Hansard Transcript 1993-May-13 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

(1) Recognizing that currently two pieces of legislation govern the delivery of social assistance in the province: the General Welfare Assistance Act and the Family Benefits Act; and

(2) Recognizing that different legislative and regulatory requirements and different policies and guidelines have been established under each of these statutes to regulate the delivery of social assistance in the province; and

(3) Recognizing that in the existing administrative frameworks established under each of these statutes, social assistance is delivered by different levels of government; and

(4) Recognizing that the existing legislative and administrative frameworks are complex and cumbersome, and cause confusion and duplication; and

(5) Recognizing that the Advisory Group on New Social Assistance Legislation recommends in its May 1992 report entitled Time for Action that social assistance in Ontario be delivered by only one level of government and be governed by only one piece of legislation;

The government of Ontario should consider replacing the General Welfare Assistance Act and the Family Benefits Act with one new piece of legislation governing the delivery of social assistance in the province; the new legislation should have a preamble and a purpose clause that would state the underlying values of the administrative system and the fundamental objectives of social assistance; and

The government of Ontario should consider replacing the existing administrative frameworks with a new, unified single-tier administrative system where social assistance would be delivered by only one level of government; and

In keeping with the May 1992 first nations' project team report entitled Principal Report on New Social Assistance Legislation for First Nations in Ontario, any negotiations between the government of Ontario and the first nations on the administration and delivery of social assistance should be done in recognition of the Statement of Political Relationship signed on August 6, 1991, by the government of Ontario and first nations representatives.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Pursuant to standing order 96(c)(i), the honourable member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Bob Huget (Sarnia): This issue is one that is of great importance to me and has been for quite some time. I have to say I was disappointed when my original time last December to present this resolution was pre-empted, but I'm pleased today to have the opportunity to seek the support of the House on this very important matter.

I'm sure many of the members in this House can identify with the frustration that comes out of the case work in their offices attempting to deal with our social assistance programs. There have been so many people in my constituency office who have been put into a state of confusion trying to deal with the bureaucratic maze of two systems.

Constituents visiting my office usually have a multitude of questions in trying to determine how they can achieve assistance in Ontario: What type of help do they need? Is it short-term or long-term? Under which act, family benefits or general welfare? Are you a single parent or a single person? Are you temporarily or permanently disabled? Are you a new entrant to the system? What office should you go to, the municipality's or the province's?

When people find themselves with no money and in a desperate situation, these questions add to their frustration at a time when the last thing people need is more frustration.

The purpose of social assistance is to help those in our society who find they're economically unable to meet their basic needs. For some who apply for assistance, it can be traumatic enough to have to ask for help in the first place. Add to this tension the fact that the administrative frameworks are complex and in themselves cause confusion and you are now looking at the nightmare faced by some applicants.

Historically, social assistance has been a municipal responsibility in Canada, but that has changed over time. Ontario, Manitoba and Nova Scotia are now the only provinces that currently have a municipal welfare system. The rest of the provinces have already moved to making it a provincial responsibility.

Currently, our province's two social assistance programs are family benefits and general welfare assistance. Family benefits provides longer-term assistance to single parents, permanently disabled persons and some seniors. That program is delivered by the province. General welfare is delivered by municipalities and is considered to be short-term assistance for single people, families headed by a couple and new entrants to the system. The benefits differ under both the General Welfare Assistance Act and the Family Benefits Act.

But why should one act cover single parents and another act cover married couples, and why should there be a different delivery agent for those acts? In my opinion, new legislation covering all recipients is a change that makes sense to me. There would in fact be no losers if these changes were made.

As taxpayers, we will benefit from a one-tier system that will lead to less duplication of services, less fraud and less overpayment. For those who apply for and receive benefits, new legislation will create an easier, more understandable and fairer system. For those on the front line who administer benefits, a streamlined service would obviously have a positive impact on their day-to-day activities.

The call for a one-tier system has come from many sources. In Transitions, a report of the Social Assistance Review Committee, one of its recommendations was that the FBA and GWA be unified into one piece of legislation. Delivery staff, municipalities and labour have all called for the province to make a decision regarding the future delivery agent of social assistance. All three have also called for a one-tier delivery service with one delivery agent per community.

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The most recent report, Time for Action, in May 1992, presented 52 recommendations to create a fairer, easier system for social assistance delivery. Recommendation number one calls for new legislation and one delivery agent, and I would have to agree that it is indeed a time for action.

One of the reasons our current systems are ineffective is their lack of statements of purpose or values. Delivery agents need a better clarification of their role and clients deserve to know what rights they have within the system. The lack of a purpose clause has also been criticized for contributing to the lack of consistent delivery service across Ontario.

Depending on how a particular office or workers see their role in the system, there continues to be considerable differences in the approach providing services. For example, some offices may volunteer information about a program while others may give information only if they're asked. The need for a purpose clause and a common set of values is clear.

Time for Action has recommended that extensive powers be given to the province to ensure that social assistance is administered according to the provisions of a new act and its principles. These powers of the province would guarantee that the system operates fairly and consistently everywhere in the province.

An example of the need for fairness is the area of special needs. Right now, people in many areas of the province do not have full access to assistance for special needs. Some municipalities fund special needs; others don't. Some will only provide part of the money for a necessary item and others provide it all. Special needs are considered to be at the option of the delivery agent. A revised system should ensure equal treatment of social assistance recipients no matter where they live.

I have noted in my resolution that these changes shall not pertain to the first nations communities. When Ontario and first nations representatives signed the Statement of Political Relationship in 1991, we recognized the inherent right of first nations to be self- governing within the framework of the Canadian Constitution.

Because aboriginal cultures are rich and complex, there are many cultural, social and political aspects unique to them that our current systems have not been able to adequately address and have in many ways been at odds with the basic values of first nations cultures. First nations themselves will have to make recommendations on the future of social assistance on reserves.

The new legislation must be consistent and understandable. However, it must also be efficient, open and publicly accountable. Delivery of social assistance must be responsive to consumers, accessible, fair, simple and open and mutually accountable. In addition, it must be coordinated with other programs and services.

I believe the elimination of the current two systems with new single-tier legislation will give us greater accountability, lower administrative costs, equity across the province and greater equity between individuals, and I seek the support of the House on this very important resolution.

Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): I'm pleased to rise this morning to participate in the debate on the resolution by the member for Sarnia.

This resolution calls for the provision of one comprehensive piece of legislation and one administrative framework administered by one level of government to replace the existing general welfare and family benefits delivery system. On its face, this is a resolution which I think we can all support.

But what puzzles me and many other people who have read this resolution is why this proposal is being presented to this House as a private member's resolution by a government backbencher and not as a government bill by the Minister of Community and Social Services.

This government over the years has had ample, ample advice on this issue in the form of several major social assistance reform reports. Three of the major ones have already been mentioned: Transitions, Back on Track and Time for Action.

In March 1991, early in the life of this NDP government, the Back on Track report was released. This was the first report of the Advisory Group on New Social Assistance Legislation. This report provided strategic advice to the Minister of Community and Social Services on new social assistance legislation; March 1991. This report focused on those measures which could be achieved without legislative change as a first step.

The Back on Track report contained, as an appendix, the former minister my colleague the member for York North's statement, "Following public consultation and refinements, I will present a bill to this House in 1992." Mr Speaker, 1992 has come and gone.

On May 2, 1990, when that promise was made, the Transitions report had been received and adopted as a framework for reform, the advisory group had been named and a concrete plan of action had been adopted; May 1990. A firm time line for the introduction of new social assistance legislation had been announced and the previous government was firmly committed to the process and had demonstrated this through the budget decisions of 1989 and 1990. I think that's an important point.

In May 1992 the NDP government released another report, Time for Action, an excellent document presented by an excellent group of individuals, which was subtitled Towards a New Social Assistance System for Ontario and dealt extensively with the very concerns we are debating here this morning. This report, like Transitions, as has been mentioned by the member for Sarnia, has as its first recommendation, "New legislation should replace the existing General Welfare Assistance Act and the Family Benefits Act and create a unified program for all recipients of social assistance, with a single-tier delivery structure." How much more clearly can it be stated?

It goes on to say: "With the merger of the GWA and the FBA Acts into a unified system, a major overlay of complexity will be eliminated. A system divided into two administrative and program streams is inefficient and confusing."

As a matter of fact, the Time for Action report begins its first chapter with "A Call to Action," which says, "This advisory group strongly urges the Ontario government" -- and may I remind the audience that this is the NDP government, of which this member is a backbencher -- "to move forward with new legislation that will set the system on a new course."

Finally, on January 22 of this year the then Minister of Municipal Affairs announced with great fanfare that he had reached an agreement with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario regarding the disentanglement process. Under the terms of the draft agreement, the province would take full responsibility for 100% of general welfare assistance costs. At that moment I was cautious, and I still am.

As we all know, the government's April 23 mini-budget announcement has seriously undermined the level of trust between the municipalities of this province and this government. AMO has requested an extension of its response time as municipalities right across Ontario grapple with new and different realities of April 1993.

I ask the member for Sarnia, why are you bringing this resolution to this House today? Why is the Minister of Community and Social Services not introducing new social assistance legislation, which is at least a year overdue? I, of course, will support this resolution, and I would encourage the member for Sarnia to make his voice heard within his own caucus and to encourage the minister to bring forward real legislation, not resolutions in private members' time, to this House for consideration as soon as is physically possible.

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Mr Dave Johnson (Don Mills): Before rising to talk about this resolution with regard to combining the GWA and the FBA under one piece of legislation I reminded myself of some of the history and some of the statistics involved, particularly in welfare. Having been involved in the municipal scene, having been a mayor, I see first hand, through the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, the serious situation with regard to welfare.

When I refreshed my memory I was shocked, even though I really recall the statistics and the heartbreak that has happened over the last few years. In 1985, 32,000 case loads were on record in Metropolitan Toronto. The case load was 32,000 in 1985; by 1990 it had gone to 51,000. Today we're looking at a case load in Metropolitan Toronto of 118,000 -- just here in Metropolitan Toronto -- a tremendous increase.

In terms of the unemployable, the case load through that period of time has just about doubled. In 1985 it was 16,000 and by 1993, today, about 31,000. The unemployable -- and here's where the real tragedy is -- in terms of the unemployable, a 16,000 case load in 1985, 32,000 in 1990 and 87,000 case load in Metropolitan Toronto today. These are people dependent on the welfare system. In total, if you take dependants as well as the case load itself, there are over 200,000 people dependent upon welfare in Metropolitan Toronto today.

This party, of course, supports any move that, for those people and for the people on family benefits, would make the system more efficient and less costly for the taxpayer of this province. However, I must say that to me it seems a somewhat simplistic approach.

The times are constantly changing. The situations we face are constantly changing. When the welfare scheme was formulated in the first instance, it was viewed as being a short-term support for people who needed a little bit of help in between jobs. Today I question whether that's the case.

Today I think we would have to look at welfare -- just looking at the case load, looking at the unemployable on the case load -- welfare today has become almost an extended or long-term income support system, and are we talking about this? Even when the reports that have been alluded to by the member for Sarnia, by the member for Ottawa-Rideau, even the report dated May of last year, even when those reports were put out, I think the circumstances were different. We did not at that time view our future in the light that we do today.

The economists today are saying that perhaps we will have a 10% unemployment rate for the next 10 years, that over 10% of the population will be unemployed for the next 10 years. There are different circumstances today. I don't think we're taking that into account.

What we really need is to have a boost in our economy to get people back to work. We need to create jobs, to get people off welfare and back to work. What we get instead is the Jobs Ontario program which -- one municipal representative I talked to recently, at any rate, described this as a program that if the economy picks up, the program isn't needed and if the economy doesn't pick up, the program won't work. It's interesting that in terms of the Jobs Ontario applicants in Metropolitan Toronto, 60% of them have at least high school education. These are people who would have a job at some point in time, regardless of the economic situation, and the people who really need the help, the people without the skills, are not able to get involved.

In terms of, will we save money by combining the two programs, will we save on duplication: Yes, there's some possibility that some duplication could be saved, but the auditor has pointed out that within the family benefits system, due to fraud, due to overpayment, we are probably spending in the province of Ontario about $150 million too much. We should be tackling that today.

We should not wait until this resolution finds its way through to combine the two systems. There is fraud today in the welfare system. There is fraud today in the family benefits system. These are two large systems where the problems should be tackled, regardless of this resolution, and I don't think it should take this resolution to solve those kinds of problems for the taxpayers.

In terms of some of the other problems that will be faced, there are differences, and the member for Sarnia pointed out that there are differences, for example, in the welfare eligibility criteria, across this province. Some municipalities permit students to be eligible for the welfare system under certain circumstances, and other municipalities do not. We need to have discussion about this. How is that going to work? How will there be equity if the system is all melded into one -- one family benefits and one welfare system?

Special needs, again, are different across this province. The member for Sarnia has indicated that there should be an equal standard in that case, but there needs to be a whole lot of discussion about this. It just won't happen overnight. Exit programs, skills upgrading to get people off welfare and back into the workforce, community support programs: These are all different across this province and there needs to be some sort of standardization and some look at that and I don't see, in the preamble here, any mention of those kinds of programs and I think we need to have a healthy discussion on them.

Those are my comments. I will leave it to the member for Burlington South to complete our representation.

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): First of all, I'd like to thank my colleague and my neighbour, who lives down in southwestern Ontario, in our neck of the woods, Mr Huget, for this resolution and congratulate him on his sensitivity and insight. This resolution reflects exactly what the people of the province have been telling the government, and we can't agree more with it.

When my colleague talks about the problems and why is it being introduced today, as I heard from the member for Ottawa -- I forget the exact location -- Rideau, "Why is it coming forward today," I know my colleague has been pushing for this and we know the time lines around private members and getting the actual opportunity to introduce a resolution. This was put before us a long time ago and I think it's very important that we keep bringing it out.

So I'm kind of glad that my colleague has brought it forward, because we're trying to deal with the issues of getting people back to work. We have a system right now in which two pieces of legislation make it very difficult for people to understand. With the current economic crisis that is upon us in our own communities -- and I reflect on own community, where free trade has caused us major job losses, plant closures are there, businesses are going under, and people, for the first time in their lives, are having to depend on social services. It's very disheartening.

When we look at social services, we must not just reflect upon the adults who are there; we must also reflect upon the children who are dependent upon social services in order to provide for basic food and basic shelter in everyday living in our society.

The fact that the system is very complex -- people do not understand it. Those on it for the first time have difficulty understanding it. Does it actually meet the needs of those consumers? We believe it doesn't. I heard the member from the Conservative Party raise that it's a disincentive to go back and re-educate. You're absolutely right. There is a disincentive when you enter a community college or a university to upgrade your skills. The disincentive is there because you're cut off social services. That has to be addressed and I know the Minister of Education and Training now, but then under the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, had to address that issue through the OSAP reforms, which are going to make it more viable for people to enter back into the education system and upgrade their skills. So that's an important step.

But, as indicated in the throne speech, we can no longer continue to tinker with it. We need to make major reform that reflects the concerns of the people of the province of Ontario, making sure that we provide a system that will allow people to access and get back to work, whether it be job training, volunteer work or opportunities that are in their communities.

We also, as a government, recognize that we must benefit the recipients, benefit the administrative people who are having a difficult time and also benefit our own communities around social assistance costs. We are, as a government, embarking -- and they're saying, "Why is it taking so long?" Because of the two-tier system that is in place, both at the municipal level and provincial level, it is important for us as a government to work with other levels of government, especially the municipal governments, on the disentanglement exercise that we've been going through and making sure that we are clear in our directions, clear in the administration, clear in our understanding of those communities and the effects on the administration of programs.

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There must also be an ownership in the process. As we talk about the 100% funding, you cannot relieve without responsibility. The responsibility of municipalities and their effect around social services is very important.

I'm looking at the time. I've been trying to talk very fast, and I know a number of my colleagues wish to speak on this.

I think the timing is very important, because as parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Community and Social Services, we have outlined a reflection of what we believe, which was outlined in the throne speech, that we must make major reforms. But I believe it is very important for this government to take the opportunity that is also put forward with this resolution to send a message loud and clear to the public of Ontario: It is time to make major reforms, reforms under one system that will be administered through one system, which will allow one major goal, and the major goal is to return people back to our workforce so that non-reliance on social services is there, and making sure that the elements around the working environment are there to make sure that protection of good incomes to provide for families is there.

And you're absolutely right. If we can get people off Jobs Ontario and we no longer need Jobs Ontario, it must mean that it's working well, it's relieving our social service case load and yes, there are people entering back into the workforce, which allows not only a financial responsibility but an emotional one too, because not everybody likes to be on social services. They like to have gainful employment, they like to feel good about themselves, and I believe that if we make a constructive and positive change around social services, we can achieve that: to put self-confidence back into those individuals who are currently faced with the economic crises that are upon us, with job loss through free trade and other economic situations that face them in their communities.

So I would like to say thank you to my colleague. It's unfortunate that it took this time to get here, but I know he, being elected, when he first came to this Legislature addressed the issues around social service and around social justice, and I thank him for the opportunity to speak to this resolution on administrative change and the change that needs to be here in the province of Ontario.

Mr Gilles E. Morin (Carleton East): I am pleased to have this opportunity to respond to Mr Huget's resolution. This resolution does not bring forth any new ideas. It simply reiterates what I and many others have been saying for the last few years; namely, that the system needs to be streamlined to be more efficient and that responsibility for the delivery of social services must be entrusted to one agency with a clearly defined mandate.

Many concerns prompted me to introduce Bill 154, the Government Cheque Cashing Act, which prohibits charging fees for cashing a government cheque. I felt that low-income Ontarians, many of whom depend almost exclusively upon social assistance, were being cheated out of moneys they were entitled to receive in full.

I also proposed other means by which the government could save money while protecting the revenues of low-income Ontarians. I recommended an agreement with financial institutions and the expansion of the direct deposit system. It now appears that this government has finally seen the light. I have learned through a reliable source that mandatory direct deposit will be implemented as a means of streamlining social assistance, thus saving this government millions of dollars. I must congratulate your government. It is the only government that seems to be prepared to take this measure, but why did it take so long?

Something does concern me, however. It is that this government is feeling the pinch of the recession and that is its sole motivation in implementing mandatory direct deposit. Bill 154 addressed all government cheques, not just social assistance, and it was introduced to protect low-income consumers from abusive commercial activities. But the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations would not touch the issue. I simply find it regrettable that this government still does not recognize the need to protect the most vulnerable persons in our society.

Do not misunderstand. I fully support measures that will save money while improving the delivery of social assistance. But it would be reassuring to know that this government also has heart. At this point in time, its work is not complete. Many low-income persons will remain vulnerable.

I have said repeatedly that Bill 154 is the first step in a series of measures to protect low-income Ontarians and to ensure the responsible delivery of social assistance. This is an important point, because the citizens of Ontario expect their taxes to be well spent, and if this government wants to be consistent, it will legislate the prohibition of fees charged on the cashing of all government cheques. If the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations takes its mandate seriously, it will get involved in this issue as well.

Back in 1989, my resolution regarding cheque-cashing fees enjoyed the support of the House. Responsible administration and consideration of the needs of low-income Ontarians is not the government's prerogative; it is also our responsibility, one that I have taken to heart because I have the duty to protect the vulnerable in our society, and so does everyone else in this House.

As a representative of taxpayers, I am also concerned about the cost of social assistance. The Ministry of Community and Social Services has embarked upon the right track, but it needs to proceed step by step. It should start with the implementation of Bill 154. It has waited too long already.

I will support your resolution, Mr Huget, but tell your minister that Bill 154, which is now awaiting third reading, will save this province millions of dollars, and now is the time to pass this bill.

Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): I would like to just take a few minutes to comment on my colleague's resolution. It would appear to me that this resolution is more or less premature in the fact that it's only dealing with a small administrative problem with social assistance and family welfare benefits. There are much greater problems to be looked at and solved before bringing this together in the form of guaranteed income or some form of payment such as that because, as you know, in the 1992 annual report from the Provincial Auditor, over $600 million was paid out on account of fraud and overpayment.

There's no mention here to get to the root of this problem. The taxpayer, the worker who does have a job, is getting fed up with having to pay out for social benefits when the administration of these two programs is in such a mess that you can have an amount like $600 million per year wasted in fraud and overpayment. It is my position that we have to get the problems in order here, and after we get these other problems, the financial problems, corrected and have a firm plan bringing these together, then we can come forward with this resolution.

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Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): Mr Huget's resolution calls for one new piece of legislation to cover social assistance, and I believe everyone is going to agree on that. He also asks that the legislation have a preamble and a purpose clause that would state the underlying values of the administration system and the fundamental objectives of social assistance. I think that is certainly worth us spending a little time on.

Unfortunately, one hour in this House is certainly not enough to discuss such a very important and, as the previous speaker said, controversial assistance system, which of course takes so much of the province's money. Maybe it's time we called for public forums right across this province to deal head on with people's feelings and attitudes. Maybe it's come to that point.

This morning, though, I'd like to do two things. First of all, he calls on each of us to think about the fundamental objectives of social assistance, and secondly, I would like to also tell you what I feel are some of the very obvious problems that I see in the current system.

The question first is, what is the purpose? I'd like to give you some of the thoughts that my colleagues and I have shared over the past year or so, because certainly since coming to government two and a half years ago we've realized that it is very important that we confront the very basis of what social assistance is all about.

Let's start, I believe, by all of us in this House agreeing that each individual in society is of inherent worth. We start with that premise.

Secondly, income not only provides the basic necessities of life; it is much, much more important than that. It gives us choice over our lives, and if one has choice in meaningful ways, we can develop our lives and therefore contribute to society, and if we don't have that choice in our lives, we will never be able to fully contribute to society and fulfil the resources that we were given.

Thirdly, many are able to gain access to economic resources through employment, but let's face the fact that others are not, either for a short term or for long periods of time, whether it's through disability or other circumstances. That is a fact of life that could befall any of us here.

Also, all citizens should have access to income without fear of punishment or stigma, and that's something that deserves a little further thought.

Some of the problems that I see with the system -- and I would like to acknowledge that much work has been done since about 1986 or so, of course, with the reports of Transitions, Back on Track and Time for Action, but I still see that we have to remove the disincentives to work. That is I think the primary problem that all of us across Ontario would say has to be addressed very soon. I cannot stress this too much.

We also have to look at the relationship of the social assistance system to the working poor and how those people on very, very low incomes who are working relate to the levels of income on social assistance.

Of course, now across the province we do have several pilot projects called opportunity planning, and they're so important to try to change attitudes and enable people to get that first step into the workforce.

Our government, I'd also like to point out, over the past two years has provided much, much more money, hard cash, into training. There can be absolutely no question of that, and that's part of this whole system that we're now looking at in the future, the importance of having the opportunity for folks to get into training. And of course we know that a job, to our own lives, to the lives of our families, is crucial to our self-esteem, so the bottom line is, people need a job.

The second most important problem that I see in the current system is the attitudes actually within the system that have been built up for years and years. What we want is not a passive system which marginalizes people and keeps them there on the fringes of society but one that enables people to get back into society. That's what I call an active system, not a passive system.

Over the years, what we have is a system that has evolved and developed with certain attitudes, and that philosophy has then created the system and kept it perpetually the way it has been. It's now time to break that cycle.

Many clients feel that they put their lives on social assistance in what I call "a holding pattern" because of the way in fact they are actually treated by social assistance, and the whole system and society. In fact workers don't have the time, let's face it, in many cases to actually deal with people, to provide them with the opportunities and the knowledge that they need to get those choices in their lives and to get some self-esteem.

There are many other problems. I'd like to touch on a couple of them: First of all, the many categories within the system; secondly, the student welfare question has to be addressed; and thirdly, the OSAP question -- when people are on social assistance, they need OSAP many times and also they need child care to enable them to change their lives.

Certainly, now is the time, after two and a half years. The white paper will be released in June and I would push very much -- I would ask everyone to help me in this -- to get new legislation as soon as possible.

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Ottawa South): Colleagues on this side of the House have been lamenting the fact and decrying the fact that the Transitions report is now four years old, and I want to speak to the particular impact of delay on our native communities. We may think that the problems presented by our existing social assistance system as they are presented in our communities are significant, but I want to tell you something of the impact they're having in our native communities.

Let's begin by understanding that unemployment on our reserves is over 50%. There are 4,000 families who are waiting for new homes. There are 3,800 homes that are in dire need of renovations. Only 50% of our native homes have central heating. Seventy per cent of our on-reserve native population and 32% of our Metis and non-status Indian households receive social assistance.

The Statement of Political Relationship referred to by Mr Huget in his resolution is a very important document and it places a very significant obligation on the government, much more so than a campaign promise would or some informal commitment or moral obligation. This is a Statement of Political Relationship, a formal document signed by representatives of the first nations and the Ontario government, and it places a special obligation on the government to move towards recognition in a very real way of our first nations' right to self-government.

To that end, it's important that the government begin to recognize that the social assistance system is simply not working on reserves, and more importantly, or just as importantly, to recognize that the reasons it's not working on the reserves are not the same reasons it's not working for the rest of Ontario communities.

Briefly put, because I don't have much time to speak to this important issue, the social assistance system as it exists today is rooted in cultural values and premises that are at odds with or fundamentally inconsistent with some of the basic values that our first nations cultures hold. I think you can also make a very good argument to the effect that the social assistance system as it exists today is in fact actually contributing to the tremendous rate of dependency that exists in our first nations communities.

As well, I think it's important to recognize that a system that will work in our non-native communities is not one that will necessarily work on the reserves. In keeping with the Statement of Political Relationship, the solution lies in allowing our first nations to develop and control the system specific to their needs. It won't be easy, but it's an obligation that is imposed upon the government by virtue of the Statement of Political Relationship.

Essentially, we're talking here about a question of jurisdiction. It's going to be absolutely essential that first nations be given the legislative authority to create their own system, one which will allow them to develop a system that is specific to their needs, and recognizes not only the differences between first nations generally speaking and the rest of Ontario but as well the differences between the various first nations.

One final point I want to make is that it's also critical that we recognize that there are some very specific problems related to our first nations communities: those who are living off reserves. At the present time, to the best of my knowledge, there is no documentation, no studies that have been specific to those needs, so we need a community-based consultation process directed by and for our native peoples, and the results of that kind of a study will allow us to gain some understanding of the best direction in which we can move in order to address off-reserve native populations.

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Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): I'm pleased to participate in the debate on this resolution today, although I'm rather quite surprised by the government's pre-emptive move through one of its backbenchers to discuss one small, minute aspect of social assistance in this province. I was in this Legislature in 1985 when the NDP third party -- it came last in that election -- put in its accord document as a condition of making the Liberals the government that social service reform was a big priority, that it had to be on the front burner.

We've had report after report. My colleagues in the Liberal Party have been talking about reports that are four, five and, some reports, six years old. The most important report in my view that's come down in the last eight years since the Liberals and the NDP have been playing with the poor is the issue of the auditor's report of 1992.

What emerged from this report was so compelling, that the amount of abuse and the amount of poor administrative structures by the government of the day was such that as much as 10% of the $6.2 billion spent by taxpayers for social assistance in this province -- 10% of it, $600 million -- was not recovered when it was fraud or overpayment or misplaced or sent out the door and should not have gone out of these buildings to recipients who didn't deserve it.

We're here in this Legislature today discussing maybe merging the two systems after eight years of discussion, maybe combining a few little things here. Nowhere in this resolution is there anything about the taxpayers who are paying for this in this province. But three miles from here, if you go right down to the Royal York Hotel, all the major unions in this province are sitting at the social contract table and they're saying to Bob Rae and his government, "Before you lay off a teacher in a school who's helping a child with learning difficulties, before you lay off a nurse in a hospital who's helping our parents who may be ill, before you lay off an ambulance worker who's protecting the people of this province who are injured, why don't you look at the $600 million that the auditor says you can save?"

People talk about there should be dignity and people shouldn't have to feel stigmatized by collecting welfare. I tell you that the people who are ripping off our welfare system are laughing at this government and they're laughing at today's debate talking about changing a few little systems.

You in your throne speech said, "No amount of tinkering's going to help this system." Well, I beg to differ with you. The auditor's report was so compelling that the public accounts committee started meeting several months ago. The evidence was overwhelming about the changes that could be made to bring in a system with integrity, within a system that can respond to the needs of the poor but also stop the growing fraud and abuse that's occurring in our system.

But instead of the government cooperating with the opposition members who were pursuing this, the government members hijacked the committee and that report is not even being written. Their simple statement was, "We think we're doing a good job." Well, you're not doing a good job. The auditor says you're not doing a good job. There are courts all over this province where people who are defrauding welfare are going before a judge; the judges don't think you're doing a good job. The municipalities don't think you're doing a good job. But you people are patting yourselves on the back because you have some resolution that says at some future event this is going to be a priority for us.

If this government was really committed, it would look for example to the province of Quebec where they brought in legislation to catch welfare cheats. Their levels of support for welfare recipients have improved in Quebec. Why? Because they're catching people who are defrauding the system. Quebec's system is working so well that they're catching people from their own province coming to Ontario and collecting welfare. And you know what happens? Because Ontario says, "Hey, we don't want to hear about it; that would be a violation of their rights," they get cut off their Quebec welfare because they can get it in Ontario.

