Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The House met at 1330.

Prayers.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

UNIVERSITY CROWN FOUNDATIONS

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): Last November I introduced a private member's resolution in this House on university crown foundations. This motion won the unanimous support of all three parties. Unfortunately, though, no action has been taken as yet by the government and the Minister of Colleges and Universities in particular.

The establishment of university crown foundations will cost the government very little money but reap potentially substantial benefits for our cash-strapped universities. So what is the holdup, Mr Treasurer?

It is time for this government to show support for our institutions of higher learning. The budget date is approaching soon. Let me remind the Treasurer and the Minister of Colleges and Universities that follow-up to my resolution will be one of the items I will be looking for. Rest assured, though, that it won't be just me awaiting legislation on university crown foundations. I have had several contacts from the university community, all asking what developments have taken place since my motion passed and was supported with praise by the government benches.

Treasurer, Minister, the university community is waiting for your budget with eager anticipation. Don't let them down again.

NORTHERN HEALTH TRAVEL GRANTS

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): I rise in the House today to bring the matter of a needed change in regulation to the northern health travel grant program. As the Minister of Health will know, there are three requirements which Ontario residents must meet in order to qualify for this program.

First, applicants must live in an area designated as part of northern Ontario for the purposes of the program. The second requirement is one of distance. The last requirement dictates that the general practitioner who refers the resident for specialized medical treatment must be a northern Ontario physician in order for the patient to qualify. As a result of this third requirement, some residents in the district of Parry Sound are currently denied access to the program.

I have held several discussions with the Minister of Health regarding this matter. I want to recognize the fact that it is under her guidance that changes have indeed been made to the northern health travel grant program, allowing most Parry Sound constituents eligibility for the program. However, this third requirement still prevents some constituents from receiving specialized medical treatment because they are ineligible.

The situation has been exacerbated by the closing of the Burk's Falls and District Hospital. Residents of the southeastern corner of the Parry Sound district must now in many instances travel to Huntsville in order to consult a general practitioner. As members of the House will know, Huntsville is located in southern Ontario. As a result, these people are barred from participating in the program because their physician lives in southern Ontario.

The minister has assured me that she will review this requirement prohibiting all residents of the district of Parry Sound from enjoying the program. I would like to know the result of this review.

ENERGY CONSERVATION

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): I would like to bring before the House today the achievement of Durham College in respect to energy conservation.

They have achieved these energy savings through the introduction of an automation system, filtration-of-air systems, and the redesign of all exterior lighting. They have installed 170 motion sensors in classrooms and laboratories and in change areas. Motion sensors are now being phased into all offices. The college has also added reflectors to the lights in hallways and used sodium instead of mercury vapour in the majority of the lighting fixtures.

Since 1985 enrolment at Durham College has increased by 44%, and yet Durham College has decreased its annual energy consumption by 1,538,094 kilowatt-hours. Durham College justly deserves its number one ranking in the college system for energy conservation.

GASOLINE PRICES

Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): Every member of this assembly with a border community will undoubtedly recognize that gasoline is the big draw for cross-border shoppers. The levels of federal and provincial tax make drivers cross over to the USA for a cheaper gasoline price. This situation is only magnified in communities such as the riding I represent, where a nearby native reserve offers completely taxless gasoline.

In an effort to assist the greater Cornwall area economy, I introduced a private member's bill in the last session of the Legislature which requested that the additional taxes the NDP government's 1991 budget had imposed on gasoline be removed. At the time, I was very disappointed that this bill was defeated. However, it now gives me great pleasure to note that a new local initiative to fight the high price of gasoline will be introduced in my riding on Monday, May 4. This program, called Cornwall dollars, will encourage residents to buy local gasoline. Essentially, participating retailers will provide shoppers with Cornwall dollar coupons. These coupons may then be redeemed at Cornwall gasoline outlets to reduce the price of gasoline to about 30 cents a litre.

Gasoline is one of the keys to keeping shoppers on this side of the border. I applaud the Cornwall Hotel, Motel and Restaurant Association for introducing this novel idea in cooperation with the Cornwall Gas Association and the caisse populaire.

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ORGAN DONORS

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): April 19 to 25 is Organ Donor Awareness Week in Ontario. Currently our province is facing a critical shortage of donated organs. Almost 800 people are waiting for a transplant operation, and the consequences are often fatal. For example, up to 30% of people waiting for a heart transplant will die while waiting. But when organ transplants do take place, they are very successful. One year after an operation, the success rate for transplants is more than 80%, and most recipients are able to lead full and productive lives.

There are thousands of documented cases that prove organ transplants save lives. In some cases, one donor can change the lives of up to 11 people by giving them a heart, a liver or eyes so they can see again. A person of any age can be a potential organ donor. In one case, a 10-year-old boy received a liver from a 70-year-old donor. In another case, the corneas from a 90-year-old donor were used to give sight to another person.

I urge the government to introduce incentives into our health care system to ensure that physicians are able to perform transplant operations when organs become available. I also urge all members of the public to sign the organ donor section of their driver's licence. That simple act may just save someone's life.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr Derek Fletcher (Guelph): In the throne speech we heard how ministers are working closely with sectors to change the way Ontario provides services. We also heard how plans are being developed in my riding to rebuild St Joseph's as a long-term care hospital and to develop Guelph General Hospital.

Guelph hospital redevelopment has been a contentious issue for 30 years in my riding. It has divided Guelph municipal politicians, doctors, nurses, unions and business people into political, religious and hospital loyalty camps. Under previous governments there were cries from the Guelph community of political interference, favouritism and window dressing.

The honourable Minister of Health met with hospital and district health council officials in Guelph on February 14 and spoke in favour of the report of the Guelph Hospitals Redevelopment Committee. This community-based committee based its report on an objective look at the health care needs of Guelph residents, the available dollars and the expertise of the hospitals.

This example from my riding clearly illustrates our government's determination to preserve public services in tough times. It illustrates our promise to be an open government that listens to people. It also illustrates our commitment to break away from the old style of politics and to do things with a different style. My constituents are saying it's about time.

MINISTERIAL COURTESY

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): I would like to thank the parsimonious Treasurer and the Minister of Health for providing some $14.3 million for Peel Memorial Hospital. The hospital has served the needs of Brampton since it was a very small town, now a community of 190,000 people reaching 320,000.

I must say, however, that I am dismayed -- in fact I am angered -- by the fact that this announcement was made through a press release. There was not the courtesy to inform the members of what was going on.

This has been a long-standing issue that I have fought since 1985. My colleague the member for Brampton North, in whose riding it is now being carried out, or would have been carried out, has asked questions in the House, has questioned the minister, has sent letters and had no replies.

This was a cutting-edge proposal which was just about in the ground, Minister. It came that close. You didn't listen to the people of the riding of Brampton South or Brampton North. You simply went ahead and allocated the moneys where you thought you could get the most political mileage out of it. That's not satisfactory, Minister, and I suggest you revisit the issue.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mr Callahan: If you can keep those people back there from yelling and shouting like a bunch of loonies, to begin with, this thing was looked at by the district health council. Many, many hours and many, many days were put in by the people of my community to determine that this was the facility. The community itself was wise enough to allocate and buy 46 acres of land on which that facility could be built. Minister, you didn't pay any attention whatsoever to the members representing that area, nor did you listen to the people of Brampton-Bramalea.

COMMUNITY SERVICES

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): The Meaford tank range in my riding has just received an influx of money which will create hundreds of jobs for the people of Grey. Aside from construction work, when completed, facilities will provide work for 80 civilians and 140 full-time army staff. It will also attract several hundred visitors each weekend, which is great news for tourism in the area. Because of the local economy, this initiative is one that was badly needed. But now we need something else as well.

The Meaford General Hospital's expansion was approved for funding in 1986, and while the board is pleased that progress is being made, it hopes the minister remembers that it is still waiting for permission to go to working drawings and to tender. They would very much like to have the project started by the end of the year.

The minister will surely understand that partly because of the new industry and population growth created by the expansion of the tank range, the community will be even more anxious to have the promised new day care, ambulatory and outpatient services. The people of Meaford have worked hard to see their dreams take shape. I'm sure the minister won't let them down.

VIOLENCE IN SPORTS

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): Another hockey season is coming to a close. Regrettably, the Toronto Maple Leafs, in spite of a good season, did not make the playoffs. Let us hope they have better luck next year.

I was appalled recently when during a hockey game a fan found himself on the ice, and in front of the thousands in the arena and millions of television viewers across the continent, the fan was held against the boards in front of the players' bench by three players while a fourth player, otherwise known as a goon, repeatedly struck the fan in the head, again and again and again. The fan continued to be hit while the referees tried to wrestle him free from the players. They brutally continued to punch him in the head.

Interjections.

Mr Perruzza: This type of violence must be condemned wherever it happens, in a sports arena, on the streets or in homes across the country. Public displays of violence, particularly by those held in high esteem in our society, such as professional athletes, cannot be accepted or protected by our institutions.

Mr Ziegler and the National Hockey League must take swift and decisive action to eradicate brutal displays of violence in the game of hockey. I have written to Mr Ziegler to ask him to act on this matter immediately, and I've also requested that the Solicitor General look into what action can be taken by our government to deal with the issue of violence in sports and to turn five-minute penalties into long-term jail sentences.

I appreciate the Conservatives; they stopped heckling when we talked about violence outside hockey. I think they take this to be a serious issue as well.

Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Municipal Affairs and government House leader): Mr Speaker, I'd like to seek unanimous consent that the parliamentary assistant to the Attorney General make a statement on behalf of the Attorney General, who is, I believe, unable to get out of Thunder Bay to be here with us today.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Do we have unanimous agreement?

Interjections: Agreed.

The Speaker: Agreed.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

COURT SYSTEM

Mr David Winninger (London South): It gives me great pleasure as the parliamentary assistant to the Attorney General to announce to the Legislature today the government's plans to increase the monetary jurisdiction of Small Claims Courts in Ontario.

Starting July 1, residents outside Metropolitan Toronto will be able to bring claims of up to $3,000 to Small Claims Courts. This brings the rest of the province in line with Metropolitan Toronto, which had its jurisdiction increased to $3,000 in 1980 as part of a pilot project. The second stage will see the Small Claims Courts' jurisdiction across the province increased to $6,000 as of April 1, 1993.

The Ministry of the Attorney General will begin consultations immediately with users of the system on ways to make Small Claims Courts more responsive to the needs of the public and ensure an efficient use of court resources. With court staff, lawyers, judges and the public, we will examine ways to improve the quality of service to the public and ensure that standards and procedures are suitable to a people's court. Our goal is to make the small claims system as easy to use and as uncomplicated as possible.

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In addition, we will consult on new procedures to appoint Small Claims Court judges. An employment equity strategy for the filling of new judicial positions and the hiring of court staff will be developed before the second stage of increase takes effect.

Small Claims Courts have always been considered the people's courts. Because it is designed so that clients can bring their claims to court without the assistance of a lawyer, Small Claims Court costs are dramatically lower than costs associated with pursuing claims in the General Division.

Today's announcement is particularly important given the current economic climate. During periods of recession, demand for Small Claims Courts services increase.

The current jurisdictional limit has failed to keep pace with the rate of inflation. Outside Metropolitan Toronto amounts have not been increased since 1977. The increases announced today will assist small businesses and individual consumers in gaining access to the court system. We anticipate a 25% increase in small claims cases with the first jurisdictional increase and an additional 15% following the second increase.

As part of our efforts to establish a more uniform system and improve service across the province, we are working closely with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union to plan for the conversion of fee-for-service staff to full- and part-time employees.

The cost of these changes will be met by increasing General Division fees, and to a lesser extent, Small Claims Court fees. While fee increases will recognize the importance of maintaining access to the court system, it is important to appreciate that fees have not kept pace with the cost of maintaining the administration of justice.

To conclude, these changes to Ontario's Small Claims Courts reflect the needs of a broad range of people who need access to this low-cost people's court.

The increased jurisdiction for these courts provides equity and access across the province and presents people with a greater opportunity to rely on the justice system to resolve a number of their disputes.

RESPONSES

COURT SYSTEM

Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): Mr Speaker, as you know, the tradition of this House is to make announcements of this type first in the House. This issue has been brought up on a number of occasions. We have a headline from today's Toronto Star indicating "Cash Limit For Small Claims Up To $3,000," an article by Paula Todd. Once again the Toronto Star has scooped the Legislature. I am just commenting, as a preliminary, that this type of thing has to stop. It indicates that there is little respect for this Legislature by the government.

This announcement has been long overdue and is welcomed as far as it goes. We know that the NDP has long advocated an increase in the limit for Small Claims Court actions. The $3,000 limit, however, is being expanded today for those areas outside Metropolitan Toronto. The significance of the announcement is that between now and next January those people outside Metropolitan Toronto will be able to sue at the $3,000 limit for the first time. The announcement goes on further, to indicate that next year the limit will be increased to $6,000.

I'd like to suggest to the government that it reconsider that particular limit. A number of experienced litigators in the province have suggested that the limit in Small Claims Court perhaps should go as high as $10,000. For example, next January, if there were to be a $7,000 claim that a citizen had against another citizen, that would have to be brought in the higher court. In point of fact, any experienced litigator will tell you that the court costs and legal fees would probably exceed $10,000 or $12,000 in the higher court for that $7,000 claim.

That brings the administration of justice into disrepute, when in fact the legal costs and the legal fees will very significantly exceed the amount of the claim.

I believe the court system can be structured. There could be a cost system structure that will enable all these smaller types of claims, $10,000 and below, to go into the Small Claims Court.

I do want to comment on one other sentence in the announcement and I quote from it:

"The Ministry of the Attorney General will begin consultations immediately with users of the system on ways to make Small Claims Courts more responsive to the needs of the public and ensure an efficient use of court resources."

The Attorney General has been telling us for 18 months that the reason this is being delayed is because there has been ongoing consultation, and yet the statement today says that consultation will begin immediately. This is the type of thinking and the type of action, particularly in the Ministry of the Attorney General, where this government is closing the barn door after the horse is out, on a whole host of issues.

This issue of the Small Claims Court should be put in the context of access of the public to our court system in Ontario. We don't know where this government is on access issues. We have a little piece of news here and a little piece of news there, and there's no comprehensive strategy whatsoever coming from this minister, from this Attorney General or from the government.

They stole a bill on class actions from the then Attorney General, the member for St George-St David. On the question of contingency fees, legal aid access issues, the law of standing, the environmental bill of rights and the expansion of intervenor funding we have no idea where this government is going. They have no game plan for the administration of justice across the board.

I will say that in the absence of the Premier I would like the Treasurer to speak to his Attorney General and tell him to get up to speed because, as I said the other day -- I see the Treasurer is taking out his note pad and I appreciate that -- the legal issues facing Ontario's society are developing in a geometric progression and this minister and ministry are moving in an arithmetic progression. They are simply not up to speed.

I would urge the Premier and the Deputy Premier to really get on the back of the Attorney General, because there are a lot of people out there who are looking for access to the courts. There are a lot of people in the legal profession who are wondering what this government is all about and what this ministry is all about.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): I would like to fill in the last little bit of time by saying that we were a little concerned that only the Minister of the Environment was able to go out and help with food banks, and not the Attorney General. We understand he may have been putting together this statement for the House today, but the speech made by the honourable Minister of the Environment was not very helpful yesterday.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): This announcement was a long time in coming. It was a very simple thing to raise the limit from $1,000 to $3,000, and it should have been done a year and a half ago. Nevertheless it finally has been done.

But there are a couple of items in this statement that disturb me. One of them is that there hasn't been anything definitive in this announcement about the judges who are going to man this court. I know the existing Small Claims Court judges are concerned because they are now working without judicial immunity. What is going to happen to those existing judges? Are they going to become permanent judges of the Small Claims Court or are they going to continue to be part of a bench that really no longer exists? The announcement is silent on that.

I am a little bit concerned about the idea that the Ontario Public Service Employees Union take such a large part in the running of our Small Claims Courts. It is interesting that at the present time, in the town of Fergus in the county of Wellington there are people who run offices and take fees for service as an accommodation to people so they don't have to travel to the county seat to issue a claim. Those people are now going to be out of a job, it appears. It's more important that the union run fancy bureaucratic court offices than for people in the counties of this province to have easy access to issue or defend a claim. This is the important thing that really underlies this whole announcement, and I am concerned about it.

As well, I am concerned that this is the government's whole answer to the problem of backlogs that presently exist in the civil courts. I hope this is not the end of it. I hope that they're going to start to look at the Ontario Court (General Division) and some of the backlogs and difficulties that exist there and that this isn't the end of their access to justice, because problems exist in the other levels of courts as well.

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): I think it's long overdue that this step was taken in this Legislature. The original expansion of the Small Claims Court jurisdiction from $1,000 to $3,000 came, I think, in 1981, as the parliamentary assistant indicated. I find it rather ironic that now the official opposition, the Liberal Party, stands up and says it should be $10,000 when it had five or six years to do something. They were asked by the chambers of commerce, they were asked by everybody in the province to raise the jurisdiction of the Small Claims Court and they sat there and did nothing.

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ORAL QUESTIONS

ASSISTANCE TO FARMERS

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): In the absence of the Premier, I will direct my first question to the Minister of Agriculture and Food. Last spring, in announcing the one-year, $50-million credit assistance program, the government talked about its commitment to developing long-range assistance programs which farmers could actually depend on in planning their financial survival. So far this year the government has introduced a minor $1-million commodity loans program, leaving farmers to wonder whether the $50-million base in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food's budget that has traditionally gone to credit assistance is being cut this year.

I ask the minister to assure the farmers of this province that the full $50-million budget allocated in past years to credit assistance will be converted into the new long-term financial assistance program he has been promising to farmers over this past year.

Hon Elmer Buchanan (Minister of Agriculture and Food): I would rather not talk in specific dollar terms at this point in time. The budget will be brought forward by the Treasurer later this month.

What we have endeavoured to do, though, is bring in long-term programs that will benefit farmers. I have addressed this House before in response to questions which talked about spending our money more wisely, smarter spending to make sure the money invested by the taxpayers of Ontario in agriculture is for the benefit of farmers and not simply transfers farmers ultimately have to turn over to lending institutions to cover the cost of high interest rates.

We are looking at ways of developing programs. We have several programs under way that are currently being developed. We've announced one program already and we hope to be able to announce, in the near future, further programs that will address the needs of farmers.

