt about that whatsoever.

Once again, I just want to close by thanking all of the members who took part in the debate. I can tell them we were listening very carefully to everything they had to say.

The Speaker: Despite the high level of interest shown in this item, the time allotted for the consideration of the matter has expired.

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

Ayes -- 30

Beer, Bradley, Callahan, Carr, Cordiano, Cunningham, Curling, Elston, Eves, Harris, Henderson, Jackson, Mahoney, Mancini, McClelland, McGuinty, Miclash, Morin, Murdoch, B., Nixon, O'Neil, H., Phillips, G., Poole, Ruprecht, Sola, Sorbara, Stockwell, Sullivan, Wilson, J., Witmer.

Nays -- 65

Abel, Akande, Allen, Bisson, Boyd, Buchanan, Carter, Charlton, Christopherson, Churley, Cooke, Cooper, Coppen, Dadamo, Drainville, Duignan, Farnan, Ferguson, Fletcher, Frankford, Haeck, Hampton, Hansen, Harrington, Haslam, Hayes, Hope, Huget, Jamison, Johnson, Klopp, Kormos, Laughren, Lessard, MacKinnon, Mackenzie, Malkowski, Mammoliti, Martel, Mathyssen, Mills, Morrow, North, O'Connor, Owens, Perruzza, Philip, E., Pilkey, Pouliot, Rae, Rizzo, Silipo, Sutherland, Ward, B., Ward, M., Waters, Wessenger, White, Wildman, Wilson, F., Wilson, G., Winninger, Wiseman, Wood, Ziemba.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon Miss Martel: The schedule next week: There will be further consideration of matters relating to Bill 4. On Thursday 18 April there are two private members' bills, the first standing in the name of Mr Chiarelli and the second standing in the name of Mr Jordan.

The House adjourned at 1810.