What kind of stupidity, what kind of further example do we need to demonstrate that we have a system out of control and a government that lacks the commitment to do something about it?

If you go to New Brunswick, it has brought in a whole series of reforms, if that's the word the government wants to use, that allow the system to respond to the real need. I'll repeat that: It allows the system to respond to the real need. Taxpayers deserve governments that respect that governments don't pay the bills; people pay the bills, taxpayers pay the bills.

That's the message that should be on the floor of the Legislature today. That's the message of the minority report which was submitted by the Conservative Party, with nine recommendations to assist with the $600-million saving. If you'd have listened three years ago when we raised it, we would have had nearly $2 billion in savings instead of shutting down hospital beds and closing day care centres. I look to save the money in this system.

Mr David Winninger (London South): Unlike the member for Burlington South, I'm not going to devote all my time to bashing the welfare recipients when they're down. Most right-thinking people know that only 2% to 3% of all recipients of social assistance are receiving social assistance fraudulently, so you're completely diverting attention from the very real needs of people on social assistance.

I applaud the member for Sarnia for bringing forward this resolution, which answers the clarion call for integration of the two systems made in the Transitions report under the Liberal government, made in the Time for Action report and made in the Back on Track report. I applaud the member for taking the initiative in this direction, and I also congratulate the member for bringing forward a resolution that is, as I'm sure my colleague for Ottawa South will agree, sensitive to the specific needs of first nations.

The member for Ottawa South acknowledged the fact that the Statement of Political Relationship, a very historic document, the first of its kind in all of Canada, recognized that we're dealing with the first nations of Ontario on a government-to-government basis within the Canadian constitutional framework. It's quite clear that, as a group, native people are still quite impoverished. They're underemployed. They're disproportionately dependent on government transfers. Twenty-six per cent of native income comes from government transfers compared to 12% of all other Ontarians. However, much of these government transfers are actually used to fuel economic development towards making our first nations more self-sufficient.

This economic hardship, which was detailed in the Transitions report and numerous other reports, both on and off native reserves, coupled with the historic lack of control over the way in which social welfare programs are delivered -- although more and more first nations are now administering their own social assistance, some even requiring work in consideration of social assistance. The economic hardship, coupled with the historic lack of control and its attendant harmful effects, needs to be corrected by creating a system of social assistance that is, as the report of the first nations' community project team -- which, I might indicate to the member for Ottawa South, was not only made up of on-reserve native representatives; it was also composed of off-reserve native representatives -- is recommending, improving and promoting first nations' control of social welfare and making the regulations and policies that flow from that legislation more sensitive to the economic, social and cultural concerns of our first nations community.

I think that's a message that comes through loud and clear in the resolution of the member for Sarnia.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Sarnia has two minutes to make response.

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Mr Huget: I'd like to thank the members for Ottawa-Rideau, Don Mills, Chatham-Kent, Carleton East, Lanark-Renfrew, Niagara Falls, Ottawa South, Burlington South and London South for comments on my resolution.

I think it's important to understand, at least from the viewing public's point of view, what private members' hour is all about. It's an opportunity for private members, whether they're government or opposition, to bring forward items and issues that concern them and concern their constituents, and it's in that spirit that I bring forward this resolution. I am far less interested in the partisan politics of the opposition or third party on an important issue that has not only troubled me but my constituents for many, many years.

One of the things I hope to accomplish, and in fact have accomplished, is an elevated debate on a very important issue. I hope that elevated debate will increase the momentum of the government to move forward with social assistance reform. One of the reforms, just one of the reforms, that is necessary -- in fact essential to social assistance in this province -- is the elimination of the two-tier, two-delivery agent system. There is no point in fooling around with two systems that don't work. We need a new system in this province. We need a new system for recipients, we need a new system for administrators --

Mr Jackson: Why are they hiding the bill from you? Why won't they show you the bill? Don't they trust you with the bill?

Mr Huget: -- and, yes, to the member for Burlington South --

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Huget: -- we need a new system that prevents fraud and overpayment.

I'm very pleased to bring this resolution forward. I appreciate the support and comments of those who have supported me, and certainly appreciate and understand the political partisanship of those who have not.

The Acting Speaker: Before I call for orders of the day, I do want to say to the honourable member for Burlington South that when he was speaking there were no interjections. I wish he would accord the same rights to the other members of this House.

INTERPROVINCIAL TRADE / COMMERCE INTERPROVINCIAL

Mr Grandmaître moved private member's notice of motion number 5:

That, in the opinion of this House,

Since for years a number of irritants and obstacles have hindered the free movement of people, goods and services from one side of the Ottawa River to the other in the national capital region; and

Since the national capital region could become a national model of economic integration reflecting the cultural duality of Canada; and

Since, at the present time, the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and the Communauté urbaine de l'Outaouais have struck a joint working committee for the purpose of breaking down existing barriers; and

Since the joint committee has already passed two resolutions, one for purchasing on an unrestricted, competitive basis, and one for personnel recruitment without regard to place of residence; and

Since, furthermore, the committee has launched an in-depth study into the situation in the construction industry with a view to alleviating the sources of frustration in that industry, as well as a project for identifying interprovincial barriers that need to be eliminated;

Therefore, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs should take steps, including setting up discussions with the minister's Quebec counterpart, so that the positive initiatives undertaken at the regional level can be followed up at the provincial level at the earliest possible opportunity.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Pursuant to standing order 96(c)(i), the honourable member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East): In the last seven days, much has been said in this House on interprovincial barriers. Only last Thursday my colleague the member for Carleton, Mr Sterling, introduced a resolution entitled Employment Equity Policy, and I want to assure the members of this House that in the Ottawa-Carleton region this resolution and Mr Sterling's resolution do have great interest.

Interprovincial barriers are not new between the province of Ontario and the province of Quebec. They date back to the early 1930s. But in the last 15 years, since 1977, when new laws and regulations were introduced in the province of Quebec, it has been chaos and my resolution of today wants to improve this climate. I think the time has come that we should resolve our differences; our interprovincial barriers should be abolished.

Back in 1977, again when a mobility policy was introduced by the province of Quebec -- and this is a letter from the Canadian Construction Association reminding me of this labour mobility policy, which reads:

"Bidders must engage subcontractors who have a permanent establishment in Quebec and who have the personnel required to do the work. Exceptions are allowed where no specified subcontractor exists in the province of Quebec or where a reasonable price cannot be obtained. Failure to comply with this requirement allows the contracting authority to retain 10% of the subcontractor price.

"Finally, to bring outside construction workers into the province of Quebec, they must obtain a competency card from the Commission de la construction du Québec, which is responsible for monitoring the movement of construction workers in Quebec and which provides placement services. To obtain this card, you must first be recognized in your specific trade by the Centre Travail-Québec. Local residents are given a high priority in this system. Essentially, out-of-province workers will not qualify for a competency card unless they can demonstrate they possess a specialized skill which is not available in the province of Quebec."

This is one of the reasons why so many tradespeople from the province of Quebec are crossing the bridge every day in my region of Ottawa-Carleton to work in Ontario, for the simple reason that these people do have a competency card but don't have a work permit. These people who do work in the province of Quebec without a working permit are even called "illegals." Imagine: illegals.

I know that times are tough in the province of Ontario and in Quebec. Along came the 1981-82 recession, free trade and now we are going through another recession, the 1990-93 recession, which is not over with. Few major projects are taking place in the province of Quebec and in Ottawa-Carleton for many economic reasons, and my resolution today not only deals with the workers, but I want all barriers abolished that prevent people or goods or services from having free circulation or access in the province of Ontario.

I think we have reached an intolerable situation and we must act, and I think the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and la Communauté urbaine de l'Outaouais have acted. Now it is up to us. It is up to the province of Ontario and to the province of Quebec to sit down at the same table and negotiate a way or ways to abolish these barriers.

Referring to the Ottawa-Carleton and CUO committee, which is chaired by the regional chairman of Ottawa-Carleton, Mr Peter Clark, and also the mayor of Gatineau, Robert Labine, this is the mandate of the working committee:

It "will be responsible for completion of the study and will provide a profile of the movement of construction workers and companies between the two territories and provide a forecast of the construction activity in the next 10 years in the Outaouais." It "will be particularly involved in the analysis of the Quebec legislation and regulations that prevent the free movement of construction workers and companies between both shores."

My colleague the member for S-D-G & East Grenville and I do sit on the Ontario-Québec Parliamentary Association and we were privileged, we were invited to sit on the RMOC-CUO committee just about four weeks ago. Some real work is being done by the two regional municipalities.

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I have a letter from my regional chair, Mr Peter Clark, which is addressed to Frances Lankin, the Minister of Economic Development and Trade, which says, and I'll read just a few lines:

"While these employment practices do seem unfair, we believe that the best way to overcome provincial employment barriers is by working collectively with our colleagues in Quebec to constructively address these very important issues. The province of New Brunswick has recently retaliated against Quebec construction laws by imposing the same conditions on construction companies from Quebec that Quebec imposes on construction companies from New Brunswick." This is the important line, "This retaliation has resulted in a regional trade war. This illustrates exactly what we do not want for the national capital region."

I want to make it very clear that I want to give negotiations a chance to work, and I was pleased to hear from Minister Lankin, the Minister of Economic Development and Trade, that she will be part of a meeting in June, June 7 and 8 of next month, along with the Premier of this province, and they will sit down with the province of Quebec to deal with these barriers.

Also I want to say something about the Ontario-Québec Parliamentary Association, which was newly created. I think it's very, very important to tell the people of Ontario that there is something going on between parliamentarians of Quebec and Ontario, and I'm very, very pleased that we are discussing issues that affect both sides of the river.

The objectives of the Ontario-Québec Parliamentary Association are very clear:

"The association's objectives are to foster the development of interparliamentary cooperation between both assemblies and thereby serve to further understanding, particularly in the fields of legislation, culture, economics, science and technology, and generally reinforce greater friendship, goodwill and mutual understanding."

Those are the objectives of the Ontario-Québec Parliamentary Association. I'm positive that we will work more closely with the province of Quebec and resolve our differences.

This weekend, Mr Speaker, and you are a member of the Ontario-Québec Parliamentary Association, in Toronto we will meet with the province of Quebec and the members of Quebec will receive a copy of Mr Sterling's resolution along with mine. We want to resolve these differences. We want to give negotiations a chance to work.

Il est tellement important. Le temps est venu d'agir. Il faut éliminer les barrières qui existent entre l'Ontario et le Québec et, une fois pour toute, donner le libre-échange ou accès -- des gens, des services et des produits de l'Ontario et du Québec.

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): I'm interested in reading the resolution today and I'm somewhat between wanting to vote for this and wanting to vote against it. One might ask what the difference is between this resolution and the resolution I presented to this Legislature and received approval for last week.

I think that the difference in it is marked, and this particular resolution calls for more talk; more talk is what we're talking about today. I think one of the reasons that my resolution gained support last week was that the members of this Legislature, voting independently, had decided that it was time for action, that the time for talk was past. "We needed to put fire to fight fire," were the words of one of the opposition members whom I talked to as we left this Legislature last week.

The proponent of this resolution put forward the letter from Peter Clark, the regional chairman, and he said Mr Clark was trying to travel the high road, so to speak, and saying that by putting forward retaliatory measures in the province of Ontario we would not achieve any kind of resolution to this problem. I think nothing could be further from the truth, and I beg to differ with the regional chairman of Ottawa-Carleton. I believe that it's time for action and the time is now.

However, the resolution that Mr Grandmaître, the member for Ottawa East, puts forward goes over a further and a wider scope than the resolution I put forward. It includes as well other matters outside of the construction field.

During the past week, as you can imagine, I have received many correspondences, letters etc, from various different quarters. I received from a Montreal resident a copy of the Montreal Gazette dated May 4, 1993. In it he included the page relating to tenders. If you look on this particular sheet, there are about 20 different tenders on this sheet.

There is an invitation to tender on a new elementary school, and it says, "Only contractors operating under the Quebec policy, ie, main office of the contractor in Quebec." Quebec hydro has eight different projects that it's tendering on. On each one of those eight, it says, "Eligibility: place of business in Quebec," "Place of business in Quebec," "Place of business in Quebec." All eight of them say that.

Concordia University, which of course, as you know, the university sector is funded by both provincial and federal funds -- not only the provinces pay the bills to build our universities, but very much the federal government -- Concordia University: "Only those businesses with their main place of business in Quebec." McGill University, there are two tenders. Only those with their main place of business in Quebec can go in on those. Lastly, the city of Montreal has another tender, "Only those with the main place of business in Quebec."

I have received numerous calls from contractors in this province of Ontario saying that this is not fair. They are fed up with the talk that my government engaged in, the Liberal government engaged in and the New Democratic Party government has now engaged in for over 15 years, with no resolution to this problem. There is serious unfairness with regard to the present construction laws and the ability for our construction workers to cross over into the province of Quebec and have the same opportunity as those workers coming the other way.

The resolution put forward by my friend from Ottawa East is very, very much typical of the Liberal Party of Ontario in not being willing to take definitive hard stands to meet problems. We feel in this party that it is time for a hard definitive stand, as Frank McKenna, the Premier of New Brunswick, has done for his province.

I will, however, say that I will support the resolution, and I will be here to vote. The Liberal members of this Legislature did not see fit to come into this Legislature last week, save and except for the member for Nepean, from Ottawa, the eastern part of this province, and put their feelings on record as to how they wanted to vote on this particular matter. I should say that also the member for Cornwall from the Liberal caucus appeared at that time.

We will be here to vote. Anything that will resolve this matter we will support. We would, however, prefer hard action and less talk.

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Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): I am supporting the resolution by Monsieur Grandmaître, the member for Ottawa East, because I think both in substance and in process he's doing the right thing.

Substance is that Ontario workers and companies are having a difficult time entering into the Quebec market. Substance is that Quebec is erecting barriers that prevent us from entering into its market. We agree with that. There is no doubt and no question that the inability of Ontario construction workers and companies to work on projects in Quebec has to be dealt with. The question we debated last week is how to do that. This is why I believe that the process that is suggested is something that I support very strongly.

I want to add that the process that is suggested is that,

"The Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs should take steps, including setting up discussions with the minister's Quebec counterpart, so that the positive initiatives undertaken at the regional level can be followed up at the provincial level at the earliest possible opportunity."

I presume that Monsieur Grandmaître means to name the Premier in this case and not the minister who is involved on matters of trade, but he should remember and he should know that the minister who deals with this particular issue in Quebec is not the Premier but rather another minister, and I'm not quite clear what he's suggesting in terms of who it is that he's referring to, whether it should be the premiers or whether it should be other ministers who are dealing with trade matters.

That's something of course that can be clarified, but I have no problems that the premiers of Ontario and Quebec get together to talk about how to reduce those barriers. We've done that in the constitutional discussions, where four of the ministers of intergovernmental affairs were premiers and the others were not. It presents some problem, I suppose, in some cases, but it added a great deal of credibility that we had four premiers at those constitutional conferences to deal with all matters as they relate to each other. We have no problems with that.

We think we've made tremendous headway in attempting to reduce those barriers, so I want to support the suggestion that Monsieur Grandmaître has made that the premiers, which I think is his intent, get together and move this agenda. It's also quite possible that the premiers instructed their ministers to move quickly on this matter and deal with it as quickly as possible.

But I want to talk a bit about what's been happening in order for our audiences to understand what steps have been taken. On March 18, 1993, the committee of ministers on internal trade agreed to begin comprehensive negotiations to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers in Canada. As well, ministers confirmed a moratorium on the creation of new trade barriers.

If you recall, I made the argument last week that New Brunswick's actions have breached that agreement. They were erecting similar barriers as Quebec. I pointed out last week that Mr Sterling's motion, which many in this House have supported, would do the same thing. The proposed solution was to erect barriers to solve barrier problems, and I argued that that was a mistake. I argued that that would exacerbate our trade problems with each other. In my view, it's in the overall interest of all governments in Canada to work to eliminate barriers to trade to avoid taking actions which would lead to even greater barriers to trade between the provinces, and that's the resolution that we passed here last week.

In my view, that enhances and exacerbates the problem. In my view, that encourages provincial cannibalism. In my view, that measure that we took last week proposes a guillotine measure to solve something that intergovernmental ministers on trade should be dealing with, which is what they're dealing with. That is the way to go. Any other proposed way to go will increase the frictions between provinces in Canada, and I don't think that's what we want to do.

The process that we are suggesting, and that I am supporting, allows for several things. If we get rid of barriers today, it doesn't solve all of our problems; there are things that need to be dealt with. We need, as guiding principles, to deal with other issues that are part of these trade discussions. We need to solve issues such as having full disclosure of information, legislation, regulations, policies and practices that have the potential to impede a single integrated market in Canada.

We need exceptions and transition periods as well as special needs consistent with regional development objectives in Canada. We need to take into account the importance of environmental objectives, consumer protection and labour standards. All of these things need to be debated in a calm setting, in a setting where we are sharing with each other the types of problems that provinces are experiencing and what kinds of resolutions need to be put into place in order to satisfy the different needs we all have in our provinces, because we're not all the same. We're different, and these guiding principles that I alluded to need to be taken into account. Applying the guillotine to this doesn't deal with that.

I suggest to Mr Sterling, in supporting Mr Grandmaître's motion, that we have to give the ministers on internal trade, who are meeting, as I understand it, in the week of June in Vancouver, the time to solve this in an amicable way, as it should be, and give them the opportunity to deal with the guiding principles that I spoke about and not undermine that process that is fully in place by taking measures that will exacerbate this problem in a very, very disturbing way.

Mr Gilles E. Morin (Carleton East): It is a pleasure for me to rise and support the resolution brought forward by my colleague regarding the removal of interprovincial barriers in general and the removal of trade irritants between Ontario and Quebec in particular.

Cette résolution vient à point. Nous n'avons plus de temps à perdre.

I would like everyone to keep in mind the following statistics as we debate this resolution. The World Competitiveness Report, issued by IMD International and the World Economic Forum in 1992, ranked Canada 11th out of 22 major industrial countries. In 1991 Canada was in sixth place, and five years ago it ranked fifth. These statistics are sobering and disturbing. What is happening to Canada, to a country that enjoys so many natural advantages and that should be competing as effectively as other nations?

It is fair to say that interprovincial barriers within Canada are contributing to the decline of Canada's competitiveness abroad. Barriers also have a negative impact on our internal economy. Even though tariff barriers between provinces are prohibited by the Constitution Act, the proliferation of non-tariff barriers has created an extremely protectionist internal economy. This situation is ultimately to no one's advantage.

Il est estimé que plusieurs milliards de dollars sont perdus chaque année en raison des barrières commerciales interprovinciales. Nous ne pouvons plus nous permettre un tel gaspillage de ressources humaines, naturelles et de capitaux.

Concerns over interprovincial trade barriers are not new. Back in 1937 the Rowell-Sirois commission studied this very issue. Its conclusions were, not surprisingly, quite similar to the criticisms we are hearing today. More recently, Canadian governments at the federal and provincial levels consider the issue serious enough to be included in the package of constitutional reforms.

Part of the problem, however, is that, historically, provincial governments have hesitated to act decisively and to eliminate barriers. My colleague's resolution is innovative in that he proposes the national capital region as a model of economic integration reflecting the cultural duality of Canada. This project would have great symbolic value, but more importantly, it would demonstrate very clearly what can be accomplished when all players involved work together and agree on the desired outcome. Since direction from above has been lacking, why should regional governments not lead the way and show what can be done?

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Interprovincial barriers have hindered the free movement of people, goods and services from one side of the Ottawa River to the other in the national capital region for many years. Many persons have complained, and the problem is serious. I am pleased to say that not only are my colleagues and myself from the area listening, but we are also acting upon this issue. We are seeking a solution to this problem.

In January of this year, Mr Grandmaître indicated that he would introduce the present resolution. Since then, the regional municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and the Communauté urbaine de l'Outaouais have commissioned a joint study pertaining to interprovincial trade barriers.

What I find most positive is the emphasis placed upon a constructive approach to this matter, as opposed to the strident calls for retaliation, as we have heard recently and as we have heard again this morning. We must not follow the New Brunswick example. A regional or provincial trade war is the last thing anybody needs at this time. I would add that there exist better ways of making one's point than playing tit for tat.

As my colleague the member for Ottawa East stated just a minute ago, the objectives of the Ontario-Quebec association are very clear. These objectives support the need to establish a positive and open climate conducive to the exchange and discussion of ideas. As a member of this association, I can assure you that excellent relations have developed between members of both assemblies. During our meeting in Quebec City last year, we discussed the issue of interprovincial barriers. We acknowledged the problem and recognized the need to deal with it.

Je tiens absolument à souligner l'importance du dialogue entre nous et nos homologues québécois. Nous devons travailler ensemble, agir dans la concertation et surtout ne pas céder à l'esprit de vengeance qui court. La mesquinerie et le manque de prévoyance ne donnent absolument rien. La coopération en vue d'un objectif commun peut, au contraire, nous rapporter beaucoup.

This is an important point: We must not bring old and unjustified resentment against Quebec into this debate. I know that the situation in the construction industry is a difficult one in the Ottawa-Carleton region; my office has received many complaints. But the issue must be understood from a wider perspective, because it is not just a local issue. The fact is that provincial governments, for a number of reasons, have maintained trade barriers despite their repeated commitments to free trade within Canada. Ontario is as guilty as any province in this respect. Also, many industries with vested interests benefit from protectionist policies and advocate the status quo.

To single out Quebec as the villain is misleading. The member for Kenora proved this last week by explaining how contractors from Manitoba appear to benefit from certain advantages, such as lower provincial sales tax, which places them in a better position to compete against contractors from Ontario.

In conclusion, I support my colleague's resolution because it is reasonable, it is positive and it is realistic.

Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): It's always a pleasure to support a colleague in his quest for fairness. However, the problem here, as I see it, is that we've been attempting to get this fairness now through discussions, through a committee. My colleague the member for Carleton, Mr Sterling, and my colleague who just preceded me in the debate, the member for Ottawa East, belong to this committee, and we have discussed till we're blue in the face. What's occurred is that insult has been added to injury. We have not corrected a very unfair situation, but in many instances we've added some more barriers, and I'm very concerned about that.

To me, it's much more than a regional issue. It certainly covers my riding, and S-D-G & East Grenville is not considered to be in the greater Outaouais area; it's in eastern Ontario. It's a problem that's been there and been a major irritant for a long time.

The reason I say that insult's been added to injury is that we now have farm pickups that come from my area with Ontario plates on them going to Quebec. If they have any commercial writing on them at all, they are subject to a $750 fine plus some court costs, which is costing well over $800, because they don't have the Quebec fuel sticker on them. That just came in in the last year and a half while we were negotiating to attempt to correct the labour problems in the construction industry, access by Ontario workers to Quebec -- and we do not have access.

Does the province of Quebec realize what's going on? I believe the elected politicians realize what's going on: The province is being run by the unions. The union of construction workers calls the shots. They not only call the shots on workers outside the province of Quebec, but they call the shots within 17 distinct and separate areas within the province, where you have to have a working permit to go from one region to another. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

The reason I have to support my colleague the member for Ottawa West today and supported very strongly my colleague from Carleton last week is that we have not been able to accomplish any progress through negotiations. I believe that Frank McKenna, the Premier of New Brunswick, had the right idea. He got their attention. We seem to have problems getting their attention.

I will simply quote some of the requirements that the tendering process requires in Quebec. It reads as follows, verbatim:

«Il existe un nombre de secteurs d'emploi au Québec qui exigent un lieu de résidence au Québec, exigence que l'on ne trouve pas en Ontario. Il y a le secteur minier, qui ne concerne pas la région de l'Outaouais, mais le secteur de construction, qui est plus important pour la région, et la fonction publique du Québec. Notons que les règles de l'Office de la construction empêchent les résidents d'Ottawa-Carleton de travailler du côté québécois, alors que de 2 000 à 4 000 résidents du Québec travaillent sur les chantiers ontariens. Les exigences exigent que les compagnies et leurs bureaux-chefs soient au Québec et exigent que les travailleurs soient du Québec.

What more can I tell you? The requirements are there and they're fairly simple. You must have your headquarters in the province of Quebec, and that is the only way you can get to work on Quebec construction sites.

The Canadian Manufacturers' Association has estimated that interprovincial trade barriers to Canadians cost $6.5 billion a year, or over $1,000 for a family of four, on an annual basis on these provincial government procurement policies regarding food processing, construction, consulting engineer, machine tool sales, import and distribution of metal-cutting machines, steel, electrical systems, boilers etc. We are working towards a global economy, and yet we have these major interprovincial barriers that must be taken down.

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I have no hesitation whatever in supporting my colleague from Ottawa East in his resolution. Let's hope we can get their attention at least.

M. Gilles Bisson (Cochrane-Sud) : Je veux aujourd'hui signaler mon intention, comme je pense l'intention de la plupart des députés de l'Assemblée, de dire qu'on est en faveur de la résolution du député d'Ottawa-Est.

Je veux vous dire pourquoi moi, je suis en faveur. Je pense que ce que le député a dit, c'est réellement la question que je pense que tous les députés de l'Assemblée, comme la plupart de la population ontarienne, reconnaissent. Ils reconnaissent que c'est très important qu'on ait une attitude entre les deux provinces pour être capables de faire un échange libre entre les provinces.

La manière, je pense, d'être capable d'atteindre ce point-là, c'est de s'asseoir comme gouvernement responsable et négocier entre les provinces et le fédéral une entente qui va jusqu'au point de dire, «Si je suis un contractuel ou si je suis une industrie au Québec ou en Ontario, je peux faire des affaires à travers la frontière Québec-Ontario sans avoir des restrictions.» Je pense que l'approche que le député prend est une approche qui est très responsable et je pense que c'est une approche qui fait du bon sens, un peu différente de celle du député de Carleton-Est, la semaine passée, qui avait la même idée mais d'une manière un peu différente.

Je veux rien que signaler deux affaires aux députés ici et au monde qui regarde. Premièrement, il faut reconnaître quelque chose. L'Ontario et le Québec, quand ça vient aux échanges, à l'argent qu'on échange entre nous deux, l'économie québécoise et ontarienne sont très importantes. Le Québec, quand ça en vient à leurs ventes, l'Ontario représente la plus grosse économie pour acheter leurs produits, qui a pour effet la production au Québec.

Nous autres, ici en Ontario, 40 % de toutes nos exportations hors de la province de l'Ontario vont directement au Québec. Pour quelqu'un de dire qu'on va être capables d'augmenter ces nombres-là en ayant une guerre entre le Québec et l'Ontario faisant affaire avec les questions d'échanges, je pense que je pourrais nuire à ces chiffres-là. Je pense que, pour être responsable, comme le député d'Ottawa-Est dit, on a besoin de trouver une manière de négocier une entente sans entrer en guerre entre les deux économies qui pourrait nuire. Je pense qu'à la fin de la journée, ses chiffres sont très importants. Alors, rappelez-vous : 40 % de nos exportations de l'Ontario vont directement au Québec. Je pense que ça a besoin d'être signalé.

L'autre affaire que je pense le monde a besoin de reconnaître, c'est que déjà la province de l'Ontario, avec le Québec et d'autres provinces à travers le Canada, face au gouvernement fédéral avec le leadership de M. Mulroney, a fait une entente en 1992 faisant affaire avec une entente interprovinciale sur les achats du gouvernement. Quoiqu'on ait fait une entente à négocier à ce point-là, c'est que n'importe quelle province au Canada, ou le fédéral, peut tourner de bord et dire, «Écoute, on ne vous laisse pas, parce que vous êtes Ontariens, vous êtes pas Québécois, vous êtes pas Manitobains, acheter nos produits», faisant affaire avec government procurements.

Si on était capable de trouver une entente faisant affaire avec cette question, qui est très importante parce que c'est la moitié du problème, je pense qu'on pourrait s'asseoir comme province responsable ici au Canada et en venir à une entente faisant affaire avec comment être capable de «dealer» avec la question à laquelle nous faisons face aujourd'hui faisant affaire avec l'industrie de la construction.

I'd like to say directly to my friend from Carleton, last week he stood in this assembly and put forward a resolution that I think had the same intent as the member for Ottawa East's, except his approach was very different. I have difficulty with the approach, because he was advocating an approach that would have said: "Let's fight fire with fire. Let's go into a trade war with Quebec" -- basically, that would have been the result of that -- "and let's show them that we can negotiate from a position of strength."

I think it's a very interesting point for the Conservative Party of Ontario to make, Mr Speaker, because I would remind you, and I'm sure you understand, that its own federal cousins in Ottawa do not support such an approach. If we take a look at the negotiations under the free trade agreement, the whole approach of the Conservatives in Ottawa has been to remove interprovincial trade barriers and not to have trade wars. I think they recognize, like most other people recognize, that once you start getting into trade wars, you could lead yourself down a path economically that could be very destructive.

Also, just recently, Mr Speaker, you would be aware that their federal cousins in Ottawa, Mr Mulroney and the Conservative Party, are in the process of ratifying a humongous trade deal called the North American free trade agreement. Under NAFTA, there's a clause in there that says that no government, in Canada, the United States or Mexico, is going to have the right to protect its markets with regard to procurement on the part of governments. In other words, that means that under NAFTA, the province of Ontario could not say, "We're only going to buy our goods from people who make those goods or service those goods from the province of Ontario." We would be contravening NAFTA.