Mrs McLeod: I was not asking the minister to reveal any confidential information about the forthcoming budget in terms of any new funds or programs; I was simply asking him to confirm the commitment to past funds.

For the past year this minister has been talking about the importance of the gross revenue insurance plan and the net income stabilization account and his own commitment to channelling past price stabilization program dollars into these new long-term support programs that will allow farmers to plan for the future.

Farmers are now raising their concerns that the government may be moving to change the existing GRIP and NISA formulas because of the government's overall financial crisis and will be looking at capping or limiting the funding and benefits under these two programs. I ask the minister whether the government is indeed considering this kind of cap, and if so, how can farmers possibly plan for their long-term survival if the government is threatening to change the GRIP and NISA programs in midstream?

Hon Mr Buchanan: We have discussed caps in the past as a way of dealing with the limited amount of funds available for agriculture and trying to make sure the funds the government was handing out to farmers in fact were supporting the family farm, the average-sized farm, and would not get out of control in terms of very large units of production.

I want to assure the Leader of the Opposition that we are not in the process right now of considering those caps. What in fact we are considering at this point in time is a way of increasing the support price which would be paid out for this year's crop. Farmers in other provinces have endorsed the concept of maintaining the support price that was in place last year, which will cost Ontario several extra million dollars to do, and we are giving that some consideration.

Mrs McLeod: I would urge the minister to recognize that what farmers need is a commitment to the long-term programs that will make planning possible. It seems to us that this government has still failed to recognize the very serious financial situation the farmers in this province are facing right now. It's a situation so serious that we're faced with a seemingly incredible irony of the recent news reports that our farmers are having to use food banks to survive.

By the time the government announces its budget and any new agricultural programs, it may well be too late for many farmers to arrange the financing that's necessary for this year's crops. I would simply ask the minister why his government continues to put farmers at the very bottom of its priority list instead of announcing the details of those needed assistance programs now, when farmers are being forced to make decisions literally about their survival.

Hon Mr Buchanan: The record of this government is very clear. A year ago we got permission to announce our interest assistance program prior to the budget. We did commit $50 million at that time. During the course of the year we announced an extra $35.5 million, of which $11 million went into the interest assistance program. I would say that very seldom have governments added money to programs in order that everyone who qualified would get his or her money. In the past what happened is that programs were announced with limits, and when the limits were reached that was the end of the money. That was not the case last year, so we do have and have demonstrated a commitment to agriculture.

We are committed to long-term programs. I think the GRIP and the NISA, which are federal-provincial programs, are good programs and we continue to be supportive of those. We are now in the process of developing interest assistance programs that are long-term in nature and we will bring those on stream in due time.

SKILLS TRAINING

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): In the absence of both the Premier and the Minister of Community and Social Services, I would direct my second question to the Deputy Premier and Treasurer. Our House leader has noted a little bit earlier today the fact that at a throne speech by the poor sponsored by the Daily Bread Food Bank, the representative of the provincial government blamed the federal government for increased use of food banks rather than acknowledging what the province could do. We on this side of the House continue to be concerned that the provincial government actually fails to take the action it says it intends to take.

It was on November 29, 1990, that the government announced, or reannounced perhaps, a $54-million fund that would, in partnership with municipalities, provide training and support to people receiving social assistance to get them back to work. I would ask the Treasurer if he will tell us whether or not the $54-million fund is still available for municipal employment programs, or is this a program that has effectively been cut?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier, Treasurer and Minister of Economics): Perhaps I could respond in a rather general way, rather than falling into a trap set by the Leader of the Opposition that would imply we've cut this kind of program. I would remind the leader of the official opposition, when she asks us a question on a very serious matter, that a year or so ago, a little over a year ago, this government announced a 7% increase in social assistance benefits and a 10% increase in accommodation or residency assistance. This year we announced a 2% increase in benefits and a 3% increase in residential shelter costs, and another 3% on July 1.

I think that, to be fair, the leader of the official opposition should acknowledge the fact that we have done a great deal, given the very restrictive circumstances in which we find ourselves, and I think the leader of the official opposition would also admit that we do have the highest social assistance rates in North America.

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Mrs McLeod: There was no trap in that question. I continue to simply be wanting to take back to the government the words, its stated commitments in the throne speech, and relate them to the reality of what's happening out there.

The Treasurer will be well aware, as he prepares for his next budget, that the need for training, and particularly training for social assistance recipients to help them get back to work, was one of the main themes, one of the main commitments, of that throne speech. We already have raised an example of one of those exact kinds of training programs which the government has cut.

Let me share with the Treasurer, so he won't feel I'm trying to trap him, the details of this particular program. The facts are that in 1988, under a previous government, $54 million was set aside for these specific training programs for social assistance recipients. In December 1990, instead of allocating these funds to municipalities across the province, the Minister of Community and Social Services reannounced the same funding. In May 1991, while speaking at an Ontario Municipal Social Services Association annual convention, the minister reportedly said -- this is a quotation -- "Even as I speak, these funds are on their way to the municipalities." Incidentally, she followed by stating that if the funds didn't arrive she would ensure that heads would roll.

My question to the Treasurer is, why was this money not spent? Why was the money that she said was flowing to the municipalities never received and why is his government forcing these same social assistance recipients to stay on social assistance when they would rather have the training opportunities and get back to work?

Hon Mr Laughren: The leader of the official opposition is being unfair in her categorization of these programs. Having said that, I would agree with the leader of the official opposition about the need for training of people in social assistance, because we believe very strongly that the day is gone when governments should simply implement make-work projects in which people qualify for unemployment insurance. When the unemployment insurance runs out, they then apply for social assistance again, and there's never any real attachment to the workforce developed. That is the kind of thing we want to avoid. We're working very hard to come up with a program that will meet those criteria. All I can assure the member opposite is that when it comes to the budget there will be more information forthcoming.

Mrs McLeod: The Treasurer doesn't have to work hard to implement this particular program. The work's been done. The programs were there. We've given you now two examples of exactly the kind of programs you say you want to implement. All you have to do is implement them.

The concerns I raise in raising this particular issue today are not ours alone. Recently there was a letter sent to the Minister of Community and Social Services, or rather to the ministry, from the commissioner of the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. In that letter, the commissioner said that despite the municipality's continued efforts to access that funding and in fact to set aside moneys from its own budget as its share of the program money, "We get nothing but excuses, vague promises and broken commitments from your ministry." Municipalities are going to play a vital role to any changes in social assistance, yet they're finding that the promises made by the government are not fulfilled and this $54-million broken promise is just one example of that.

Let me ask the Treasurer very directly, very frankly, is the province's financial situation so grim that you're holding back this particular funding and this particular program that was first announced in 1989 so that your budget next week can seem to offer at least something to the unemployed people of this province?

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): Smoke and mirrors.

Hon Mr Laughren: I don't want to be provocative, but this government needs no lectures on smoke and mirrors from that party opposite, none whatsoever.

It seems to me that one of the basic differences between the position of this government and the position of the leader of the official opposition is that she seems to be satisfied with the status quo. We're not. We want to do even better than we've done in the past.

TOURISM INDUSTRY

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): My question is to the Minister of Tourism and Recreation. Last week my leader met with the president of Local 75 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. I was shocked to learn that there would be no new major conventions in Toronto until 1995. In fact, many Canadian organizations are looking to American cities because the average cost of holding a convention in this city is 40% higher than in the US. Would the minister tell us what specific initiatives he is taking to stop this tide of cross-border convention shopping?

Hon Peter North (Minister of Tourism and Recreation): We've had a number of opportunities to speak to some people about the problems with conventions and trade shows in Ontario. We've been working very hard to induce people to come to Ontario, to have their conventions here. We've put some dollars into London, Ontario, in the investment of a convention centre, which I am sure is going to be a real asset to the people of London. We continue to look for opportunities to bring conventions here to Toronto and to other parts of the province. We've invested in different convention centres in other parts of the province as well, and we invest in marketing programs that we hope will induce people to come to the province and have their conventions here.

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): I haven't heard a response to the question as to the action plan, but I'd like to tell the minister that the restaurant industry in Ontario has lost 50,000 jobs since your government took over, and now this government, in its insatiable hunger for more tax revenue, is reportedly looking at removing the sales tax exemption on meals costing less than $4. This could cost up to 12,000 more jobs in this province and it's going to further decimate the tourist industry.

Mr Minister, will you give your personal assurance that these jobs will not be lost and that this exemption will not be removed in the Treasurer's next budget?

Hon Mr North: Maybe I could address a couple of the different questions you asked. First of all, on the question of 50,000 jobs lost, I've spoken directly to the industry concerning these problems. The industry has also had an opportunity to speak directly to the Treasurer, I might add, on these basic concerns.

We've had a tremendous opportunity to work with the tourism industry since I've been the minister, and I've found that they're easy to work with. They want to look at partnerships between business, labour, the government and the community. We've tried to do those types of things. The central reservation information system is one of those opportunities. We've tried a marketing plan that involves all aspects of the private sector and the public sector working together. We've made that commitment; the industry has made that commitment. I understand that there have been jobs lost. There have been jobs lost in a number of other industries as well.

One of the questions you might want to take back to your colleagues and want to take a little further down the road is the question of the GST. I don't want to blame anybody for anything, but I'm telling you what they're telling me, and a big problem in the tourism industry in this province as well as other provinces is the question of the GST. If we can solve that problem, we can solve problems we have with our own tax. We've had an opportunity to speak to the Treasurer. The Treasurer makes decisions on taxes. We try to bring those issues forward. That's all we can do.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): The Minister of Tourism and Recreation is telling us he's investing in new convention halls. The problem, Mr Minister, is that we're not filling the ones we have right now. Second, he's suggesting he's meeting with business for partnership. The people I meet with in the tourism and restaurant trade aren't asking for partnership; they're asking for a tax break.

The bottom line in his response is that he blames the federal government for the GST. Your party sat on this side of the House some two years ago and condemned the Liberal government for the commercial concentration tax. It's killing the restaurant business. It's killing the tourism business in Metropolitan Toronto. Your party promised to withdraw it. For a matter of a year and a half you've collected $110 million in revenue. Have you forgotten your promise? When do you plan on going to the cabinet table, fulfilling that promise and giving this industry that is decimated by this recession an opportunity to fight back?

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Hon Mr North: That's a very good question, and I appreciate that question. I've had lots of opportunity to come to the cabinet table and have all kinds of discussions about tourism in this province, and we've had the opportunity to speak to the Treasurer about a number of different tax issues. As a matter of fact, the industry itself has come forward with a paper on taxes saying where it would like to change some taxes, where it would like taxes to be removed and where it would give us a very balanced approach to taxes in general in this province. We've had those opportunities and we've had those discussions. Those discussions have come to the Treasurer --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Hon Mr North: I'm sorry you can't hear me; I apologize for that. I'm telling you that we're trying to do what we can. This is not the easiest thing in the world to do -- anyone can tell you that. We've talked about the commercial concentration tax; you've talked about the commercial concentration tax. They've talked about infrastructure; they want infrastructure built in this province. Sometimes when you want to build something, when you want things, you have to pay for them, and there has to be some way to pay for them. We'll have those discussions with the Treasurer, and that's the way it is.

TEACHERS' DISPUTE

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): I have a question for the Minister of Education. Mr Minister, 12,000 high school students in the Ottawa Board of Education have been out for 28 days now. In the Carleton Board of Education they've been out for 19 days. When are you going to show some leadership?

Hon Tony Silipo (Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet and Minister of Education): I have been following the events very closely and have been having a number of discussions with the Education Relations Commission. It may be useful to read to the House a brief press release which was just put out by the Education Relations Commission, which met this morning to deal with this matter.

The release indicates: "The Education Relations Commission met today and seriously considered the question of whether an advisement of jeopardy should be made to the minister with regard to the dispute between the Ottawa Board of Education and its secondary school teachers. The commission has deferred the decision on jeopardy pending the results of meetings scheduled between the parties and the mediator to commence in Toronto at 9 am on Wednesday, April 22, 1992." That's tomorrow morning. "The commission will remain in constant contact with the mediator.

"Failing resolution, the commission will be reconvening for further consideration of the question on Thursday, April 23, at 11 am." That's this Thursday.

I think the sense is quite clear: As a result of this release, the actions the commission has taken and discussions I've had with them, there is a sense that there's a real possibility of the dispute being resolved between the parties. I think as long as that possibility is there, we need to be doing everything possible in that vein. But quite frankly, we're prepared to take our responsibilities very seriously if the dispute isn't resolved.

Mr Sterling: We've had 28 days of this bafflegab by the minister. Mr Minister, in spite of your threat late last week to the Ottawa press that you were going to legislate the teachers back to work, the teachers and the boards are not talking as of noon today. When are you going to take some real action?

Hon Mr Silipo: Either I wasn't reading very clearly or the member wasn't listening. The parties are meeting tomorrow morning with a mediator who is going to be in constant contact with the ERC. I think the member understands enough about the process to know that if that is happening, that is the appropriate way in which this dispute should be allowed to be resolved.

Mr Sterling: The appropriate way to take action is what I introduced two weeks ago, and that is to legislate the teachers back to work. Last week, Mr Minister, you said you would ensure that the school year for the students would not be jeopardized. How are you going to ensure that?

Hon Mr Silipo: By not being hesitant to take whatever action will be necessary when this dispute is resolved to ensure that the time that's been lost is appropriately made up. That's something I've indicated very clearly to the commission, that's something I know it will be looking at in terms of how this dispute is brought to a conclusion and that's something, quite frankly, which I intend to deliver on.

Mr Charles Beer (York North): My question is also to the Minister of Education and it also concerns the two strikes in the Ottawa-Carleton area. First of all, we have to make very clear that it is the minister who has twice, over the course of the last number of weeks, intervened in this dispute, first by saying he felt that the school board in Ottawa could bargain in a more creative fashion. He then last week, four or five days ago, said, "We now begin to measure everything by days."

If you look at the comments that were in the press, on TV and on the radio over the weekend, there was a clear sense that if the parties had not resolved this issue by this morning the minister was going to move. What is worse is that by now trying to distance himself again and saying it's up to the Education Relations Commission, in effect both parties can say, "We don't really need to do much because the minister has indicated that he's going to step in and resolve this."

Minister, what faith do we have that this is going to be resolved and what are you directly and personally prepared to do if those discussions fail?

Hon Mr Silipo: If the member had taken all the comments I made when I indicated what he quoted to me and to the House, I think he would know that I continued to reiterate within my response then, as I do now, the role that the Education Relations Commission has to play in this process and that in fact it's not appropriate for me as minister or for the cabinet to act without that advice coming from the commission. That's a law that was in place long before we came to exist and even before the previous government existed. So that is there and it's the process we need to follow. Whether we like it or not, that's the process we have in place now.

Again, what I can say to the member is that I'm satisfied, as a result of the actions that are happening now, that there is a possibility that the dispute can be resolved and resolved quickly this week. Clearly, if that doesn't happen then there is a responsibility on the commission, on me as minister and on the government to take other appropriate actions.

Mr Beer: I think everyone in this House, and certainly all the parents and students in the Ottawa-Carleton area, hope fervently that that in fact will happen, but I think we have another question to ask: What have we, and more specifically what have you, learned from this particular strike? We know there are others on the horizon. It goes right back to the management of the education system by you and your government, it goes right back to the 1% in transfer payments, and it goes right back to the kind of direction you are giving to school boards and to the secondary school federation and other teachers' federations.

The question is this, Minister: Are you prepared to come back into the House at the end of this week -- when this has been successfully resolved, we hope -- and indicate clearly to all school boards, to all the teachers' federations, just what the government is prepared to accept in terms of wage and benefit settlements for the rest of this year?

Hon Mr Silipo: I think I have indicated on more than one occasion that I don't believe it's appropriate or necessary for us to bring in wage controls, if that's what the member is asking for.

Having said that, I think I and other ministers have indicated clearly that we're in a time when in fact there have to be more realistic expectations on the part of teacher and other employee groups in terms of wage expectations. I think the indications we've seen in some jurisdictions and the indications we've seen in our own negotiations with the provincial school teachers are an example of that kind of approach, coupled with, I might add, an approach by the employer, the school boards, in the provincial schools and us, the ministry, in terms of addressing some other issues that were important to the employee groups.

I think that's the approach that needs to be taken. As I indicated earlier in the House, over the next couple of days we will also be indicating further ways in which, through the transition funds that we have yet to allocate with respect to education, we can be of a little help in that respect.

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DRUG BENEFITS

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): My question is to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Minister, you and all the members of your government should be aware that April is Parkinson's Disease Awareness Month across Canada. The minister will also be aware that people with Parkinson's disease are forced to pay an outrageous $2.31 for a six-cent pill which is sold in Canada under the name of Eldepryl by the company Deprenyl Research Ltd.

Since 1990, the Ontario government has funnelled $5.2 million of taxpayers' money towards the purchase of Eldepryl for patients under the Ontario drug benefit plan. Could the minister tell this House what steps she has taken to ensure that Ontario taxpayers and people with Parkinson's disease are not being gouged by an unscrupulous private company?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): I think that question is more appropriately addressed to my colleague the Minister of Health.

Hon Frances Lankin (Minister of Health and minister responsible for the provincial anti-drug strategy): There was an article in the newspaper over the weekend which brought to light some of the statistics the member opposite used in his question. In fact, in today's paper there is some rebuttal of those numbers from the company, quoting the executive vice-president, Dr Martin Barkin. There are some other numbers that come to light, and as I understand it, the company will be holding a press conference today. If I look at what was in the paper today, they talk about the costs actually being $1.51, not 6 cents.

But let me step back from that for a moment, because I think the member raises a very important issue around the cost of drugs. He will know that one of the things we have been facing with the increased cost of the Ontario drug benefit plan is the increased cost of drugs themselves, and most particularly new drugs coming on to the market. We do have an ongoing issue with respect to all of the provinces and the federal government around this issue, particularly in light of recent suggestions that there may be a move to extend patent protection and do away with compulsory licensing, which I know the member will know about. We will probably face even more serious concerns in this area, and there is a need for a comprehensive national pricing policy --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the minister conclude her response, please.

Hon Ms Lankin: At this time I can tell you that with the drug reform secretariat that has been set up and some of the policies we are developing, we are attempting to deal with this kind of issue both with respect to manufacturers and with respect to distributors such as the company in question.