Now, I have problems with NAFTA, but I have a little bit of difficulty with the member for Carleton, how he can on one hand advocate freer trade with Mexico and Canada, to say that we have to open up the procurement process with those people, and then throw barriers up between Quebec and Ontario. I think it's ludicrous for the member to take that position.

I would think -- I hope not; I don't want to put words into his mouth -- it's more of a political statement he made last week in this House rather than an economic statement, because what he is advocating is clearly interprovincial trade wars with Quebec. I do believe that the Conservative Party is opposed to interprovincial trade wars. I think, rather, what he was speaking to is a resentment within the province of Ontario, because it does exist, over the whole question of a lack of jobs within our economy and seeing workers from Quebec coming into our province.

I deal with that in my riding of Cochrane South, the same as the member from Ottawa, my colleague Mrs Gigantes, deals with in Ottawa, and it's difficult for people to come to terms with. But when you sit down as rational people and you say, "Listen, the way of dealing with this is not to take a hammer and hit somebody else on the head," to turn around and to say, "Let's deal with it by having a tit-for-tat war" -- the approach I think most people would recognize is to remove them by negotiations.

We've negotiated the first part of the agreement, which is that now no province in Canada can bar another province from buying procurement products for that province. We've already negotiated half of this. We negotiated that in 1992, saying point blank, "If you're a Quebec company or if you're an Ontario company, or you're a government, you can't stop people from buying from within the country."

The second part of that is a question of the construction industry. We are now going to the table. We have a willingness on the part of their federal cousins in Ottawa, with the Conservative Party, to deal with this. I applaud the federal government for working with us on that initiative. The Quebec government is sort of indicating as if there might be some movement there. It's a little bit here and there, I agree, but I think by responsibly walking to the negotiating table together, we can get somewhere in the end and be able to negotiate a removal of interprovincial trade barriers that would be to the benefit of those people in Ontario as well as people in Quebec and all across the country.

I would support the member for Ottawa East's resolution and I urge every member to support it because I think it is a prudent approach.

M. Jean Poirier (Prescott et Russell) : Je voulais vous indiquer que je vais appuyer très fortement la résolution de mon collègue le député d'Ottawa-Est, à titre premièrement de critique de l'opposition officielle aux Affaires intergouvernementales, mais également à titre de député d'une circonscription frontalière dans l'est de l'Ontario.

Évidemment, lorsqu'on a un système de libre-échange avec les États-Unis et le Mexique -- c'est absolument bizarre qu'on puisse l'avoir avec Tijuana et El Paso au Mexique mais qu'on ne puisse pas l'avoir avec Grenville et Gatineau, à l'autre côté de la rivière des Outaouais.

Les choses sont vraiment à l'envers dans ce monde et on peut remercier les Conservateurs, au niveau fédéral, de ce genre de cadeau prématuré, d'avoir coprésenté cela sur la scène internationale et d'avoir oublié la scène interprovinciale. On appelle ça, à la campagne, mettre la charrue devant les boeufs, et en parlant de boeufs, allons-y bien.

Ça fait longtemps que je reçois du courrier, des appels de gens de l'Ontario et de Prescott et Russell qui sont très furieux des anomalies de la situation dans le système de libre-échange interprovincial entre l'Ontario et le Québec. J'apprends également que la même situation se produit entre l'Ontario et le Manitoba.

La rivière des Outaouais nous sépare dans l'est avec nos collègues, notre famille du Québec. Je suis certain que le peuple des Outaouais, au moment où ils se promenaient en remontant ou en descendant à la rivière, leur rivière, qu'il n'y avait pas ce genre de niaiseries-là entre les deux provinces comme on le voit présentement.

Mes collègues parlementaires, nous siégeons à l'Association interparlementaire Ontario-Québec et le sous-comité de l'est de l'Ontario et de l'ouest du Québec, nous avons tenu un excellent dialogue. Le moment est venu de régler les problèmes.

Mes collègues auparavant ont fait mention justement des problèmes qui existaient, des essais de négociations. Bien sûr que jusqu'à présent, ça n'a pas été reluisant, mais je suis convaincu que le moment est arrivé et que les parlementaires de l'Ontario et du Québec et aussi du Manitoba sauront, à ce moment-ci, trouver la solution idéale au moyen de résolutions comme celle de mon collègue d'Ottawa-Est et sûrement pas à coup de marteau sur des mouches comme celle proposée par mon collègue le député de Carleton.

Ce n'est pas en commençant avec des menaces, comme l'a fait le Nouveau-Brunswick, qu'on va régler le problème. Bien sûr qu'il y a des irritants. Bien sûr que les gens sont émotionnels. Bien sûr que les gens, comme on dit, sont en beau joualvers et qu'ils le sont sûrement dans les circonscriptions de Carleton et de S-D-G & Grenville-Est et dans Prescott et Russell. Mais le mandat d'un parlementaire, c'est de mettre de l'eau sur le feu et non de l'huile sur le feu. Nous avons une obligation morale de trouver des solutions, de régler le problème à l'amiable comme les gens nous ont mandatés de le faire. Ce genre de crise émotionnelle-là, de prendre un marteau pour tuer les espoirs de négociations, je condamne ça très sévèrement. Ce n'est pas le temps. Ce n'est pas le moment. Ce n'est pas la façon de faire les choses.

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Il y a un paysagiste justement dans l'est de l'Ontario qui a pris son camion, qui a acheté des produits au Québec, qui s'est rendu à Montréal pour se faire remettre une amende de quelque 800 $ parce qu'il n'avait pas acheté son essence au Québec, parce qu'il n'avait pas la taxe au Québec, parce qu'il n'avait pas un permis du Québec, parce que lui avait pris son propre véhicule commercial à lui pour aller chercher des produits fabriqués au Québec. Je trouve ce genre de situation-là complètement anormale et à corriger et à éliminer.

Je viens d'entendre mon collègue de Carleton qui dit : «Pourquoi est-ce qu'on veut taper sur le Québec ? Parce que les États-Unis puis le Mexique vont mieux nous traiter que le Québec.» Quelle chose absolument absurde que d'utiliser ce genre de langage-là. J'espère qu'entre Mexicains, Canadiens, Américains, Ontariens et Québécois, on va être capables de trouver des mécanismes de bonne entente entre voisins au sein de la même famille, plutôt que de proposer et dire qu'on va être mieux traités par les Mexicains et par les Américains que par les Québécois. Ça, c'est vraiment ajouter de l'huile sur le feu.

La solution, ce n'est pas le protectionnisme. Ce n'est pas la «retaliation». Ce n'est pas oeil pour oeil, dent pour dent, la solution. La solution, c'est de libérer, de dialoguer : de libérer les échanges, et je suis convaincu que le moment est malheureusement tardif, mais il est arrivé, le moment de régler la situation.

Éliminer les barrières interprovinciales, ç'est essentiel. Au moment où on se parle, on me dit qu'il y a plus de 500 barrières aux échanges commerciaux interprovinciaux -- complètement ridicules, mais ça va être éliminé. Il faut favoriser le libre mouvement des personnes, des services et des biens, peut importe la province au Canada, sans égard à l'origine des gens qui veulent travailler au Canada. Ces barrières interprovinciales sont complètement ridicules, non nécessaires, exagérées et elles vont disparaître.

The solution is to dialogue, to negotiate, yes, to talk harder, to put the dealings on the table, but to resolve them in a parliamentary fashion, in a diplomatic fashion, from member to another member of this Canadian Confederation, and we are doing that and it's happening.

I want to support this type of resolution from my colleague the member for Carleton East --

Interjections: Ottawa East.

M. Poirier : -- to make sure that we continue and get the results we want, and it's not to hammer away, as is proposed by certain other of my colleagues, that we will resolve it this way.

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I am pleased to have this opportunity to say a few words today on this resolution. It's a fairly long one, but there are parts in it I'll just read:

"The purpose of breaking down existing barriers... therefore the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs should take steps, including setting up discussions with the minister's Quebec counterpart, so that the positive initiatives undertaken at the regional level can be followed up at the provincial level at the earliest possible opportunity."

The resolution is much the same as that of my colleague the member for Carleton last Thursday, where he had an interprovincial trade resolution brought before this Legislature and it passed. I'm pleased to see today that the member Mr Grandmaître has brought this resolution forward to have further debate on it.

It's important to know the discussion that's been taking place in this Legislature last week and this week, and I often wonder how many people in Ontario realize the barriers there are between provinces in Canada, far more barriers than I ever anticipated until the discussions started some time ago, and then, when the discussions were taking place with regard to the Constitution debate, I think more people became aware of the barriers that we have between provinces at that stage than ever before.

It's a barrier that has been brought to my attention in my local riding with regard to contracts that have been let out, with regard to the availability of the construction industry and the people from Quebec being able to come to Ontario to work and to secure jobs here in the construction industry.

I know there's a large contract in our riding that was let with regard to fencing, and it was a large group from Quebec that came and put up all these fences along the 400 highway. It was brought to my attention by people within my riding saying: "How can this happen? Why is it that we're not allowed to be able to go to the province of Quebec and to be able to get contracts?" It has been brought to my attention from people who live near the boundary, the Ottawa River, with regard to them being able to go over the bridge to get work.

We've got to have competitive competition. My colleague mentioned, with regard to the trade barrier, that it costs Canadians about $6.5 billion annually. That amounts to $1,000 for every family of four.

We talk about the approximately 500 barriers to international trade and we look at the studies that have been done. It's easier to do business with the United States than it is to do business with the province of Quebec.

We have the provincial government procurement policies, standards and regulations, provincial licensing requirements and regulations that differ between provinces. We have the distribution restrictions. We have different pricing policies and the marketing boards. These barriers have a serious impact on everything from food processing, construction, telecommunications, transportation, banking and health care products to beer and wine. There are many problems with the barriers to interprovincial trade which negatively affect the efficiency and competitiveness of this province. The basis of the resolution is to do away with those barriers.

I often wonder, as many people have always wondered, how come they were put there in the first place? Why have we had these barriers between the provinces in Canada? I cannot understand it. However, I think these resolutions that have been brought forward last week and this week are bringing it to the people of the province and, I hope, to the minister so that she will negotiate to try to find a way to get rid of the barriers between provinces.

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): In the very few seconds that I have left, I'm going to support this resolution tomorrow, because as many of you will know, I represent a district that has a lot of --

Mr Grandmaître: Today, Tony.

Mr Perruzza: Today, today, I'm going to support it today, you're absolutely right. I have a constituency that has a lot of construction workers who are out of work.

I have the Montreal Gazette dated Tuesday, May 4, and I see Quebec Hydro here, its tenders: Eligibility, it reads, place of business, in Quebec. The list continues right through: McGill University, same kind of thing. So if you're a Quebec construction company you can work in Quebec, if you're a Quebec construction company you can come and work in Ontario, but if you're an Ontario company you can't go to work in Quebec. That, to me, doesn't seem to be fair at all.

That's why I'm going to support the resolution. We need some fairness now, not 15 years down the road. We need it today.

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Ottawa South): It occurs to me, as we address this issue, that we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that these are difficult economic times. Difficult economic times can breed despair, can lead to people seeking to lash out in a visceral response to difficulties before them, but I think it's incumbent upon us as elected representatives to show some real leadership in this regard, and that is, in this particular matter, not to appeal to baser instincts which would have us lash out and implement some type of punitive response to the difficulties our constituents are facing.

I think much more appropriate, in these circumstances, is to explore all possible avenues prior to entering into or undertaking punitive action. In this particular case, that has not been fully explored.

One of the things I would ask is that the Minister of Labour undertake to enter into negotiations specific to this issue. I understand that the government is about to undertake, in the month of June, some broader-based discussions with its provincial counterparts and the federal government, which have as their end to remove some of the interprovincial trade barriers. That simply isn't adequate, given the circumstances that we face in the Ottawa-Carleton area, and I would ask the government to undertake negotiations specific to these particular issues and that those commence at the earliest possible opportunity.

Certainly, one option that I could offer is that the government may very well consider exempting Ottawa-Carleton from the punitive interprovincial construction trade barrier that exists at the present time.

Mr Grandmaître: This is a family portrait. This is the Ottawa-Carleton caucus, and I'm very pleased that they're all supporting my resolution. I can assure you that it feels great when all three parties are on side on a resolution. I haven't seen this in this House for a number of months.

Mr Morin: Except for the member for Carleton.

Mr Grandmaître: Except for the member for Carleton. I'll be addressing the comments of the member for Carleton. I think fighting fire with fire is the wrong attitude. He exposed the same attitude last Thursday by wanting to close the interprovincial bridge's right of way, but I can't --

Mr Sterling: Why didn't you vote against it? Why didn't you come in and vote?

Mr Grandmaître: Will you bring the member for Carleton to order? Can you bring him to order? He's so short, I can't see him when he's sitting down.

But anyway, I want to remind the member for Carleton that we have to work to resolve our interprovincial barriers. I think it's very, very unfair for the member for Carleton saying these kinds of things, for the simple reason that we are trying to create not only an attitude, not only to resolve our differences, but to work together.

As pointed out earlier, we do have free trade with the US and we're working on free trade with Mexico, and I think we should have free trade among our provinces. That's number one. But the federal Tories never thought it was important. It was much better to do business with the US and Mexico and forget about interprovincial barriers.

The Acting Speaker: The time provided for private members' public business has expired.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REFORM

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): We will deal first with ballot item 7 standing in the name of Mr Huget. If any members are opposed to a vote on this ballot item, will they please rise.

Mr Huget has moved private member's resolution 7. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

INTERPROVINCIAL TRADE

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): We will deal next with ballot item 8 standing in the name of M. Grandmaître. If any members are opposed to a vote on this ballot item, will they please rise.

M. Grandmaître has moved private member's resolution 8. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

Interjections: Carried.

The Acting Speaker: Carried.

Interjection: No.

The Acting Speaker: I'm sorry?

Mr Villeneuve: The Liberals said no. I can't believe this. The Liberals said no.

The Acting Speaker: All those in favour of the motion, please say "aye."

Those opposed, please say "nay."

In my opinion the ayes have it.

Call in the members; a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1203 to 1208.

The Acting Speaker: I'd ask the members to please take their seats.

Mr Grandmaître has moved private member's notice of motion number 5. All those in favour of the motion will please rise and remain standing.

Ayes

Abel, Arnott, Bisson, Bradley, Brown, Callahan, Carter, Chiarelli, Cooper, Dadamo, Daigeler, Duignan, Frankford, Grandmaître, Haeck, Hansen, Harrington, Hope, Huget, Jackson, Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings), Johnson (Don Mills), Jordan, Klopp, Kormos, Kwinter, Malkowski, Marchese;

Martin, McGuinty, McLean, Miclash, Mills, Morin, Morrow, North, O'Connor, O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau), Owens, Perruzza, Poirier, Runciman, Sterling, Stockwell, Sutherland, Tilson, Villeneuve, Waters, Wessenger, Wilson (Simcoe West), Wilson (Kingston and The Islands), Wilson (Frontenac-Addington), Winninger, Wiseman, Witmer, Wood.

The Acting Speaker: All those opposed to the motion will please rise and remain standing.

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 56; the nays are 0.

The Acting Speaker: The ayes being 56 and the nays being 0, I declare the motion carried.

All matters relating to private members' public business having been completed, I do now leave the chair and House will resume at 1:30 of the clock.

The House recessed at 1212.

AFTERNOON SITTING

The House resumed at 1330.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CONSERVATION AUTHORITIES

Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): The Bob Rae-Mike Harris expenditure control program was presented to this Legislature April 23. The expenditure control program was wholeheartedly supported by Mike Harris with the only proviso that --

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I believe there is not a quorum present.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Count the members, please.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is now present, Speaker.

The Speaker: Would you kindly reset the time at 1:30. The member may wish to start over.

Mr Brown: Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you to the government for finally showing up.

The Bob Rae-Mike Harris expenditure program was presented to the Legislature April 23. The expenditure control program was wholeheartedly supported by Mike Harris with the only proviso that it did not go far enough. The program announced a 20% operating cut to conservation authorities and eliminated the conservation land tax rebate.

The conservation authorities of Ontario protect our watersheds. The Sewell commission on planning suggests more watershed planning. The protection, restoration and management functions of conservation authorities will, however, be severely impacted this operating year. The cuts will translate to a 46% decrease to some authorities. Nine to ten authorities are presently considering selling significant wetlands and forests in order to offset the crisis and chaos the Rae government has created. These lands were often purchased with private donations and help from groups like the Bruce Trail Association and the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

The authorities cannot afford to pay the municipal taxes. This is just one more step towards the creation of a huge environmental deficit by this government. I ask Mr Rae and his government to give serious consideration to the environment and rethink the fairness and priorities of these cuts.

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): Three years ago the Rotary Centre in Kitchener, which helps some 1,200 children and their families every year, obtained approval from the Ministry of Health for construction of a new children's treatment centre for the disabled children of Waterloo region and Wellington county. To date, the ministry has failed to deliver on the promised funding for this centre.

The excessive delay in obtaining the approved funding has created tremendous uncertainty in my community as well as creating serious problems for the Rotary Centre. Some of the 600-plus donors are now withholding or questioning their financial pledges for this project, and 10 service clubs are anxiously awaiting the commencement of this project to which they have already contributed over $600,000.

In addition, fire, safety and maintenance problems with the existing centre are creating dilemmas about the spending of public funds to upgrade a building which the Rotary Centre expects to vacate soon.

I urge the Minister of Health to recognize the significant problems which her delay in making a decision -- a three-year delay -- is creating, and take immediate action, please, to ensure that the new children's treatment centre becomes a reality in the very near future. The children and their families have waited long enough for a commitment which was made to them almost three years ago.

JUNIOR HOCKEY

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): My constituency, Sault Ste Marie, has been honoured as the host of the Canadian junior hockey championships, the Memorial Cup. The Memorial Cup will start this year on May 14 and end May 23.

As host of this prestigious event, Sault Ste Marie will represent the country and the province of Ontario. Sault Ste Marie is very proud of this opportunity and, most important, ecstatic that our own local hockey team, the Soo Greyhounds, are again in a position to win the national junior championships this year, for the third time.

We must give recognition to the city and the Soo Greyhounds for their relentless efforts to bring the Memorial Cup to the Sault. The economic spinoff of the event will be tremendous to all of us who work and live in Sault Ste Marie.

I am also honoured to have the Premier come to the Sault to help kick off the festivities. Most importantly, Bob Rae and the provincial government have pitched in up to $87,000 to help with the renovations and upgrading the Memorial Gardens, the site of the Memorial Cup. This grant comes from the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation to help assist the community to make this cross-Canada event worthwhile. The NDP government's investment in the city of Sault Ste Marie will certainly be appreciated.

I want to take this opportunity to invite all of you to watch the Memorial Cup as Ontario represents this country in a sport loved by all Canadians. This is another proud moment for us in the Sault. Congratulations, and go, Hounds, go.

REST HOMES

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): In November 1990 a coroner's inquiry into the death of a resident in an unregulated boarding home prompted the government to appoint a provincial commission to inquire into unregulated residential homes in the province.

In December of that year, Ernie Lightman was appointed to undertake the study. On June 24, 1992, Elaine Ziemba, Minister of Citizenship, tabled the report of the Commission of Inquiry into Unregulated Residential Accommodation.

The report highlighted the fact that 47,500 vulnerable adults, most of whom are persons with developmental disabilities, psychiatric histories or senior citizens, live in unregulated settings, defined as such because there are no provincial licensing, standards or inspections, nor are there any other viable projections for the lives and wellbeing of these residents.

The Lightman report made numerous positive recommendations, such as a bill of rights for rest home residents. However, the government has yet to act on any of the 148 recommendations that will enhance the living conditions of the marginalized people within our community who deserve the right to live in dignity.

I challenge the Minister of Citizenship to act on the recommendations, instead of allowing this report, like many others that are now sitting in the ministry, to gather dust on the shelf. I hope that the minister reacts to that immediately.

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): On April 23 the Treasurer announced a change in the definition of "full-time student" from 150 minutes a day to 210 minutes a day. This change will have significant impact on the management of programs and staffing in our secondary schools. The announcement came after school boards had negotiated teachers' salaries, staff levels, programs and mill rates. School boards, principals and teachers were not consulted about this change prior to the announcement.

Minister, we support an effort to streamline our school system. Taxpayers believe that ways must be found to reduce the size of bureaucracy and eliminate the costly duplication of services. Your government promised consultation and partnerships. Management decisions such as the definition of "full-time student" need to be communicated in a timely fashion to allow school boards, administrators, teachers, students and taxpayers to modify programs, timetables and staffing in a responsible manner.

Phasing in of major changes in program and funding changes is responsible, if in fact they are phased in and communicated in a timely fashion. Changing the rules in the middle of the game is unacceptable in any place of work. In education, front-line workers and consumers -- that's teachers and students -- not to speak of taxpayers, have lost confidence in this government's ability to manage and communicate.

1340

ROSE OF DURHAM

Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): I'm pleased to rise today to tell you about a community agency in Durham region, an agency that strives to break the cycles of poverty, abuse, neglect and powerlessness for young teenaged parents and their children. The agency I speak of is the Rose of Durham.

Here with us today are Nick Barber, from the board of directors, and Laurel Hamilton, the executive director of that agency. Thank you very much for coming.

By providing support, counselling and referral services, the Rose of Durham reaches out to the vulnerable teenaged parents and their children from throughout the region of Durham. While adhering to the principles of Children First, the Rose of Durham is committed to filling the needs of these young people, many of whom come from fractured families and have experienced the effects of alcoholism, physical and sexual abuse, violence, poverty, illiteracy and social isolation.

The Rose of Durham works in conjunction with virtually every other major social service agency and network in Durham, providing life skills training, educational opportunities and referrals.

The Rose of Durham enjoys the endorsement of the mayors of the towns of Whitby and Newcastle and the city of Oshawa as well as those of my colleagues here from the region of Durham.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to acquaint you and the House with this most valuable of community resources.

SARAH MCLAUGHLIN

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): When political leaders offer a blunt message and a simple solution to the financial woes of a province to gain media attention and score political points, they do so at the expense of Sarah McLaughlin and all other vulnerable children in our society.

In a letter to me, Sarah's parents say the following:

"Sarah is a 19-month-old deaf-blind developmentally delayed child. She has infantile spasms which are a severe form of epileptic seizures. Last year she was experiencing 50 to 100 seizures per day. She is also microcephalic, which means her head and brain are smaller than normal, and possibly she is mentally handicapped.

"I do realize the drastic cuts in funding to all the programs; however, I find this totally unacceptable....

"How are parents going to teach their children adequately and cope with the pressure and stress of their needs without any hands-on intervention in their home? We are not looking for babysitting; we are looking for support to help teach our child. She can only see and hear through someone else....

"Nine hours per week is only touching the surface. We are requesting 20 hours per week, which is not really very much when you consider her requirements....

"Mr Bradley, Sarah's seizures are now controlled and with all the added intervention she is progressing and developing. Please help us help our daughter. She has so much potential. Let's not take that away from her. We are striving to help her be as independent and functional as possible. Her life is just as valuable as that of any other child."

Indeed.

POLICE WEEK

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): This is National Police Week, and I'd like to make a few brief comments. I've been waiting all week for a statement from the Solicitor General acknowledging this important week, but he has failed to comment. I suppose that's not surprising, given the nasty anti-police comments made last year by the Premier's parliamentary assistant and the Premier's own actions and words in implying racist motives to police actions and refusing police officers an audience while at the same time hurriedly meeting with vocal interest groups whenever they called.

Unlike this NDP government and its Liberal predecessors, we in the Ontario Conservative Party are strongly supportive of the thousands of men and women in blue who perform so magnificently day in and day out on our behalf, facing tremendous odds and unbelievable scrutiny. Despite the critical comments emanating from Liberals, NDPers, vocal pressure groups and certain elements in the media, the vast majority of Ontario residents are proud of our police officers and thankful for the outstanding job they do under very difficult circumstances. Congratulations, National Police Week. We're with you. Keep up the good work.

MOTORCYCLES

Mr Mike Cooper (Kitchener-Wilmot): I rise today to inform the House of an issue that directly affects 165,000 residents of Ontario: motorcycle safety and awareness.

With each passing year, more and more residents of this province are riding motorcycles or mopeds, but they face a hidden danger, other motorists. Last year alone, 55 motorcyclists and nine passengers were killed on the highways and byways of Ontario, many after colliding with cars and trucks. Add to that number 2,183 injuries to motorcycle drivers and 487 to passengers.

A good number of these deaths and injuries could have been prevented if more motorists were in the habit of looking twice before entering intersections and if more bikers had taken motorcycle safety courses. This is why the Bikers Rights of Ontario, a non-profit group dedicated to responsible motorcycle legislation, wants the province to raise motorcycle safety awareness by declaring May of each year as Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month.

Two weeks ago, myself and the member for Lincoln, both of us motorcycle enthusiasts, sponsored a bikers' rights rally here at Queen's Park. Many of you will recall the enthusiastic showing of bikers in front of the Legislative Building. Many of these motorcycle enthusiasts signed petitions which have since been presented to the House, petitions asking the province to officially declare May as Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month.

On behalf of the 165,000 licensed motorcycle riders of Ontario, I would ask that the Premier consider officially proclaiming May as Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month throughout the province of Ontario.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

HIGHWAY SAFETY / SÉCURITÉ ROUTIÈRE

Hon Gilles Pouliot (Minister of Transportation): Last week in the House I announced that the government is proceeding with the introduction of a system of graduated licensing for new drivers.

Ce système est une importante initiative qui s'inscrit dans le cadre de la vision du gouvernement. Cette vision rendra les routes de l'Ontario les plus sécuritaires en Amérique du Nord. Aujourd'hui, nous franchissons une étape de plus vers cet objectif.

As Minister of Transportation and on behalf of my colleagues from the ministries of the Attorney General, the Solicitor General and Correctional Services I am announcing a six-point integrated safety project using advanced technology to make Ontario's roads safer by reducing speeding and ensuring that all drivers obey our traffic laws.

One unifying theme of these measures I am announcing today is that each uses the most modern technology to ensure that drivers will obey the speed limit on Ontario roads, reducing highway deaths and injuries significantly.

The six measures include:

-- Photo radar, a system that has been used successfully in other jurisdictions in the United States and in Europe. Photo radar cameras photograph the licence plates of speeding vehicles. Virtually all speeding vehicles are captured by the camera; police are not required to chase speeders. The speeding ticket and photo are then mailed to the vehicle owner.

A six-month photo radar pilot project is set to begin in January 1994. Of course, it will be preceded by a campaign to raise public awareness and change driver behaviour.

-- At the same time, we will begin a pilot project to test in-car computerwork stations in Ontario Provincial Police patrols, linking officers in the field to an integrated telecommunications network.

-- The workstations will be even more effective with the introduction of magnetic stripe, machine-readable drivers' licences in the spring of 1994, which will reduce driver's licence fraud and save administrative time for police.

-- We will rebuild our existing system for collecting and analysing collision data to provide better, more timely information to help us improve the condition and design of our roads and, of course, to help our driver and vehicle programs.

-- A centralized database for collection of fine payments currently being phased in will mean more efficient processing.

-- Finally, we will streamline our court processes to make courts more accessible and more efficient.

Nous savons que la vitesse est un facteur important dans les collisions et aussi dans les décès, et qu'elle constitue les deux tiers des accusations portées en vertu du Code de la route. Un décès sur six est causé par l'excès de vitesse.

In 1991 alone, more than 1,100 people lost their lives on the roads of Ontario. More than 90,000 people were injured due to collision, and yes, Mr Speaker, more than 213,000 accidents took place on the 23,000 kilometres of roads and the 3,000 bridges across our province. Part of our vision is to make the roads of Ontario the safest in North America.

The cost of speeding in terms of pain and suffering, health care and lost productivity is indeed staggering. We all have a moral obligation to increase safety. This is why this government is moving aggressively to address speeding. By introducing these measures as a joint project of all ministries responsible for provincial road safety, justice and law enforcement, we are moving in partnership towards a safer Ontario and a more efficient and equitable justice system.

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Ma collègue la procureure générale et moi-même présenterons bientôt une loi afin de modifier le Code de la route et la Loi sur les infractions provinciales qui permettra d'aller de l'avant avec ces projets.

Au nom de la procureure générale et du solliciteur général et ministre des Services correctionnels, j'ai le plaisir d'annoncer que le gouvernement a l'intention de mettre en oeuvre ce programme. Je suis sûr que tous les partis travailleront de concert afin que cette loi soit adoptée dans les plus brefs délais.

I have every confidence that all parties will work together to see this legislation passed without delay. Saving lives by improving road safety is a goal and a responsibility we all share.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Responses?

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): Well, I must say I'm pleased that the Minister of Transportation is at least making a statement in the House. Mind you, it's a statement that really, as do his previous statements, announces something that will happen many years down the road, because this is a pilot project that requires changes in legislation, so it will not happen tomorrow. But, Minister, thank you for at least announcing it in the House and not, like your other cabinet colleagues, going all over the place and avoiding this Legislature.

However, this morning, I must say, at the press conference, the minister wasn't there just himself; he had two of his cabinet colleagues there, and I was wondering why they were there. Perhaps they were trying to give him assistance to answer all the questions from the press, but I think what they were there for is to send him off to Spain, because I understand that the minister is off to a conference in Spain next week.

Minister, you're going there to an international road conference. Let me give you two messages on your trip to Spain. First of all, Minister, don't get photographed with a dead bull in front of you like Mulroney did with the boars. That's the first warning that I give you. But the second one, which is much more important: Minister, yes, we want the safest roads here in Ontario. But, Minister, don't use the Mike Harris approach of more police, more enforcement, more laws. Use the Liberal approach of more roads, of better roads, of improving the roads, because that's what's killing the people, that our road network is clogged, and that's why people are speeding.

I refer you to Highway 16 in eastern Ontario, my own area. The minister is well aware of the terrible accidents that have happened there only recently. And, Minister, speeding in most of these accidents was not the problem. It's that people were trying to pass and, unfortunately, not following the rules, because there's only a two-lane highway leading into the nation's capital.

Minister, if you would go ahead with this road, as promised -- and I'm using the 416 as an example -- you would be avoiding all the terrible accident situations that you are concerned about. It's not through the police, it's not through these gadgets and gizmos -- as you mentioned yourselves this morning, because I was listening to your press conference -- that you're going to save lives; it's through better roads, it's through roads that will provide the transportation needs for the people in this province.

You announced a major Jobs Ontario project on February 8. I'm wondering what has happened since then. Minister, I was hoping that you would come in here in this House and talk about the major capital infrastructure projects that are needed for the traffic improvements in this province but are also needed to get the economy going again in this province. That's what we're hoping for.

Minister, okay, I appreciate your making this announcement about some pilot projects that will perhaps cut down on speeding, and on principle I think that's okay. But what we're really wanting from you are announcements about new roads, announcements about the subways, that they're going ahead, that we see a shovel in the ground, that you employ workers again, the unemployed in this province, to give them hope again. And, Minister, to build roads, to build infrastructure, that's the way to bring back hope. I hope the Treasurer is listening as well, and I certainly do hope that in his budget next week we will have good news in terms of roads, good news in terms of subways, good news also in terms of the Red Hill Creek Expressway. We haven't heard anything about that major project that is missing in Hamilton, and if that project were going ahead, there would be a lot of activity and a lot of employment right there in Hamilton, and with Hamilton and Toronto and many other parts of the province.

Minister, when are we going to hear from you about the real needs of the people, and that's jobs, that's building new roads and building the infrastructure that we need in this province?

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): The things that have to be solved, I tell the minister, are Highway 403 in the Mississauga area and the Hamilton area, which, by their construction, are causing real problems. This is going to produce a cash cow for the minister and I suggest that he concentrate his efforts on getting the bad drivers off the roads, particularly those who weave in and out of lanes and those who drive dangerously.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): I am forced to comment on the Liberal Transportation critic's comments about this junket to Spain, which I know the Minister of Transportation has been somewhat sensitive about all week. I'm reminded of Mr Peterson's junket to Italy shortly before the last election, which cost the taxpayers some $310,000 for a nine-day trip. I don't think it was a terribly good investment. Apparently, neither did the electorate.

But let's just speak about this announcement. The PC Party has always been at the forefront of pushing safety measures and we are certainly pleased that the minister is thinking about improving the safety on the roads of this province. However, there are of course a few comments that we have about how he is proceeding.

It seems that this crumbling administration is grasping at straws, trying to bring out some decent announcements, which are very premature. We see that the implementation of this is to begin the pilot project in January of next year, but there will be a four-year implementation schedule. The minister doesn't mention this.

On the subject that he announced earlier this week of graduated licences, yesterday I went back to him and said, "Minister, why don't you move up the timetable on graduated licences, because that is a practical solution that could stop the carnage on the roads this summer?" I suggested in question period yesterday that he should bring at least first and second reading, preferably also third reading, of that bill forward before the summer recess.

The minister gave his usual bafflegab and I asked for a late show, which was to be tonight. I've been informed by the minister's aides that he will not be attending. He's going to be having drinks with his federal counterpart. Apparently, that is more important than moving forward legislation in this province.

There is no detailed cost that has been provided by the minister as to what this program is going to cost, I guess because the announcement is so premature. What we do know is that each unit is gong to cost $80,000 and the workstations are going to be some $50,000. That's $250,000.

My question to the minister is, does he intend to increase fines? Recently, in a private conversation it was suggested by the OPP that in a test in Orillia it was estimated that within a very short period of time, just from the tests where they studied it, they could raise $80,000 on a particular site in Orillia. This, Minister, is just a tax grab. Don't call it anything else; we know what you're doing.

So far as licensing is concerned, you are not moving on the things you should be doing, and that is quick implementation of graduated licences, and when we look at the technology of --

Interjection.

Mr Turnbull: I see the member there from somewhere east of Toronto needs his medication changed once again.

The Speaker: Would the member for Durham East come to order, please.

Mr Turnbull: Minister, magnetic strip technology is useful, but I ask you, why does this same government not move forward with technology to stop the abuse of the health care system, which, according to a secret report by the Ministry of Health, is costing some $700 million a year to the taxpayers of this province? Why is this government not using that technology for money which can save the taxpayers, but instead is moving forward with a massive tax grab?

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Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): I have a couple of concerns with the announcement today. One first concern is that in announcements such as these, these particular pilot projects are not put in spots which, I would suggest, are dangerous areas or high-traffic or high-accident areas. They tend to become specifically revenue generators for the government. They pass off this revenue generation on the premise that they're saving people's lives.

From municipalities on up, it's treated as a method to generate revenue for the coffers, under the guise of protecting the drivers of Ontario. If it were truly the case, many other alternatives could be taken that would save far more lives, be far more beneficial. But the one caveat is, those particular announcements aren't made because they don't generate any revenue. That's the most important part of this announcement: more money from the taxpayers, in areas that are not necessarily dangerous but can create a lot of money, and that's why I am very cynical.

There are a lot of other concerns I have about people driving cars that are rented cars and so on. Who's going to pay the bill for those speeders? Is it going to be the companies in the province of Ontario who have to come forward with the dollars? I don't think this is well-thought-out.

The Speaker: The member's time has expired. Would the honourable member please take his seat.

ORAL QUESTIONS

LABOUR RELATIONS

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): My first question today is to the Treasurer, and it concerns the social contract and expenditure controls of the current government.

Mr Treasurer, you will recall that it's three weeks ago that you and your colleague the Premier announced to the province what your social contract and expenditure control program would involve. Just to quickly refresh one's memory, you said three weeks ago as a government that in this fiscal year you wanted, among other things, a $2.4-billion expenditure reduction and you wanted a $2-billion reduction in the public sector payroll in this fiscal year. Those were two clear commitments that you gave two and a half, three weeks ago. Since that time, you've indicated that the social contract talks must end no later than June 4.

Now, I want to simply ask the Treasurer this: In the last few days, we have seen an ongoing discussion down at the Royal York where, yesterday, there weren't even enough chairs to seat all of the participants; the individuals can't even agree on the agenda. Mr Treasurer, Mr Minister of Finance, how can you expect the people of Ontario to have any confidence in this process given the chaos and the uncertainty which seems to abound everywhere as we move forward to your budget next week?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): The talks are going well. I should say to the deputy leader for the day for the official opposition that I really do believe there is cause for optimism. Keep in mind that we are sailing in uncharted waters in our attempt to negotiate with the public sector, so I think that to expect that it would all be smooth sailing simply would not be realistic. The government's chief negotiator has said on several occasions that he expected it to be difficult. I recall saying myself, as this whole process began, that I expected that there'd be some very difficult times, there'd be some very strong things said, there'd be a lot of excessive rhetoric used and that we should all put that in perspective because this is the first time that this has ever been tried.

So I am still optimistic. This morning the government's chief negotiator, Mr Decter, went back to the table and presented the leadership of the public sector unions with a response to what they had given to us last Friday. It seems to me that's the way negotiations should work.

Mr Conway: What we do know is that time is passing. Today is May 13. We are six weeks into a fiscal year where the government has said it wants to reduce its expenditures and those of its partners by billions of dollars. As the violins play, as the fires of this budgetary crisis lick ever closer to the heart of the government, young doctors know the problems, students are about to be told that they are going to get only conditional approvals for admission to colleges and universities within a few months, senior citizens are about to be told that programs they rely on are going to change quickly and significantly, and the Treasurer is sitting here imagining that this chaos down at the Royal York is a chaos without a price. For young doctors, for senior citizens, for students, for everyone in this province this chaos has a price.

Surely the Treasurer must understand that we are now six weeks into the fiscal year, and he has set clearly the fiscal framework. What kind of signal are you sending to the people of Ontario and to the financial community as they have to watch daily a process where people are not talking about the main issues, they can't find chairs, and they don't even agree on the agenda? What kind of signal, what kind of leadership is that?

Hon Mr Laughren: I don't know why the member for Renfrew North insists on putting the worst conceivable light on what's going on with these talks.

The public sector unions now have our response to each of their proposals which they gave to us. They will be meeting on the weekend, it's my understanding, and then next week it's our hope that many of those proposals, which must be dealt with at the sectoral tables rather than at one common table -- that that process will get under way next week.

I am very much aware of the pressures of time, very much aware of that and concerned about it, but I think not to have these very tight time constrictions and pressures would not be appropriate either. I don't think the member for Renfrew North is just saying, "Just leave the time frame open ended." I don't think he's saying that.

I am not sure what he's implying should be done, but it seems to me that what we're trying to do is to give the negotiations every opportunity to work, keeping in mind, first of all, that we've said there's a deadline on negotiations of June 4, and secondly, that the budget that will be brought down next week will take into account the almost $4 billion in expenditure reductions and the $2 billion that's on the social contract table, along with the third leg of the stool, as we're referring to it: a revenue package.

Things are unfolding. Of course there's pressures of time. I expected that right from the beginning.

Mr Conway: Things are moving on, absolutely. CBC Radio news reported at 1 o'clock today that, for example, the township of Atikokan has today decided to lay off a number of municipal staff, to go to a four-day work week, because they are very concerned about the fact that their provincial grants are off by about $200,000. They do not want to raise taxes, so they have decided to lay people off. They've laid off their recreation director, they've laid off a number of people in their public works department, and they are determined to try to keep their tax increase to a minimal or zero level. But they've had to do that; they have today gone to a four-day work week. They are typical of everyone else in this province who cannot wait for this chaotic business at the Royal York to come to some conclusion two or three or four weeks from now, well into this fiscal year.

Given what we've heard today at Atikokan, would it not be more sensible for the government to do this: that the government would turn its attention to a more limited process, where it would deal with its own employees and its own program to come to some resolution and allow the other sectors, the hospitals, the municipalities and the others, to proceed by way of sectoral negotiations to, within the clear fiscal framework the Treasurer outlined three weeks ago, work out their best solution within those sectors? Would that not be a better way to proceed than to try to do a kind of Charlottetown accord that is clearly not working?

Hon Mr Laughren: That is very, very close to what we are attempting to do. That's why we said it was important to have the sectoral tables. We have no objections to a common table where the public sector would bring proposals to us as a common group, but I do believe that the solution in the long run will be found, by and large, at the sectoral tables, because that's where the specifics need to be debated with the public sector. One cannot exclude the people who deliver the services. They know best about where efficiencies can be achieved.

I understand the concern by members of the assembly and others, but I think that out in the public at large there's an understanding that what this government is trying to do is tackle a serious problem that, quite frankly, no other government in this province has ever even tried to achieve, and we are.

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The Speaker (Hon David Warner): New question.

Mr Conway: Sid Ryan and Liz Barkley are down at the Royal York this moment saying they want to talk about the revenue side that the government doesn't want to talk to them about. They're not even talking about the main issues --

The Speaker: Is this the member's second question?

Mr Conway: -- of your statement of April 23, and we're halfway through your six-week cycle. Get real, because the people and the taxpayers expect their interests to be protected.

Mr Speaker, my second question to the Minister of Finance --

The Speaker: The honourable member should know better. Would he now place his second question.

Mr Conway: Thank you, Mr Speaker, and that is a fair encouragement.

YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): A very few days ago, the Ontario government released a major report on youth employment in Ontario in 1993, and tragically, the Ontario government report just released indicates that young people in this province are going to face very, very difficult job prospects, particularly in the summer of 1993.

Based in part on predictions from the Conference Board of Canada that have changed just in the last 24 hours, the Ontario government report indicates that youth unemployment this summer will be in the neighbourhood of 19%. My question to the Treasurer is, what kind of social contract does the Rae government plan for young people across this province, who are increasingly concerned about hope and opportunity in this province of theirs?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): There is no question whatsoever that youth unemployment is going to be a problem in this province this year, as it was last year and was the year before. What we have decided to do is put more money into youth employment programs than has ever been spent in this province before. That's a commitment to the youth of this province, and we're determined to deliver that.

I appreciate the fact that there's high youth unemployment. I don't think, however, that the member for Renfrew North is implying that we can absorb the entire youth unemployment with government programs. I think that would be unrealistic, and I hope he's not implying that we could spend that kind of money on youth employment programs this summer. But we are spending more than has ever before been spent on youth employment in this province.

Mr Conway: I recommend that all honourable members read this report, because it is a very, very worrisome report from the government of Ontario, and it's just released.

Young people look to this government and they see the government listening to Sid Ryan and Mr Upshaw and Ms Barkley. Boy, when those people talk, the government appears to listen, but the young people are asking, "What's being done for us?"

You know, I just did some checking about some of the employers in this province. Last year the Toronto General Hospital offered some 200 summer employment opportunities; this year they are offering none. Quaker Oats in Peterborough last year offered 13 student employment opportunities; this year they will be hiring two. Last year the Labatt's brewery in Waterloo hired between 35 and 40 people, and this year they will be hiring none because they've gone out of business.

Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): Last year General Motors hired none; this year 800.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order, the member for Durham Centre.

Mr Conway: My question, Treasurer, is, what hope and what commitment are you prepared to make to the tens of thousands of young people coming out of school or out of work, as we speak, as they look for hope and opportunity in Ontario in 1993?

Hon Mr Laughren: I would not want the member for Renfrew North to leave the impression that we're not doing a great deal for youth unemployment in this province.

For the year we've just concluded, and then many of these programs spin over into 1993-94: for example, on Jobs Ontario Youth, over $13 million, over 5,500 participants; summer Experience, $8.5 million, 3,500 participants; the Environmental Youth Corps, $10.9 million, 3,000 participants; northern Ontario training opportunities, $3.5 million, 1,600 participants.

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): All those kids out of work. They really have jobs, do they, Floyd?

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Laughren: I could go on. That's only half the list.

We are spending about $180 million on youth employment programs. Of course, it'll never be enough to employ all the unemployed youth in this province. We understand that. We understand as well that the official opposition simply wants to spend more, more, more on every conceivable program there is in the province. We're not prepared to do that.

Mr Conway: Let it be clear where this member stands: I am prepared to spend money on young people. I'm getting a little ticked off at the commitment you're prepared to make to some of your friends, many of them the best-off people in this province in relative terms. The deal I want for the young people of this province is the deal that you've been prepared to make over the last few years for some of your friends, who've done relatively well in tough times.

My question to this government is, are you prepared to make any kind of a social contract for these young people, who are facing some of the toughest times that I've seen in this province in a generation?

The Treasurer talks about his report. Let me read this report just released and what the government's report says, and I quote but one sentence. "While there will be an increase in the number of jobs, there will also be an increase in the number of young people in the labour force competing for those jobs, and furthermore, young people will be facing competition for those jobs from older workers who are being laid off during this cyclical downturn."

Today in Atikokan young people are going to be competing with people who have just lost their jobs with the municipality because the government has not been able to manage public sector expenditures over the last 18 months.

The Speaker: Could the member place a question, please.

Mr Conway: My question to the Treasurer: We've been talking to people in the public sector. I think of the Ausable-Bayfield Conservation Authority, which we were told last week had no problem with the release of funds.

The Speaker: Would the member please place a question.

Mr Conway: Today they say they do not yet have the funds to hire the few students this year they want to offer jobs to. Will you, Mr Treasurer, give us a commitment that the funds for the available summer placements will be released forthwith?

Hon Mr Laughren: I hope that the member for Renfrew North would understand that one of the reasons we have gone through this very painful exercise of finding $4 billion in expenditure reductions, and why we want and insist on finding $2 billion at the social contract table, is so that we can protect jobs and services all across this province and put money into our priorities, such as youth employment programs. That is exactly what we're doing.

I would just remind the members opposite that the member who asked me that question, the member for Renfrew North, was the Minister of Education and the Minister of Colleges and Universities, responsible for training in the colleges. Did he lay the foundation for training in this province? No, he did not. We've had to increase expenditures on training and apprenticeship programs by over 25% since we formed the government, because they didn't do the job when they had the responsibility.

SOCIAL CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS

Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): My question is to the Deputy Premier and the Minister of Finance. Mr Minister, Sid Ryan has said that there is no way he is going to be able to meet your June 4 deadline, that the talks could take six months. He cannot make the deadline, and it's going to take six months.

I want to read you a quote of what Liz Barkley said yesterday. She said: "What a mess. It was a waste of time. It was confusion." That's what your so-called partners are saying about this process. Quite frankly, for this Premier and this Deputy Premier to be talking about the talks going well is a lot like Neville Chamberlain saying, "There will be peace in our time." They are not going well. There is chaos over there today and there was yesterday.

Minister, the chaos can't continue. Do you intend to make taxpayers wait six months for a solution to this problem, and if not, when are you going to introduce legislation so that the talks can proceed and so that the people of this province will know you're serious about reducing the costs in the province of Ontario?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance): I know that the third party would like nothing better than for the government to bring in legislation and take everybody off the hook. That's what the third party would like to do.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Hon Mr Laughren: Well, it's not that easy. We believe that the best way to protect jobs and services in the public sector in community after community, all across Ontario --

Interjection.

The Speaker: Order, the member for Downsview.

Hon Mr Laughren: -- is to negotiate an agreement at the social contract table in order to protect the very jobs of the members whose representatives are sitting at that table. That's the purpose of the social contract talks. I don't expect the Conservative Party in this province to want to see anything achieved through proper collective bargaining. We, however, want to see that achieved.

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Mr Carr: The problem is, they say it will take six months. We're only in the process of dealing about process right now and we haven't got down to any talks about where the savings will be.

What we're encouraging this government to do is what the Quebec government did yesterday. They said they are serious. They will introduce legislation to freeze the salaries of the civil servants if necessary. They've sent a clear signal they will act if the talks fail.

What we are saying to this government is, you've got people down at the Royal York talking about what the table will be, how many will sit where, whether the table will be round, and yet the people of this province are paying interest daily as a result of inaction by this government. What we're saying to you is, introduce the legislation and have it ready so that if the talks fail, the people around that table know you will act, because quite frankly, they do not believe you have the political courage to act and to do what is right.

What we're asking you today is, will you table the legislation so that if the talks fail we can act to legislate the people --

Hon Mr Laughren: No, absolutely not. We believe and I think that the public sector unions understand that in order to protect between 20,000 and 40,000 jobs all across the province, a social contract must be negotiated. They understand that. They know that the budget that is coming next week is going to reflect the $2 billion in savings that must be achieved at the social contract table. They understand that.

Perhaps the member of the Conservative caucus doesn't understand that, but I think most people in the province do. While you may want to do what your leader said -- bring in the legislation, bang, bang, bang -- that's not our view of the way you negotiate with your own employees.

Mr Carr: The problem is that they honestly, truly don't believe you're serious. One of the reasons they don't believe you're serious is because they see you spending $5,000 a day to hold talks at the Royal York -- $5,000 a day to hold talks down there -- and they say, "These people aren't serious about restraint," and they do not see that you're prepared to legislate.

They're down there talking about tax raises. They're talking about all things except, how are we going to find the money by reducing their salaries? They're talking about everything else, including what type of drapes are going to be in the meetings, instead of talking about, how are you going to reduce the salaries?

What we're saying is those talks will not proceed. There will be no solution unless you have the political courage to come in with legislation so they know you are serious. The province of Quebec has had to do that and the people at that table know that they are serious. The problem is, Sid Ryan, Liz Barkley and the people around that table do not believe you have the political courage to do it.

The Speaker: Would the member place a question, please.

Mr Carr: I don't believe you have the political courage to do it. Will you stand up today and tell them that if these talks fail, you will have the political courage to legislate them at the earliest possible point if the talks fail? Will you do that today? Will you get these talks going by making a clear statement that you're prepared to legislate?

The Speaker: Would the member take his seat, please. Minister.

Hon Mr Laughren: The member opposite apparently believes in the Clint Eastwood school of collective bargaining. That's not the position of this government.

We have said to our partners in the public sector, both the employers and the employees and their representatives, that we want to achieve a settlement at the social contract table. We have told them that expenditure reductions are not on the table, we have told them that tax policy is not on the table, that what is on the table is compensation in the public sector. They understand that very clearly. They know very well that we're serious --

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): They don't want that.

Hon Mr Laughren: I don't know who your confidants are in the public sector unions but I can tell you, we are deadly serious about it and they know we're serious.

Mr Dave Johnson (Don Mills): My question is to the Minister of Finance. Minister, the mayors are upset. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has said clearly to the mayors that AMO is not negotiating on behalf of the municipalities, that AMO cannot negotiate on behalf of the municipalities, and AMO has indicated that this social contract will be the biggest single fiscal issue of their career.

Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): Mike Harris wants bigger cuts.

The Speaker: The member for Ottawa West, please come to order.

Mr Dave Johnson: Yet, Mr Minister, the Premier will not talk to them. The mayor of Mississauga, representing 48 mayors, has contacted the Premier and there's been no response.

The mayors understand the fiscal problem you have. They understand that there needs to be action. The mayors are prepared to help you, but they need someone to talk to them. Will you, Mr Minister, talk to the mayors? Will you include the mayors, in a meaningful fashion, in the social contract negotiations?

Hon Mr Laughren: The chief negotiator for the government at the social contract tables is Mr Decter. That is whom AMO should talk to at the social contract table.

Interjection.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Laughren: I guess the member for Oriole is completely out to lunch. She has no idea what she's talking about. If I could return to the member who asked the question --

Interjection.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Laughren: I wish the Liberals would let the member for Oriole ask a question in the House so she wouldn't have to interject full-time every day.

If the mayors of this province, through their organization, AMO, want to have in-depth discussions about the specific impact of the expenditure reductions, for example, on their municipalities, the Minister of Municipal Affairs is the person to whom they should direct their comments or their requests. That is his job, and he is doing that job and doing it very well. There's no sense in the mayors or AMO coming and talking to me. The chief negotiator at the social contract table is Mr Decter and the Minister of Municipal Affairs is the Honourable Ed Philip. That's whom they should talk to.

Mr Dave Johnson: Mr Minister, again I reiterate two points: One is that AMO has made it clear that AMO cannot negotiate the social contract on behalf of the municipalities. They do not have that authority. The second is that the mayors and the municipalities understand your predicament, understand the financial disaster that has been created, and are prepared to help you solve it.

But the mayors also see the chaos at the Royal York Hotel and are concerned with some of the suggestions that are coming forward. They are concerned, for example, with the pause day, one day off a month with no pay. They ask the question, if you negotiate with the unions in the absence of the municipalities -- because AMO can't negotiate on behalf of the municipalities -- a pause day for the ambulance drivers, will you also negotiate a pause day for heart attacks? If you negotiate a pause day for police officers, will you negotiate a pause day for crime? If you negotiate a pause day for the firefighters, can we have a pause day for fires in the province of Ontario?

The Speaker: Could the member conclude his question, please.

Mr Dave Johnson: The point is that the municipalities need the flexibility to deal with your cuts to solve your problems in their own way. Will you give the municipalities this authority to make the cuts that you need in their own way, using their own experience?

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Hon Mr Laughren: I think that's a good question. What's on the social contract table is a set of proposals that we put there. They are proposals. If the municipalities have better proposals to reduce compensation in the public sector, of course we'd be very interested in hearing those proposals.

As for your comment that AMO cannot negotiate on behalf of the municipalities, it concluded a very long and complex exercise on what is known as disentanglement in which they've --

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): Well, look what's happened to it. I don't think I would take that as an example. I don't think you could have picked a worse example.

Hon Mr Laughren: They were given the mandate --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Laughren: Whether or not. I mean, I know the Conservatives don't think anything should be negotiated. You think everything should be decreed by the provincial government, that all power and wisdom resides at Queen's Park. We happen not to believe that. We think there's room for negotiating with the people who deliver the services, and whether it's successful or not, the municipalities did give AMO the right to negotiate through the disentanglement process. So I don't think it's appropriate --

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

Hon Mr Laughren: -- or fair to say that AMO doesn't have the right to negotiate for the municipalities.

The Speaker: Final supplementary.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): I think the difference, though, of being a Conservative is that we understand the difference when someone's hiding behind negotiations because there's a vacuum in leadership. There's no leadership on that side of the House. We, as the third party in this House, have told you since day one you must show some leadership. You haven't shown any leadership. That's why there's chaos. That's why you don't even have enough chairs at the bargaining table.

The question I'd like to put to the Finance minister is simply this. Mr Finance Minister, this process is flawed, badly flawed, from the beginning. It's a fly by the seat of your pants process. You thought it up in early April, and it didn't work then, but you insisted this is going to buy you back some of the valuable support that you've lost in the last two and a half years.

The question that's coming out of Metropolitan Toronto is this. You don't transfer any grants to the Metropolitan school boards, and the Metropolitan school boards are going to have to come up with funding under the social contract, and savings, and you don't flow any unconditional grants to the school boards. Are you going to ask for the most absurd of all, that the school boards write you a cheque for the savings so in essence the Metropolitan Toronto taxpayer is now flowing money to the provincial government in the form of an unconditional grant? Is this how absurd this whole process has become, that you're now pilfering the taxpayer of Metro Toronto in the name of a social contract?

Hon Mr Laughren: I cannot resist. It was a former Minister of Education when the Conservatives were in office named Bette Stephenson who wanted to pool the commercial and industrial assessment, so I think that for the member for Etobicoke West --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would the minister take his seat, please.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Minister.

Hon Mr Laughren: Thank you, Mr Speaker. To the member for Etobicoke West: I would assume that he wouldn't expect us to be negotiating with the Metropolitan Toronto School Board here on the floor of the Legislature when that's supposed to be taking place at the social contract table.

The Speaker: New question.

MUNICIPAL FUNDING

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs. I find it, Minister, somewhat interesting to hear all the former municipal politicians in the third party standing up demanding rights for all the municipalities.

I have a quote from Hansard here by the leader of the third party, Minister, in which he says, "But I want to be very clear, through you, Mr Treasurer, to the Premier and the government, that we are supportive of the amount of cuts, and we don't think you've gone far enough."

Now they seem, Mr Minister, to have changed their stripe, now that the men and women of AMO and Mayor McCallion have banged on Mike Harris's head and said: "Mike, you don't really mean that, do you? We need your help, Mike." So now all of a sudden they're born again --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Would the member place a question, please.

Mr Mahoney: -- trying to help the municipalities. I think it's wonderful.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Would the member place the question.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Mahoney: My question -- I know it upsets you.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Would the honourable member quickly place a question.

Mr Mahoney: I'm sorry that I upset all these right-wingers over here like that, I really am. I didn't mean to do that. I wanted to ask a question because the Treasurer has said himself --

The Speaker: And I would appreciate your asking a question quickly.

Mr Mahoney: The Treasurer said that the municipalities should be talking to the Honourable Ed Philip, and my question --

The Speaker: Would the member take his seat, please. The member has utilized a considerable amount of time. I will ask him to please quickly place a question.

Mr Mahoney: I'm trying to. They're heckling me, Mr Speaker.

My question to the minister: The Treasurer said the municipalities should talk to you, sir. You have said and accused Chairman Tonks of fearmongering when he is indeed afraid of the cutbacks and the effects on the police and the fire department and all the municipal infrastructure. How can they come to you when all you do is attempt to intimidate them and accuse them of fearmongering?

Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): I was just speaking to Chairman Tonks only about an hour ago and he didn't feel terribly intimidated by me, so I hardly think that he feels intimidated. Indeed, he was quite understanding of the fact and said to me, "We are all part of the problem; we all want to be part of the solution and I appreciate that you have consulted with us."

We have released this morning the distribution of the $110.8-million reduction program in terms of Metropolitan Toronto. That will work out to less than one half of 1% of their operating expenditures. Hardly a matter that they cannot manage and hardly a matter to cause great concern. They recognize that if we went on the way that the Liberals would have us do of spend, spend, spend, and not deal with the deficit, by 1995-96 we would spend 26 cents out of every dollar on interest rates to foreign banks, and that wouldn't create one job in Metropolitan Toronto or in Mississauga or in any of the other regions around.

Mr Mahoney: I can appreciate the fact that you're confused when you get a signal from the leader of the third party that he wants you to cut more one day, and the next day stands up and changes his tune and says you should be doing something else.

I can appreciate the fact that there's not a particularly clear message, but let me give you a clear message on behalf of the mayors and all the municipalities around this province. The message, sir, is that they are managing their books properly. They are running their corporations properly. In the case of my own municipality, there was even a 1% reduction in taxes which I'm sure drove you crazy and you're going to stick it to them now to make them pay for that.

Minister, the municipalities are trying to get a meeting with the Premier. He won't even answer the telephone. He won't respond to letters. They want to know just what they're supposed to do. Should they increase taxes to the ratepayers and their municipalities? Should they lay off firemen? Should they cut police services? What exactly should they do? They're asking that question. The Treasurer says you're the man to answer it. How do you answer the municipalities? Are you just going to cut them off at the knees, or are you going to sit down and try to help them with their problems?