Mr Jim Wilson: Thank you for your statement. It is interesting that the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations won't comment on an unscrupulous business practice. The minister is aware that the company that distributes Eldepryl is owned by a former NDP member of this Legislature, Dr Morton Shulman. Dr Shulman's company has reportedly made a profit of $10 million on the backs of people suffering from Parkinson's disease. Minister, you and your government came to office wrapped in the flag of social justice. Eldepryl is being sold at an incredible 3,750% markup. Is this the NDP's idea of social justice?

Hon Ms Lankin: Again I would suggest to the member that at this point in time I am not sure he has his numbers right. I would like some further clarification, as I understand will be in the press conference that is taking place today.

I think I have been very clear around the issue of the problem of drug costs and the increase in drug costs that we have been experiencing in this province and in this country. I don't support profits that can't be explained as a result of the cost of research and development, with respect to what a fair profit is.

When the drug plan, the Ontario taxpayers and individual consumers are facing that, with what is essentially a very important, lifesaving product with respect to medications, it is a serious problem for all of us. I think he would agree, and with his past experience with respect to the federal government he would know the problems we face with this on a national level.

Let me simply say that I continue to be concerned and I appreciate the concerns he has raised. We will attempt, in the actions we are taking, to follow up on them.

GAME AND FISH BILL

Mr Daniel Waters (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): My question is for the Minister of Natural Resources. Late last year, Mr Minister, I recall that you introduced amendments to the Game and Fish Act. Since that time, I have received a lot of correspondence on several particular sections of the act. Today I would like to ask a question on one.

Perhaps most notably, there has been a concern raised with regard to the changes around hunting and sporting dogs. I am concerned that the change will allow conservation officers the authority, with no liability, to shoot hunting dogs that are trespassing or running at large. Can the minister clarify for me whether this is the case, and if it is, why?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Natural Resources and minister responsible for native affairs): I appreciate the question. This has been the subject of a great deal of concern expressed particularly in rural Ontario.

As the member would know, these amendments to the Game and Fish Act have been introduced by three successive governments, and hopefully they will be passed. There are two matters here, though: dogs running at large and the question of trespass. There are two separate issues and two separate sections of the bill.

In the bill, the matter of trespass does not allow for a conservation officer to shoot dogs. However, there is a separate section of the bill that does deal with dogs running at large and running deer. If the conservation officer is satisfied that there are dogs running deer and that are harmful to those deer, then he can shoot. In the current bill, the legislation now in effect, conservation officers are able to do this during the hunting season. The change in this bill would allow conservation officers the same right and responsibility in closed seasons as well.

Mr Waters: While this clarifies your intention somewhat, I still feel there's an awful lot of confusion, even after understanding that different sections of the act are separate. Is the minister willing to make an effort to improve the knowledge of the act and what the amendments mean?

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Oh boy, an advertising campaign.

Hon Mr Wildman: While not exactly an advertising campaign, as suggested by the member opposite, we are preparing a fact sheet for all interested parties. It will be distributed to all members of the Legislature as well, which will make it possible for members and their constituency assistants to explain the different sections of the act.

Also, we are prepared to look at changes to the section dealing with trespass to ensure that the intent of the clause is actually put in place. On section 80, we're prepared also to look at clarification of the term "running at large," which can be dealt with through the regulations.

These are important matters. I agree with the member that all members of the House and members of the public should be aware of the issues. That's why we're preparing the fact sheet.

JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): My question is to the Attorney General, concerning how he continues to fall far short of the standards expected of his office. In addition to the embarrassing Mary Hogan affair, we now have the embarrassing Emily Carasco affair.

The minister knows that in 1988 the former government, under then Attorney General Ian Scott, established the Attorney General's Advisory Committee on Judicial Appointments. One of the expressly stated goals of this committee was to remove any unwarranted criticism of political bias or patronage in appointments to the judiciary. Legal observers were therefore astonished last week to find that committee member Emily Carasco, now a federal NDP candidate and an NDP appointee to the committee since 1990, had been promoted by the Attorney General to chair of the committee in the midst of a Windsor-area NDP nomination convention.

This appointment was announced only four days before the NDP nomination. The evidence also suggests this appointment was used for partisan purposes at the nomination meeting itself to better Ms Carasco's chances of winning.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the member have a question?

Mr Chiarelli: My question is this: It is obvious that the Attorney General, or Ms Carasco, used the sensitive and non-partisan chair of the advisory committee on judicial appointments for crass partisan purposes. Will the Attorney General immediately ask for her resignation in view of the obvious political tainting of the judicial appointments process in Ontario?

Hon Howard Hampton (Attorney General): It's unfortunate the member opposite didn't put all the facts before the House. First of all, the committee itself selects its chair. I did not select the chair of the committee. The committee, the majority of whom are still members who were appointed by the former government of Ontario, selected Ms Carasco as the chair of the committee.

The member does not do the committee justice. The committee is an advisory committee, as I said. The majority of the members on the committee are still members appointed by the former government. The role of that committee is to advertise openings on the provincial bench. It is to solicit applications and conduct interviews. The committee decides by majority vote and, I might say, in almost all cases decides on the basis of consensus who will be recommended to be appointed as a judge.

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The Speaker: Will the minister conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Hampton: The fact that many of the members on the committee were appointed by the former Liberal government of Ontario and that they decided that Ms Carasco should be the chair, to me says that this has nothing to do with politics except in the mind of the member opposite.

Mr Chiarelli: None of the appointees by the Liberals were appointed four days before a very high-profile nominating convention. The minister told last Thursday's Windsor Star, "I want to look at it to see if there's an issue here," adding that he would make a decision in about two weeks. He obviously has made his decision. In the same article, Ms Carasco said, "Surely there are more important things in the justice system for a justice critic to be looking at."

When the Attorney General and the new chair of the judicial appointments advisory committee cannot see the significance of how their conduct will increase public cynicism in the administration of justice and in government generally, then maybe it's time they both resigned. Will the Attorney General agree that the circumstances around the appointment of a high-profile active NDP candidate as chair of this committee creates the appearance of political bias in appointments to the judiciary, and will he now ensure she is immediately removed?

Hon Mr Hampton: Again, to set the facts before the House, the fact of the matter is this: This is not a partisan activity in any way. This is a committee which receives applications and interviews candidates and then makes recommendations.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Will the member for York Centre come to order.

Hon Mr Hampton: I'll attempt over the din on the other side to complete the answer. The committee has selected a chair of its committee. My understanding is that this process was completed some weeks ago. I merely made the announcement following the request from the committee.

There are very high-profile members of the Liberal Party on this committee. Some of the members of this committee have even given, if I might, extensive policy advice to the Liberal Party federally and provincially. It's interesting: I do not hear the member opposite calling for those resignations.

I believe the chair of the committee should have the freedom to participate in the political process. I believe the chair of the committee should have freedom of speech and freedom to express herself. In my mind, the chair of the committee has done nothing wrong.

The Speaker: Will the minister conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Hampton: The chair of the committee continues to do very good work on the committee. I believe that is where the matter should rest: with the committee.

TRILLIUM BOOK AWARD

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): My question is for the Minister of Culture and Communications. Madam Minister, your ministry took part in the Trillium Book Award to Margaret Atwood just over a week ago. At that time she received a $12,000 cheque and your ministry, according to Brian Beattie, paid the $3,300 round trip business class airfare at the request of Ms Atwood.

Our concern is that while we applaud her being recognized for her literary talents, we are concerned about what alternatives your ministry considered before booking and paying for this airfare. Could you not have considered having the ceremony at some time when Ms Atwood was back in Canada or indeed in Ontario? Would you not have thought of asking her publisher, perhaps, to pay? Finally, do you agree that the taxpayers of this province should pay the airfare for a recipient of a $12,000 award?

Hon Karen Haslam (Minister of Culture and Communications): The Trillium Book Award is one of Canada's most prestigious literary awards, comparable to the Governor General's Award, and we are proud to showcase Ontario writing and publishing. Since the award was established in 1987 the practice has been to pay expenses for the Trillium jury, finalists and winner to attend both the news conferences to announce the short list and the reception to announce the winner. The cost of the ticket was accommodated within the Trillium award budget. The award budget was scrutinized and adjusted to compensate. For example, for the first time there was a cash bar at the reception. We did scrutinize the budget to make those accommodations.

Mrs Marland: I am floored that this minister, who has been in this House a year and a half, had to read that answer. That is unmitigated gall, in my opinion. You should at least know what is going on in your ministry. Perhaps, Madam Minister, you can answer the next question. Perhaps you can tell us --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mrs Marland: This is the same ministry which is rejecting hundreds of requests for grants from small performing and visual arts groups around this province at the same time it saw fit to approve a $3,300 airfare round trip from Paris for this recipient.

I have here a copy of the Management Board guidelines for international travel and I would like the minister to tell this House under which of these guidelines the payment of that fare qualified, because according to my review, there is nothing in the Management Board guidelines that would either approve beforehand or retroactively the payment of that fare for Ms Atwood. In fact, the guidelines actually specify that approval cannot be given retroactively, which in our understanding is what had actually happened in her ministry without her knowing anything about it.

Hon Mrs Haslam: I can only reiterate how important Margaret Atwood is to the writers of this community. The Trillium Book Award is a major award. We are very pleased we were able to offer this so that Ms Atwood could attend. I will agree that we scrutinized the budget, checked over what we could and could not do and offered a cash bar. We did not pay for any of those things in order for us to allow Ms Atwood to attend this very prestigious award.

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ENERGY CONSERVATION

Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): My question is for the Minister of Energy. The recession has destroyed many jobs in my riding. Because of free trade many companies have closed their Canadian subsidiary operations regardless of their profitability and efficiency; for instance, 2,300 jobs at the General Motors foundry in St Catharines.

I would like to look at Niagara Falls and tell you what is happening there. We have many major power users, large, heavy industries that have located there since the turn of the century because of cheap power from the falls. Some of these companies I have toured, such as Carborundum Pulpstones, Cyanamid, Norton Advanced Ceramics and Washington Mills. I have spoken to the business people and the union people, and they have told me of their concern about the rising power bills, which they feel may result in plant closures.

Mr Minister, what can you tell me and my constituents that will help keep the power bills down and these jobs in my riding?

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Minister of Financial Institutions and acting Minister of Energy): The member raises an important question because the kind of companies she is referring to find themselves faced with a contradiction, a contradiction that says on the one hand -- they've been pushing this through their organizations over the last number of years -- that Ontario Hydro should be allowed to proceed to build large new supply options across the province to keep the energy supply secure in this province. On the other hand, they are very concerned about the price increases we've seen in the last couple of years, price increases which result from that old philosophy of build everything you need and might need into the future.

The answer for the future has to be that we build a much more efficient society in this province, a society that uses energy in a much more efficient way than in the past. Hydro and the Ministry of Energy have a number of programs that are designed to help industries right across this province to use energy much more efficiently and to start the process of reducing their energy bills.

Ms Harrington: I firmly believe that in the long term we have to have stable and attractive power rates in this province. Right now I must ensure that these major power users take advantage of the efficiency programs being set up and that they know our government is here to help them. Mr Minister, how do they find out about these programs you are offering?

Hon Mr Charlton: The programs, which are offered by both Ontario Hydro and the Ministry of Energy, deal, specifically for Ontario Hydro, with electricity consumption. Ontario Hydro has a number of programs that deal with electricity consumption and the Ministry of Energy also has programs that deal with all the other energy fuels, so it would depend in part on whether they are concerned about just electricity or the overall consumption of energy in their operation. My advice would be that they contact both the Ministry of Energy and Hydro so that we can attempt to coordinate the best advice overall in terms of energy-efficient use in the particular industry in question.

RYERSON POLYTECHNICAL INSTITUTE

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): My question is to the Minister of Colleges and Universities. We know that Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, headed by your cabinet colleague's husband, has lobbied for full university status for some time. We also now know that the Council of Ontario Universities advised you last year to conduct an external examination of Ryerson's request, including a review of the faculty's academic qualifications.

The minister will know that the doctorates of several faculty members have come under serious questioning in the last few days. Mr Minister, why did you refuse the proposal of your own advisory body and why did you reject an external review of Ryerson's academic and other credentials?

Hon Richard Allen (Minister of Colleges and Universities and Minister of Skills Development): About a year ago I asked the Ontario Council on University Affairs to advise me on the advisability of exploring university status for Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, and also Nipissing University College in North Bay, and I did get advice back from it, which was of a twofold nature. The first was that the council had no particular objection to moving with regard to those initiatives, and in particular with regard to Ryerson, and that this should be a limited mandate institution at the university level devoted to applied affairs.

Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, as you know, is a long-standing institution in this province about which we know a great deal and whose reputation is well founded and for which we have a great deal of respect. It seemed to me that what was proposed by the Ontario Council on University Affairs as advice to me as minister -- and I underline, as advice -- was too far-ranging and too comprehensive with regard to an established institution in the post-secondary system. I did not reject specific initiatives of review that might pertain to particular aspects of the institution, and indeed we have a good deal of information coming from that institution now in a preliminary examination of the acceptability of the proposal. I certainly did not reject out of hand in any respect the investigation of degrees.

Mr Daigeler: Minister, it is you who has put the Ryerson institute in a rather embarrassing situation right now. If you had accepted the recommendation of your own body last year, I'm sure the matter of the faculty qualifications would have been brought up and investigated. That's at issue here.

You did not follow through on the suggestions -- and wise suggestions, I would like to say -- of your own advisory committee, so I would like to ask again, Minister, why are you so intent on pushing through the review of the Ryerson qualification for full university status? Are there any special reasons you're hiding from us?

Hon Mr Allen: The suggestion that I am pushing through Ryerson's university status regardless of all considerations is a bunch of hogwash. It really is.

The critic may well know that what is happening across the university world, for example, in Great Britain, is that polytechnical institutes are across the board being given university status in recognition of a new status of applied studies at university levels. That's not an uncommon thing today.

I am not pushing something. Something is happening in the larger world of higher education that I am trying to accommodate in Ontario for the best benefit of those people who follow technology studies in a rigorous way in our system. That's all I'm trying to do. I'm sure it's all the member would want me to do.

GAME AND FISH BILL

Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): To the Minister of Natural Resources: Last week, Mr Minister, in reply to one of my questions, you stated that you had consulted with organizations such as the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the deer hunters and a number of other groups concerning wildlife and Bill 162. Can you explain why farm groups, and even the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and probably the minister himself, don't really agree with your claims in trying to define what a farmer is? Do you feel it's your mandate to define what a farmer is, Mr Minister of Natural Resources?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Natural Resources and minister responsible for native affairs): Last week I indicated that the Wildlife Working Group, in preparation of the wildlife strategy, had consulted widely and had representatives of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture on it.

I'm not sure the member meant to indicate that I as minister did not agree with myself, but I would point out to the member that in the current Game and Fish Act there is a definition of "farmer." This is not something new. This is in the current act.

The proposed changes in Bill 162 are a matter of concern to farmers. I met with a group of deer farmers this morning and they explained that to me. I indicated that we would consult with the Minister of Agriculture and Food and with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture on how we might rework that wording, because we don't anticipate that we should be defining "farmer" any differently than it is in the current act.

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Mr Villeneuve: I really appreciate that the minister will not change the definition of "farmer." He has just said that, and I will accept that. I think the minister knows full well that the only consultations the ministry undertook were typical of this government. They were by invitation. Indeed, the federation of agriculture and the deer farmers have not had a great deal of input into Bill 162 to this point. I'm pleased to hear that the minister will indeed be consulting.

Can the minister explain why it's necessary to give his ministry power in Bill 162 to ban without appeal such animals as rabbits, goats, bison, beefalo and fish? This bill, unless it's changed, will put them under your jurisdiction. Tell me why that's happening.

Hon Mr Wildman: I think the member for the united counties is confused. First, there is nothing in the bill that bans animals. The fact is that the bill is designed to deal with wildlife and to ensure that the Ministry of Natural Resources can carry out its mandate to protect wildlife species in this province. The concerns that were raised this morning when I met with the deer farmers related to consultation. They and the member are confused in that the consultation he's referring to was on the wildlife strategy, not Bill 162. As he knows, Bill 162 is just an update, a more modernized wording of legislation that was first prepared by his government, then subsequently by the Liberal government and now by us. This is nothing new. It's been around for five to six years.

MOTIONS

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

Mr Cooke moved that Mr Arnott exchange places with Mr Murdoch (Grey) and Mr Harris exchange places with Mr Carr and Mr Martin exchange places with Mr Wessenger in order of precedence for private members' public business.

Motion agreed to.

PETITIONS

FRENCH-LANGUAGE SERVICES

Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): I have a couple of petitions to present today. The first one reads:

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

"Whereas the French Language Services Act, 1986, Bill 8, continues to elevate tensions and misunderstandings over language issues throughout the province, not only at the provincial but also at municipal levels; and

"Whereas the current government disputes its self-serving select committee and intends to encourage increased use of French in the courts, schools and other provincial services to ensure that the French Language Services Act is working well to the best of their concentrated efforts; and

"Whereas the spiralling costs of government to the taxpayer are being forced even higher due to the duplication of departments, translations etc to comply not only with the written but also with the unwritten intent of the French Language Services Act; and

"Whereas the spiralling cost of education to the taxpayers are being forced even higher due to the demands of yet another board of education -- French language school board,

"We, the undersigned, request that the French Language Services Act be repealed and its artificial structures dismantled immediately, and English be declared as the official language of Ontario in governments, its institutions and services."

OATH OF ALLEGIANCE

Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): I have another petition here.

"Whereas Her Majesty the Queen, at her coronation in 1953, took a personal oath to the people of Canada, and Canadians have always reciprocated with oaths of allegiance and service to the person of the sovereign;

"Whereas it is our right and duty to take oaths of allegiance and service in such form;

"Whereas Ontario regulation 144/91 made under the Police Services Act, 1990, denies Ontarians this right,

"We, the undersigned residents of Ontario, loyal to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to resolve that His Honour the Lieutenant Governor in Council be requested to revoke Ontario regulation 144/91 and restore the traditional oath of service to Her Majesty for police personnel in Ontario."

KRISTINA D'ANDREA

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): I have a petition addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

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

"The Minister of Health for the province of Ontario review the case of Kristina D'Andrea, a member of our faith community who suffers from mucopolysaccharide disease. We feel that the bone marrow transplant that she requires to live should be done here in Ontario rather than forcing the family to go to the United States. If this little girl is forced to go to the United States, we feel OHIP should pay for the full cost of the operation, as Toronto Sick Children's hospital said they would do the operation and then they refused.