Hon Mr Philip: The member for Mississauga West says that we're getting mixed messages. The Conservatives are asking us to cut more, although their federal colleagues don't seem to be able to get hold of the deficit, and the Liberals want us to spend more and more and more, as they did when they were in office.

Quite frankly, the alarmist rhetoric of the member for Mississauga West does nothing to resolve the problem. In terms of --

Mr Mahoney: Now you're going to call me an alarmist, because you're finished calling Tonks one.

The Speaker: Order.

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Hon Mr Philip: He says that it will mean, in his question, major cuts and layoffs in Mississauga. He says it will mean major, major problems in Mississauga, and he says that Mississauga managed its own budget so well.

Last year, in unconditional grants alone Mississauga got $8 million from this province. That helped them to manage their budget very well. This year, as a result of the unconditional grants reductions, it actually works out to 0.36; in other words, four tenths of 1% of their operational budget.

That's what the member for Mississauga West then is saying: somehow there are going to be terrible dramatic cuts in Mississauga and somehow the garbage isn't going to get picked up. Stop the alarmism. The mayors know now, they have the figures, and you're going to find then that they'll understand what we're trying to do and they'll be part of the solution, not part of the problem the way you are.

LAND REGISTRATION

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. I'm sure the minister recalls the company that she created, Teranet, and as you know, there was an agreement with the province of Ontario that it would contribute millions of dollars to this new company and in turn the other partner, Real/Data, would contribute an equal amount of money.

We know they've missed at least two payments towards the new company, Teranet -- Real/Data has missed two payments. The third payment, which totals $14 million, as I understand it, comes due tomorrow. My question to the minister is, have you received the $14 million from Real/Data?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): First of all, I want to be very clear in assuring the House that irrespective of RDO's actions, the government and the public interest in the operation of the automated land registration system is protected at all times and services to the public will continue as usual.

As well, what the member opposite fails to mention again and again is that in respect to Teranet, the government owns and has total ownership of all of the data. That's very important to understand, and the government also has control over the fee structuring, the intaking and accessing of all the data.

RDO's continuing its efforts right this very moment to find investors. There are Canadian companies who are very interested in investing and they are keeping us informed of what's happening in those negotiations. But no, as the member well knows, they have failed in this economy to be able to come up with their investment. The important thing is that the public service continues.

Mr Tilson: I think the problem, Madam Minister, is that you enter into a contract with a corporation such as Real/Data to do certain things. They were to contribute $14 million. You're telling us today that they haven't made that contribution. They've breached the contract with you.

The program can't continue without that $14 million. I don't know where you're going to get the money, whether the Treasurer is going to give it to you or whether you are going to can the project.

I took the time yesterday, Madam Minister, to telephone your assistant deputy minister, Mr Daniels, and ask him this specific question, as I'm sure you are aware, and he has referred to exactly what you said, that you don't have the money.

My question to you is, who are the people who are interested in putting up this money? Will you tell us who those people are and will you be prepared to scrutinize those same people as you did for the people who entered into the contract for Teranet? Will you put that out for tender and will you tell us who those people are?

Hon Ms Churley: Yes, as I said previously, there are at this very moment now companies who are examining and considering investment in Teranet. I of course at this point can't say who these people are, but once an interest is expressed, and I believe there is quite an interest in this company, we will be examining very closely the components of that company.

The member has to bear in mind, as I said, that we are in a slowdown in our economy and that patient money is very hard to find right now for long-term investments such as Teranet, but it is seen as a very good investment. It's just that we have to look carefully for patient money to arrive, and I believe that there's a very good chance that will happen.

CONSERVATION AUTHORITIES

Mr Mike Farnan (Cambridge): My question is to the Minister of Natural Resources. Minister, grants to the 38 conservation authorities across the province are to be reduced by $10.6 million. The headquarters of the Grand River Conservation Authority, with responsibility for 657 kilometres of river, is in my riding, Cambridge.

The authority has the responsibility for flood monitoring, ongoing improvements in flood control, the prevention of erosion in the river banks, all of which activities are essential safety measures. As well, it is charged with a program of improvement in water quality, reservoir maintenance, ensuring the availability of water in its catchment area. I am told that parts of the catchment area rely on the Grand River for their drinking water.

My question to the minister is this: What assurances will he give to the people of my riding, to all the residents of the ridings in the Grand River watershed and in all of the conservation areas that those services essential to our health, safety and wellbeing are not at risk and that they will be maintained?

Hon Howard Hampton (Minister of Natural Resources): I thank the member for the question on an issue which I know is important in many communities.

Conservation authorities, as an agency of the government, have had to share in the expenditure reduction plan. However, conservation authorities have other funding. While they receive about a third of their funding from the province, they receive a third from area municipalities and they receive a third through their own revenue measures. So unlike some other agencies and some other organizations, they do have options in terms of raising revenue.

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): What about the taxpayers?

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order, the member for Grey.

Hon Mr Hampton: I believe that if we're able to work cooperatively, we will be able to address the expenditure control issues that conservation authorities have.

I met recently with the Association of Conservation Authorities of Ontario. We have agreed upon a plan of action, that we will meet one month from now to look at their views as to how we can successfully control expenditures and continue to provide the services that people need and expect.

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

Hon Mr Hampton: I would say to the member for Cambridge that I believe one month from now we will be able to show the people of the province and particularly the conservation authority interest groups that we can in fact handle their expenditure control problems.

Mr Farnan: Perhaps in replying to my supplementary the minister might reflect and give me the assurance I asked for. The assurance was that the essential services of health, safety and wellbeing of these communities are not put at risk and that they will be maintained.

In supplementary, many parts of the Grand River -- the Kissing Bridge at Montrose, for instance -- are tourist attractions, and work is proceeding on other enhancements such as a trail linking the riding of Cambridge with Paris. The Grand River is to be designated a heritage river in 1994 because of its outstanding historic, recreational and cultural place in Ontario. The service industries in this part of Ontario expect a steady increase in local use and in tourism as a result.

Minister, what assurances will you give that the reasonable expectations of the Grand River becoming an augmented tourist attraction will not be damaged by these reductions in grants, necessary though they may be?

Hon Mr Hampton: To attempt to answer the member's first question again, we are assured by the conservation authorities that though they may have to curtail some of their non-core activities, though they may have to reduce some of their non-core activities --

Mr Murdoch: Who is going to pay their taxes?

The Speaker: Order. The member for Grey, please come to order.

Hon Mr Hampton: Those kinds of conservation and water control and water development activities that are central to conservation authorities, they believe and we believe they will be able to continue without interruption.

On the supplementary, the member refers to tourism development on the Grand River. I can only say to him that the issue of tourism development is one that not only does the province have some responsibility for but the conservation authorities, the municipalities and the federal government through the Canadian heritage river system have responsibility for, and we are proceeding to work out a basis to fund the development on the Grand River.

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IMPAIRMENT TESTING DEVICES

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): My question is to the Solicitor General and it's related to your April 22 decision to stop using the specific type of impaired driving screening device called the ALERT J3A. As you know, Mr Minister, in 1990 the grommets in this machine were changed, and it is these post-1990 machines about which concerns have been raised.

These approved screening devices are an important tool used by police on the front line in the battle against drunk driving, and as a result of your order, there are only four for the OPP being used right now. They have 432 of these ALERT machines; 176 of them use the old grommet and can still be used, but you've ordered them on to the shelves while people can drive around in this province and not be appropriately tested. I'm wondering, Mr Minister, if you will not let the OPP use the old machines with the old grommets to help reduce drunk driving while you fiddle around and make up your mind.

Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General): I thank the member for the opportunity to address this important issue. First of all, let me thank him because I do believe it is my first question from him as not only the new member but my new critic. Again, I formally welcome you to the House and to this portfolio.

My response begins with an acknowledgement that our decision was taken after two other provinces and after the RCMP had also decided to take similar action. I'm sure the honourable member will know, in researching his question, that these decisions are made on the recommendation of a federal advisory body called the alcohol test committee, which advises the federal Minister of Justice on exactly what units are allowable and what aren't. The member will of course know that each unit is named specifically in the legislation as to what is an allowable unit. It is this advisory group that sent out the message that these particular units are no longer considered to be absolutely reliable, due to changes not just the type of which the member has mentioned, but others that are in question too.

Mr Murphy: As I'm sure the minister is aware, I've read in the paper today that he says no decision is going to be made on this until September. Well, we're going to have a whole summer of driving on the roads of this province, and something has got to be done to make sure that the carnage that has happened before won't happen this summer due to the failure to provide the OPP with some screening devices.

As you're aware, there's an Ontario-made option, the Alcometer SL2, that can be purchased right away and can be done, replacing the entire OPP's screening devices, for approximately $150,000, about the price of the salary of the ministers who are without portfolio on that side of the House.

I'm wondering if you will commit to the people of this province to get on and get a new screening device as soon as possible so we don't have any repeats of carnage and the OPP and other police have an appropriate screening device to make sure we have safe roads.

Hon Mr Christopherson: I think I heard two questions in there. I'll deal with the first one first.

With regard to his comment that I made a statement in the media that no decision would be made until September, that is not accurate. I don't think it even reflects exactly what was in the article. But certainly I took the opportunity earlier today at a news conference to be very clear about what I was saying when I talk time lines. I have met, as I'm sure the member knows, with the president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, as well as a representative from Metro police and, of course, our own OPP commissioner. To talk about this very issue in terms of time lines, we've made a commitment that we want to have as many of these units replaced as possible before the summer season, for exactly the reasons the member mentions.

I commit to him now that I and the police chiefs will work closely to ensure that as many of those units are replaced as possible beforehand.

The second thing I would say to him on the unit that he talks about -- I would be a little bit cautious and just signal to my colleague that the unit the police prefer, when I talk to them, is not that particular unit, it's another unit, and that one is in front of the federal government -- in fact, this alcohol test committee. We're awaiting their approval. It should happen within the next few weeks, and when that approval is in place we will put in place a plan that will replace the units using the kind of machine that the police want, that the police are recommending to me, not just what the honourable member from across the way thinks we ought to do in this province.

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): I have a question for the Minister of Education. Mr Minister, you will be aware that last week this Legislature voted that we should take some action with regard to construction workers who come to Ontario, whereas construction workers don't have the same opportunity to go to Quebec to work. I want to talk particularly about what effect it's having on our young people.

At the present time, there are 540 residents of the province of Quebec who are enrolled in Ontario apprenticeship training programs. These 540 people don't live in Ontario; they return to Quebec each night, they pay Quebec provincial income tax, they buy their groceries and supplies presumably in the province of Quebec, yet they come to Ontario each day to take advantage of our Ontario skills development program. For example, 55 of the 540 Quebec residents are electrical apprentices in the Ottawa area, each of them receiving 36 weeks of schooling, at an approximate cost to the Ontario taxpayer of $11,000 worth of training.

Can you tell me why the province of Ontario is paying to educate Quebec's workforce?

Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): I appreciate the question from the member. He will understand, because he's had some contact with our ministry, that the prime responsibility for dealing with this whole issue, which is in fact a trade barrier within our nation, lies with the Minister for Economic Development and Trade. I can certainly indicate to the member that this issue has been raised as late, as I understand it, as at a meeting of the trade ministers that was held on March 18 of this year.

We intend to continue to pursue the issue because we agree with you that there is unfairness, but not necessarily thinking that the best way of solving the problem is to impose the same kinds of trade barriers in terms of the workforce that Quebec imposes on Ontario, that a better way of trying to deal with this is to get Quebec to agree that there has to be equity of access on both sides of the border.

Mr Sterling: Mr Minister, I agree and everybody agrees that the best solution would be negotiation. Unfortunately, this problem has existed through three governments, including the government of which I was a part.

What do I say to the 200 well-qualified Ontario applicants who would like to become an electrician's apprentice when 55 of these positions are being occupied by Quebec residents? What do I say to my constituents who are saying, "Why on earth are you allowing these Quebec residents to have my opportunity for training for a job in the future and you're allowing Quebec people to come in," whereas they say to me then, "I do not have the same opportunity to go over to the province of Quebec and obtain the same apprenticeship training in that province"?

It's very, very unfair to these young people and, quite frankly, many of the people of Ottawa-Carleton, many of the people of eastern Ontario, and in fact this Legislature itself has said to you and to the government: "We are fed up. The talking has gone on for 15 years. The time is now for a solution."

Hon Mr Cooke: The government agrees with the member that the barriers that currently exist are terribly unfair to the people of this province, and we expect and hope that the province of Quebec will treat people from our province as fairly as we're treating people from their province.

It's best to resolve this matter at the negotiating table. I think all of us agree with that. I think a clear message was sent from the Legislature when your resolution was carried in the Legislature, and that should very much help the negotiating hand of the Minister of Economic Development and Trade for the province of Ontario. I expect that those discussions will continue, and this government expects that Quebec will respond, because the province of Ontario cannot continue to deal with the terrible inequity and unfairness that continues to exist.

X-RAY SERVICES

Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): My question is to the Minister of Health.

I have an article published in the past issue of the Welland Tribune, an article that, if what it says is true, contains some disturbing news about the future of X-ray service in the province.

In it, the past president of the Welland County General Hospital warns that non-emergency X-ray service could be capped. The former president is quoted as saying that this could happen because the Ministry of Health wants to shut down all private X-ray clinics. The article reports that:

"According to the past president, the ministry is proposing to stop paying the technical fees for X-rays taken in private clinics. Apparently, this proposal is contained in a ministry memorandum sent to the Ontario Medical Association.

"The Welland County General Hospital fears that if the proposal is implemented, more outpatients would flock to hospitals for X-rays, but the hospitals may not be able to accommodate them all because the technical fee the province pays is a fixed amount.

"The worry is that there is no financial incentive for the hospital to do more X-rays than the amount the fee pays for, and the end result, according to the past president of the Welland County General Hospital, could be a cap on non-emergency X-ray service."

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Is it true that people in the province who need non-emergency X-ray service can expect some problems obtaining this service? Can the minister advise this House and my constituency if these services are being capped?

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): I'm glad to have an opportunity to clarify an article that I think was the result of a misinterpretation by the hospital administrator of some statements about a potential change within the Ministry of Health.

Ontario has been one of the few provinces which permitted physicians to join a group and bill for services through one collective number. This system has created problems because there isn't an ability to both monitor services, to track services, to identify patterns of practice, so we have been considering changing the policy to require physicians to bill all services through their own individual number.

We've been working with the Ontario Medical Association on this through the joint management committee, which is how we like to discuss changes with the profession, and the issue raised by the Welland hospital administrator relates to how this would affect hospitals.

I think it's important for me to say that if the system is changed, an alternative means of ensuring hospital reimbursement would have to be developed, and in addition, any change would not affect payments to privately run X-ray clinics.

The Speaker: The time for oral questions has expired.

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Pursuant to standing order 34(a), the member for York Mills has given notice of his dissatisfaction with the answer to his question given by the Minister of Transportation concerning graduated licensing. This matter will be debated today at 6 pm.

PETITIONS

PHARMACEUTICAL SERVICES

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): I have a petition here from a number of residents of a seniors' building in my riding, 801 Mount Pleasant Road.

"We, the undersigned, members of Club 801 Moore Place, 801 Mount Pleasant Road, Toronto, are opposed to the change in services of pharmacy services, prescriptions, price changes and cost-sharing and feel that seniors should not be required to pay the price."

I've affixed my signature because I agree with their sentiments.

GAMBLING

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): "To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the New Democratic Party government has not consulted the citizens of the province regarding the expansion of gambling; and

"Whereas families are made more emotionally and economically vulnerable by the operation of various gaming and gambling ventures; and

"Whereas creditable academic studies have shown that state-operated gambling is nothing more than a regressive tax on the poor; and

"Whereas the New Democratic Party has in the past vociferously opposed the raising of moneys for the state through gambling; and

"Whereas the government has not attempted to address the very serious concerns that have been raised by groups and individuals regarding the potential growth in crime;

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

"That the government immediately cease all moves to establish gambling casinos and refrain from introducing video lottery terminals in the province of Ontario."

I'm very happy to sign this petition.

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Mr Mike Cooper (Kitchener-Wilmot): It's my pleasure to present a petition on behalf of my colleague, the Honourable Evelyn Gigantes, the member for Ottawa Centre. It was prepared by members of Social Work Advisory for Gerontology, who are a group of over 100 professionals and non-professional social workers who work in the Ottawa-Carleton health centres, homes for the aged and service agencies supporting senior citizens.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the residents of Ottawa-Carleton are presently required to transfer to Brockville Psychiatric Hospital for medium- and long-term psychogeriatric treatment; and

"Whereas there is physical space available in existing facilities in the Ottawa-Carleton region; and

"Whereas the geographic distance constitutes an unreasonable hardship for families who want to provide ongoing support to alleviate the emotional turmoil suffered by families now compelled to place their loved ones outside their geographic area;

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

"To provide funding for long-term psychogeriatric care including hospital beds in Ottawa-Carleton, and we urge this funding to take place as quickly as possible."

ACCESSORY APARTMENTS

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): I have a petition here with some 100 or more names of residents of my community on it. It's addressed to the Legislature of Ontario:

"Whereas the Minister of Housing and the Minister of Municipal Affairs have released 'draft legislation for apartments in houses, granny flats,' to permit accessory dwelling units 'as of right' in all residential areas and to permit granny flats;

"We, the undersigned, object to the 'draft legislation for apartments in houses, granny flats,' for the following reasons and petition the Legislature of Ontario as follows:

"(1) That the province examine the implications that the proposed legislation may have on the rights of property owners, landlords and tenants with respect to their expectations of zoning authority and the neighbourhoods in which they live;

"(2) That the province not entertain this proposed legislation removing the right of local government to regulate development without adequate public notification and opportunity to review and comment on the draft legislation;

"(3) That the local municipality be granted the authority to regulate and license (or register) accessory apartments;

"(4) That the province, in consultation with local and regional authorities, examine methods of compensating the municipality for increased costs of servicing new residential growth (accessory apartments);

"(5) That right of entry for bylaw enforcement officers to inspect accessory apartments during reasonable hours be incorporated into the legislation;

"(6) That representatives from the Ministry of Housing and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs be requested to conduct a public meeting in Brampton" -- they'll love it there, too -- "to discuss the draft legislation with the community; and

"(7) That the city of Brampton supports granny flats as a form of housing intensification subject to the ensurance that the units will be removed at the end of their intended use."

I have affixed my signature thereto.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"To the Legislative Assembly and the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario:

"Whereas the people of Ontario are undergoing economic hardship, high unemployment, and are faced with the prospect of imminent tax increases; and

"Whereas the Ontario motorist protection plan currently delivers cost-effective insurance benefits to Ontario drivers; and

"Since the passing of Bill 164 into law will result in higher automobile insurance premiums for Ontario drivers;

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

"That Bill 164 be withdrawn."

I support this petition and I have signed it as well.

GAMBLING

Mr Dennis Drainville (Victoria-Haliburton): I'm glad to add these names to the thousands of signatures of people who are protesting casino gambling.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the New Democratic Party government has traditionally had a commitment to family life and quality of life for the citizens of Ontario; and

"Whereas families are made more emotionally and economically vulnerable by the operation of various gaming and gambling ventures; and

"Whereas the New Democratic Party government has had a historical concern for the poor in society, who are particularly at risk each time the practice of gambling is expanded; and

"Whereas the New Democratic Party has in the past vociferously opposed the raising of moneys for the state through gambling; and

"Whereas the citizens of Ontario have not been consulted regarding the introduction of legalized casino gambling despite the fact that such a decision is a significant change of government policy and was never part of the mandate given to the government by the people of Ontario;

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

"That the government immediately cease all moves to establish gambling casinos and that appropriate legislation be introduced into the assembly along with a process which includes significant opportunities for public consultation and full public hearings as a means of allowing the citizens of Ontario to express themselves on this new and questionable initiative."

I affix my signature to this petition.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr David Winninger (London South): I have a petition signed by 116 individuals petitioning the Legislative Assembly of Ontario that Bill 164 be withdrawn.

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POST-POLIO SYNDROME

Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas post-polio is a new phenomenon to attack survivors of polio;

"Whereas the Ottawa and District Post-Polio Association has been formed to help survivors of polio;

"Whereas most family practitioners do not have the specialized knowledge to treat post-polio symptoms effectively;

"Whereas we, the members and friends of the Ottawa and District Post-Polio Association, wish to emphasize to the Ontario government the need to fund a post-polio clinic in Ottawa;

"Whereas a formal request was presented by the Ottawa and District Post-Polio Association to the Ottawa-Carleton Regional District Health Council in May 1988 and received a top priority at that time;

"Whereas the Rehabilitation Centre of Ottawa-Carleton has presented a proposal to the Ministry of Health for funds to establish a post-polio clinic;

"Whereas there are at least 1,000 known polio survivors in the catchment area of the Rehabilitation Centre who need the immediate services of a clinic;

"Whereas there are at least 5,000 polio survivors in Ontario;

"Whereas there is only one formally constituted post-polio clinic, which is in Toronto and which has a lengthy waiting list;

"Whereas the cost and difficulties of several trips to the Toronto clinic and staying overnight each time are often insurmountable for a disabled person;

"Whereas polio survivors who had no paralysis from the initial attack of polio are not immune from developing post-polio symptoms of varying severity;

"Whereas research indicates that 80% of polio survivors may develop post-polio symptoms anywhere from seven to 71 years after the initial attack;

"Whereas post-polio symptoms are not related to the aging process;

"Whereas because of immigration, the post-polio population will not diminish,

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to establish a post-polio clinic in the Rehabilitation Centre of Ottawa-Carleton for the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of patients and to disseminate information so that the estimated 1,000 known polio survivors in the centre's catchment area can receive adequate treatment and that the medical profession be educated regarding the post-polio syndrome."

These petitioners are presented and I have affixed my signature.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr Peter North (Elgin): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly and the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario with some 235 signatures on it that Bill 164 be withdrawn.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Further petitions? The honourable member for --

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Bruce?

The Acting Speaker: Bruce.

Mr Elston: I was hoping, Mr Speaker, that you might see me this time.

BRUCE GENERATING STATION

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): "We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"When discussing the future of Bruce A, to consider that the undersigned are in full support of the continued operation of all of the units at Bruce A. Furthermore, we support the expenditure of the required money to rehabilitate the Bruce A units for the following reasons:

"In comparison to other forms of generation, nuclear energy is environmentally safe and cost-effective. Rehabilitating Bruce A units is expected to achieve $2 billion in savings to the corporation over the station's lifetime. This power is needed for the province's future prosperity.

"A partial or complete closure of Bruce A will have severe negative impacts on the affected workers and will seriously undermine the economy of the surrounding communities and the province."

In addition to councils, chambers of commerce, business associations, labour groups, riding associations, school boards and others, this particular petition is signed by people from Whitby, Ajax, Oshawa, Bowmanville, Thornhill, Fenelon Falls and several others. I have attached my signature, and this forms part of a group of over 15,000 who are in support of the Bruce A carrying on.

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION

Mr Paul R. Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the undersigned, hereby request immediate action to be taken by the Ontario government, through the Ministry of Transportation, whereby the sections of Highway 33 from the town of Picton limits to Glenora ferry and from Glenora ferry, Adolphustown to the village of Bath, be reconstructed and paved. The said sections have not been tended to in many years and the travelled portion is not only a hazard to motorists but a disgrace to the heritage highway system."

GAMBLING

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I have a petition regarding casino gambling, people opposed to it.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the New Democratic Party has traditionally had a commitment to family life and quality of life for all the citizens of Ontario;

"Whereas families are made more emotionally and economically vulnerable by the operation of various gaming and gambling ventures; and

"Whereas the New Democratic Party government has" supposedly "had a historical concern for the poor in society, who are particularly at risk each time the practice of gambling is expanded; and

"Whereas the New Democratic Party has in the past vociferously opposed the raising of moneys for the state through gambling; and

"Whereas the citizens of Ontario have not been consulted regarding the introduction of legalized gambling casinos despite the fact that such a decision is a significant change of government policy and was never part of the mandate given to the government by the people of Ontario;

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

"That the government immediately cease all moves to establish gambling casinos by regulation and that appropriate legislation be introduced into the assembly along with a process which includes significant opportunities for public consultation and full public hearings as a means of allowing the citizens of Ontario to express themselves on this new and questionable initiative."

I have signed it because I agree.

Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario signed by 10 of my constituents who petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

I have signed this.

BRUCE GENERATING STATION

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): I have a petition that has been signed by well over 15,000 people in the province in support of Bruce A.

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

"When discussing the future of Bruce A, to consider that the undersigned are in full support of the continued operation of all the units at Bruce A. Furthermore, we support the expenditure of the required money to rehabilitate the Bruce A units for the following reasons:

"A partial or complete closure of Bruce A will have severe negative impacts on the affected workers and will seriously undermine the economy of the surrounding communities and the province."

I have attached my name to this petition, which includes signatures from Courtice, Pickering, Toronto, Ajax, Agincourt and other places removed from our particular area who are showing their support for us.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

HUMAN RIGHTS CODE AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LE CODE DES DROITS DE LA PERSONNE

On motion by Mr Callahan, the following bill was given first reading:

Bill 14, An Act to prevent the loss of the Protection of the Human Rights Code by Agreement / Loi interdisant de renoncer par voie d'entente à la protection que reconnaît le Code des droits de la personne.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Would the honourable member have a short résumé?

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please, the table has to recognize the bill.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): The law clearly prevents a person who has rights infringed under the Ontario Human Rights Code to sign those rights away. However, in a recent case in my riding, a constituent who had a learning disability and had been employed by a company for a considerable period of time was discharged. He filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.

Unfortunately, in the meantime the company he worked for had him sign a waiver of his dismissal. The Human Rights Commission found that this was in fact a bar to the enforcement of his rights under the Human Rights Code, despite the fact that it flew totally in the face of the jurisprudence in that regard. The purpose of this section is to ensure that no person, regardless of what he signs, can in fact lose his rights under the Human Rights Code, and this man did in fact lose them because he was let go because of a learning disability.

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OPPOSITION DAY

FISCAL AND ECONOMIC POLICY

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): Mr Speaker, with concurrence, and in the absence of Mrs McLeod --

Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): Where is she?

Mr Mahoney: She'll be here. Don't you worry. I would like to move this opposition day resolution.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Do we have consent for the honourable member for Mississauga West to proceed? Agreed.

Mr Mahoney, on behalf of Mrs McLeod, moved opposition day motion number 2:

Recognizing that, since taking office, the NDP government has consistently mismanaged the financial affairs of the province and has been unable to devise a plan to pull the economy out of the recession;

And whereas there are 550,000 people without work in the province of Ontario;

And whereas 214,000 have joined the unemployment line since the NDP government came to power;

And whereas for over two years, the NDP government ignored the Liberal caucus's calls for fiscal restraint, failed to recognize the serious nature of Ontario's fiscal crisis until far too late, and has now engaged in a poorly thought out, last-minute exercise to cut spending that will transfer the burden of restraint to school boards, hospitals, municipalities, colleges and universities and social service agencies and will affect most Ontarians in their daily lives, without adequately addressing the Ontario government's own operations;

And whereas, when in power, the Conservative Party ran deficits for 15 straight years prior to 1985, and left Ontario with accumulated debt of $30 billion;

And whereas, when in power, the Conservative Party averaged 12% spending increases annually between 1980 and 1985;

And whereas, during its last five years in power, the Conservative Party averaged deficits of $2.1 billion annually;

And whereas, when in power, the Liberal government was the only government to balance its budget in Ontario in the last 20 years;

And whereas the federal Conservative government has failed to manage the national economy, left Canadians over $450 billion in debt and has produced a do-nothing budget that fails to reassure international investors;

And whereas the people of Ontario are becoming increasingly concerned about their future and the future of their children, due to the fact that they have no confidence in the ability of the NDP government to restore economic security and health to the province of Ontario;

Therefore the Liberal caucus calls upon the government to take a commonsense approach to managing the economy and to implement the following recommendations:

(1) Create an economic climate in which job creation and economic renewal are their number one priority;

(2) Get its own fiscal house in order through genuine reorganization and restructuring and elimination of waste in order to get the deficit under control.

(3) Refuse to increase taxes in order to protect fragile economic recovery and encourage an economic climate that will lead to job creation.

(4) Review expensive programs such as the $1.1-billion Jobs Ontario Training program, the $30 million bureaucracy created by the advocacy legislation and the Interim Waste Authority that has cost taxpayers $30 million so far.

(5) Ease the regulatory burden on business by reviewing the NDP's anti-job legislation, such as Bill 40, and eliminating the costly bureaucratic bottlenecks in areas such as land use planning and the WCB.

(6) Focus on training and retraining to help people get back to work and to make our workforce more attractive to international investors.

(7) Introduce measures to alleviate youth unemployment to give our 140,000 unemployed young people hope for the future.

The Acting Speaker: Mr Mahoney, the honourable member for Mississauga West, has the floor.

Mr Mahoney: Mr Speaker, I want to address you and the members of this Legislature and I think more importantly the people of this province on this resolution that has been so thoughtfully drafted by our leader, Lyn McLeod, a person who, I believe, will indeed be the next Premier of this province and the one who will be responsible for cleaning up the terrible mess that will be left to us by the incompetence of the current government.

I think it's quite clear to people that when they look at a government that starts off the day, so to speak, facing a $10-billion deficit, you have to wonder if it has any idea what it's doing. What happens is that you tend to get the government being defensive. That's understandable. They come back and they say: "It isn't our fault. You Liberals left us in a mess. You Liberals created this problem." Let's be clear about that. The Liberal government, in the five years that we were in power, managed to balance the books twice, and for the first time actually paid $430 million --

Mr Peter North (Elgin): Give it a break.

Interjections.

Mr Mahoney: I know it upsets them -- off the debt. That is in fact a first in living memory in this province, that we actually reduced the debt.

Now, here's the management that comes in. Floyd Laughren, the Treasurer, when he became Treasurer, had a press conference, and Floyd Laughren, I would say, is an honest, decent man. The Treasurer came forward at a time when he had a press conference to announce the deficit that he would be facing to start off with, and he announced it somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2.4 billion. The press jumped on him right away and said, "Mr Treasurer, did the Liberals lie?" Mr Laughren said, much to the unhappiness of his caucus, by the way, "No, the Liberals did not lie." Mr Laughren said, as a matter of fact, that as a result of the downturn in the retail sales in this province --

Mr North: No, it isn't.

Mr Mahoney: That's exactly what he said -- as a result of the downturn in the housing industry, this province lost revenue in the neighbourhood of $700 million in retail sales tax and $400 million in land transfer tax. We can understand that. We don't blame Floyd or the NDP for that particular problem. If anything, more of that blame lies with the cousins of the Conservative Party, in Ottawa.

Then you go on and the NDP got a little bit creative and they said, "We're going to pay off the stadium debt" -- that's $300 million -- even though it wasn't due. They could have negotiated a better deal. "We're going to pay off the Urban Transportation Development Corp debt in Thunder Bay," even though it wasn't due, $400 million.

Good politics by the member for Nickel Belt to wipe those debts off. I'm glad to see him here, because he is an honourable man who told the truth until he got squeezed by the back bench and even maybe the Premier, who said: "Floyd, be a little nastier to those guys. Don't be necessarily just coming out and admitting that they'd -- go ahead and give them a kick. We want you to do that." But that's what in fact happened.

Mr North: Give him some water.

Mr Mahoney: I've got water, thanks.

The deficit ran up in the initial days as a result of problems that were beyond their control, but let's be clear: We were only sitting at about $2.4 billion. We were not facing a $17-billion deficit that supposedly the Premier has said they're facing, although I predict -- you heard it here, and Gerry Phillips, our critic has said it -- the actual deficit the NDP will fly on budget day, Wednesday next, will be in the neighbourhood of $8 billion to $8.1 billion.

The interesting thing is that they'll try to claim some success in bringing forward only an $8-billion deficit. Unbelievable. The benchmark that this government has set for deficits is $10 billion, but we all know that the incompetence of this government to go and plan any kind of economic recovery is legend in the province of Ontario.

What is happening, though, that is of some frustration and concern, are certain frauds being perpetrated by members in the third party opposite. Let me just tell you that when the Conservatives were in power, we had, as the resolution said, 15 years of running deficits. It was common. Let me say to some of the members opposite, I remember the days when I was on municipal council. Those were good days. These are good days too, in a lot of ways. I remember those days when we used to get --

Interjection: Days with Margaret.

Mr Mahoney: With Margaret Marland, and, boy, let me tell you, the member for Mississauga South used to be just as upset as I was about this.

1530

We used to get missiles from the provincial government announcing that it was not increasing taxes. You know how they did it? The same way that you people are doing it right now in the sense that you are passing on your problems to the lower levels of government, to the municipalities. That was a Tory trick. They invented that trick. Darcy McKeough, Bill Davis, Clyde Bennett --

Interjection.

Mr Mahoney: Claude Bennett. Clyde, Claude, close enough. They invented that trick, Mr Speaker, as you well know, of saying: "Let's just pass the burden on to the lower levels of government. Those guys have got lots of money and flexibility and, besides, people don't really understand what's increasing their property tax, so they won't blame us, and we'll just give them the problem." I remember those days. They were legendary.

We would wind up having to go to the people for our police services, for our fire services, for our parks and our recreation, for the education of our kids. We would have to go to them. You know what we called the Tories? We called them the Fathers of Underfunding when it came to education.

When we became the government, for the first time in the history of this province the school boards came to us, and so did the municipalities, and said: "We would like to plan a little bit further than one day at a time, one month at a time, even one year at a time. We'd like to look long-range."

So our government announced a $900-million, three-year capital budget program to the schools in this province -- first time ever. We went to the school boards and we said: "We understand your problems. We are going to provide you with three years planning in advance, a commitment that the money will flow, that it will be there." We had to do that because the portables that were occurring all over the province were clearly as a result of the Conservatives.

Now, as I pointed out earlier, we have the Tories standing up -- it's such irony -- as the NDP passes all of its problems down to the school boards and to the municipalities and to social service agencies and to the firefighters. Let me tell you, you're passing your problems right on to the people. How many taxpayers are there in this province, folks? One. One taxpayer, and you're passing your problems on just as the Conservatives did.

I'm sure you must have found a Tory manual when you took office -- somehow we hadn't managed to shred it -- on how to get rid of deficits, on how to deal with your problems, and you're simply implementing that policy.

It couldn't be more clear that the Conservatives enjoy it when Mike Harris stands up and says, "I want to be very clear, through you, Mr Treasurer, to the Premier and the government, that we are supportive of the amount of cuts, and we don't think you've gone far enough yet."

Just let me tell you, these guys are in bed. It makes me ill. Even the Premier, I know, thinks it's disgusting, but he's stuck with it. They're in bed, they've pulled the comforter up over, they're snuggled in together.

Let me tell you, you're going to do irreparable damage to the municipal people, irreparable damage to the school children -- you're talking 40 kids in a class -- irreparable damage with what you're doing. You're mismanaging this economy, as this resolution clearly points out, and you are destroying the infrastructure and taking away hope for all people: our young people, our senior citizens and our local leaders in this community. This government should be ashamed of itself.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The honourable member for Oakville South.

Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to enter the debate and to add a few comments on what's happening.

They're pointing at me to go at the Liberals, and we will do that, although I would like to be a little bit more constructive and talk about some of the solutions. Having said that, I know it's very easy to criticize and to talk about some of the problems, but I want to spend most of my time getting into some of the solutions, what I think we should do. I spent a great deal of time putting together our recommendations in our pre-budget minority report, and I want to touch basically on some of the solutions we see.

But I also want to go through the motion that was introduced by the Liberal Party, and I think it's almost a given now that over the last little while the financial affairs have been mismanaged in this province. I think, as many people will know, going way back to the first budget, we had to resort to basically going on strike and holding up this place because we said: "Don't do it. You can't spend your way out of it."

We went through a period of time where we said, "We need to have public hearings. Don't do it," and of course the other side laughed at us. Quite frankly, even in the last election we said that you can't continue to tax, spend and borrow like there was no tomorrow. Not only did the NDP laugh at us, but the Liberals laughed at us. But I want to say to the people of this province: No one is laughing now, because we were right.

When I look at the spending in this province, which we put in our minority report -- and I just want to briefly touch on that before going to some of the other points. If you look back to 1983-84 -- and the Treasurer here will know this -- we were spending $25 billion in the province of Ontario. Now, of course, we're heading -- where we end up with the cuts, I don't know, but we're heading to about $55 billion.

But we don't blame this NDP government for most of that increase in spending. The people who created this problem were the Liberal government. If you look through those years when they took government between 1985 and 1990, they were spending in some cases double and triple the rate of inflation, and I think that's very important to realize.

In fact I remember that when I was thinking about running, the four western premiers were critical of the former Treasurer, Mr Nixon, because they said he was increasing inflation in this country with the massive, outrageous spending that went on, and we told him, "You can't continue to do it."

Interjection.

Mr Carr: I know the Treasurer says he was and I know he was there encouraging them, saying: "Spend more. You should have spent more."

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): No, we told him, "Be careful, Bob."

Mr Carr: "Be careful, Bob." I don't think you were saying that, the Minister of Finance.

But during that period, if you look at the statistics which I put together in that report, and I know some of the members have had a chance to look at it, we were spending double and in some cases triple the rate of inflation, and you knew. We had a saying here in this province during that period under the Liberals that anything that moved, they taxed it; if it still moved, they regulated it; then ultimately when it went out of business, they ended up turning around and subsidizing it. So during that period of time we had increases each and every year. They were encouraged by their partners during the early years of that coalition.

It's interesting that the previous speaker talked about the Conservatives being in with the NDP. I remember that this Conservative government that ruled for 42 years was defeated by a coalition that was put together during that period, and if you look at the spending, that was even worse than in the years of the late 1980s, because what they were doing during that period was spending more and more money.

Quite frankly, when you look at all the services in this province, in health care we now have fewer hospital beds and there are now waiting lists that are longer; in education, we now have about 30% of our children who are graduating who are functionally illiterate and can't do basic math skills. So they pumped all the money into this area and yet things got worse: waiting lists for social assistance, waiting lists for non-profit housing. All the things that they did during this period of time made things worse and worse.

My friend the member for Wellington and I were laughing at one of the points in there where it said, "Whereas the Liberal caucus has called for fiscal restraint for the last two years." Well, my goodness, anybody who has been around here could not have forgotten the chanting that went on from the Liberal benches. They were literally chanting: "Spend more. This program, spend more." We said, "Don't do it." We said during the first budget, "You can't run up the deficits," and during that period of time, there they were every day in question period: "What about this program? What about this program? Spend more in this area." Quite frankly, you may disagree with us, but at least we've been consistent.

I don't want to spend a great deal of time going back on the Liberal record other than to say that one of the concerns that we've got when people talk about records -- and my friend the member for Wellington often laughs about this. During that period of time, some of the younger members here, we couldn't even vote during that period, the Davis years. But for the Liberal members, each and every one of them, with the exception of a couple of the new members, were not only here and a part of that government; many of them were the ones who were in cabinet making the big decisions.

If we look at spending over the period of time, we got ourselves dug in this hole not during the two years that began this NDP government, although as you know, it spent, again, about 13.5% its first year. The spending that we have got in this province has been a direct result of the continuous spending going back to the mid-1980s.

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I must say, I think they have finally changed their tune. They realize you can't continue to go on. I look at things like non-profit housing, where we spent -- what did the auditor say? -- $5 billion over the last few years, at two or two and a half times what the private sector would do in terms of putting these shelters up.

I notice during that period of time we had some of the failed programs, the famous Ataratiri. Remember that debacle? That'll cost us probably upwards of $500 million, getting up close to $1 billion, some people say, and not one unit was built. Not one unit is going to be built after all that spending that went on during that period of time.

Unlike my friends in the Liberal Party, and I just basically want to go into some of their solutions -- it won't take long, because they have not offered any solutions. What we said, and I will report here -- in our pre-budget document we laid it out -- we said that there should be a moratorium on non-profit housing in the province of Ontario.

They've said during the period of time, the Liberals, "Yes, you can't increase taxes. Don't run up the deficit," but they haven't listed anywhere where there can be any substantial savings. I know my friend the member for St Catharines talks about advertising and the $1 million here and the $1 million there. My friends, we are talking about heading towards $55 billion, with a B. So when you talk about $1 million here or $2 million there, quite frankly, it's like talking about mice in the basement when there are elephants on the roof.

Unless you tackle the three major spending programs in this province -- and one of them I want to address is social assistance. There in that particular area we're up to about $6.2 billion, and unless and until you can deal with that, there will never, ever be any opportunity to reduce spending or to reduce taxes in the province of Ontario.

I will say that I appreciate the fact that they have attempted to come up with a couple of solutions here and they are now, as we all know, focusing the attention on the Conservative Party, because I think most people in this province realize that in the next election this government will never be elected.

I say to my friend the member for Oxford, who is out looking for another job right now, I assume, because when the two years are up he'll be unemployed, most people realize that this province will be governed by another party and that it will be a case of either the Liberals or the Conservatives. I say to my friends opposite who will be out of jobs, the reason the people of this province are looking to the other two parties is because they need to have solutions.

We began this process going away back, some of the members in our caucus, and said, "We can't have business as usual." We can't continually stand up and say, 'The government's terrible, they aren't doing things right,' without offering solutions.

Going way back a year ago, we introduced our first document, New Directions: A Blueprint for Economic Renewal and Prosperity in Ontario. Eighteen months ago we said, "You have to control spending." In it, we outlined things like what to do with social assistance, investment strategy, our balanced budget provisions. We talked about the moratorium on the labour legislation going way back. We didn't, as often politicians do, talk on one side of the mouth at one time and then in the exact opposite the next day. We put in writing exactly what we stand for and what we believe.

When I look through the Liberal document, or the motion here -- the same thing when it came to education. About six months ago we put out our second document, New Directions: A Blueprint for Learning in Ontario; concrete proposals, not one-line, vague outlines of what you should be doing like were listed here, which if I can find it here, says, "Focus on training and retraining to help people get back to work and make our workforce more attractive to international investors." Well, quite frankly, that could be written by anybody on any side of the political spectrum.

What we did is put together something simple and easy to read, 30 pages, of the things we believe in, going from audits to teacher training to nutrition programs to dropout rates to technology programs, English as a second language, number of school days, discipline in schools, setting standards, core curriculum. All the things that we believed, we outlined in our first documents.

I think at the end of the day people will -- and I know even in caucus there may be some people who don't agree with everything in there when you put this together. Because that's the old political way of doing things. Don't offer solutions; criticize the government and then when you're speaking to whatever group is out there, say, "Yes, we'd help you"; as Mike Harris has called it, attempting to be all things to all people. That may have worked in 1990. It doesn't work today.

So what we did is offer some concrete solutions. I know I won't have time to go through all of them, but what we did is we took a look at some of the areas. We talked about the tax measures. We talked about how really in the province of Ontario we do not right now have a problem with revenue; what we do have is a spending problem.

I want to read a couple of comments that came through from the finance and economic affairs committee pre-budget hearings. There was some moving testimony. I want to read something from Pat Palmer, who is the Ontario Chamber of Commerce president.

Mr Sutherland: A good guy.

Mr Carr: Yes, he is, member for Oxford, a good guy. He said:

"Never in the past half-century have business conditions in Ontario been as bad: record numbers of bankruptcies, chilling numbers of plant closures.

"See our blood. No more taxes. Tax increases will only make the deficit position worse and subsequently put even more pressures on our social programs."

That's why we've been so critical of the Liberal government over that period, because if you look at the statistics, as we did, through the graphs, you will see that the per capita taxes in this province not only doubled over the period that it was in government; it was well over 100%. So quite frankly, when we look at the problems we've got today in terms of the taxes and the spending, we didn't get there overnight. It was part of the legacy going way back.

Had there been new Liberal members elected, one can say, "Well, they weren't a part of it." The reason we are critical of these Liberals is that not only were they here as backbenchers; most of them were around the cabinet table making these decisions. So it's fine to say today, "We're in this crisis. Don't increase taxes; don't increase the deficit," but they don't offer any solutions as to where the cuts can be made.

When I look at our debt over the last little while, we have been consistent. We have said, "You can't continue to run up the spending." We were the first ones in our minority report, for example, to call for a cutback in the civil service back to the 1985 levels. We were prepared to put that in. In point 5 we said, "We need to get back to the 1985 levels in terms of the number of civil servants." No other political party would have the courage in opposition to say that, because you might alienate certain groups. We did it because we believe that if we were in government, that's exactly what we would do. That's why our friends in the Liberal Party are a little upset with us supporting the government, because we have said it is not politics as usual. If they do make the right choices and if they do make some of the right decisions in terms of cutting back the size of the civil service, we will be there to applaud them and to say we can't continue going on.

Some of the other points that were listed -- I think when they get down to the specifics here, the seven-point plan, there really is nothing in there that you can grab and say, "Boy, that's something we hadn't thought of."

"Create an economic climate in which job creation and economic renewal are their number one priority." I've heard this Premier say that's what he's done for the last two and a half years, close to three years. He's the one who's been saying that's been their number one priority. So everyone agrees on that, but we need to be specific.

The Liberal Party had its chance in its pre-budget hearings to do that, and when I look at its recommendations in there, quite frankly, I don't mean to offend any individuals, but it is sad that a political party today would actually put forward these recommendations on pages 5 and 6 as a blueprint for what it would do in government. If I showed that to my 10-year-old kids, they would laugh at me in terms of what the answers or the solutions are. Until they're prepared to make the tough choices, I think they will continue to lose more and more credibility with the public, because in spite of what you might think about some of our ideas, you know very clearly that we are not only prepared to stand up for them; we're prepared to articulate them. We won't change them when there happens to be a by-election, just because politically the winds may change. We have stuck to them, and at the end of the day I think we're going to have the credibility on those issues.

They talk about the tax increases. We're glad they finally got around to our thinking, because quite frankly, the problem we've got right now is if we increase any more taxes, you're going to kill whatever recovery is coming as a result of the tax increases. I say that to the Treasurer. I know he's getting a lot of political heat from the people in the social contract talks. The last thing we need in the province of Ontario is more tax increases, and we will continue to fight them, as we did the Liberals, every step of the way if they increase any taxes, because all you will do is kill this recovery in the province of Ontario.

They do talk about Bill 40, eliminating that. I wish the Liberal Party had stood up during those debates and said: "We're going to do as the Conservatives have done. We will not only repeal Bill 40, but we are going to introduce legislation to bring in the secret ballot for certification, ratification and strike vote." Had we done that, I honestly, truly believe that bill wouldn't have gone through, because the people pushing this, people like the Gord Wilsons and some of the other people who were pushing this, would have said: "Now, let me think. This government isn't going to be elected. The Conservatives are going to come in if they get elected and repeal it and then introduce secret ballot provisions." If the Liberals had said that as well, most of them would have said, "Well, we'll leave it alone, because we can have everything we want in two years, but after two years, what we're going to have is a secret ballot for certifications." I think the OFL would have been the first one to say, "We'll leave it as it is. The certification process would have been better in the past than it will be through secret ballot," because, as you know, a lot of the labour leaders are fearful of the secret ballot provision in the certification process, and had the Liberals stood up and said that they were going to repeal it, I really believe that bill could have been stopped.

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Instead, they didn't, and then when they were pushed and pushed and pushed -- I remember watching Focus Ontario, and as aggressively as only the media could be, finally she said, "We're going to repeal the parts that are killing jobs," the Liberal leader said, after being pushed, pushed.

What does that mean? She wasn't specific. What parts is that? Anybody realizes that, to be more specific, we've said the first piece of legislation, we'll be repealing it, and we're not only going to do that, we're going to introduce secret ballot provisions so that we have democracy back in the union movement here in the province of Ontario. The Liberals attempt, I think, over the last little while, to be all things to all people, and unfortunately they please no one.

I look at the other measures they talk about here, introducing "measures to alleviate youth unemployment to give our 140,000 unemployed young people hope for the future." Well, that's terrific. I'm sure the NDP hopes for that as well. But we need to be specific. We need to have concrete proposals on how that is going to be done.

We've talked about it in our minority report. We've talked about the tax changes. We've talked about the situation with the wealth tax and the corporate minimum tax, saying we would not do it. We talk about freezing spending at the 1992-93 level. We have said very clearly that if we were in government, the spending in the province of Ontario would be frozen at the 1992-93 level. We would introduce a provision which would require a government to balance the budget at least once during the term of office.

We talk about the solutions to some of the problems in terms of saving money. We've said what we would do is introduce the same provisions that Manitoba has done, under which civil servants were given additional days off without pay. In Manitoba, for example, they did it in the summer. Essential services would be exempt, but the Manitoba government has calculated that the program will reduce the salary by about 4%, and a similar program in Ontario would save about $160 million if we did that. That doesn't make a lot of the civil servants happy in the province of Ontario, the hardworking men and women, but we have said: "We are going to be honest with you. If we were in government, this is what we would have to do. You might not like it, but this is what we would do."

The Liberals, of course, won't say that. They won't find $160 million anywhere, other than the member for St Catharines to talk about some advertising that will save $1 million. There's specifically $160 million. By cutting back to the 1985 levels, we wouldn't be talking about millions of dollars; we would be talking about literally billions of dollars.

We talked about what we would do with social assistance in that we talk about the steps to recover, the recovery rate on welfare, abuses in payments. The recovery rate's only 3% versus 10%. We've said we would introduce the home visits, similar programs to what Quebec has done through its Bill 75 where it looked at the people who were on social assistance to see who in fact was abusing the system. And it isn't only us who is saying this, Mr Speaker. As you know, the auditor of this province said that the abuse is probably about 10% in social assistance, and at $6.2 billion, we're looking at well over $600 million that the auditor says is being lost through fraud and abuse within the system.

We talked about the moratorium in non-profit housing. We said that any new non-profit housing that has not already been started we would scrap. If you look at the savings in there, we'll spend $1.2 billion annually subsidizing those things, and quite frankly in this day and age we cannot continue to put up the non-profit housing at two and a half times what the private sector can do.

We talk about some of the other provisions in terms of Bill 40. We talk about what we would do with WCB.

Not all these ideas were thought up by ourselves. What we have talked about doing is looking at other jurisdictions where successful programs have been put in place and taking those ideas and incorporating them.

We also talk about some of the other programs with the employee health payroll tax.

We are pleased that the Liberals are finally focusing on the economy. We don't want to get into a situation of who's to blame for this, we're all in this together, but we need concrete solutions to our problems, and quite frankly I'd be surprised if the government side can't support things that are in here, other than the fact that, as they've done to the Conservatives, they've thrown in the odd cheap shot in there in terms of what they were doing. I guess in this political day and age, when they know that we're going to be the major opposition for forming the government, that's acceptable. But if you put aside the one- and two-line cheap shots, I don't think there's anything in here that the government can disagree with, and one of the reasons they can't disagree with it is that there is nothing specific in here.

If I have criticism of this motion in terms of the Liberals, I say to them, we need to have something more specific. We're in this together, we will cooperate and we will support motions even with the cheap shots that are in there about the Davis years and whatever, going back to Leslie Frost and John Robarts and whoever the Liberals believe created these problems. All I know is, during that period of time we had fewer people on welfare, we had more jobs, and we had an education system and a health care system that was the envy of the entire world.

I wish I could stand up today and say we had that. We do not, but we're not here to blame the Liberals or the NDP for their mismanagement because over the last little while I think if we were to get some concrete proposals and solutions from the Liberals, I think they'd be surprised at how we will support them. I know even in this resolution, even with the cheap shots regarding the Conservative Party and the federal Conservative Party, we still say that there are points in this resolution that we can support. They even go so far as to criticize the federal Conservative Party for its fiscal management and I, for one, believe that the last budget should have been tougher. If I had been the Minister of Finance I'd have been tougher and made some of the changes.

I sit back and reflect on how I got involved in politics. I remember it was in the early 1980s. I was getting in shape for training camp -- I was at that time I guess with Quebec -- and I used to go out for a run down by the lakeshore, right by the Globe and Mail box, and when I would come back I would pick up a Globe and Mail. I remember during that period of time coming back -- and this is how I got into politics -- reading the Globe and Mail as I got home, and I remember interest rates at that time were 21% under the federal Liberal government, under Pierre Trudeau, in the early 1980s. And I had to renew my mortgage, with a young family -- I think only Lindsay was born there -- at 21% because of the mismanagement of the federal Liberal Party.

It got me into politics. I don't know whether to be happy or sad for that on some days. But not only were there 21% mortgage rates, we had a postal strike on -- kind of ironic, similar to this government -- where they wouldn't legislate the postal workers back to work. I remember Trudeau was in Africa worrying about the north-south issues, and I got so angry, so upset, I said, "That's it; I'm going to get involved in the political process." That year I must not have been running too fast, because I got to training camp, was the first one cut, and then got into politics.

I guess justice did come around, although as I was thinking later, this government and this Premier's term of office has almost been like my hockey career was: We're both a bunch of minor leaguers, and when his contract comes up in two years I'm sure it won't be renewed.

So when the Liberals talk about what the federal government is doing and the financial crisis they're under, I remember the spending that created the fiscal mess. If you look at 1984, over that period of time, if you look at the federal government, it was the interest payments that quite frankly created the problems.

What we're saying to this government is: Look at what happened federally. Trudeau's long gone; let's not blame him. He's long gone off the scene. But the same principles of running up the deficits that happened federally, we have to learn from them. That's why, two years ago when you were going to spend your way out of it, we said you can't because it gets gobbled up. Since 1984, on the current account balance, they haven't added one new cent to the deficit, but it is the interest payments alone that are going to gobble us up.

There are some things in here that I think all parties will agree with. I think if you take a look and get rid of the cheap shots that are given to both the other parties, there are some good ideas in here. I hope over the next little while they will be more specific when they have the opportunities, whether it's through the finance committee of the Legislature, to put some programs together, to be more specific about what they would do in government, and don't stand up day after day and say don't raise taxes, don't raise the deficit, but don't cut spending.

Quite frankly, there is a cynicism out there in the public. We all get tarred with the same brush and we have to be prepared to stand up, as we have done, and it's a non-political issue. We were the first ones to say that what was done in the province of Newfoundland under a Liberal government was the correct thing. You've heard our leader, Mike Harris, say when Frank McKenna, another Liberal, has done some good things in New Brunswick; he has stood up and complimented him. So it goes beyond ideology of just Liberal versus Conservative-NDP.

Even today, we said you should do as the Quebec government did yesterday: have the legislation ready in case these talks fail. That was the Liberal government. We're saying, follow that lead.

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So we're attempting to be non-partisan, to look at the issues, because, quite frankly -- and I will close because I think I'm running over my time -- people are not interested in philosophy or in political parties' ideology. They're interested in solutions.

And we want to be a part of that: We're going to applaud you when you do the right things; we're going to be there to stand up as firmly as anybody else when you don't do the right things. But at the end of the day, I honestly, truly believe we can get out of this if there's more cooperation, if there are concrete proposals and if the people who sit on the back benches on all sides will roll up their sleeves and get involved.

So we're not here to say "I told you so" during that period of time over the first two budgets, when we were, in some cases, in our actions very, very critical of you, but we will be there to make sure that some of the things that are done are leading us in the right direction.

If any of the members would like to see some of our ideas -- and I know the Treasurer's probably read through it. The budget's coming down so it is probably already put to bed, but for some of the members who have not had a chance, I think you'll find that the 15 points in there -- you won't agree with all of them, but there are some concrete solutions. We want to be a part of the solution.

I would just close by saying that the resolution has some good points. Let's get away from the cheap shots and let's get this province back, because if we don't, unfortunately, two years from now there'll be nothing left. Over the next little while we have to continue to work hard to make sure that this province leads this entire country in the economic recovery.

Those are my comments for today, and I thank the members for listening to me.

Mr Sutherland: I'm pleased to participate in this opposition day motion. Let me say, reading this motion reminds me of my days at Western on the student council. It must be some of those Liberals from Western who work for the other caucus who wrote this motion that goes all over the place.

I want to say, clear-cut, that I reject the premise of this motion that the opposition has put forward today. They are accusing this government of not being able to manage the situation, that we do not have a plan to deal with the most difficult economic times since the Great Depression.

I want to say today that this government does have a plan. It's a very good plan, it's a very solid plan, and my colleagues on this side who are going to participate in the debate today and myself are going to outline the components of that plan, just highlight a few of the components of that plan.

As I said earlier, we are in the most difficult economic times since the Great Depression, so in order to deal with those difficulties, we have to develop strategies. Our government has developed those strategies, and let me outline some of the main components: first of all, significant job creation through investment in public infrastructure, in our roads, in our water and sewage systems, in telecommunications; upgrading skills of our workforce, both through the Jobs Ontario Training program and through the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board.

I find it very interesting. When you look at the seven recommendations put forward in this opposition day motion, you go to number 4 and the Liberals are asking us to review the very successful Jobs Ontario Training program. You go to number 6 and what do they say to do? Focus on training and retraining. Well, they can't have it both ways. We are focused on training and retraining through that program.

As you remember from the throne speech, we're also going to be coming forward with initiatives to support community economic development.

We also have a very strong goal of preserving and maintaining our public services and of course, in order to do that, managing our finances very effectively. I'd like to elaborate a little more on how we are managing our finances effectively and will continue to do that.

In these difficult economic times, it is important to be investing in jobs, to be investing in our people, those who have lost their jobs as a result of the recession, to be investing in our youth, who are going to be our future, and at the same time, of course, preserving our most important public services. But in order to do this, we must continue to manage our finances and restrain the growth of the debt.

Before explaining our plan in terms of dealing with the finances, I would like to talk a little bit about where this province has been at and how we arrived at the current point.

First of all, as I said earlier, this is the worst recession since the 1930s. We've had large job loss and, may I say, unlike the last recession, far more of this job loss has been permanent. That job loss has been due to restructuring in general, adjustments to free trade and the impact of the free trade agreement; also, we've had to suffer through a very high Canadian dollar, and when we talk about interest rates, in terms of real interest rates, they've been very high and they've had a significant impact.

The result of all that is that unlike many other companies during difficult economic times, when there's less demand for their products and services, there's an increased demand for government services. We've certainly seen that, with the significant increase in the number of people who require social assistance in this province, the number of people who require our other services, whether that be the increased need for training, for other types of adjustments etc.