"In justice, we feel you should do whatever you can to give this child a chance to live. We thank you for your time and cooperation."

This partial petition, because I understand there are a great many more, probably thousands more, is signed by over 600 citizens of London, Ontario. I have affixed my name to this and I'll put it to you for your consideration, Mr Speaker.

SCHOOL ACCOMMODATION

Mr David Winninger (London South): I'm pleased to table a petition signed by 82 concerned members of the parent-teacher association of St Francis separate school in my riding of London South. The petition reads as follows:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas St Francis separate school in London has been overcrowded since it was constructed some 20 years ago; and

"Whereas we have had portables on this site for almost all of these years and these portables now are in poor condition; and

"Whereas many of our students face the prospect of spending almost all of their elementary school career in portables,

"We, the undersigned members of the parent-teacher association of St Francis school, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario that the Ontario government continue to allocate funds for capital expenditures for school buildings and that the Ministry of Education allocate funds for new construction at St Francis school in the current year."

I submit this petition and I have affixed my name to the petition.

CHILD CARE SERVICES

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): I have a petition which reads as follows:

"We, the undersigned, request that the minister take action immediately to rectify the further salary inequity announced December 2, 1991, for early childhood educators. We believe that the principles of freedom of choice, pay equity and non-discrimination form the backbone of our democratic society. Furthermore, parents must retain the right to select the day care of their choice."

This petition is submitted by 53 parents from Burlington, residents of Halton Centre, and I've affixed my name to the petition.

LABOUR LEGISLATION

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): I have a number of petitions signed by 64 Ontario residents representing both the management and employees of a number of Ontario companies, including Ronson Paving and Construction, Fauteux Building Supplies Ltd, M&G Steel Co, Gillanders Construction and McConnell Contractors Ltd, which read:

"Whereas investment and job creation are essential for Ontario's economic recovery,

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

"To instruct the Minister of Labour to table the results of independent empirical studies of the effect that amendments to the Labour Relations Act will have on investment and jobs before proceeding with those amendments."

I here affix my signature as well.

1510

ORDERS OF THE DAY

House in committee of the whole.

WASTE MANAGEMENT ACT, 1992 / LOI DE 1992 SUR LA GESTION DES DÉCHETS

Resuming consideration of Bill 143, An Act respecting the Management of Waste in the Greater Toronto Area and to amend the Environmental Protection Act / Projet de loi 143, Loi concernant la gestion des déchets dans la région du grand Toronto et modifiant la Loi sur la protection de l'environnement.

The Chair (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Just to remind the House, this is the second sessional day. All amendments proposed to be moved to the bill shall be filed with the Clerk of the assembly by 4 o'clock on the last day, which is today. At 5:45 pm on that day, today, those amendments which have not yet been moved shall be deemed to have been moved and the Chair of the committee of the whole House shall interrupt the proceedings and shall, without further debate or amendment, put every question necessary to dispose of all remaining sections of the bill and any amendments thereto and report the bill to the House. Any divisions required shall be deferred until all remaining questions have been put, the members called in once and all deferred divisions taken in succession.

I also remind the members that if you wish to divide on any question or any amendment or any section, you must have at least five members standing.

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): Just for clarification, I've tabled this afternoon some motions we have. It didn't do much good when we were in committee, but I've got them at the table. I have the Liberal motions here and I just want to be sure whether or not there would be any further motions coming from the government. Does the government have any amendments to bring forward today?

Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): At this point in time, no, we don't. There were quite a few amendments made when we were in the committee process in clause-by-clause, and the bill as it's reprinted is the way the government is bringing it forward today. I haven't got a copy of your proposed amendments, so I suppose the table will provide them for all members.

Mr Cousens: The process is one that continues to amaze the public at large and it happens to be the way an old-fashioned Legislature works. The government, which has the greatest number of seats, will at the end of this afternoon's session pass into law Bill 143.

We have gone through weeks and weeks of hearings, and to my mind there has just been no listening from the government. I am saying this before we start the afternoon: Anything we have to say this afternoon helps clear our chest. The tragedy is that there are many people outside this House who have tried to make their views heard and understood by the government. I'd just like to remind the House today as we begin this session that there are no further amendments by the government; I would be willing to put up a wager that there isn't an amendment of any meaning that could be put forward by either ourselves or the Liberals that this government would support.

It's a tragedy. It's one of the worst things I've seen happen. Right from the very beginning this is a government that has gone and done its own thing, without consideration of either the promises it made before it won the election on September 6, 1990 --

Interjection.

Mr Cousens: I'll tell you what's different about it: It's that you're so sanctimonious about it. If there's anyone who's more sanctimonious, it's the Premier, the Minister of the Environment and the New Democrats, who said they would have a full environmental assessment for Keele Valley, and you haven't done it and you won't do it. If you vote for this, you're voting for the lies that have been said before. I shouldn't say "lies." You're voting for the misinformation that you and your government came out with.

What we're into this afternoon is another bit of a sham. I will participate in it reluctantly. I wish there was more I could do than just shout, raise my voice and make points, because the fact of the matter is, once a government has won, as this one has, it seems to stop listening. They don't need to listen. They just go and do what they want.

Mr Chairman, before you begin the session, I just thought it would be worth while to make a few --

The Chair: Order. I just want to remind you that the more time you take in debating, the less time you have to debate the amendments.

Last Thursday we were debating section 2.1, which was introduced by the member for Brampton North and then was withdrawn; he is withdrawing it today. We have section 2.1 from the member for Markham. Would you please read your amendment.

Mr Carman McClelland (Brampton North): On a point of order, Mr Chair: Section 2.1 was the subject of debate on Thursday last. I thought we had proceeded with that and that debate had not concluded with section 2.1. Just by way of explanation, I had submitted a new package of amendments today with the understanding that any subsequent amendments in the package that was presented on Thursday would be withdrawn.

In short, as a result I would like to proceed with a vote or a call of the question on the amendment as introduced by myself last Thursday. So the amendment for section 2.1 is not withdrawn; subsequent amendments are withdrawn in lieu of the amendments tabled today.

The Chair: My understanding was that you were withdrawing it today, but we'll pursue the debate. Please go on.

Mr McClelland: I have nothing further to say on section 2.1. I'm prepared to have a vote on the amendment. It will be deferred, of course, but you may put the question now.

The Chair: Are there any other questions on the amendment introduced by the member for Brampton North? We're ready to put the question.

Mr McClelland moves that the bill be amended by adding the following section:

"2.1(1) Within four months after the coming into force of this act, and every four months afterwards, the corporation shall prepare a written report setting out descriptions of all the sites the corporation is considering as possible sites for landfill waste disposal sites.

"(2) The corporation shall give a copy of the report to the Minister of the Environment and shall make copies of the report available to members of the public at no charge."

All those in favour of the motion will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the nays have it.

Vote deferred.

The Chair: Mr Cousens.

Mr Cousens: I'm not going to proceed with the amendment I have; we're so short of time. The amendment that has just been deferred is very similar in many ways, so in order to proceed expeditiously on other matters before us this afternoon, though I have an important motion the fact is that many of the elements of it have already been discussed and are inherent to the wording the member for Brampton North put forward. I will not proceed with my amendment 2.1.

The Chair: Are there any questions or comments on this statement? If not, then we'll proceed to the next amendment you have, which is to subsection 13(1).

Shall sections 3 through 12 carry?

Interjections: No.

The Chair: All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Vote deferred.

Section 13:

The Chair: Now we're dealing with subsection 13(1).

Mr Cousens moves that subsection 13(1) of the bill be struck out and the following substituted:

"Application

"(1) This part applies to,

"(a) landfill waste disposal sites located in any one or more of the regional or metropolitan municipalities described in subsection (1.1), the primary function of which is the disposal of waste generated in one or more of the regional or metropolitan municipalities described in that subsection over a period of at least twenty years; and

"(b) environmental assessments of landfill waste disposal sites referred to in clause (a).

"Regional and metropolitan municipalities

"(1.1) The regional and metropolitan municipalities referred to in subsection (1) are the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, the regional municipality of Durham, the regional municipality of Peel and the regional municipality of York."

Are there any questions or comments?

1520

Mr Cousens: In the document before us, which is Bill 143, the government has in its section 13 three key decisions it would like to see done: that there be a landfill waste disposal site located in Peel, one in Durham and one in the region of York.

This logic that the honourable minister has brought forward is flawed in so very many ways. I know my colleague the member for Mississauga South will comment on this as it relates to Peel. I can certainly relate as it affects York region, and you would expect the member for Durham West to deal with it as it affects his riding in Durham, but the fact is that the member for Durham West is keen to see something that I think his own constituents would have alarm over.

Why, in the first place, would the government want to have the most expensive land in Canada allocated for use as a landfill site? Why would we do that when there are opportunities for landfill sites outside of the greater Toronto area? Why would you choose the greater Toronto area when there is a site near Kirkland Lake where there is at least some possibility of interest in that site? Why do we have a wall around the greater Toronto area in dealing with our garbage and say we will solve all our garbage problems within the GTA?

We start from the wrong premise. First of all, let's begin to be very creative in dealing with the 3Rs. Let's all of us make a conscientious effort to make sure we are doing everything possible to reduce, reuse, recycle -- everything possible. Let us also have minds that are open to possibilities that can solve the long-term problems for the greater Toronto area.

I am dumfounded that just over a year ago, the Minister of the Environment sent a letter to the then Metropolitan Toronto committee that was looking at it, giving it encouragement to try to find a site outside of Metro Toronto. The Minister of the Environment said, "You're on the right direction; see if you can find another site," so they did. They went to task, spent millions of dollars -- close to $10 million, I think; it might be more -- and identified a possible site.

There hasn't been anyone on this side of the House -- unless the Liberals have; you never know what they're going to do. We certainly would not want to force any community to be an unwilling host for someone else's garbage, but Kirkland Lake, at the Adams mine site, had a feeling that there was a possibility of considering that. There was a referendum on the November election of 1991 giving the people a chance to express their feelings about it, and 69% of the people in that community said, "Let's at least look at it."

It would mean there would be jobs created in Kirkland Lake. It would mean that the rail line going from Metro Toronto, somewhere in the MacMillan yard in Vaughan, could be used as a depot, and that the garbage would then be shipped up via rail to the north country. It would mean that the rail lines would have increased viability in a depressed market. The railroads were very, very busy years ago, bringing the ore from the north; now, with the mines closing down as much as they are and the economy as depressed as it is, the railroad would have an extra reason for its existence. So there would be jobs made available to those people in Ontario Northland and in the other rail networks involved in shipping the waste through to the Adams mine site.

The Adams mine site, when you look at it, is an impressive site.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): For a hole in the ground.

Mr Cousens: For a hole in the ground. Anyway, it is. When you're in charge of garbage, you'd love to have a place like this that seems, to someone who doesn't necessarily know all there is to know about holes in the ground -- we're getting deeper and deeper in another hole created by the New Democrats, but that's another kind of hole. The economy is bad. Everything you guys have touched has turned to something that's a four-letter word: dirt.

The Adams mine site has the potential of being a 20-year hole in the ground -- there are three holes there -- that could service the needs of the greater Toronto area, but the bill as we have it makes it impossible to look at a solution outside of the GTA to dispose of our garbage. What are we stuck with? We're stuck with a bill by the minister that says, "We'll have one in Peel, one in York and one in Durham."

As it stands, what this bill really means, ladies and gentlemen of the House, is that York region, with Keele Valley, is going to be the primary dump site for Metropolitan Toronto. I don't like it, the people there don't like it, but it's going to happen, when you know full well there are opportunities to get rid of our waste outside of the greater Toronto area.

We're dealing with a fundamental breakdown in thinking and in the possibility of finding a practical solution to Metro's waste. That is closed off by other parts of this bill. We're now faced with what we really do with this act.

Bill 143 is really putting the onus on Peel to come up with this landfill site. I sincerely hope the member for Mississauga South will take some time to discuss the problems around the Peel sites that have been selected and the cost that's gone into it. The feeling from the community about the way this government has mismanaged the search for a site within Peel is really an example of how not to do business. I sincerely hope the member for Mississauga South will do that.

With York region, I have never in my experience seen the tame and mild Eldred King, the chairman of our region, come forward in such --

Interjection.

Mr Cousens: He is. I mean, you're talking to a gentle man. The presentation he made with legal counsel on behalf of York region was a strong statement of anger and indignation about the way this government is dealing with the issue. You heard representatives from my riding, the riding of Markham, you heard the mayor of Vaughan, Mayor Jackson, along with her legal counsel, and you heard from the mayor of King; you heard from representatives from just about every community in York region saying, "Don't do it to us," and it's happening.

I find the bill offensive and would like to find ways where we could move away from certain sections of it that are going to make it necessary to find a landfill site in York region or in Durham or in Peel when in fact you know the better solution is found outside the geographic area to which the garbage site for Toronto is being confined. The most expensive land in Canada is here. The land has a value far greater than other parts of the province. Even in a community such as in Kirkland Lake, where there is a sense that enough people in the community would take that as an alternative site to be considered, it is ruled out.

We started talking about this bill on October 24, and at that point most municipal politicians who wanted to get re-elected were out on the election trail, trying to speak to their constituents to get ready for mid-November. As a result, it wasn't until after they were elected that they had a chance to study the bill.

When finally it became very obvious to people, more than just those of us who were on the bill examining it all the time, that this was a problem, there was enough of a reaction that myself and our House leader, in cooperation with the Liberals -- when you're in opposition and there're only a small number of you, you end up making friends even with the Liberals. If you go back a few years ago and you realize that they helped get us into this mess, and you go back a few years before that and realize the Conservatives helped make the mess, I think there isn't anyone who can say their hands are clean in dealing with the garbage issue.

1530

But the fact of the matter is, and it's worth saying and putting on the record, that the critic for the Ministry of the Environment in the Liberal Party, the member for Brampton North, and myself, with the support of both our caucuses, said when the House recessed at Christmastime that we would not allow this House to rise without at least having several weeks of hearings on this bill so that the public would have a chance to respond to it. I would like to thank the Liberals for their support of this initiative, because those were some of the most painful weeks I've ever put in, to sit in committee and see what was happening. There was nothing wrong with the presentations that were presented, but the stonewalling by the New Democrats was something that left an awful lot to be desired. What happened at that time was that although recommendations were brought forward by the communities at large that would support the amendments I have before the House right now, every one of those suggestions and recommendations was defeated.

All I would hope for is that out of the wasteland of five weeks -- one week listening to each other make amendments and have them voted down, and another four weeks in which we had a chance to look at other options -- there may be some way in which the public at large would at least sense that the government is taking power away from them in the process of setting up a new administration to look after our waste.

Our feeling here is, let's just begin to have a plan that doesn't mean that waste sites have to be in Durham, Peel or York. Let's see if we can come up with something. If this minister had done what she had promised to do so that we would have known where the potential landfill sites were going to be, it might have changed the hearings quite a bit. Then people would have had a sense of knowing the possible locations, whether in Whitevale or the Rouge Valley or some other part of each of our municipalities, that that was where the landfill site was going to be. But the Interim Waste Authority has not come forward with its list of potential sites that are being considered for landfill, and because of that the public has become rather apathetic about what really is going to happen with garbage.

I'm not apathetic. I'm really proud of the way in which our own caucus is supportive of other initiatives. I don't think our amendment here today begins to solve the problem. I don't think the bill as a whole solves the problem.

The legislation that's going to be tabled by the Minister of the Environment to speed up the environmental assessment process might, that one thing alone, negate the whole need for Bill 143. If there was a way in which people could participate in a process to appeal environmental assessments and do it more expeditiously so that some people couldn't delay the whole process and protract it for long periods of time, we would be further ahead. The fact of the matter is that I have not seen that legislation. It was referenced in the speech from the throne and I look forward to seeing it because maybe within that -- did you not indicate there are going to be changes to the Environmental Assessment Act?

Mrs Marland: Yes, she did.

Mr Cousens: I left with that feeling from the speech from the throne. The minister was looking as if she hadn't heard about it before, but I know she has. She's got a lot on her mind; I don't know what it is.

Hon Ruth A. Grier (Minister of the Environment and minister responsible for the greater Toronto area): The minister is remembering a statement she made in this House last week, so presumably --

The Chair: Order.

Mrs Marland: She did announce it last week, that there will be revisions --

Mr Cousens: The whole bill has been tabled.

Interjection.

Mr Cousens: No, I know that it will be tabled, and I haven't seen that.

Mrs Marland: It's only a statement.

Mr Cousens: It's only a statement. We haven't seen the bill yet. A bill to change the whole environmental assessment process would go a long way to improve the system we're into now, but this government still doesn't know when it is going to do that. Broken promises, broken hope and great disappointment: I haven't talked to anyone who is thrilled with the actions that are being taken by this government.

I understand that the member for Durham West feels it's just a great bill. I hope his constituents will have a real good look at what he has said in committee and how he has supported this, because what he is really saying when he supports the government's motion on this section is that he wants to have a garbage dump in Durham. I have to say he would be doing a bigger favour if he said to his constituents, "I'm prepared as well to look at a site outside the greater Toronto area so that we might be able to look at a place that isn't necessarily as unsound as this is or we might find a spot that would be better."

Anyway, we present this for the concern and consideration of the committee and I indeed hope there is some willingness to take away the sense in which there would have to be a landfill site in each of those three areas. It may be the beginning of a crack that says maybe we can look elsewhere outside the greater Toronto area. That is the kind of intention I have behind this amendment, and as well intended as it might be, I also have the sense of knowing it's not going to go too far, but you have to try or they wouldn't send us down here to at least put the case forward.

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I would like to make a couple of comments to bring another perspective to the record we've heard so far. I'd like to begin with the Adams mine site and the whole concept about the willing host.

What we heard from the member is that there was a referendum in Kirkland Lake, Engelhart and Larder Lake for the landfill site to be in the Adams mine site. In fact the Adams mine site is in Boston township and the people who live in Boston township were not allowed to participate in the referendum, were not asked and were in fact --

Mr Cousens: That is not true.

Mr Wiseman: That is true.

Mr Cousens: "Not allowed" is not true. They don't live in the municipality in which the referendum was.

The Chair: Order. The member for Markham, please take your seat. When you wish to take the floor, all you have to do is to stand up after he is finished.