I think it's also important to point out that there has been a three-year decline in the revenues of this government and of the province of Ontario. That's very important to point out because that is unprecedented. That is unprecedented.

Just to show you the difference, because we've heard a lot from both of the other parties about how well the Tories managed this province for 42 years, how well the Liberals managed it for the five years they were in government, during the last recession the worst year for revenue growth for the province was 1982-83. How much did revenues grow during that year? They grew 8.8%. So during the last recession, during the worst year for revenues for the province, they increased 8.8%. During the Liberals' five-year reign, the lowest revenue increase of any year was 10%. It was 8.8% when the Tories were there; 10% during the Liberals.

It's much easier to manage and deliver services and manage the economy when your revenues are increasing. So when the two opposition parties talk about what they did when they were in power, we need to understand that that situation is dramatically different from the situation this government had to face when it came into power. It's like comparing apples and oranges.

So what was the situation in 1990 when we came into government? We were entering into a period of high unemployment, slow economic growth and an unprecedented three-year decline in revenues, combined with the accumulated impact of reductions in federal transfer payments and, quite frankly, a system of public services that could only be funded and sustained if the rapid economic growth of the late 1980s continued at its high rate. Of course, we know that economic growth did not continue and the revenues weren't generated as people were out of work, they lost their jobs: retail sales tax down, personal income tax down, corporate tax down significantly.

Based on all that, it is our government which is having to manage through the most difficult period since the 1930s, and it is our government that is managing effectively.

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I checked and it seems that there is no quorum here. I'm surprised that the government can't keep a quorum in this House.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Would you please check if there is quorum.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Speaker ordered the bells rung.

The Deputy Speaker: A quorum is now present. The member for Oxford.

Mr Sutherland: As I was saying, we've had to make the tough financial decisions. The 42 years of Conservative government, the five years of Liberal government, did not have to deal with the situation we have today which is forcing us to make tough decisions, tough financial decisions that, as I said earlier, need to be done in order for us to continue to invest in jobs, in people and in our public services and in our public infrastructure.

Our government has been and is taking a balanced approach to control the deficit because, quite frankly, as I think the Finance minister has outlined, we do not want interest payments to become the largest single program the government is providing. Interest payments do not help people specifically.

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How are we doing that? First of all, we've implemented an expenditure control plan of $4 billion. Now, in the resolution and in the seven points, it talks about the government getting its financial house in order through reorganization and restructuring, elimination of waste. Of that expenditure control plan, the largest component, $720 million, is internal savings, and that is coming through administrative streamlining, delayering. For example, the Ministry of Community and Social Services had area offices and regional offices. The regional offices are being eliminated as part of the delayering and destreaming process. We also have savings from the integration of the ministries, and of course some of the other things we're doing to control expenditures, the very successful job we did last year with health care in terms of, after 10 years of 10% increases, keeping that expenditure increase to 1%, with minimal job loss.

The other component of that, of course, is the social contract, in which we're going to have set a goal at $2 billion. Unlike some of the opposition parties, we're going to do that through negotiating with our employees, because we believe the very hardworking, dedicated people who deliver our public services understand the problem and are willing to help with the solution and also have many, many good ideas as to how we can reach that $2-billion target.

We believe in partnership and negotiation with those folks.

The third component of the balanced approach is taxes. The Finance minister has indicated that there would be tax increases.

The opposition would like to kid the public that we could have no tax increases. I know personally I would prefer that there weren't any tax increases either, but I don't think we would be realistic with the people of Ontario if we said that and if we did that.

We understand, if we go back and look at the federal situation during the early 1980s and what the federal government did there, there were substantial increases in spending but there weren't the revenue increases to support that. You can do deficit financing, and we're going to continue to do some deficit financing, but you've also got to be able to increase your revenues so that the debt doesn't get too far ahead of you. That's why there are going to have to be tax increases as well.

Look at the motion the Liberals have put forward. They have said in question period that they don't like our expenditure control plan, and they say in here that they don't want any taxes. So I guess what they want is for the deficit to run out of control. That is what they're promoting, like their federal counterparts did in the early 1980s.

Of course, if we didn't do that and the deficit ran out of control -- no tax increases -- there'd be even more substantial reduction in essential public services. We're going to ensure that, through these tax increases, they're done in a fair manner.

So through the expenditure control plan, the social contract and tax increases, this adds up to a balanced package of solutions to reduce our deficit and to continue to allow us to invest in jobs through Jobs Ontario Capital, in people through our Jobs Ontario Training and OTAB programs and also through the Jobs Ontario Youth, and set a path for regaining prosperity in this province.

We have a very comprehensive plan, and I look forward to my colleagues outlining more details of that plan.

Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): I'm glad to be up on my feet today and I'm very glad to see the Treasurer here. I hope he had a very good trip to New Liskeard last week. As people realize, we gave him a very warm welcome and a very enthusiastic welcome, all 4,000 people voicing their concerns over the sort of slash-and-burn policy that this government has embarked upon.

I'm glad he's here, but I want to turn my guns, I'm afraid, to the only two Conservatives who are here right now, because day after day the Tories are talking about Liberal budgets and comparing their 42-year reign in Ontario and how fiscally responsible they were. If you look at the last five years of Tory reign in Ontario, and you take the five years of Liberal governments and you take a couple of years of the NDP budgets, and we've got one to come next week, the record, and I'm going to talk to the facts, speaks very differently from what the Conservatives have been saying.

In the Conservative budgets from 1981-85 -- this is at a time when unemployment was at 8.7% and jobs were being created at about 64,000 a year; the real growth in the economy at that time was 3.5% -- what's interesting is that the deficits that the Conservatives were creating in their budgets, on an average, over those years were $2.7 billion a budget. That's what the Tories were doing.

What was it when the Liberals were bringing forward these budgets that the Tories say, and sometimes the government party says, were very big? They averaged $1.9 billion. These figures, of course, are rather new and strange to the people of Ontario as of late, because of course we're now used to budget deficits as large as $11.5 billion. In fact, that's the average of the first two NDP budgets that we've seen. We don't know what we're going to see next week, but we're going to see another big figure nowhere near $1.9 billion.

What was the per cent of growth in spending at that time? The Tories were spending at 11.3% per year. We brought it down a bit; we were 9.9%. So we were pretty high. This government here, the NDP, is 7.8%. I think the real story, though, is the cost of this debt, and of course that's what this government wants to talk about: how much it costs to service the debt of this province. Basically, when the Tories were doing that, the average per cent growth in the debt was 11% a year. When we, the so-called big spend government, the Liberal government, was there for five years, it was only 5%. Of course, this government, the NDP government, in two years has now increased that to 24%. So if you look at the facts, these attacks are absolutely wrong. They're off base. They're not on target. I think that's important.

In the few minutes that I have remaining, I have to turn my guns on to what is happening over here in the Ontario government today, because town after town, community after community in Ontario is starting to feel the damage caused by the slash-and-burn policy of the NDP government.

The Treasurer is here, and I wish we had a shaman here who would relieve him of this virus that has struck him, this virus that he's got to cut this deficit. I think it's the W5 virus, is what it is. They must be hooked up to their VCRs, looking at this New Zealand bankruptcy story, and it's just hooked into them like a virus, and it's tenacious and it's not letting go. I think Mr Rae looks at this every day; I think Floyd Laughren, the Treasurer, must look at this every day, and they're getting hooked. They're just so afraid that they're going to be tagged as the government that brought Ontario down and smashed the Ontario economy.

So what are they going to do? They're taking a page from the Tories and they're going to slash and burn right across this province; association, municipality, institutions, it doesn't matter. What's a shame is that what they don't realize, and I wish they would, that it's not just your problem. We all helped to create this problem. It was part of the Liberal government's problem, part of the Tory government's problem, so why don't we all work together on this?

You don't have to fix it in six months. We could take some time and we could all work together, because it took 127 years to get here, to create this mess, all of us doing it. It's not just your fault. So why don't we all work together to alleviate this mess? Let's work together and take a few years and do it and not cause so much pain to all the women and children and men across Ontario. That's what we need to do. Why don't we start having a social contract with the people of Ontario and not just the people who work directly for the government?

As I've mentioned many times in this House since April 23, which was called Black Friday in New Liskeard and Haileybury, in the Timiskaming district, this government, besides stopping the relocation of 200 Ministry of Natural Resources jobs that were really going to be the underpinning of the economy of south Timiskaming, also announced that it would close an institution that's been in existence in the town of New Liskeard for 70 years, the New Liskeard College of Agricultural Technology, an institution that is on the forefront of northern research and development for agriculture in northern Ontario. The institution has really been the frontier of the Ontario government for 70 years in blazing the trail to increase the productivity of northern agriculture.

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Without very much thought, and from what I've heard, with only about 48 hours before the announcement, this government decided to close that institution. That was a bad decision and it's a decision that still today I do not accept. I've told the Treasurer today, as I've told him every day since he made that announcement on April 23, I will fight to the end to save that institution.

I'm glad the Treasurer, when he comes up, is going to listen to the community coalition group that wants to make a presentation to bring some proposals forth to the Treasurer to say how we can save this institution. I think it can be saved and I think we can do better. I think we can spend less. I think we can make it more cost-effective.

I'm sympathetic to your problem. I think we can bring in more revenues. I think maybe the vet lab up there which we need -- we can make a profit centre for this government.

Let's talk about it. Let's give us a chance. Let's work together, and don't slash and burn right across Ontario. Yes, we've got a problem and we can work together on it. It's not just your problem so don't try to take all the blame for it. We'll work together on it and we'll do it together. That's what we have to do.

That's my plea today. Let's start to manage, let's start to talk, let's start to consult and let's start to work together as representatives of our constituents and not just adopt the party line. You all have responsibility over there for your constituencies and you should be representing those. You should be standing up, regardless of if you're a cabinet minister or a backbencher, and defending your constituents against this onslaught.

It's not right and I'm sure deep down in your hearts -- because I was one of you at one time, as you know -- you know it's not right, what's happening. You know it's not right and it shouldn't be happening. I ask you to start working together with all three parties and the people of Ontario to make this happen in a much more sane way so we're not slashing and burning and destroying these jobs at a time when the economy is so fragile in Ontario. We need these jobs. We need government support right now. The last thing we need is the government of Ontario to abandon the people of Ontario.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): I'm very pleased to join this debate today. I must admit that I just about had to fight to get some time to speak to this.

Clearly, we recognize there is a problem in this province. We have 550,000 people out of work. We have 214,000 people who have joined the unemployment lines since the NDP formed the government. It's a very serious situation and nobody in this House would underestimate it.

If the NDP government had listened to our advice, it wouldn't be in the situation it's in today, but I'm particularly interested in the wording of this motion brought today by the Liberals. The Liberals talk about the fact that the government is ignoring their request for fiscal restraint. Mr Speaker, you know the truth of the matter: The Liberals have not asked for any fiscal restraint, except for the last two months, simply because they don't know what direction they're going in. It's the old story: People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. That adage should be remembered by a party that had the most profligate government North America has seen in many decades.

Let's just examine the record. When the PCs left office, a serious recession was just behind us and the provincial debt had climbed to $30 billion -- $30 billion since Confederation. I'm not proud of that, but I do put it in context: $30 billion since Confederation.

However, what did the Liberals do? In a time when this economy was so overheated that it was recognized as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world -- certainly not because of anything the Liberals had done. But in that time of record receipts of tax revenues, when nobody could have ever dreamed that taxes and revenue from taxes would climb so much -- at the same time, this government added $10 billion to the debt.

Now, anybody who follows economics would say that this was a bad idea: adding to the debt at a time of record revenues. The Liberals should have been paying off the debt, but they did nothing. They increased taxes 33 times and added $10 billion to the debt. That's absolutely unacceptable.

Let's examine how the Liberals did it, and let's just look at the five-year average increase in expenditures of governments. The Liberals have talked about numbers, but unfortunately they forgot to talk about inflationadjusted numbers. During the five years that the Liberals were in power, after you inflation-adjust the increases, we get to a number of 5.04% year-over-year increase above inflation, whereas when we look at the last five years that the PCs were in office, inflation-adjusted again, we have 3.8%. These numbers are absolutely irrefutable. They are the facts. In other words, the Liberals were significantly worse than the Conservatives -- significantly.

Now, the NDP, in its inimitable way --

The Deputy Speaker: On a point of order, the member for Scarborough North.

Mr Curling: On checking, Mr Speaker, I see no quorum in the House.

The Deputy Speaker: Is there a quorum in the House?

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is now present, Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker: A quorum is now present.

Mr Turnbull: It's interesting that the Liberals, on their own opposition day, cannot even keep more than two people in the House. They're taking away their own time from the motion, but I guess they haven't figured that one out yet.

However, what did the NDP do with the increase year over year of expenditures? Inflation-adjusted, they spent 5.55%. So let's just recap those numbers. The PCs increased spending in this province, inflation-adjusted, by 3.8%, the Liberals increased spending by 5.04% and the NDP increased spending year over year 5.5%. In other words, the Liberals and the NDP were just about as bad as each other.

Let's just turn now to some of the wasteful programs that the Liberals suggest we should cut. They don't have any. They came forward with the recommendation in this motion that the government, and I'd like to just read a part of the motion, "Create an economic climate in which job creation and economic renewal are their number one priority." Well, that's motherhood and apple pie. I don't see any recommendations of any substance here, much in the same way as the Liberals did not have any substantial recommendations in the pre-budget consultations. We have a page -- one page -- of pre-budget recommendations, and we have a whole book from the PCs. I'll get to that in a moment.

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There's no doubt about it; we need to cut wasteful programs. We need to cut wasteful programs where they are not serving the purpose that they were intended for or if they can be delivered in a more efficient way.

The Liberals would have you believe that they brought in balanced budgets. Let's just talk about --

Interjections.

Mr Turnbull: I've got the bears a little stirred up. There was one balanced budget that the Liberals brought in. Now, the interesting thing was, when we turn back to the budget documents of the year that they brought in a balanced budget, which was 1989-90, they forecast a deficit of $577 million. Through an amazing stroke of luck, the federal government transferred to them $880 million more than they had anticipated. Do you know what, Mr Speaker? It managed to give them a $90-million surplus.

Now, wait a minute; there's something wrong with these numbers. They don't add up. They were going to have a $577-million deficit. They got from the federal government $880 million more than was anticipated, and they ended up with a surplus of $90 million. In other words, if they had not received this windfall payment from the federal government, they would have had a larger deficit that year than even they had anticipated.

Now, you will recall that the following year they told us, in that election year, that they were going to come in with a surplus. Do you remember that surplus, Mr Speaker? I know you do, because you were out on the hustings that year. That was the year they told us we'd have a surplus.

Then the NDP came in and my friend Floyd across there got the keys to the treasury. He had a look, and the cupboard was bare. First of all, there was going to be, he thought, maybe a $700-million deficit. Then he checked again; it was a $1.2-billion deficit. Then, when he really did all of the fine, detailed numbers, it was a $3-billion deficit.

It's amazing that we have a party bringing forward a motion critical of other parties who just don't know how to do their math. The Liberal Party brought in 33 tax increases. They had windfall amounts of revenue. They added a $10-billion deficit to the economy at the time that we had an overheated economy, and they told us that they could balance the budget. The only year they managed to balance the budget was when the feds bailed them out by Serendip.

But don't take my word for it. I'd like to read to you what the press said about it, and I'll quote from the Financial Times of May 29, 1989: "When Treasurer Bob Nixon tabled his recent budget, business groups denounced the Peterson budget in terms normally reserved for the socialistic hordes of the New Democratic Party."

John Bulloch, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, blasted the Peterson regime as the most anti-business government he had dealt with in 20 years. "Peterson may dismiss business discontent over any of these issues as unwarranted, but the cumulative impression is that of an anti-business agenda."

Then let's see what the Toronto Sun had to say on April 21, 1988:

"Parsimonious old farmer, my foot. Treasurer Bob Nixon yesterday plowed taxpayers into the ground and then stuck it to them with a gilt-edged pitchfork. But this budget also employs the oldest political trick in the book. It sticks it to the taxpayer in the first year of a majority government in the belief that the public has a short memory. A year ago, when the Liberals had only 51 seats and a minority government, Nixon said in his pre-election budget that fiscal responsibility meant no new taxes. Yesterday, with the economy still strong and the social needs precisely the same, Nixon, arguing fiscal responsibility, demanded the biggest tax grab in Ontario history."

Because time is running out, I can't read all of the press clippings. But I want to say that the recommendations that the Liberals have made to the government in terms of getting its own house in order are flimsy. They came forward in the pre-budget consultations with one sheet of paper. There are five recommendations on it, and there's an awful lot of white space on it. I'll read a couple of these recommendations:

"2. A budget with real fiscal restraint: We will be supportive of a budget that provides a plan for significant spending restraint. However, we will evaluate the spending restraints on the basis of (a) fairness, (b) sensitive planning, and (c) use of creative solutions."

Let me read number 4:

"Restoring public confidence: The budget should contain the proper signals and a plan to build public confidence."

That is the most flimsy document I've ever seen in my life.

This is our pre-budget document. In it, we have 15 very, very detailed recommendations. Not only does it take three pages of tightly typed text to put them out, but we go on to have a whole book laying out further details of it. Anybody who wishes to get a copy of the Liberal pre-budget document and the Conservative one should phone my office and I would be very happy for them to get a copy, I will send it to them, and they can be the judges. They can phone my office, 445-4040, and I will send it out, and I would like to hear back from the people who are listening to this debate or read the debate what they think of the lack of Liberal suggestions. There's no substance whatsoever.

In addition, we have put forward two documents recommending what the government should do and we have urged the government to follow those suggestions. In fairness, the Premier has recognized the fact that the Conservative Party, even though he does not agree with the recommendations it is putting forward, at least is making recommendations. We are not making empty noises, suggesting one day that you should spend and the next day that you should save money. That is the basic problem with the Liberal Party. They don't know what direction they're going in.

In conclusion, I just want to say it is quite clear that the government has lost its way but we do believe that if it were to follow the detailed recommendations that the PC Party has put forward it can start getting back on to the rails. That being the case, we will always support them.

We don't agree with some of the things the government is doing, but we are always prepared to offer constructive recommendations, and we will continue to do so, because that is the politics of today, not the old politics of Liberals who only understand opposing.

I will in fact be voting in favour of the Liberal motion because I do believe that the government should get its fiscal house in order. But I do repeat that the Liberal Party should remember the old axiom: Those people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Mr Mike Farnan (Cambridge): I want to focus in on the very simple wording of the motion, and the motion calls for the government to take a commonsense approach to managing the economy.

The people who are viewing this debate must see through the partisan claptrap of the opposition parties, and I want to put this in a very simple context, common sense. When you are running the budget of your family, you have to plan and the plan is very simple. You have to plan financially for the basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. Prudent planning will include putting money aside for children's education and indeed perhaps even for an emergency fund.

Families who get into trouble fiscally, it usually results -- and I say directly to the people of Ontario who are watching this debate -- from overextending the ability of the family to pay for those things that it is in fact purchasing. If indeed the family overextends its lifestyle by expensive purchase, this is indeed very dangerous because if it is hit by difficulties, if there is a decline in revenue in the household, if there is unemployment, that family will suffer economic hardship, will have an inability to pay and will find itself in a real crisis.

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The family of Ontario is no different. We are a family which is in a situation because basically over the years our family has not planned well. Over successive Conservative and Liberal administrations, our province has been overextended. During a time of plenty, during a time when revenues were at a high, when the economy was booming -- and I say this to both administrations, both Conservative and Liberal -- there was a consistent policy: spend, add more new programs, lead the good life, live now, pay later. That's okay as long as the money is coming in. Hey, have a good time, have the expensive holidays, have the luxuries, but be aware that the day of reckoning will come.

Always, new programs were added. Conservative administrations added program after program; Liberal administrations added program after program --

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): You asked for them.

Mr Farnan: -- not concerned about the overextension of the family resources, not concerned about that, they simply continued to add programs, never taking programs off the table. No programs were scrutinized for efficiency, no programs were scrutinized in terms of real need and programs were not scrutinized in terms of cost-effectiveness.

Now, the member says, "But you, as an opposition party, asked for programs," and it is true, we did. But the people of Ontario know how to run a family budget and they know that previous Liberal and Conservative administrations continued to add these programs. And they may indeed say, "When New Democrats were asking for those programs, they may not have been too wise." Indeed, I asked the Treasurer only a couple of weeks back if he could tell me how much in new spending the Conservatives and Liberals asked for in the last 12 months, and he said it would be in the billions of dollars.

This cannot go on. This is a relatively young government, a government of a mere two and a half years. I heard the Conservatives talking about "since Confederation." Well, you guys didn't learn in over 100 years. We're here for two and a half years and we are giving you the substantive direction, the sound economic direction, of how to guide the family's resources. We are saying to you, we are saying to the Conservative Party and we're saying to the Liberal Party, and we're going beyond you to the people of Ontario, to the people of this province, and we are saying to the people of Ontario: "No more. We cannot overextend the debt of this province. We cannot overextend the ability to pay of this province."

We need to say that because I don't get phone calls from constituents saying, "Mike, I can't sleep tonight because of the provincial deficit." They don't phone me up with that, but they do phone me up with concerns about individual programs; how true. But you know, when that same individual looks at his bank account or looks at his Chargex bill and finds that suddenly the family is in financial crisis, a state of panic sets in, and what do they do? They sit down as a family and all of the family together tighten their belts -- not one member of the family. They sit around the kitchen table, they take out their pencil and their paper and they say, "Okay, guys, how can we cooperate together as a family in order to address this particular need?" And the success of that kitchen table conference is the ability of the family to come together and that they all share in the solution of coming up with positive, constructive solutions, so that the family's financial situation can be put back in order.

I am so proud of this Treasurer, so proud of this government, that a young government can come to power and say, "Hey." Since Confederation, the Conservatives never got the message; since Confederation, the Liberals never got the message. We in our first term of office are able to go to the people of Ontario and say: "You know, you can't live like that. You have to order your finances. You have to get your finances in order, and that means sacrifice." But we also say to the people of Ontario: "We are a family and we must all work together. The public sector, the private sector, business, labour, government itself, we must all work together constructively."

I have the confidence in my Treasurer and in this government that we will be addressing these efforts of fiscal restraint in a fair manner and a just manner. We will be working to protect jobs. We will be working to ensure that services are maintained. We will be doing our very best to ensure that this is done as fairly and equitably and with as great a degree of justice as possible, but do it we will, because we are saying to the people of Ontario:

"Whatever happened with the Liberals, whatever happened with the Conservatives, we are determined to get the books in order. We are determined to put Ontario back into a sound fiscal, responsible position, a position that was allowed to happen because we were overextended, so that when we were hit by the recession we didn't have the resources to pay for all of the programs that the Conservatives and Liberals have layered over and over on top of each other." We are saying, "Now is the time for efficiency. Now is the time to examine programs for real need. Now is the time for cost-effectiveness."

This Treasurer and this government have set a course for the people of Ontario, and do you know why the people of Ontario are going to support the course of this government? Because it makes good common sense. They will see that what we are doing is exactly what they do when they sit around the kitchen table and say, "Hey, we've got a problem; we've got to do something about it." Well, we have a problem in the province of Ontario. This Treasurer, this government, we're going to do something about it on behalf of the people.

Mr Joseph Cordiano (Lawrence): I'm very happy to stand up and speak on this debate, extremely happy, and I'm even more happy that the Treasurer is here today to listen to some of this -- pardon me, the Minister of Finance.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Walkerville): If you're happy, we're happy.

Mr Cordiano: Well, it's a happy day indeed. I must say, all of us being happy today, let's get right into this debate, which I think is one of the more significant debates that we will have in this Legislature because it enumerates entirely what is wrong with the government's prescription for dealing with the economy. It is entirely a very factual enumeration of what is wrong, it's very detailed, and furthermore, it also lists what can be done to improve the situation. So it's not just the usual diatribe that we hear from the third party about how it's going to hack, slash and literally destroy just about everything in sight, because I've got to tell you, Mr Speaker, Mike Harris's prescription for how to cure our ills -- members will forgive me for this -- is a simpleton's prescription.

Mr Stockwell: A what?

Mr Cordiano: A simpleton's prescription. It is very simple-minded in its approach. It fails to realize that there are very complex issues that we are dealing with. Yet this third party and Mike Harris would like people to believe that the world is easily fixable, just like a mechanic would tinker with your car and give you a tuneup. He thinks he's dealing with a clunker from back in the 1970s --

Mr Stockwell: We are at the kitchen table and now we are in the car. Can we talk about the economy?

Mr Cordiano: They are cars that still have carburetors and are not fuel-injected as they are today. But we're talking about an economy that needs a technician, that needs up-to-date information, up-to-date views on how to deal with very difficult circumstances.

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Of course, we can forget about this administration having any idea as to how to approach that, with all due respect to my friend the Finance minister, who's sitting in the House. I know he makes every effort. Of course, his colleagues don't always agree with some of the prescriptions that have been put forward. I know privately that he's making every effort these days, but it's an uphill battle and it's still nowhere near what needs to be done, nowhere near.

I might add that the social contract talks attempt to obfuscate what the reality is out there, attempt to obfuscate the real facts of the situation. The fact is that you need to deal with matters in a straightforward way, you need to come clean with people in this province, and this is something that has been said to the administration over the last number of years.

You have been running huge deficits, wildly out-of-control spending. You tried to spend us out of this recession in the first few years and realized that you would go bankrupt trying to succeed. Having realized that now, the government comes back and says, "We need to do something drastic." Well, lo and behold, that's precisely the wrong thing at this time when we're coming out of a recession, in some form of recovery, and this government's going to attempt to shell-shock everybody into submission with whatever it's putting forward these days.

A $17-billion deficit scare is the big stick they're attempting to use, and that's fine if that were the real situation. We don't believe that's the case. We believe that in fact the deficit has been overstated. That $17-billion deficit figure is probably $2 billion or $3 billion or $4 billion higher than we think even this government could manage to make it, that in fact when it gets its budget straightened out and brings about these cuts it's talked about, it'll bring in a budget deficit that's under $10 billion. And we believe that is possible and achievable, given that they've set such high expectations for everybody. Now they're going to come in with a deficit that's under $10 billion and they're going to say: "Aren't we wonderful? We brought our house under control."

Well, far from it, because in fact the economy is stalled, and if we do see some numbers that are improving, they're generally anaemic at best. In fact, this economy doesn't really have much going for it in Ontario, and this government isn't doing much to encourage additional investment so that we get real job creation.

But turning back to my friends in the third party, they would have people believe that, over the years when they were in government, managed the affairs of this province in a way which they feel has been better than anybody else. I say that's just silly, that's obviously silly. We know that the previous administration under the third party, the Conservative government that was in office when we defeated it in 1985, had run its course. And boy, what a run they had, at 42 years in power. They were largely a bunch that was anaemic in terms of their views, their new ideas. They had grown stale, they had grown stagnant. There was just deep inertia all around. Quite frankly, that administration was dead and was looking to revitalize itself with a leadership review back in 1985, but failed miserably.

What was the legacy of 42 years of Conservative rule? The average budget deficit was well over $2 billion a year for the last five years of their administration. When we took office, their budget deficit was somewhere in the neighbourhood of $3 billion. I know Mike Harris likes to stand up and say, "We had a lower deficit figure." Well, if you take the deficit figure of that time and apply it against revenues, it was a huge amount, in the order of 13%, 14% of revenues. That was a huge amount of money.

Coming into office, the Liberal administration in 1985, a recovery had been under way. There's no doubt that between the years 1985 and 1990 we had the best economic times. But I say this: The Liberal administration of the time believed in a pay-as-you-go fiscal policy, so that for everything we spent we brought in revenues to pay for it.

I've got to say to my friends in the third party, the surplus that was accumulated, there were funds there to pay down the accumulated deficit by about $435 million in the year we did that. I say to my friends in the third party, that is a far better cry in terms of deficit control than they could ever boast.

We're getting into a war about who did what around this place, because Mike Harris insists on dealing with matters in a simple-like fashion, which is the only way he can understand these matters.

Mr Stockwell: I was going to speak just briefly on the motion, but that last speech certainly leaves you without breath when a member can accuse a leader of being simple-minded and simple when it comes to economic policies. I don't think that's a reasonable way to debate today, and I also don't think his issues --

Mr Cordiano: On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr Stockwell: Will you stop the clock, Mr Speaker?

Mr Cordiano: I think the record will show that I said that the leader of the third party had simple-minded views --

The Deputy Speaker: This is not a point of order.

Mr Cordiano: -- rather than that he was simple-minded.

The Deputy Speaker: This is not a point of order.

Mr Stockwell: Well, okay. If that's a clarification, then it was clearly lost. I don't understand the difference, but let's leave it at that.

Firstly, I just want to deal with the balanced budget approach that was taken by the previous administration. Look, I am not going to sit here and debate this document that the Conservatives, during 1980 to 1985, were fiscally responsible. I don't particularly think they were. I don't particularly think they had cornered the market on fiscal responsibility. A $15-billion budget with a $2-billion deficit is not what I consider to be a fiscally responsible administration, and I don't think anyone would argue that on this side of the House on behalf of this party.