Mr Wiseman: In fact I would agree with the member. In fact they were not allowed to participate because they did not live in Kirkland Lake or Larder Lake or Engelhart. He is correct about that. So what we have here is a group of people who live around the township making a decision for the people who live in the township. To that I think we would all have to agree, because you've just stated that. That's the truth.

What we know is that there was a poll done in Boston township, Catharine township and Pacaud township, which is south of the Adams mine site; 164 homes were phoned and 162 opposed the use of the Adams mine site for waste disposal. I think we have to consider that.

Coming from the region where I do, where landfill sites have been located in Pickering, with the majority support of the rest of Durham region against the support of the local council, I have a great number of residents who are sympathetic to the notion that you must be consulted.

I'd also like to speak about the transportation. You made the point. What in fact would happen is that about a million and a half tonnes of Metro garbage would be driven to Vaughan, compressed, put on rail cars and shipped up to the Adams mine site, where it would then be sorted, separated and 8% of it would be recycled, with 92% going into the hole. I want to deal with that in a minute.

The projected cost is $600 million, and I think to myself, what would $600 million do in the recycling programs of southern Ontario to get them off the ground? Yet the idea here is to just put it on a train and ship it north. To me, that's false economy and the lost opportunity to invest the $600 million in the plants, in the recycling centres and in the whole of the recycling industry. We'll see how that works out a little later on.

The Adams mine site could not take all of Metro's garbage. It was to take a million and a half tonnes for 20 years, for a total of 22 million tonnes or so of Metro's garbage. There would still have been a need in the GTA for a site for another 3 million tonnes per year.

What we heard from the member is that he wants that all over Ontario. He wants everybody to be on the table. I think the new member for Brant-Haldimand would be interested to know that if he passes this piece of legislation, if he votes for it, then he is voting not just for a landfill site for Metro's garbage, maybe in Dunnville, but he would be voting in favour of that incineration plant in Cayuga to burn Metro's garbage. What the member is saying is that he wants to put all of Ontario back on the table for Metro, and that Metro is the only municipality in all of Ontario that has the right to expropriate property in another municipality's jurisdiction.

1540

Mr Cousens: Whoever said that?

Mr Wiseman: That's what is in the --

Mr Cousens: That's a crock.

Mr Wiseman: It's implied by what you're saying.

Mr Cousens: You take the implication, you blow it up and you make a lie of it, or you Martel it.

The Chair: Please address the Chair.

Mr Wiseman: What in fact he wants to do is go back to the Solid Waste Management Steering Committee process that would put Marmora, Plympton, Essex, Lambton, all of these places, back on the table.

Mr Cousens: Mr Chair, I object.

The Chair: Is this a point of order, or do you object?

Mr Cousens: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: Let the honourable member stick to the facts. He is making up things that have nothing to do with what I said or think and is not -- objection. He has no right to make implications or imply things as to what another member has to say. Speak from what I've said or don't speak at all, and speak the truth.

The Chair: Order, please. Take your seat. I just want to remind members that there is a procedure to follow. You're each given a turn to debate, so when it comes your time, you will be given that opportunity.

Mr Cousens: Don't deal with innuendo.

Mr Wiseman: This is not innuendo. The facts of the matter are that if this bill is defeated the way the member is asking, you have to look at the ramifications and the implications of that in terms of where the direction would go. This bill, very clearly brought to this House in a democratic process, if defeated would mean that all the things I have said would have to be back on the table, because the defeat of the bill would return it to the status quo, and as to the bill, to begin with.

Mr Cousens: Objection, Mr Chair.

The Chair: Order. Please take your seat. This is not a court of law. I don't take any objections; I take points of order. Do you have a point of order?

Mr Cousens: Very much so. The honourable member, if he was listening to me, is already misinterpreting what I said. If he's going to make statements in this House then he should speak --

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): That's not a point of order.

Mr Cousens: Well, come on, it's on the record. The one thing I have made very clear is a willing host. You talk about Marmora and other sites. They are not willing hosts. So there's no way you're going to start shoving someone's garbage in someone's backyard who doesn't want it, and I have never said that. When you start saying that I'm intending that, that is wrong and I want you to correct yourself.

The Chair: I'd just like to make a suggestion. If you object to some of the comments that are made by the member for Durham West, take notes. After that, you will have a chance to debate it.

Mr Wiseman: Having said the above and not having any cause to retract or change any of the things I have just stated, I would like to move on to the next items I would like to talk about in terms of this bill.

That has to do with the potential for recycling and the potential for recycling to be the solution to a large part of the waste problem. Just to give a couple of examples, when we were in Kingston we heard from Alcan Recycling Canada that over the last two years somewhere in the neighbourhood of $40 million of aluminum was thrown into the landfill sites. This was really quite unfortunate in terms of the potential this aluminum had for jobs, competitiveness, reduction in the amount of electrical energy that would be necessary to produce new aluminum and the fact that he said it's worth $1,000 a tonne. Just for the information of the House, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 31,000 tonnes of aluminum is lost every year to the waste process.

When we were in Kingston we also heard from a tire recycler who put a tire in front of the table and showed us three jars of oil, tar and carbon black, all derived from a tire that he said could be recycled. So throughout southern Ontario people are being very innovative.

We also heard in this committee on a regular basis that there are more jobs available through recycling than there are through disposal.

In terms of cost, what we're looking at here in terms of cost is $150 a tonne; actually it's $152.50 that Metro's charging. Anybody who's recycling will recoup that right from the very start, but that money potentially is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $8 billion to $12 billion, which would be very useful in the development of recycling and the positioning of Ontario industries in the international market for recycling and reduction and being able to then transport and sell those technologies overseas.

I want to clear up my last point, and the reality is that there is going to be a landfill site somewhere in Durham for Durham's garbage. It could be in anybody's riding, but the point to be made here is that for the first time in history the landfill site is going to be sited against criteria that have been developed and established by the Interim Waste Authority and that take into account agricultural land, hydrogeological state, proximity to social environments and a whole host of other criteria never evaluated before.

My closing point is that, unlike the previous government, which used an order in council to locate a landfill site in north Pickering and circumvented all of the democratic processes to do that and would not consider it against any other site in Durham, this process offers the opportunity of involvement of the people, the local municipal politicians and the IWA. Every site will be defined against the criteria established and brought into force when this bill is passed, because it established the crown corporation of the Interim Waste Authority.

Hon Mrs Grier: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I know you tried to direct the debate to the amendment before us. I would like to point out to the member for Markham that while we seem to be debating whether the waste should go to Kirkland Lake or somewhere else in Ontario, as I read the motion before us it refers to landfill waste disposal sites located in any one or more of the regional municipalities. Therefore, I suggest that the submission we heard from the member for Markham and the subsequent debate are all out of order.

The Chair: The point of order has been made. The member for Markham, do you have a point of order?

Mr Cousens: In response, the fact is that the whole bill is out of order. If we were to deal with it correctly you really have to put the larger picture in place. The bill is forcing us to have our garbage, our landfill sites, within the greater Toronto area. What you have to deal with is the whole picture. To that extent the motion is not out of order at all and my comments are not out of order. If anything is out of order, it's Bill 143.

Mr McClelland: Not having the language of the amendment, I might ask if the third party critic has a copy of his amendments available. I would appreciate having them so I can follow the debate.

Having said that, I have two questions that relate to the section under debate that I'd like to put to the minister for her comment. The section says that each of the three regions will find a landfill site for dealing with waste generated for a period of at least 20 years. Is there any cap on the potential time limit, by way of example, with respect to what the member for Markham is saying in terms of having a more expansive view as far as geography is concerned? In terms of the time frame as well, is it possible, by way of example, that the Peel site could be 40, 50 or 60 years potentially?

The other question that relates to this particular section and I think ties in with the amendments is this. The minister says the section deals with the Environmental Assessment Act, but is it not true that subsequently, by delineating the geographic boundaries, she effectively eliminates one of the very provisions of the Environmental Assessment Act, which is to look at a broad range of environmental criteria to arrive at the best -- not a better, not a good, but potentially the best -- environmental solution? That is really an ancillary question. The one I would like to have, if I could, as a direct response is the cap on the time limit.

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I have a further question in terms of the York site. We know it will end up in York through the municipality of Metro Toronto. I asked this question during committee and did not receive a response, to the best of my knowledge. I reviewed the responses last evening that were tabled during committee. Is there anywhere you are aware of in North America that would have the potential capacity of a Keele Valley and a potential additional site that would last for at least 20 years, possibly 40, 50 or 60? Is there anywhere in North America that has that kind of burden put on the ecosystem in an area as small geographically as York? My understanding is that there is nowhere else in North America that would have that concentration of landfill. I wonder if you might be able to respond to that question, which was put to your staff and the ministry during committee.

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me make a couple of responses to the points made by the member for Brampton North and in fact to some of the less extraneous comments made by the member for Markham.

With respect to the 20 years, I think that if the member looks at this section of the legislation, he will see that the site for new landfills is for landfills that will have as their primary function the disposal of waste generated within the regional municipality over a period of at least 20 years. I think what you will find in the hearing before the Environmental Assessment Board is a great deal of debate about how long those landfills will last and how much waste those landfills will have to accommodate, because as the member is aware, the alternative to the landfills is increased reduction, reuse and recycling.

The debate before the board from some people will undoubtedly be that if we were more aggressive in the 3Rs we would need a much smaller landfill site or no landfill site at all, with other people saying that the objectives we have set ourselves of a 25% diversion from disposal by the end of 1992 and, at the time of the hearing, working on a 50% diversion from disposal by the year 2000 are in fact too ambitious and cannot be met as the economy, as we hope, is rebounding. That will be the debate before the board. That decision will be made by the board.

For the purposes of the site search, the legislation is quite clear that the Interim Waste Authority begins and conducts its search and prepares for the environmental assessment a site that will accommodate the disposal of waste in those regional municipalities for at least 20 years.

I want to spend a couple of minutes talking about the delineation of boundaries. With all due respect to the member for Brampton North, I think he is quite wrong in his characterization of the fact that boundaries are set in opposition to the Environmental Assessment Act. In fact, municipalities all across the province have said for many years: "Within this municipal boundary we are searching for a site. Here are the criteria. This is what we present to the board." In many cases they have come together with adjoining municipalities and conducted a joint waste management master plan. In many cases a city and a rural municipality have come together and jointly undertaken to find a disposal site. That is how the act has traditionally been interpreted. There has never been any question of whether that was an appropriate way.

Let me say that never has a municipality or a proponent gone before an Environment Assessment Board, to my knowledge or recollection, and said that it wanted to ask for an environmental assessment approval of a site in a municipality somewhere else on the basis of a resolution from the council of that municipality saying that it wanted somebody else's waste. The "happy host" criterion that was the foundation of the SWISC process and is cited by the member for Markham in his justification of going to Kirkland Lake is, I think, very dubious legally and might well have resulted in an Environmental Assessment Board deciding that that was not a sufficient criterion on which to decide where a landfill site was to be located and might have resulted in the entire process being tossed out by the board. I think the results of that happening at the end of the day are too serious to contemplate.

Let me again make the point, as did the member for Durham West, that Metro Toronto has a very special right within this province. It has the right to seek a landfill site somewhere other than within its own boundaries. It's the only municipality allowed to pinpoint somebody else's backyard and say, "We'll have a landfill site in your backyard, thank you very much."

What we are doing by this legislation is, to use a phrase I'm sure the member for Markham is very fond of, levelling the playing field and saying to the regional municipalities within the GTA, "You don't have the right to dispose of your waste in someone else's backyard; you have the obligation and the responsibility to dispose of your waste within your own political, geographical boundaries and you have an obligation, in determining where those landfill sites will be" -- and this is what the Interim Waste Authority is doing -- "to use not political criteria, not resolutions from a municipal council, but environmental criteria." At the end of the day that's what matters.

The site search that is being undertaken by the Interim Waste Authority is the most extensive process of consultation and of development of environmental criteria we have seen in the past in this province, and I am confident it will lead to the identification of a series of sites which will then be narrowed down to a preferred site in each of the three areas and submitted to an Environmental Assessment Board.

The member for Markham commented on the rationale for the division of a site for Peel, a site for Durham and a site for York-Metro. I know that is an issue that has been raised, will be raised again and I have responded to before, but I think it's probably worth putting the reasons on the record.

Responsibility for disposal of waste and for management of waste throughout the province has traditionally been, and continues to be, a municipal responsibility. Within the greater Toronto area, because of the failure of the regional municipalities to be able to identify sites and come to grips with the process, the previous government put in place a process of coordination which we have come to know as SWISC, and allowed that committee to search for sites somewhere outside the GTA, which is why Marmora, Plympton and Kirkland Lake came to the fore.

When it was obvious that the process was going to lead to non-environmental criteria being used in the selection of sites and that the interim sites to be selected by that process had been exempted from the Environmental Assessment Act and therefore from a full examination of alternatives, our government stepped in and said: "This is an unsatisfactory way to do business. Therefore we will create a crown corporation and give that crown corporation the authority to proceed to find landfill sites and to submit those landfill sites to an environmental assessment." It is certainly our hope and indeed our expectation that when all the grief and all the pain has been taken by the Interim Waste Authority in identifying preferred sites and submitting the environmental assessment, the regional municipalities may then be, if not willing, in fact anxious to have those sites revert to them in order that they may operate them and they may generate the revenue from those sites and apply that revenue to their waste reduction, reuse and recycling programs.

In order not to preclude that possibility, in our delineation of the boundaries within which the site search would be undertaken we used the regional boundaries. We said that the Interim Waste Authority will search for a site within Peel primarily to service those who generate waste within Peel, will search for a site within Durham primarily to service those who generate waste within Durham and will search for a site within York and/or Metro in order to service the people who generate waste within York-Metro.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Why York and Metro?

Hon Mrs Grier: I know that question, "Why York and Metro," has been raised and will be raised again. The member for Markham is very expansive on the subject. But I would remind the House that many years ago Metro and York entered into a legal agreement. That legal agreement was that they would jointly identify a site and operate it. Metro would operate it and look after the waste in York. That agreement runs until the year 2003; that agreement exists. That agreement joined the regional municipalities of Metro and York in a joint effort to dispose of their joint waste, and that is the agreement we have continued by this clause within Bill 143. That will allow Metro and York to continue that arrangement and to find within their boundaries a site for the disposal of their waste.

The logic behind this bill is very clear. The intent of this bill is to find sites to enable the regional municipalities to resume their traditional responsibilities for waste management. I am confident that will be the ultimate outcome, and I cannot support the amendment that's been put forward.

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Mrs Marland: It's really almost impossible to sit in this House this afternoon and hear what the Minister of the Environment is saying with respect to this amendment to Bill 143. First she said, "What we are doing is levelling the playing field." We're all so fed up with that expression anyway, and I try not to use it, but what this minister is doing is throwing out the whole game. I think it's almost unbelievable that she would stand in this House today and say that.

She says the municipalities identified in this amendment failed to identify their sites. I think the people in the region of Peel are going to be very interested to see that quote from the Minister of the Environment in Hansard, because the taxpayers in Peel have spent $9 million; not $9 million from the provincial treasury, but $9 million on the backs of the taxpayers in Peel has been spent to identify the landfill site in Peel.

This minister and the member for St Catharines, the former Minister of the Environment for the Liberal government, have both stopped the process of the identification of that site in Peel. We lay the blame for the fact that there is no landfill site today in Peel to replace Britannia, which was to have closed one year ago -- which we lose sight of: It's already had one year's expansion. But when the region of Peel was at the 11th hour of an environmental assessment hearing for its site and the former Minister of the Environment, the member for St Catharines, said, "No, you've got to go back and redo it all again," certainly that decision at that point was a very curious one for those of us in Peel, because we always felt it was probably more than a coincidence that the land was partly owned by Ronto Development Corp and more than a coincidence that Patti Starr's husband --

Mr McClelland: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: I take great exception to the inference being drawn by my friend the member for Mississauga South -- and she is a friend. I challenge her to say that outside this House in terms of any inference of impropriety. She's implying impropriety in conduct on behalf of the former minister, who is not here, and does not even have the courtesy to do it in his presence.

The fact of the matter is that it's inappropriate and, quite frankly, unbecoming and inconsistent with the member for Mississauga South as I know her, and I would ask her to reconsider the implication she is making in terms of the impropriety of Mr Bradley's conduct. If she is so inclined, I would challenge her to say the same outside this place.

Mrs Marland: I would like to inform you, Mr Chair, that I have on a number of occasions in the presence of the former Minister of the Environment made exactly the same statement I just made, and I have no concern with making that statement. It is just rather interesting that the then Minister of the Environment issued a notice of order to the region of Peel not to proceed with its environmental assessment hearing on the site the region of Peel council had voted on, and that site was owned by Ronto Development and Ronto Development was partly owned by Patti Starr's husband. Those facts are indisputable. The conclusions that can be drawn from them are up to those people who wish to draw those conclusions.

We in the region of Peel are simply saying that we were well on the way to looking after our own garbage in Peel. We didn't need the former Liberal government's intervention; we certainly didn't need the current NDP socialist government's intervention. If we had been left alone in the region of Peel, we would not be talking about expansion of the Britannia landfill site; we would now be completed. Even if it had taken three years for an environmental assessment, we would have had it.

Instead of that, what do we have? Without an environmental assessment at all, we have the expansion of a site that was originally established under the Environmental Protection Act, an act that this Minister of the Environment, when she was over here in opposition, said was unacceptable. She always said the Environmental Protection Act was not sufficient protection in establishing a landfill site. Yet today with this bill she is willing not only to establish but to expand an existing site that was not originally heard through the environmental assessment, only through the Environmental Protection Act, which she has said all along was insufficient protection.

So when this minister says that Peel, in which she includes all these municipalities, failed to identify its sites, she's got to answer to 750,000 people in the region of Peel who spent $9 million of their money, through their property taxes, to identify the landfill site -- and all for nothing; that money is now out the window. In fact, the good news for Peel taxpayers is that they're now about to pay again for an evaluation to the expansion of the Britannia landfill site, an expansion which is totally in conflict with an existing, signed agreement.

When this minister was talking a few moments ago, the member from Etobicoke corrected her about the agreement that was signed for Metropolitan Toronto in terms of its waste management plans. The same thing in the region of Peel: We had an agreement that was signed between the city of Mississauga, the region of Peel, the province and the Ontario Municipal Board. That agreement established that the Britannia landfill site, which opened in 1978, would be closed in 12 years. Unless I'm mistaken, we are now in 1992. That landfill site already has had one 12-month expansion.

Now we get to the real crux of the problem, and that is that although this minister and this government have been asked repeatedly by the city and the region and the residents within that community of the Britannia landfill site to give a closing date, a final deadline that they could commit to for the expansion of the Britannia site, this minister and this ministry have failed these residents completely.

In fact, I have a letter over the signature of James H. Bursey, who is is the president of the Federation of Mississauga Ratepayers' Associations; the letter is dated March 24, 1992. In reply to a letter from the Minister of the Environment, Mr Bursey says a number of things, and he's referring to our discussion of the Residential Strategy for Action: A Six-Point Action Plan.

He says, "I am deeply concerned about the contents of your letter." In particular, skipping down to another paragraph, he says under item 1: "Provincial government commitment to a planning schedule to identify, select and announce the location of the preferred long-term landfill site for solid waste disposal for the region of Peel on or before the end of March 1993.

"When we agreed to moving the decision date from December 1992 to March 1993, we were assured by you that, save for third-party legal impediments, you were willing and able to commit to a firm date for decision by the end of March 1993. However, your recent letter states, 'My commitment to this schedule is based on their (IWA) assurances.' This is not acceptable."

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Mr Bursey is saying to this minister that there is nothing this minister is willing to commit to.

It's very interesting to palm it off to the Interim Waste Authority. The reason I say it is very interesting is that the region of Peel hosted a meeting to brief all the politicians in the region about two weeks ago. At that meeting, the chairman of the Interim Waste Authority, Mr Erv McIntyre, addressed those politicians present, including MPPs and Peel regional councillors. During that meeting I said to Mr McIntyre that I was very disappointed that the Interim Waste Authority has the responsibility to establish all of these landfill sites in the GTA and here we are one year later and, really, how much further ahead are they? Sure, they've had a few public meetings and a few drop-in information centres, but really, in a whole year, how much further down the road are they in preparation to deal with the establishment of landfill sites in the greater Toronto area or anywhere, as the member for Markham has said?

Do you know what his answer was? I couldn't believe this, and I think the minister should know what Mr McIntyre's answer was. I hope the parliamentary assistant, who is in the House presently, though the minister is not, will convey this to her. Mr McIntyre's reply was, "But of course we're five months behind with our work." I asked, "And why is that?" The answer was, "Because you have delayed the passage of Bill 143." He is saying the work of the Interim Waste Authority is five months behind because we have delayed the passage of Bill 143. It is ironic. Already, at only one year old, the Interim Waste Authority is blaming on the opposition the fact that it's five months behind.

I think this is incredible. As far as I know, there are 74 government members in this House and there are 37 Liberals and 20 Progressive Conservatives. Isn't it ironic that you're now saying, "You've delayed the passage of this bill, so now you've delayed the work of the Interim Waste Authority"?

Will somebody please tell me how it's possible -- I would like the parliamentary assistant to answer this question. Could you tell us how it is that the delay of the passage of this bill has delayed the work of the Interim Waste Authority? It's got $17 million. It has all the authority it needs to proceed with the mandate it was given when it was established.

All we in the opposition said was that we wanted the public to know what Bill 143 is about. We want the public, which is paying for this boondoggle, to get an opportunity to come in here and state its concerns when you take away everybody's rights. When you've got a piece of legislation that supersedes every existing statute in this province in terms of waste management and land use and zoning, when you have something so monumental, of course we wanted the public to have an opportunity to come in and tell us what they thought, right from individual ratepayers, ratepayer groups and organizations all the way up to municipalities and umbrella organizations for municipalities like AMO, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

That public hearing process had to take place. The fact that you didn't want to schedule it and didn't want it, and we had to drag you kicking, yelling and screaming, before Christmas, before you agreed to go to public hearings, rests on your shoulders, not ours. We happen to believe in the public process which, I may say, at this point does not exist on Bill 143. Bill 143 is so powerful that this minister can do whatever she likes through her directors and managers and never ask the public another question.

I must also say that when this parliamentary assistant is answering my question about how the delay of the passage of this bill could be blamed on the Interim Waste Authority being five months behind with its scheduled work, I hope the parliamentary assistant will be in a position to address the concerns the Federation of Mississauga Ratepayers' Associations still have with this minister. They were a very fair and reasonable group. There was a public meeting in Mississauga to which the minister came and where she was presented with a six-point mandate. It is my understanding that some of those points have been addressed, but the most critical ones dealing with when the Britannia landfill site will be closed and a decision made on a new site are still outstanding.

When we look at this excellent amendment placed by our Environment critic, the member for Markham, you really have to wonder why this minister is talking about establishing landfill sites for at least 20 years. I have said this a number of times in the committee: Nobody wants a landfill site, period, but certainly nobody wants it on the condition that it's going to be there for at least 20 years.

If you could say to people, as we did, in the city of Mississauga for the region of Peel's garbage, "This landfill site is going to operate for 12 years" -- people came together and signed that agreement which is now being violated by this socialist government. People came together and said, "All right, we'll accept it for 12 years," and they knew that after 12 years there would be an end to the trucks, dust, noise and pollution.

Having said that, I must also recognize that the Britannia landfill site is one of the best-managed landfill sites in Canada, but not without a tremendous cost to the people who pay for the operation of that site: the taxpayers in the region of Peel.

Here we have an amendment that talks about the new waste disposal sites being established for a period of at least 20 years. It just doesn't make sense. Nobody is going to accept it. You might as well move. Who is going to buy property when they know that landfill site is open for at least 20 years? Does that mean 30, 40, 50 years? Does it mean for ever?

What you are doing is freezing any land in the area of wherever these landfill sites will be established. It is the most impractical approach anyone could have dreamed up to establishing landfill sites in the future. But if you were willing to make an agreement and stay with it and say to people, "It is going to be open for 8, 10 or 12 years," people would accept it because they would know there would be an end as long as there wasn't a socialist government that came along and took their rights away and violated a signed, binding, written agreement between the residents, the property owners, the municipalities and the province.

Fortunately, this Bob Rae socialist government is a one-term government and this won't ever happen again. It will never happen again in the province of Ontario that people will be betrayed. The people who have been betrayed are the people in the greater Toronto area, for whom there were solutions to their waste management. This particular government has total disregard for those agreements.

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I have asked this government repeatedly if it would even lift the freeze on the property around the Britannia landfill site, which it now wants to expand -- again, I say, without an environmental assessment -- if it would lift the freeze and allow those jobs to be created by building those homes. We're talking about something like 5,000 homes. It doesn't take much imagination to calculate how many jobs 5,000 new homes being constructed would generate, not only the jobs of the people working on the site building those homes, but the jobs of the suppliers who manufacture what goes into building and constructing a home.

It's entirely possible, if this government were willing, to lift the freeze on those lands and let those homes be built, a high percentage of which, I should explain, are affordable homes, and have that construction go ahead, have the jobs created and have something written on title that identified there could not be any appeal or objection by the new home owner, when he moved in, to the ongoing activity of the Britannia landfill site. It could be registered on their deed that they accepted the fact the landfill site was operating and was adjacent to the area where their property was. As long as these documents were legally binding, what is the problem? But we have asked and asked and asked this government, and that problem hasn't been resolved.

There is one other problem I want to talk about on this subject of waste disposal, parliamentary assistant, and I'd like you to address this for me in your answer because it is a very real concern for waste disposal in the greater Toronto area. Yesterday I read in the Toronto Star -- actually, I'm reading it today, but it was in yesterday's Toronto Star -- that St Lawrence Cement is proceeding to request its environmental assessment hearing. Having said that, I want to show you their environmental assessment document, which I've just received today.

This is an environmental assessment document that I show to the parliamentary assistant, which is a proposal for burning refuse-derived fuel. I would like you to confirm again, as was confirmed in the committee hearings, that the incineration ban by your ministry applies to refuse-derived fuel, as identified in this proposal from St Lawrence Cement, refuse-derived fuel that is made from municipal solid waste. My concern is that if St Lawrence Cement proceeds with this final environmental assessment document to an environmental assessment hearing, there is a further cost for the taxpayers of this province that frankly should not be permitted.

Are you willing to, once and for all, assure the taxpayers they will not be paying the cost for an environmental assessment hearing for a process that your ban on incineration covers? Can you assure us the regulations will address the extent to which your ban on incineration covers? Does it cover refuse-derived fuel made from municipal solid waste and to be burned in existing incinerators, not new incinerators to be built -- that part we understand -- but to be burned in existing incinerators such as those that are used for the manufacture of cement?

Those are just a number of the concerns I wanted to place on the record today at the outset, and I look forward to the parliamentary assistant's response to my questions.

Mr O'Connor: The member for Mississauga South raised an awful lot of important points. I hope I don't miss any of them. You did speak at some length, but I tried to keep track of what you've been speaking about this afternoon in this important debate.

You mentioned the residents' group and Jim Bursey. The minister and her staff have met with them and actually plan to meet with them again to try to resolve some of those issues that were brought to the committee and have been raised by the member. The minister has said she is hoping she can reach an agreement soon on some of the concerns they've talked about.

The member opposite also talked about the money spent by SWISC and SWEAP and all the other processes that took place in trying to come up with some solutions. I noted going through a document from the Interim Waste Authority that in the original draft approach and criteria document that was sent out to all -- this one here is for the Durham region, but there was one for Peel, York and Metro -- it refers to a lot of the work that had gone on under the SWEAP and SWISC processes, so that hasn't gone for naught. Information has been used, and used wisely. That is something I'm sure she's quite concerned about, the public purse, as we all are, especially in a time of recession. That money was spent and there were some concerns about the direction that process was going. It had to be looked at and it wasn't something the government of the day was comfortable with, and that's why the change in direction took place.

The member opposite talked about Peel region and the involvement of the public there. I know there were five workshops initially by the Interim Waste Authority in trying to deal with some of the problems there. For people who attended, there were 100 workshop booklets and information packages sent out. In Peel region there were 2,400 newsletters sent out. There were 450 copies of the DAC document circulated. Actually, on the 1-800 line itself, 500 people phoned and requested information and were sent information along those lines, so I think it's really important.

The member opposite also raised questions around the buffer zone and the area surrounding the existing Britannia Road site. I know that's one thing that's really important, for a number of different reasons. First of all, the member opposite would be well aware of the minister's report that was circulated. Before any of the buffer zone property could be released, the compliance with the minister's orders has to be dealt with. When we had the mayor of Mississauga come before the committee, at that point in time they weren't in compliance with the minister's orders. They were defiant and they had some concerns, and they came to the committee and shared some of those concerns. At this point in time they are in compliance and trying to follow them.

I'd like to point out some of the areas and some of the studies that need to be looked at before we can just release some of that land that is being referred to. We hear a lot of concern about the environment. I know the Britannia Road site is going to be expanded after the studies have taken place, and it's really an area of a lot of concern to residents around there. The environment is an area that ranks as a concern with all members of this House.

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They're taking a look at the leachate control and collection: the quality, the quantity, the collection, their disposal of the leachate, the installation and operation and maintenance and monitoring of pre-treatment systems, and contingency plans for backup controls. A lot of that has to be taken care of for the leachate collection.

For the gas generation control, again there has to be an awful lot of work done to make sure that the quantity that is expected to be generated will be looked at for its potential mitigation, including potential lateral through the shallow zones of the till and what not. It's something that has to be looked at, and it's part of the minister's reports.

Storm water management again is an area that will be looked at: the final cover, the buffer zone assessment, which is exactly what the member opposite was referring to.

The operation of the site itself has to be one that probably concerns local residents more than anything. In any landfill site, especially one of enormous size, we have to make sure the landfill is operated in sequence and the cells are closed in a proper way so that dust and traffic, litter and odour control are all met. There's the end use plan, and there's an awful lot more that goes into taking a look at running and the operations of a landfill site.

Peel is trying to comply with the minister's report right now, and the studies are starting. The member asked about the buffer zone. The minister did in speaking to the committee address the fact that the buffer zone has some importance to the people she represents, and we have to make sure that the integrity of the buffer zone is maintained. She has talked about a phased release of some of the buffer zone where it would be appropriate. That's something that does need to be dealt with.

One other point the member opposite raised was the incineration of municipal solid waste, and I think that's something that isn't going to be enshrined in the legislation. I guess we have an amendment coming up later on this afternoon around incineration by one of our colleagues here that will be looked at and probably debated again, but it's something that will be enshrined in the legislation.

Mrs Marland: Could you answer the question that was asked in committee, whether we can be assured that regulations will address the extent of the ban on incineration to cover refuse-derived fuel that's made from municipal solid waste that would be burned in existing incinerators -- for example, the existing St Lawrence Cement incinerators it uses for manufacturing cement -- and will you establish an environmental assessment hearing for them at a tremendous cost to the taxpayers if your regulations prohibit the proposal they bring to that hearing?

Mr O'Connor: I believe in my final conclusion answer towards some of your questions I did state that the legislation will enshrine that there will be no further approvals for the incineration of municipal solid waste. We do have further amendments that members here have raised this afternoon that deal with the some of the RDF, and we'll deal with that when we get there.

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I'd like to speak to this matter. Certainly I've been listening very carefully to the words of the member for Mississauga South and the parliamentary assistant and earlier on the Minister of the Environment.

It's a strange thing when we talk about this particular issue, and in particular Britannia landfill site in the city of Mississauga, because for those who are located anywhere within that area in terms of his or her responsibilities of representation, and those who are reading from some sort of a report, like the Minister of the Environment, it seems that we're almost talking about two different places.

I think it is important for members of the Legislature, and certainly for the minister, to listen to those people who live in the area, who represent the area and who have been involved with the issue for many years and talk about the reality of what we have in the city of Mississauga as opposed to the theory that the Minister of the Environment wishes to latch on to whenever it seems convenient. I will give one example of that latching on to a theory.

The Minister of the Environment in an earlier response spoke about -- I just paraphrase her words -- the need to maintain and enforce an agreement. I think she was alluding to an agreement between the city of Toronto and the region of York. She went on at some length and spoke about how important a legal agreement is and how important it is for people to make certain they can rely on the provisions of an agreement between two particular municipalities. That is an example of the Minister of the Environment latching on to a particular principle when it suits her needs.

But I could ask her the question -- and if she were here, I would in fact do so -- why the same principle of safeguarding provisions within a legal agreement such as that between the city of Toronto and the region of York is so very important when the provisions of an agreement that had been entered into almost 12 years ago between the city of Mississauga and the regional municipality of Peel, which spoke about where a new landfill site was to be located, are not? That of course remains unanswered by the Minister of the Environment.

Over many years many politicians brought this particular legally binding agreement to the people in the areas they represented and said: "This is the agreement. We have signed this agreement. These are the provisions. You can rely on these provisions that when the Britannia landfill site reaches its capacity, a new landfill site will be located, not in the city of Mississauga but in the city of Brampton. We as local politicians have entered into that agreement. It is a binding agreement. It is a legal agreement. It is an agreement you can rely on." In that particular case the Minister of the Environment does not latch on to the principle of legally binding documents as well as she does for those that exist between the city of Toronto and the region of York.

The first question I ask the Minister of the Environment, who is now here, is simply, what is the difference between a legal agreement between the city of Toronto and the region of York, which you believe must be complied with, and another agreement that was entered into between the city of Mississauga and the regional municipality of Peel, which you believe does not have to be complied with? That is my first question.

Before I get into my second question, I would like to step back, because there are a number of people, certainly within the city of Mississauga and the regional municipality of Peel, watching this debate very closely. I represent that area of Mississauga North where the Britannia landfill site is located; in fact, I live fairly close to the Britannia landfill site. I think it's important to realize that a great many of the ratepayers' associations within that particular area have taken what I believe to be a very reasonable, responsible and balanced approach to this issue.

We have to realize that everyone in the region of Peel knew that the Britannia landfill site was reaching its capacity. It will reach its capacity very soon, as I stand here now, probably within the next few months. So the question a few years ago was, what happens when the landfill site does reach its capacity?

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In essence what was going to happen is that there was already set down a hearing under the Environmental Protection Act to determine an interim landfill site in the city of Mississauga. By that I mean that basically when Britannia, the landfill site in Mississauga, reaches capacity then there would be another landfill of a short-term, interim nature in the city of Brampton to receive that landfill. On that basis hearings were set down. I don't know how many times members within the region of Peel have to say that hearings under the Environmental Protection Act were in fact set down and slated to begin in February of 1991. That's when the hearings were scheduled to be commenced.

The Minister of the Environment stopped those hearings with an order and so we in the area were left with the situation that Britannia was still going to reach capacity. But where were we going to put the garbage when it reached capacity? We could not look to that interim site because the Minister of the Environment stopped the hearing. It was obvious that in light of the dictates of the Minister of the Environment the only way the region of Peel could look after its own garbage would be through an emergency order by the minister to expand Britannia. It was clear as soon as the minister made that decision, I believe in November of 1990, that there was just no other recourse than that somewhere down the line she was going to have to expand Britannia.

If I check Hansard I can be certain the minister refused to admit at the time and in the months to come that the only way Peel could look after its own garbage, which it has a history of doing, was if the minister, by an order, expanded the Britannia landfill site. Guess what happened? That's exactly what she did. She expanded the Britannia landfill site.

I now move to my second question. I well remember the election of 1990, when there was the statement made by the now Premier and by the now Minister of the Environment, I believe, that there would not be any expansion of an existing landfill site without a full environmental hearing -- simply stated, no expansion without a hearing. In other words, vote for the NDP and you can be as certain as our word is certain that there will not be any expansion without a full hearing. In Britannia we have an example of a site being expanded without consultation.

Now I move to my second question. The parliamentary assistant spoke about how much consultation has gone on within the city of Mississauga and the regional municipality of Peel. The parliamentary assistant conveniently spoke to consultation of a long-term nature. I would like to pose the question to both the minister and the parliamentary assistant: How much consultation has gone on with the people not only of the city of Mississauga but of the regional municipality of Peel, who have dealt specifically with the expansion of the Britannia landfill site?

We are now left with a situation where a hearing for an interim landfill site to be located in the city of Brampton has been stopped. Second, the Minister of the Environment has ordered the Britannia landfill site to be extended without any public consultation and public hearing, notwithstanding the specific promises made by her and the now Premier during the election.

We have a number of ratepayer groups in the area. We have the Credit Valley Residents Association, the Confederation of Resident and Ratepayers Associations, the RiverRun Ratepayers Association and the Sandalwood-Eastgate Community Ratepayers' Association. I know the minister is well aware of those groups and the good work they have done, because they came to the minister and said: "We see the writing on the wall. You are going to expand Britannia. We know the actions you took which stopped the hearing for an interim site were wrong. We know you are going to, by order, expand Britannia, so what we want is a guarantee."

That I do not believe to be unreasonable -- a guarantee. I will not read all of their six points, but they want a guarantee that there will be a long-term site selected for the disposal of waste in the region of Peel, to be announced in March 1993. They want a planning schedule to be in place so that Britannia, as expanded, will close no later than December 31, 1995. They want assurances about the interim expansion of the Britannia site.

You have to remember it was a hard task for those associations to get the support of the residents, the people who live around the area, to say, "Listen, the minister is going to be mandating this expansion, but what we want to do is make certain that this expansion is the only expansion." That can be accomplished if the minister will release the holding zone of lands around the landfill site. Right now they have put a freeze on all development within 500 metres around the landfill site. The residents are saying, "Give us the assurance that this will be the only expansion."

You can do so by allowing development. The parliamentary assistant has spoken about a number of reports that are ongoing. I would remind the parliamentary assistant and the Minister of the Environment that there is ample information now available from a variety of sources as to the safety of the Britannia landfill site. The residents of the area are saying, "Show us that you are ready to limit Britannia to what it is now or will be after the order." You can do so by allowing development. The time for development is now. We are now in that building season. This is now the time to do it.

The minister and the parliamentary assistant are conveniently looking at words on a piece of paper and not looking at the facts as to what Britannia is and has been and will continue to be, and that is, as all persons know, a safe landfill site. So there is no reason to stop the development in the area around the landfill site.

The parliamentary assistant, and this leads me to my third question, speaks to the integrity of a buffer zone. My simple question is, what do you mean by "the integrity of a buffer zone"? We have people who are ready to build homes. I have, from a meeting held, information that the development of those lands would result in 6,000 homes. Land developers are anxious to begin work. The high rate of unemployment in the construction trades dictates that we must accomplish the release of the lands without further delays. Unemployment is now. This is the time, this is an opportunity, to start to build around the lands. Give to the ratepayer associations the assurances they want. Give to the ratepayer associations the assurances they deserve. You can do so by releasing those lands.

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I'd speak to Mr Bill Christmas, who is the second vice-president of the Mississauga Board of Trade, which represents more than 2,300 Mississauga-based companies that will benefit from development and a strengthened economy. Tony Dionison, the president of Local 183 Labourers' Union, represents more than 14,000 members who had an unemployment level of more than 50% at that time, and they need those jobs now for their members. David Keenan, the immediate past president of the Greater Toronto Homebuilders' Association, confirmed again that more than 6,000 homes are waiting to be built, with the greatest percentage in the affordable homes category. The land must be released. The reports, the data, are there; all that is required is action.

You said earlier, during an election, that this site would not be expanded without a hearing. The fact is that this site is going to be expanded and there will not be any hearing. The residents of the area see the writing on the wall and they say: "Let us see some action. Let us see some leadership. Release those lands. Provide a buffer. Provide a guarantee, an assurance, that Britannia will not be further expanded." In this regard there is now an amendment tabled by myself that specifically states there will not be any further expansion of the Britannia landfill site.

You on the government side have an opportunity today to say yes to the ratepayers' associations within the city of Mississauga. You have an opportunity to say yes to the municipal politicians who entered into legally binding agreements many years ago that you are throwing in their face. You have an opportunity to correct some of the very serious wrong you have done to the people, to the families and to those many people who need jobs in the area. Today is the day for you to stand up and say, "We will accept that amendment." Today is the day for you to say, "We'll release those lands, and jobs and homes and communities will be built." Today is the day. It is up to you, Madam Minister, to meet the challenge of a problem that, with all due respect, you yourself and only yourself have created.

Mr O'Connor: The member opposite has raised a few concerns again, concerns that had been raised earlier, about the ratepayers in the area. This is the document you are referring to: the six points, I believe.

The minister has met with them on several occasions and I believe will be meeting with them again later on this week. It's important, when we can have some constructive debate with residents to try to get a little feedback, that we do that. The residents have been meeting, and any helpful changes from that are always important.

I want to refer the member opposite to the minister's order. The minister recognized, when there was going to be a need for a lift in Peel region, that the community had to be involved. Community involvement is very important. I want to read to you a little from the minister's report:

"Community involvement programs shall be developed by the municipality and implemented and shall include the following:

"(a) the establishment of a public liaison committee with representation invited from various sources, including but not limited to the regional municipality of Peel, the corporation of the city of Mississauga, the Ministry of the Environment, local ratepayers' associations and local residents.

"The committee will perform the following functions:

"represent the views of a broad range of stakeholders' interests to the municipality; provide ongoing comment to the studies and other activities being undertaken by the municipality for the provision of increased disposal capacity; to provide a forum for discussion of issues arising out of the provision of increased disposal capacity and to assist the municipality in communicating with the local residents and general public."

That's local issues related to provision of increased disposal capacity.

"(b) the development of a communications plan in support of the community involvement program, which shall include but is not limited to the following: description of communication objectives; target audiences as complete cross-sections of groups with interest in the provision of increased disposal capacity; the nature and type of the communications -- eg, fact sheet, bulletins, displays -- that will be used to achieve these objectives. The nature and type of communication activities will be open houses, information sessions" -- in fact, there have been information sessions already -- "and the establishment of a highly accessible public information centre to provide a focal point to deal with the public and media inquiries and public access to the technical documents and information for distribution."

Other methods: distribution, public notification and a schedule of the implementation.

Right within the minister's report, dealing with the very tough decisions that had to be made, which the minister made and should be applauded for -- she dealt with the communities in her minister's report, so it wasn't something that had to be done as an afterthought; it was something that was very important.

The other question the member opposite raised was the buffer zones. I had mentioned a little bit about the buffer zones, but I guess we have to recognize the necessity for buffer zones, what the reason for the buffer zone is. When you have a landfill site, you need to have a buffer zone around it, and what for but to control some of the litter, the odour. When you have a major landfill site, there's going to be some impact on the local community, so the buffer zone is to try to limit that. That's why, when you take a look at dealing with the buffer zone and phased release of that, that has to go in conjunction with the whole operation of the landfill site. That's why it's so important, and you have to include the local residents in the whole process.

I'm sure the member opposite, when he was speaking about the buffer zone, was concerned for his local residents and probably never realized the impact of living close to one: the blowing litter, the dust, the odour and the noise, of course. Anyway, I just wanted to clear up those points.

Mr Stockwell: The answers are almost hilarious. It's almost hilarious that government members could stand in their places today and suggest to a neighbourhood, who they promised before the last election would not be an expansion to a landfill site -- the Premier of this province promised, gave that undertaking -- and suggest after breaking that promise to the residents that they will offer them a "focal point" in their community where they'll send out faxes and newsletters, and at the local IGA they'll put up some bulletins on how the expansion of Keele Valley, which they promised they wouldn't do, is going. This is some kind of process to get them off the hook for not fulfilling their campaign promises.

It's interesting to have this debate here today. Obviously, we're in the 11th hour. This piece of legislation is going to be rammed through by this government --

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): Democratically.

Mr Stockwell: Democratic, right. You want to know something that's not very democratic about this? The Premier, as part of this legislation, gave two very sincere undertakings to the people in Keele Valley and the people at Peel. Those undertakings, which I'm sure you know, but I'll repeat for your own information, were that they would not be expanded without a full environmental assessment hearing.

The question I have is simply, why did you say that when you had no intention of carrying it out? That's a very clear question, a very straightforward question. It has nothing to do with posters at the IGA or faxes or focal points. The question is, why did you say it when you knew you couldn't deliver?

The minister has said on a couple of occasions, at least today I've heard her on one occasion, that the municipalities did not in fact carry out their jobs in searching for an interim or a long-term landfill site. I take great exception to that. Many, many millions of dollars were spent, specifically in the GTA, by a committee of Metro chairmen to find exactly that, an interim landfill site.

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To see the member for Durham West stand up here today and suggest that his community would find it acceptable for them to put a landfill site in the Pickering area, which is the exact issue he got elected on, is unbelievable. This whole debate surrounding this piece of legislation is difficult to debate on the changes and amendments etc. This debate hinges on integrity; this debate hinges on election promises; this debate hinges on campaigning and political decisions. That's what this debate hinges on. It hinges not on the environmental process this minister suggested she stood for when in opposition; it hinges on whether or not this minister and this Premier are people of their word. Are you or are you not a person of your word?

When you give an undertaking to a community that you will not expand dump sites -- and that is what they are, dumps; let's get that straight. You can call them landfill sites and all the other terms you want; they're dumps. When you give your undertaking during an election that you will not expand a dump in a residential neighbourhood, are you a person of your word? The clear answer in this legislation is that no, they are not; they are not people of their word.

We have members in this House standing and asking the minister as forthrightly as possible with respect to buffer zones surrounding those expanded sites, which they promised they wouldn't expand, that they be released. Why is a member of this House asking the minister to release these buffer zones? The simple answer is they don't trust them. Why don't they trust you, Madam Minister? Why don't they trust your Premier? Because you told them you wouldn't expand the sites without a full environmental assessment hearing and you did.

If you want to couch the phraseology in any form you like, if you want to try to blame municipal governments, be my guest. It seems to be a rule rather than the exception for your government. If you want to try to blame the opposition for holding up this piece of legislation, be my guest. If you want to have your parliamentary assistant stand up, when asked about releasing the buffer zone, and mumble stuff such as bulletin board messages at the IGA and fax machines and focal points, be my guest. But the bottom line to this piece of legislation, the bottom line to this issue is that you gave an undertaking and you broke your promise.

The people in the municipalities spent a number of years, including millions and millions of taxpayers' dollars, searching for an interim landfill site. They spent millions and millions of dollars searching for a long-term landfill site. Madam Minister, as late as April 3, 1991, you still didn't have a policy on this issue. In this House in Hansard it was noted that you encouraged Metro council to go for the Kirkland Lake deal and use its reserve funds, now sitting at more than $200 million. To suggest that you had a long-term, established policy is not being forthright with the public or this House, because as of a year ago you were still encouraging Metropolitan Toronto council to seek approval for the Kirkland Lake site.

Many millions of dollars have been spent, and this debate can go on and on and on, but the 11th-hour question that stands, that I would like an answer for, that I've never got an answer for, that the people in Peel want an answer for, that the people in York, Metro, Durham and the GTA want an answer for is, why, Madam Minister, did your government tell them you wouldn't be expanding sites and then do it?

Mr Cousens: A number of things have been said on this amendment and I have very little confidence it's going to be carried. I just have to thank the member for Etobicoke West and the member for Mississauga South for the comments they made and the deep feelings we have at what has happened here in this House.

It really is one of those things where it's no wonder we have such a bad name as politicians. We can say one thing before we're elected and then another thing afterwards. I guess that's why we have a new term now known as "Martelling." We don't use the word "lying," but this is a true Martel joke as far as what's happened is concerned, because the Premier said one thing before he was elected as it had to do with Keele Valley landfill site and what we're dealing with now is very much the opposite.

What I really think NDP stands for now is, "No Dream Possible." People are inclined to believe the politician who tells the biggest lies, and that's really what's happened in this case, because many people believed what the New Democrats stood for.

I have to say that I so strongly object to the member for Durham West and his comments. It is wrong for any other member of this House to impute motive to other members, and for him to say that there is anyone in this House on this side, and certainly within our caucus, who would proceed with any kind of placing of Metro's garbage in a place such as Marmora where there's strong opposition to it is wrong, categorically wrong.

What I'm calling for through other options is that there be an environmental assessment. That environmental assessment would give a community a full opportunity to participate and consider what is going to happen to it, the very same thing that should have happened on Keele Valley and will not happen. For the minister to say that there is full conversation, and fuller consultation with this bill than ever before, is wrong and certainly does not hold with the kind of tradition of integrity and honesty you call for on matters such as this.

This bill is heinous. It's sickening. It takes away rights of people all over the place. It takes away the rights of regions to be involved in their own planning. It takes away the rights of property owners to protect their rights. It takes away the rights of Metropolitan Toronto to do what it had planned to do. There are ways in which this could be handled. That could have been very easily done through strong changes to the Environmental Assessment Act. That has not happened.

Mr Chairman, if the House will accept this as a move on my part, I withdraw the motion and I withdraw my other amendments, because to me the kind of reaction we've had to this is a farce. I am prepared to remove all my amendments at this point because it is just --

Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): Oh, you weren't very serious, Don.

Mr Cousens: I'll tell you, it's just not happening. What you people have done and what you're about to do to the people of the province -- I will vote against everything you've done in this bill. To me, to come along and even try to amend it and to change it as the best way -- I oppose all that you've had to say on this bill and all that it stands for, and what the member for Durham West stands for as well. I think what you're standing for in your riding -- I think the member for Etobicoke West said it earlier. How you can come along and stand up and say, "Oh well, we're going to have a dump in my riding," and be proud about it when you could have saved Durham from having a dump on their site is just so sick. I hope the people in Durham remember you when it comes to the next election.

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The Second Deputy Chair (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Did I hear correctly that the honourable member for Markham is withdrawing all his amendments that I have before me?

Mr Cousens: Yes, Mr Chairman.

The Second Deputy Chair: Is there further debate on section 13? The honourable member for Etobicoke West.

Mr Stockwell: Mr Chairman, I'm simply waiting for an answer.

The Second Deputy Chair: The amendments by the honourable member for Markham on behalf of the Progressive Conservative caucus have been withdrawn. It therefore follows that there would not be replies.

Shall section 13 stand as presented by the government?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Vote deferred.

Section 14:

The Second Deputy Chair: Shall section 14 stand as part of the bill?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Vote deferred.

Section 15:

The Second Deputy Chair: I gather we have an amendment to section 15 by the member for Mississauga North -- I mean Brampton North.

Mr McClelland: I should acknowledge the willingness of the member for Mississauga North to rise to any occasion.

I move that section 15 of the bill be struck out and the following substituted:

"The Environmental Assessment Act applies with respect to a landfill waste disposal site referred to in section 13."

The Second Deputy Chair: We are asking the honourable member for Brampton North to move his amendment to 15(3).

Mr McClelland: I tabled an amendment in the first instance to strike out section 15, and I just read into the record the amendment. I do have a subsequent amendment to subsection 15(3).

The Second Deputy Chair: The amendment you have just presented actually eliminates or strikes out 15 completely, and you are also amending it. I believe we must deal with amendments first.

Mr McClelland: We'll move forward to the amendment I have for subsection 15(3) and then come back to section 15, I presume, under your direction, Mr Chairman.

The Second Deputy Chair: Mr McClelland moves that subsection 15(3) of the bill be struck out and the following substituted:

"(3) An environmental assessment which complies with this section shall be deemed to comply with subsection 5(3) of the Environmental Assessment Act in respect of the matters referred to in this section if a notice is published in a newspaper of general circulation in the area where the landfill waste disposal site is located stating that the environmental assessment has been completed but that the assessment does not comply with subsection 5(3) of the Environmental Assessment Act."

I hope the member understands that you have to amend section 15 prior to moving to have it struck out.

Mr McClelland: Mr Chairman, this has been debated, and I think the member for Etobicoke West just hit the nail on the head in terms of comments.

This section goes to the heart of the bill. Section 15 as it now stands says among other things, "An environmental assessment for a landfill waste disposal site referred to in section 13 is not required to contain" and then begins to set out at some length the items that are not to be considered.

Quite frankly, that is contrary to the general spirit of the Environmental Assessment Act, the very underpinnings of the Environmental Assessment Act, such that any ideas and alternatives are brought forward and given scrutiny. They are brought before an impartial board, a board that is constituted to deal with the issues at hand. What section 15 does is prescribe or limit the environmental assessment in a way that I believe cuts to the very heart of the Environmental Assessment Act.

As has been stated by the member for Markham, the issue here is whether or not the Environmental Assessment Act needs reform. We think it does. We understand that's coming. But the way to do it is to do it directly, not by some backhanded method to try to begin to eliminate some of the rights people believe they have.

I think the language is self-explanatory as it sits in the bill. The language of the bill as it now stands says, "We're going to give you an environmental assessment, but we're not"; it says, "We'll do what the act says, but we're not going to do it completely." So it would be our intent to move an amendment that would recognize the fact that this is just playing word games. The bill as it is now written -- particularly section 15, entitled "Environmental Assessment," which as I said goes to the heart of the bill -- in fact overrides the environmental assessment, as has been pointed out in many instances. We want to make that point abundantly clear. The motion is to that effect.

Mr Cousens: It's not a bad motion. It would be good if this motion were considered as to how it affects all landfill sites and all planning that goes on around this province so we have one law that meets the needs of all; so if people are faced with a problem in Kirkland Lake at the Adams mine site, there's an environmental assessment process; if they have a problem with a site that has been selected in the expansion of Keele Valley, for instance, there's an environmental assessment process.

If the environmental assessment process takes too long, as it does now, and if it's fraught with problems, with frivolous objections that are brought forward, change the environmental assessment process. This government won't do that. But if you changed that process itself, you could close the time gap that takes place instead of extending it over long periods.

Use some of the judicial systems that are used by the Supreme Court of Canada so that if someone has a point to make before the Environmental Assessment Board, they would have to bring forward their point of view; they would have a chance to present it; they would be given limited time in which to do it. If the views they were representing were wasting the court's time, they would be thrown out, and that would end it. We could process the concerns that people have far more quickly, instead of people using environmental assessment as a way of keeping the thing dragging along and stopping development of all kinds.

We need environmental assessment. It is taken away in this bill. It has taken away the rights that are inherent to the people of the province through the Municipal Act, the Regional Municipality of York Act, and Peel and Durham acts, the conservation acts. All these acts are set aside and fair play disappears. The amendment's a good one. I support the amendment. I know what's going to happen to it, but at least we're trying.

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): I'd like to take this opportunity to reply in short to the remarks that have been made both by the member for Markham and the member for Brampton North.

I believe the audience that may be watching this should realize that there is a process that was established under the previous Liberal government that has allowed a shortening to take place in various aspects of the Environmental Assessment Act. It is something that is impacting on my community and in fact is impacting on my neighbourhood, so I know very well that this shortened environmental assessment process is taking place within the planning process within municipalities. In fact, it was brought forward by the previous Liberal government, so I really would be very cynical about the kinds of comments that the member for Brampton North and the member for Markham are presently making.

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Mr McClelland: Just a brief comment on that, and I recognize that the member for St Catharines-Brock is sort of grasping at straws: The fact of the matter is that what the government is currently trying to do in one minute basically is wipe out the rights of the Environmental Assessment Act. She's talking about a process she clearly doesn't understand, basically a process that could take and probably will take five years. What we're doing here is that the government is saying, "Sorry, we're not giving you any rights at all," and I hardly think that is a valid or realistic comparison.

Be that as it may, I think the member for Markham was right. The government has made it abundantly clear it's not at all concerned about adhering to the promises it made or respecting the rights of the people of this province and it's going to go ahead and do what it will do regardless of the impact it has on people around this province.

Mr Stockwell: To the member for St Catharines-Brock, if that argument you just made is anywhere in your briefing books, rip it out, throw it away and burn it.

Mr Wiseman: Recycle it. That's the mentality you've got over there.

Mr Stockwell: Recycle it, that's a good idea, just like what you're going to do with the Agenda for People. Take that piece of paper and recycle it. To take even this kind of argument to that absurd level, I respectfully submit to the member for St Catharines-Brock, by suggesting that a shortened EA of some five years is anywhere near equivalent to the expansion of the two sites your minister has approved that took exactly one minute, or the length of time it takes to sign her name, borders on the hilarious if it weren't so dangerous. Please, take my advice: Get that paper, rip it up and throw it in the recycling bin, because that is where that argument belongs.

Mr Wiseman: We're dealing with section 15 of the proposed legislation, and what I'd like to do is just take a couple of moments so the viewing public can have a very clear idea of what we're talking about here. Subsection 15(2) talks about not using the alternative of incineration or transportation of waste within the environmental assessment.

We've just heard very clearly from the critic for the third party that he favours the idea of incineration, and prior to that we heard from the member for Mississauga South that she does not support incineration in cement kilns. If this section is not passed, if in fact the bill is not passed, what you are then doing is reopening the whole process to do exactly what the member for Mississauga South does not want, and that is accepting the alternative of incineration.

Why is it that we eliminate incineration from the view? I think there are two good reasons for that. The first is that incineration, we have heard, creates dioxins in the whole process of incineration, and I think that needs to be carefully considered. The second thing we need to understand about incineration is that it's going to burn a lot of the material that should be recycled and could be recycled, and therefore it becomes self-fulfilling in the sense that in order for the incinerator to be profitable or to create the amount of BTUs that are necessary for energy from waste, you have to burn the very materials that are recyclable. Therefore that is also unacceptable.

I think it was summed up rather well by Dr Connett from the United States, who said that even if you could make the whole process clean, if you could eliminate every possibility of any waste being dispersed in the atmosphere, if you could get it 100% clean, then you would have to ask yourself, why would you burn it, because there's a lot of material and a lot of natural resources that would then be lost that could be reused?

In a competitive society, what does this mean? I have businesses in my riding that have given me tours of their plants that are talking about capturing from the waste stream out of their stamping plants minute amounts less than an eighth of an inch. The reason they do that is because they think they can get one more product out of that waste, and that makes them that much more productive. That means their cost is that much less for all the other products, all the other items they are creating. Therefore, they are trying and seeking to recycle.

I think it is important for us to understand that incineration is not a viable option for municipal solid waste and even for industrial waste. For example, there is a new company starting to make secondhand use of materials from builders, from kitchens and a whole host of useful material: insulation, wallboard, Gyproc. All these things can be reused in the building process. To burn it up is to eliminate it and eliminate the possibility of its reuse. It takes a lot of value added, a lot of labour, to make these products and to simply just burn them up is a waste of that labour and it makes us even more uncompetitive than we are now.

Mr Stockwell: Are you going to hold that position tomorrow?

Mr Wiseman: That position is a position I presented to you when you sat behind your paper at council and ignored what we had to say for five years. How you have changed your position since you got here.

Now, long-distance transportation is also unacceptable because of what I said earlier. It costs a huge amount of money per tonne to ship. The chairman of my region suggested that all of Durham region's garbage could go to Kirkland Lake. I calculated that this would add somewhere between $60 and $80 in tax increases per household to the residents of Durham region. It also puts it in the north and creates a problem for what is called perpetual care. How do you take care of a landfill site for ever? By pumping waste and circulating it for ever. It also misses the opportunity for reusing all those products in the future.

I would say that all the communities of Ontario outside the GTA should have a really long, hard discussion with their MPPs who support long-distance transportation and incineration, because basically what they are saying is that we will give Metro the opportunity to decide a landfill site or an incinerator for Metro's waste in those communities.

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): Grey?

Mr Wiseman: Grey, Bruce.

Mr Murdoch: That's all right. We'll take one.

Mr Wiseman: I think your residents would probably find that a little bit more objectionable. What I am saying is that my residents do not want to open up their community to any more of Metro's garbage as they have for the last 20 years, getting Metro's garbage at Brock West and Beare Road.

Hon Mrs Grier: I wanted to respond briefly to the amendment put forward by the member for Brampton North because I think, as he said, this clause is at the heart of the legislation and at the heart of our desire that the long-term sites be subjected to an environmental assessment.

The implications of this section are to craft the limits to that environmental assessment and to avoid the necessity of a long-drawn-out, long involvement by citizens, by municipalities, by opponents and by proponents in an environmental assessment looking into options which we have already understood, learned, deemed to be environmentally unacceptable.

We've had many times, around this issue, the debate about incineration. I'm not going to reiterate the arguments, but certainly nobody on this side of the House can accept that incinerating waste is an acceptable way of dealing with it in the 1990s. We know that it is merely putting the waste from one medium, the land, into another, the air, and ultimately into the water and is not consistent with an ecosystem approach. We know that it does not obviate the need to find landfills. You are in fact looking for landfills for toxic ash as opposed to landfills for municipal solid waste. We know the costs of incineration -- the costs to construct the incinerator, the costs to operate it, let alone the costs of the effects of the emissions -- are far greater than landfill.

1730

We had just last week a report from the International Joint Commission, a leaked report from the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, pointing out that if we were to stop the spread of dioxins into our foods and our waterways the banning of incineration was a necessity.

I am very proud that in this province this government has undertaken that step. To put that back on the table for an environmental assessment is a step backwards, not a step forward, and not a step in favour of the environment.

Similarly with long-range transportation, long-range transportation of waste to someone else's community is an old-fashioned approach to waste management. It is not an approach that is acceptable. It is not an approach that is consistent with putting in place a comprehensive waste management system, a system that will put reduction, reuse and recycling first, that will mean what we now consider waste and have disposed of out of sight, out of mind for years becomes a resource, a resource that can be reused and a resource, as my colleague the member for Durham West has said, in which many new opportunities exist for reuse and for the creation of products from materials that would up to now have been disposed of.

We have put in place the beginnings of a system to make that possible, and to step back and say, "Send it somewhere else; send it up into the air by incineration," is a retrogressive step that is not consistent with our commitment to an environmental solution to waste, a solution that will put in place comprehensive recycling that will mean that what we are disposing of in landfill is only those materials for which no other use can ultimately be found and that we find those landfill sites as close as possible to the source of the generation of that waste.

Those are the principles that have driven the policies this government has put in place, those are the principles behind Bill 143 and those are the principles that will take us from a consumer to a conserver society, one that we can be proud of in the next century, one that we can leave to our children and to our grandchildren with some pride and with some confidence. That's what Bill 143 does and that's why this amendment is not one I can support.

Mrs Marland: I would like, now that the minister is back -- Madam Minister?

Mr Murdoch: Would you listen, Ruth?

Mrs Marland: Yes. It's hard to ask the minister a question if the member from Durham is speaking to her. However, since we are now down to our last joyful 27 minutes of Bill 143 --

Interjection: Twelve minutes.

Mrs Marland: -- actually 12 minutes, I would like to ask the minister -- excuse me, Madam Minister, could I ask you this question directly, through the Chair?

It's very important for us to establish the answers to the questions which I raised earlier, in your absence, which the parliamentary assistant deferred to a later period in this debate. But since the later period in the debate isn't going to take place now, I would like to ask you the question about whether your incineration ban includes refuse-derived fuel made from municipal solid waste -- as an example the proposal by St Lawrence Cement to burn RDF in its cement kiln. We would like to know whether we can be assured that regulations would address the extent of the ban on incineration, and would it include RDF burned in an existing cement kiln like St Lawrence Cement? That's the first question.

The second question is, are you going to subject the taxpayers of this province to bear the tremendous financial costs of an environmental assessment hearing a proponent such as St Lawrence Cement is requesting, in spite of the fact that there is an understanding that your incineration ban includes RDF from municipal solid waste in a cement kiln like St Lawrence Cement?

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me say to the member and her constituents that I really appreciate her very strong opposition to the burning of municipal solid waste in the cement kilns of St Lawrence Cement. I know her long-standing concern and opposition to that proposal, and I am glad to be able to say to her again, as I have said to her in writing when she has asked me in the past, that as far as this government is concerned, the incineration of municipal solid waste is not acceptable. The regulation that will put that in legal form for the rest of the province will include proposals such as that from St Lawrence Cement for the combustion of municipal solid waste in its existing cement kiln. I have made that clear to the member and I have made that clear to St Lawrence Cement.

With respect to the second question she asks, as to whether or not people will be subjected to an environmental assessment process as a result of the announced intention of St Lawrence Cement to apply and to subject its proposal for the incineration of municipal solid waste in its existing cement kiln to the Environmental Assessment Act, that's a question I am not in a position to answer definitively at this point. I have not yet had an opportunity to review their application and the precise wording of it, and I have asked the legal counsel within the ministry to give me their advice on that. As soon as we have come to a conclusion with respect to that particular application, I will be happy to share that information with the member.

Mrs Marland: Does that apply to RDF?

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): She is saying they haven't decided; they don't know.

Mrs Marland: Does it apply to RDF that's made from municipal solid waste?

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes.

Mr Stockwell: I have just a quick question. You've made a long speech about transporting garbage outside your jurisdictional boundaries, Madam Minister. You know as well as I know that some half million tonnes of waste, conservatively estimated, are heading south of the border to the United States. What exactly do you see in this piece of legislation or in future legislation to ensure that that, in fact, doesn't take place and you stick by the policy and guidelines you've set down?

Hon Mrs Grier: What I see with respect to future legislation are amendments to the Municipal Act that would give regional municipalities the power to direct the flow of waste within their boundaries, the issue of flow control that I am sure the member, as a former member of Metro council, is very familiar with.

We released some weeks ago a discussion paper which had been developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs in response to the requests from many municipalities that they be given precisely that power. We have proposed in this initiatives paper a number of other questions with respect to municipal authority over municipal solid waste, and the issue of flow control is addressed in that discussion paper. I would hope that when we have completed our consultation around the province on that initiatives paper we will be prepared to come to the House with amendments to the legislation that would respond to the concerns and to the discussion during that consultation.

1740

Mr Stockwell: I'm sure you were here for the last question I asked with respect to giving your undertakings last election, when you and the Premier gave your word to the people in Peel surrounding the Keele Valley landfill site, and the grave concerns out there in those communities and others that there's not a lot of trust involved any more with respect to your government and what you say and what you do being the same thing.

Obviously there is some doubt out there that you are a person of your word or that the Premier is a person of his word. Considering the promise you made last election about no expansion to either site without a full environmental assessment hearing and the fact this legislation is changing what you suggested you would do last election, taking in the buffer zone and so on and so forth, why would anyone have any sense of comfort when you suggest, "These buffer zones are set aside and take my word on a few of these other changes in this legislation"? Why would anyone have any comfort in believing you, considering the fact that you promised not to expand these sites last election and in fact did?

Hon Mrs Grier: I don't think a question phrased in that particular way deserves an answer. But let me say yet again to the member that we had a number of decisions to make. What was in place when I became the minister was a process whereby two new interim landfill sites would be opened up -- one in Brampton and one in Pickering -- without a full environmental assessment.

Mrs Caplan: On a point of order, Mr Chair: I don't want to accuse the minister of misleading the House, but every time she says "without a full environmental assessment" she neglects the fact that a full environmental protection hearing was in place and being undergone. I ask her to mention that in her comments so that not only will she not mislead this House; she will not mislead the people of this province.

The Chair: Order. You know this word is not acceptable. I ask you to withdraw it.

Mrs Caplan: I have said I do not want anyone to be misled by the comments. I asked that the minister clarify so that no one would assume she was misleading. I did not say she misled; I said some might think she was misleading.

The Chair: Just don't play with words.

Hon Mrs Grier: I'm glad to expand my answer and say that those two new greenfield sites were to be opened without benefit of a full environmental assessment but under the provisions of the Environmental Protection Act. The Environmental Protection Act does not allow for consideration of alternative sites. It merely indicates a site that has been selected for whatever reason, with no requirement that there in fact be the kind of environmental criteria approach to the selection of criteria, determination and consultation of criteria, that is now being undergone by the Interim Waste Authority.

No, in fact somehow it was decided that there would be two new sites -- one in Brampton and one in Pickering -- and that there would be a hearing under the Environmental Protection Act. At those hearings there would not have been an opportunity to discuss whether there might not be a better and more environmentally sound site somewhere in the vicinity.

Faced with the choice between that kind of inappropriate process for the determination of the appropriateness of brand-new sites or the continuation of two existing sites, sites which were operating, sites which were operating satisfactorily, I made the decision that we should continue the operation of those two existing and well-functioning sites and that we would make sure that any new sites for landfill in this province would be subject to a full environmental assessment. That is what Bill 143 will do and that is the position of this government.

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): Under the dictatorial procedures imposed on this bill and this Legislature by this government, we now have one more minute to consider the provisions of this bill. I have just one thing to say in this final minute. The people of Ontario will defeat this government for a number of reasons. One of the primary, one of the first reasons, one of the things that will bring this government down three years from now or whenever it has the courage to call an election is the provisions of Bill 143.

It is the worst piece of environmental legislation ever put before a Legislature in the history of Canada and, I suggest, North America. It takes away the rights of people to be heard. It imposes the arbitrary will of a minister who used to preach sound principles and sound environmental policy. I just want to say in these final few seconds, remember this day and this moment and this hour because this bill will defeat you.

The Chair: It is now 5:45 pm. I will now interrupt the proceedings and I will put every question necessary to dispose of all remaining sections of the bill and any amendments thereto, and report the bill to the House.

Section 15:

The Chair: Shall the amendment proposed by Mr McClelland on subsection 15(3) carry?

All those in favour of the motion will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the nays have it.

Vote deferred.

The Chair: We'll now deal with the amendment of Mr McClelland to subsection 15(4).

All those in favour of the motion will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the nays have it.

Vote deferred.

The Chair: We'll now deal with the amendment to section 15 brought in by Mr McClelland.

All those in favour of the motion will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the nays have it.

Vote deferred.

Sections 16 to 18, inclusive, agreed to.

Section 19:

The Chair: The amendment to section 19 is out of order under section 54.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): On what basis is it out of order?

The Chair: Under section 54.

Shall section 19 carry?

All those in favour of the motion will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Vote deferred.

Sections 20 to 26:

The Chair: Shall sections 20 to 26 carry?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Vote deferred.

Section 27:

The Chair: Shall Mr Offer's amendment to section 27 carry?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the nays have it.

Vote deferred.

Sections 28 to 34:

The Chair: Shall sections 28 to 34 stand as part of the bill?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Vote deferred.

Section 35:

The Chair: We'll now vote on Mr McClelland's amendment to section 35 of the bill. Withdrawn? Withdrawn.

Shall section 35 stand as part of the bill?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Vote deferred.

1750

Sections 36 and 37:

The Chair: Shall sections 36 and 37 stand as part of the bill?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Vote deferred.

1756

The committee divided on Mr McClelland's amendment to add section 2.1, which was negatived on the following vote:

Ayes 35; nays 60.

The committee divided on whether sections 3 through 12, inclusive, should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether section 13 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether section 14 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on Mr McClelland's amendment to subsection 15(3), which was negatived on the same vote.

The committee divided on Mr McClelland's amendment to subsection 15(4), which was negatived on the following vote:

Ayes 34; nays 61.

The committee divided on Mr McClelland's amendment to section 15, which was negatived on the following vote:

Ayes 35; nays 60.

The committee divided on whether section 15 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether section 16 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether section 17 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether section 18 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether sections 19 to 26, inclusive, should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on Mr Offer's amendment to section 27, which was negatived on the same vote.

The committee divided on whether section 27 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether sections 28 through 34, inclusive, should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether section 35 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether sections 36 and 37 should stand as part of the bill, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The committee divided on whether the bill should be ordered to be reported, which was agreed to on the same vote reversed.

The Chair: Mr Cooke moves that the committee rise and report.

Motion agreed to.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The committee of the whole House begs to report one bill without amendment.

1810

The House divided on whether Bill 143 should be reported, which was agreed to on the following vote:

Ayes -- 59

Allen, Bisson, Buchanan, Carter, Charlton, Christopherson, Churley, Cooke, Cooper, Coppen, Dadamo, Drainville, Duignan, Ferguson, Fletcher, Frankford, Gigantes, Grier, Haeck, Hampton, Hansen, Harrington, Haslam, Hayes, Jamison;

Johnson, Klopp, Lankin, Laughren, Lessard, Mackenzie, MacKinnon, Mammoliti, Marchese, Martel, Mathyssen, Mills, Morrow, Murdock (Sudbury), North, O'Connor, Perruzza, Philip (Etobicoke-Rexdale), Pilkey, Rizzo, Silipo, Sutherland, Ward (Don Mills), Wark-Martyn, Waters, Wessenger, White, Wildman, Wilson (Frontenac-Addington), Wilson (Kingston and The Islands), Winninger, Wiseman, Wood, Ziemba.

Nays -- 36

Arnott, Beer, Callahan, Caplan, Carr, Chiarelli, Cleary, Conway, Cousens, Cunningham, Daigeler, Eddy, Eves, Grandmaître, Harnick, Henderson, Jordan, Mancini, Marland, McClelland, McGuinty, McLean, Miclash, Morin, Murdoch (Grey), Offer, O'Neil (Quinte), O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau), Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt), Poirier, Ramsay, Sola, Sorbara, Stockwell, Turnbull, Villeneuve.

The House adjourned at 1818.