I think they had lost touch with the people, they had lost touch with the community, and maybe at that point in time they deserved to lose the election. Of course, we all know that when the voters speak, the electorate is never wrong, and we lost power because of that.

The member who spoke previously, speaking about a balanced budget and "We taxed properly" -- that's just not true. In the five years they were in power, from 1985 to 1990, they acquired $10 billion of new debt. It's not a debate --

Mr Mahoney: Nine.

Mr Stockwell: Nine billion. It's not a debate, it's a factual matter, and the question is put --

Mr Mahoney: Ten to your 30.

Mr Stockwell: Ten to our 30, and we were in power some 42 years. If the member had been listening, I was just saying that I'm not defending the Conservative administration from 1980 to 1985, as I would not expect you to defend the Liberal administration from 1985 to 1990. Clearly, the people didn't think you were doing a very good job and they voted you out. If they had wanted you to stay and had wanted you to continue with that kind of administration, they would have voted you back into power. It didn't happen.

I don't think the people of this province are very enamoured at this time with this government. I don't think the people believe, according to the last two polls that I saw in St George-St David and Don Mills, that this government is doing such a bang-up job on the finances of this province.

I think we all have a lesson to learn. We all have a lesson to learn in this House, and that lesson is: Simply because you as a party did this some 15 years ago, in some instances, or 13 years ago, and some seven or eight years ago, and even a couple of years ago, it's better that you admit that you made a mistake and maybe mishandled the situation than try to defend the indefensible.

The people of this province weren't happy with 33 tax hikes, and it's probably better that the previous administration come forward and admit it and cleanse themselves. We made a mistake. I think we, from 1980 to 1985, we as an administration, lost contact with the public. We lost their respect. They thought maybe we were somewhat arrogant. We have to accept that fact because the electorate is never wrong.

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As to this government today, of the last two opinion polls and the rolling polls that I think everyone receives from the professionals out there, it's pretty clear that they're not exactly the fair-haired people of the province of Ontario. In fact, I would suggest that if an election were held today, it would be hard-pressed to gain official party status within these four walls.

I think you yourself have probably figured that out, looking at where your new seat is, and maybe a few others have figured that out. Maybe this government has figured it out by doing such an about-face on its fiscal attitude in the last three or four months, finally discovering that this deficit-debt crisis, which it thrust itself into, is a very serious economic concern.

My one point that I'd like to make in the few short minutes that I have to comment, is that I honestly don't believe this government would be making the decisions it's making today if it weren't for the bond-rating companies. I think the bond-rating companies have forced them into these decisions that are very unpleasant, uncharacteristic and not within the policy that this party has lived within.

Mr Mahoney: It's very Tory.

Mr Stockwell: It is rather a Conservative approach. In some instances, we don't believe it goes far enough. In others, we think they could make some adjustments that would make it better.

I say to my friends on this side of the House, I honestly don't think that your particular attitudes towards this administration and your reports that you put out on financing are very fair, concise or reasonable either. I read your minority report on the finance committee, and it is just simply without substance, without foundation. I think you've got to answer to the public about those kinds of reports, because --

Hon Mr Laughren: Simple-minded.

Mr Stockwell: I won't use that word, because I don't believe they are simple-minded. But I think you're going to have to answer to the people, because I don't think the people are going to buy into these hollow promises and these vows that we take every six weeks for every four or five years.

They're not going to buy into the fact that you can solve all the problems with a magic wand. They're not going to buy into the fact that all of a sudden these social democrats have become fiscal conservatives. I don't think, no matter how many new suits you buy, they're going to buy into this conversion.

Mr Mahoney: They're rented.

Mr Stockwell: They may well be rented. They're due back in June 1995, as I understand it.

I think we all need a big dose of reality. If you're going to start talking about the financial mismanagement, we're going to have to talk about the government, we're going to have to talk about the previous administration and we're going to have to talk about our policy initiatives.

I think we've offered some up, maybe not popular but realistic. I would ask the previous administration, the Liberal Party, to come up with a little more concrete attitude when it comes to fiscal conservatives.

Ms Zanana L. Akande (St Andrew-St Patrick): I noted in the member's motion that she was talking about renewal, about renewing the economy, about getting people back to work, and it's within the NDP's plan to get people back to work that I rise to speak to the House this afternoon. It is in fact a very important part of the plan of our particular party and our government.

You know of course that youth represent 18.1% of the Ontario labour force and that youth have borne almost all the significant job loss. It accounts for 85% of the net decline in employment. It's a tragedy. It's a sad situation. But realistically, it is not a situation that is totally the responsibility or the fault of this particular government. It is something which has grown to this extent.

All of us know that we are in a recession. All of us know that in fact our youth will be bearing the brunt of that recession. We know that there are people coming out of universities, people who have to find funds in order to return to university and to college and to high school. We know that some of the graduates are concerned about the kinds of situations that they will be facing summer after summer, and in the longer term, year after year.

Because we know that the preparation of these people and the opportunities for youth is a significant part of what must be done in our renewal, in our development of this economy, of our management, of our putting Ontarians back to work, we have put significant funds, additional funds, into what already went to youth employment summer programs.

Last summer, we put an additional $21 million to create 9,551 job placements, and it is significant to mention that's 1,051 more than were actually targeted, and how we did that is an important message. We did that through cooperation with the employers. We did that through cooperation with small business. Many of the small businesses told us that without that money, without that support, they would have been unable to employ any youth and they would have been unable to extend and develop their businesses. We did that through the support of community agencies that worked as job brokers and assisted us in finding employers who were happy, who were willing and who wanted and needed the employment of these youths.

Let me tell you that many of these youths continue to be employed today. In one agency, in fact, 60 of the 300 youths who achieved summer employment were maintained in those positions and still continue to work for those employers.

Let me tell you also that many of the youths have summer employment not only from last year, but they have weekend employment; they are called there on Christmas holidays; they work there during the March break; they work there at peak times for those community employers, because many of the small business employers employ people from the very community in which their business is situated.

It's particularly important to note that the employers feel a responsibility to not only support these youths in providing for them the jobs and giving them the opportunity to work for them; they feel the responsibility to help teach those youths about the jobs and about opportunities that they will have after they graduate. They take an interest in them. They develop a rapport. They develop mentorships.

We have many letters from students who have said to us: "Without this employment, I would not have been able to return to school. But more than that, I have found employment in an industry in which I hope to be involved in the future, and I have found a friend in the employer."

It is a story that is not just about jobs, that is not just about supporting youths while they learn a new trade; it is a story about people accepting responsibility for the development of the youth in this country. That is a story in which this government is proud to be a motivating factor and a part.

We also have letters from the employers who tell us that the calibre of youth they employed was such that they would do it again and again. In fact, they have come back this summer to find youths to be employed.

Last summer, with the additional 9,551 jobs, in total, there were in excess of 26,000 youths employed in that summer. This year, this government has dedicated $25 million to create, in addition to the jobs that are already out there, 10,000 job placements for the unemployed youths. I tell you, Mr Speaker, it is my expectation, in fact I feel very strongly, that I will be able to report to this House that we have employed more than those 10,000 youths.

We will do it as we did it last year. We will ask for the support of the employers. We will ask for the support of the community workers. We will certainly work with those youth employment centres and with the Futures offices, and we will provide jobs in excess of the number 10,000 that we have allocated the money to.

In addition to that, the government has allocated certain moneys that will go to sustaining and developing the Futures offices. It's interesting to me that that's one of the recommendations the member has made in the opposition. We had thought of that, known that it was necessary and decided to do that long before, because we recognize that these offices support youth not only in their summer employment program, but in the programs that they provide for youth all year long.

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It's a significant growth, but one point I must make about the summer programs we provided last year and the ones we are doing this year is that we have done something significantly different, something which the Liberals did not do, something which the Progressive Conservative governments of the past failed to do.

We have in fact implemented the program in ways that ensure that equity will be there, that all youth -- white youth, black youth, youth from all places -- will be employed, that all of them will be employed according to the experience they have, the expertise they have, that all of them will have an opportunity to serve according to their abilities and their gifts.

This is not a quick fix. This is not a Band-Aid program. This is an important part of an extensive, inclusive plan which seeks not only to put youth back to work, but also to address this province as it exists, all of us working well as we can contribute. Equity, Mr Speaker; equity and employment. It's been done by this government.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Further debate? The honourable member for Eglinton.

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): Today I'd like to debunk a few myths that have been out there about this province's fiscal situation and who contributed to it.

The first myth I'd like to talk about is that of restraint. Now, if you listened to the NDP and you listened to the Conservatives, you would think that the Liberals hadn't heard of restraint. They obviously haven't been listening to what we've been saying for years.

In fact, Mr Speaker, I'd like to share with you a quote from the NDP. This was in the spring of 1990. It was the pre-budget consultations. The NDP published a report afterwards, and this is what they had to say about the Liberals and restraint. Remember, this is the NDP talking, a direct quote:

"The Ontario government," that is, the Liberal government, "has reacted to predictions of an economic slowdown by dropping its 'liberal' pretence and showing its true 'conservative' nature. The Liberal government is now spreading the message that 1990 will be a year of financial restraint. The Liberal majority on the finance committee agrees with this conservative philosophy and has recommended a course of restraint.

"The New Democratic Party challenges this defence of the status quo by calling on the government to implement reform policies needed to bring fairness to our society."

The Liberal government, in the spring of 1990, looking at an economic downturn on the horizon, was talking about restraint. We called for it then and we called for it in the spring of 1991, when this Treasurer brought in his first budget. The Treasurer, who is now called the Finance minister, decided that he was going to spend his way out of the recession. If you remember that, that meant a $10-billion deficit which by year-end grew to over $11 billion.

The problem is that they have now seen the light, they've seen the light on the road to Damascus, but some two years too late. By the time they decided that to spend their way out of recession wasn't working, we were in such dire straits that they then panicked and threw the province into chaos with their slash-and-burn polices.

The second myth I'd like to address today, which perhaps the Treasurer would agree with -- the second myth I'd like to debunk -- is the fact that the Conservatives are the party to best dig us out of the fiscal mess.

Hon Mr Laughren: All right.

Ms Poole: I knew the Treasurer would agree with that particular one.

The record shows something very, very different. The record shows that when the Tories were in power, they did not balance the budget. In fact, they ran 15 straight years of deficit the last 15 years the Tories were in power. During their five last years in power, with Harris sitting at the cabinet table, the Tories averaged deficits of $2.1 billion, 33% higher than those of the Liberals. When the Conservatives left the government, they left Ontario with a $30-billion deficit, a $2.6-billion annual operating deficit.

Hon Mr Laughren: Where are the Tories?

Ms Poole: The Tories, who don't appear to be evident right now, they preach fiscal responsibility, they preach fiscal restraint, but the fact of the matter is they certainly didn't practise it when they were in power.

I'd like to read portions of an article by Rory Leishman, the national affairs editor for the London Free Press. He asked the question: Who is the best party to clean up the fiscal mess? He said, "Well, you might think the Conservatives," but then he said, "but not necessarily." I'll quote from his article. He says:

"Fiscal responsibility knows no ideological bounds. It was extravagant spending by the Progressive Conservative government of former Premier Grant Devine that left Saskatchewan with the worst fiscal problem in the country."

Likewise, it was the "conservative National party that drove New Zealand to the brink of bankruptcy, by running up an annual deficit equivalent to 10% of gross domestic product in 1984."

Then he goes on to talk about the Conservative government and how, after nine years in power, it failed to eliminate the debt and the deficit. But in fact, and this is not in the article but it is historic fact, the Conservatives in the federal Parliament, who promised, who went into Parliament, who went into government promising to eliminate the deficit, they doubled the debt in the nine years they've been in power.

Back to Mr Leishman's article. He asked the question: Is there any reason to believe a Conservative government of Ontario, headed by Mike Harris, would do any better? "Not on the basis of Harris's current priorities....Specifically, the Ontario Conservatives' plan calls for a one-percentage-point reduction in the provincial sales tax to 7%; a 10% cut in gasoline and fuel taxes; and phased elimination over two years of the employer health tax for all firms with payrolls of less than $400,000. Once fully adopted, these measures would cost the provincial Treasury more than $1.5 billion a year in lost revenue."

This is an editorial comment from me: This is from a man who has pledged that he is going to eliminate Ontario's deficit within three years if he's elected and, secondly, he's going to do it without raising taxes. So he's already said he's prepared to accept $1.5 billion in lost revenue.

Back to the article. "Is this a sensible proposal at a time when the Rae government is expecting a record $12-billion provincial deficit? Harris professes to think so." Then he describes in his article about how Mike Harris had said that he would take spending back to where it was in 1985.

Hon Mr Laughren: Back to the Stone Age.

Ms Poole: "Back to the Stone Age," has said the Finance minister. This is Mr Leishman's conclusion:

"However beguiling this scenario might be, it's unrealistic. Barring a full-blown credit crisis, there is no way any government could generate political support for the severe cuts that would be needed to reduce provincial spending to the same level as 1985.

"What would Harris do: roll back wages for teachers, hospital workers and other public sector employees to 1985 levels? Good luck to him....This year, the total exceeds $17 billion. How would Harris slash $5 billion to $6 billion in annual health care spending while also fulfilling his promise to preserve a single-tier health care system that provides high quality, comprehensive and universal coverage?"

That's the Tories. As far as the tax fighter, the self-proclaimed tax fighter, who says that he doesn't believe in taxes, Mike Harris was a member of the cabinet. He voted for 16 tax increases from 1981-84, totalling more than $1.8 billion. Is that his fiscal restraint? The Tories are very good at talking about 33 Liberal tax increases over the term of our government. They never once mentioned the fact that there were 27 tax decreases during that same period. They forgot that little piece of math.

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When the Tories are talking about spending, you have to take it tongue in cheek, because, I'll tell you, there was no one on the front lines more than the Tories when we were in government, who were insisting our government wasn't spending enough. They said: "Spend more on health care. Spend more on the environment. Spend more on education. Spend more on social services." And you know what? They said, "Spend more on housing." I read into the record some time ago some quotes from members of the Conservative caucus in the last government when the member for Nipissing, if you can believe this, the leader of the Conservative Party, called for non-profit housing in his riding. We can't count the number of times the member for Mississauga South stood up and asked for more non-profit housing. The member for Markham, the former leader of the Conservative Party, Andy Brandt, they all stood up in this Legislature and asked for more non-profit housing, and then they have the gall to criticize the Liberal and NDP caucuses for supporting non-profit housing during our regimes.

If people say that they're going to believe the Tories when they make these promises of fiscal restraint, restraint in spending, when they're going to control the deficit, they're going to reduce taxes, I'll tell you, they can believe them as much as they believed Mike Harris during the leadership.

At that time, what did Mike Harris say? He said that he would scrap rent controls. He said that he would bring in user fees for health care. He said that he would change seniors' benefits. I ran in the election in 1990. That man was leader of the Conservative Party.

Did he keep one of those promises? Not one of them. In fact they hedged on every single one of them. And when we brought his record up and read from the record on the election trail, they said: "No, no, no. That wasn't what we meant. We didn't mean scrap rent controls. We meant, well, we'd bring in something else. We're not sure what it would be, but we'd bring in something else."

We didn't hear what they were going to do to seniors at that time. We didn't hear what they were going to do to the universality of the health care system, because the Conservatives are very convenient at forgetting their promises.

So when all is said and done, you have to decide who you're going to believe, and I say, be very wary of believing the Conservative Party.

I'd like to close with a quote from the Toronto Sun, and I've got the original here, because my father happens to be a pack-rat and I saw it up at the cottage not very long ago. Thursday, December 26, 1985. Okay? The Liberal government in power. I read this, "Government Hikes Budget 42.1%," and I thought: "My God, that's when we were in government. What did we do?"

I read on: "In a classic case of do as I say, not as I do, Queen's Park will hike its annual legislative budget by 42.1% this year." Then they go on to say: "The 42.1% hike for the Ontario Legislature is the largest percentage increase recorded in Canada." Then it says, "The study says Ontario's 'sizeable increase' is due mainly to the expansion of services to MPPs, including a new office computer system." It goes on to talk about the growth in the government caucus office staff, the opposition staff and how this has been increased.

Mr Speaker, you know the irony? It says, "The measure was pushed through by the Tories with NDP backing over Liberal objections just before the Conservatives fell from power."

That's the truth. When these people and these people accuse the Liberals of increasing the size of government, it wasn't the Liberal caucus that did that; it wasn't the Liberal government. The Liberal government voted against it.

So the moral of this story is, there are myths out there. The people of Ontario should learn for themselves what the truth is, because listening to the Conservatives will not give you the true story.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The honourable member for Nickel Belt.

Hon Mr Laughren: I am pleased to take part in this opposition day debate brought forth by the official opposition. I've been somewhat bemused by some of the arguments that have been brought forth by members opposite, but it is rather refreshing to hear the Liberal official opposition beating up on the third party and vice versa; turning their guns on one another rather than on the government.

I must say that when I looked at the wording of the opposition motion I found it very strange. The Liberals argue early on in their opposition motion that, "Whereas for over two years, the NDP government ignored the Liberal caucus's calls for fiscal restraint." I don't know where that came from, but for the Liberals to accuse anybody of not exercising restraint is really an argument from loony land; it really is.

I keep track in this House of the demands from opposition members to spend more money. The official opposition -- I just made a list of very few here, because I don't want to take up too much time of the House, but I'm glad the leader of the official opposition is in the House, and I welcome her here. She's been calling for more money for municipal employment programs, for training, for long-term job creation; the member for York North has been calling on government spending to stimulate the economy; the member for Halton Centre wants more money for health care and hospitals; the member for York North wants more money for social assistance; the member for Bruce wants more money for municipalities and schools; and the member for Scarborough-Agincourt wants more money on job creation.

Those are all admirable calls. I appreciate that they're all good causes, but where the official opposition loses its credibility is one day it's calling for these expenditure increases and the next day it's tabling a motion telling us that we haven't listened to its calls for fiscal restraint. Could we have just a dash of consistency from the official opposition from time to time? Just a dash; that's all. I really do find it passing strange.

The Liberals say in their motion, too, that the Conservative Party ran deficits for 15 years. Beating up on the Conservatives they are, today. I should remind members in this assembly that when the Liberals governed -- I heard the member for Eglinton talk about how the devil made them do it when they increased government spending, that it wasn't the government that did it. They were the government, but it wasn't them that did it. I don't know how that system works; I guess it really was the devil.

But for the Liberals to talk about anybody running a deficit when they, in the five most prosperous years ever in this province -- when natural increases in revenue were flowing in. There was one year when the Liberals got $1 billion extra from Ottawa that they were not expecting. At the same time, during the five years the Liberals were in office they increased the debt from $30 billion to $40 billion, a 33% increase in prosperous times.

So here we are, trying to deal with the worst recession since the 1930s and, yes, indeed we have run up very substantial deficits, but I can tell you, we didn't do it in the most prosperous times this province has ever seen. That's what the Liberals did. I'm sorry, my friends, you cannot have it both ways; you cannot accuse us we're not exercising fiscal restraint when in the best of all possible times you increased the total debt of this province by 33% in five short years -- at the best of all possible times. So we have increased the deficit substantially in the worst recession since the 1930s. Of course we have. You did it in the best times since the 1930s. There's a big difference, my friends.

I don't really understand why the official opposition thought it could get away with this kind of motion, given its track record when it was in government and, quite frankly, given its track record in opposition. Here you are calling for restraint while day after day after day you're calling on us to spend more money. At least the Conservative Party, the third party, is consistent in what it demands in this assembly. What the Conservatives call on us day after day to do is to cut spending on virtually all programs across government and to legislate reductions in the public sector compensation. There is at least some consistency. I think it's a Neanderthal consistency, but at least it's consistency.

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But the official opposition -- now, I know that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, I've heard that expressed, but at the same time, in the assembly I think that the people in this province are sick and tired of having the Liberals promise one thing one day and demand something else the next day. They're getting tired of it, my friends. You can't continue to get away with it.

The Liberal opposition motion calls on this government --

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. I would ask the Treasurer to please take his seat. Order, please. The honourable member for Nickel Belt has the floor.

Hon Mr Laughren: Mr Speaker, I didn't mean to tease the bears this afternoon. I was going to try and be most restrained, but it doesn't take much to get them going.

The Liberal motion calls upon the government to create an economic climate in which job creation and economic renewal are the number one priority. From the day we formed the government, that's exactly what's been the number one priority of this government, number one, and continues to be.

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): Why are there more people unemployed today than in the history of this province? Why is that? Why are there more people unemployed than ever?

Hon Mr Laughren: For the Liberals not to understand, for the official opposition not to understand that this jurisdiction and others are facing the worst recession since the 1930s -- and I don't know how it is that the Finance critic of the official opposition wouldn't understand what got us into this recession in the first place. It wasn't his government that put us in the recession, it was the federal Tories in Ottawa that put us into this recession, and for the critic of the official opposition not to understand that leads me to suggest to the leader of the official opposition, perhaps you need a new critic for the official opposition.

Ms Poole: We don't need a new critic. You need a new Finance minister.

Hon Mr Laughren: I expected you to call for that. The motion calls on the government to "get its own fiscal house in order through genuine reorganization and restructuring and elimination of waste in order to get the deficit under control." That's exactly what we are doing. I mean, what does the official opposition think that our expenditure reduction program is all about, that the social contract plan is all about and that the budget is going to be all about next Wednesday? That's exactly what it's all about, and I thought the official opposition understood that. That's exactly what we're trying to do.

What I think rots the socks of the official opposition is the fact that we are tackling a problem that they never had the courage to tackle. That's what's really bothering them over there. You knew we were heading for trouble and you did absolutely nothing about it except layer program on program on program for the five years that you were the government. That's the problem, and we, for the first time as a government in this province, are trying to address the problem of the growing deficit and waste and layer upon layer in the public sector.

And we're doing it. It's very tough, but we are very serious about it. I've never known any other government to tackle the problem of the size of the public sector or of expenditures the way this government has done, because we've --

Mr Phillips: Nobody has created a problem like you have.

Mr North: You walked away from it.

Hon Mr Laughren: Yes, the official opposition, after less than three years in power with a majority government, rather than staying and dealing with the problem, you called an election, you ran away from the problem. That's what you did. That's exactly what you did, and the people of this province will not forget that.

To the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, my critic, who I think is a good critic -- and I take back any comment I said about that; it was a certain rhetorical flourish, because I do believe that the member for Scarborough-Agincourt is a thorough and hardworking critic and I didn't mean to malign him personally.

The official opposition motion says that we should refuse to increase taxes in order to protect the fragile economic recovery. Well, if there's one thing the people in this province don't want to hear, it's absolute nonsense like that. They don't want a George Bush, "Read my lips, no new taxes" line. That's not what the people of this province want. I understand that nobody wants new taxes. Nobody wants new taxes; I understand that.

But I also believe that the responsible thing to do in this province now is to have a balanced approach to getting the deficit down, and that balanced approach includes expenditure reductions, and we've tackled it by reducing the expenditure growth by $4 billion this year; we are addressing the problem of compensation in the public sector by putting $2 billion on the social contract table, and we're going to get that $2 billion; and we're going to round off this balanced approach by increasing revenues in the budget that'll come down next Wednesday. That is a responsible and fair approach to dealing with our fiscal problems in this province.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): That's what Robin Hood said too. You should be in Sherwood Forest.

Hon Mr Laughren: Well, that's exactly what we're doing. The Liberal opposition calls on us to focus on training and retraining to help get people back to work. No government has ever spent the money we've spent on retraining and apprenticeship programs, in the middle of the most severe recession. We increased spending on retraining and apprenticeship programs by 24% last year and we had to start almost from scratch, because when the official opposition was in power, they didn't lay the base for a proper training, retraining and apprenticeship program. We've had to do it; that's why.

The final part of the resolution says that we should "introduce measures to alleviate youth unemployment to give our 140,000 unemployed young people hope for the future." Well, we are spending this year about $180,000 on youth employment across various programs and ministries. No government has ever spent more. I think you are simply engaging in hollow rhetoric for the sake of the rhetoric itself, not dealing with the problems in this province.

I recall very clearly that the leader of the official opposition, when she became the leader, said that she was going to be a leader with a difference, that she saw her responsibility as the leader of the official opposition not just to criticize, but to bring forth alternatives. In the document --

Interjections.

Hon Mr Laughren: Mr Speaker, I'll try and --

Interjections.

Hon Mr Laughren: The official opposition, I believe, understands -- I hope they understand -- that a $16-billion or $17-billion deficit is unacceptable. I have never heard them say that it's an acceptable level of deficit. They might quarrel with our numbers and so forth, but I think they believe that's too high a deficit. What I am still waiting to hear from them is how they would address the problem of that $16-billion to $17-billion deficit.

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I know what this motion says. This motion says, first of all, that we can't raise any taxes, but also that we should get our fiscal house in order. Now listen to this. We should get our fiscal house in order "through genuine reorganization and restructuring and elimination of waste in order to get the deficit under control." Do you really think that package in itself -- that's it -- is going to get the fiscal house in order? That is a complete copout on the part of the official opposition.

If you see your role as simply to criticize, that's fair comment. You are Her Majesty's loyal opposition and if you decide that's your role, simply to criticize government, that's fine. I think that's a legitimate role for you to play. But what is not acceptable is for you to stand in your place and say that your role is not simply to criticize, that it's to bring forth viable alternatives, and you don't do it. That's what's not acceptable.

You cannot continue to call for fiscal restraint one day, call for no tax increases the next day, call for more spending the next day, say that you're going to be a leader with a difference and bring forth alternatives, and then bring forth no alternatives except ones that would have no meaningful impact on the deficit whatsoever. I think that's what people in this province will find unacceptable.

I am not saying that this government has got all the answers or found all the solutions to our deficit or our fiscal problems, but what I will say to you is that at least we are tackling them in a forthright manner. We are tackling them in a very serious way. We're not trying to mislead anybody. We've opened the books of the province the way they've never been opened before. We're sitting down with the public sector, management and workers, and saying to them: "These are the books. Let's sit down and see where we can find the $2 billion." To me that's an open and democratic way to address our problems.

We've already taken the $4 billion in expenditure reductions. Those are not pleasant reductions. I was in the riding of Timiskaming last week and got a very strong reception from the people in New Liskeard, but I think the people of New Liskeard understand -- the member for Timiskaming I think has played a positive role in this regard -- that while we've got a major problem out there, we've got to address it, and they agree that we should reduce our expenditures. What they disagree with are the components of the package to reduce expenditures, but nobody is telling me we do not have to address the problem.

While everybody will have their own view of which expenditures should be reduced -- I know sometimes, when it's a bit close to home, it's hard to accept that this particular reduction should take effect -- I can tell you, Mr Speaker, that there were no easy choices in that list of expenditure reductions. The cabinet agonized over every single reduction. You could make a good argument why each one of those reductions should not take place, but you'll end up with a hollow package. You'll end up with no reductions. There are no easy choices if you're going to reduce expenditures.

It's time that the official opposition understood that the salad days of the 1980s are over, and that when they governed, those were indeed salad days. They could afford to layer program on program on program and not worry about the deficit, and increased the deficit by 33% in five short years.

We are working hard to protect services, to protect jobs at the community level. We will continue to do that and we look forward to some alternatives from the leader of the official opposition.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate, the honourable Leader of the Opposition.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I regret that it is now a quarter to 6, because I have been sitting here waiting with so much impatience as the Treasurer repeatedly calls on me in this place, one week before his budget, to provide him with the help that he so desperately needs to bring in the kind of budget that this province is looking for. I am anxious to provide him with the alternatives. In fact, I'm sitting here; I just counted them while the Treasurer was asking me to come forward with alternatives. I've got at least 18 alternatives outlined in my speech that I'm probably not going to get a chance to present, now that it's a quarter to 6 of the hour.

I would invite the Treasurer, if I cannot present all the alternatives today, to read the material that we keep presenting. I invite him to come to Thunder Bay, where I'm going to outline more alternatives, more vision for the future, the direction we believe this province should go. I'll be back on Monday and I'll be presenting our alternatives again, because we would truly like to see this government present the kind of budget this province needs.

We want to present alternatives. We are ready to present alternatives, but we want the alternatives presented in the context of a vision of hope and optimism for the future of this province, the kind of a vision that will both get the deficit under control, but will get people in this province back to work and will provide them with some stability and some hope for growth in the future. I'm more than ready to do that. I only wish there was sufficient time left, after the Treasurer has kept asking me for alternatives, to be able to do it all in my few moments today.

As I came in, the Treasurer was acknowledging that our motion begins with the recognition that the NDP government for the past two and a half years has mismanaged the financial affairs of this province and has completely failed to provide a plan to get our economy going and get people back to work again. People are still waiting for that, and that description is understating the reality of what has happened in this province for the last two years.

The Treasurer has just finished saying that no government has spent more. He meant on training. I think we could extend that to almost every other area and add that no government has spent it less effectively, and that is another of our concerns.

I would like to remind the Treasurer of a basic reality, and that's the reality that this government has managed to take the deficit from zero, which was the deficit figure at budget year-end 1989-90. There is no doubting the accuracy of that statement. That is a statement confirmed by the Provincial Auditor, the Treasurer will note: year-end 1989-90, a budget deficit of zero.

I can tell the Treasurer, this Treasurer may never have this experience -- I know he will never have this experience -- but I would just share with him that when you can bring a balanced budget, you don't need a short-term, crisis, reactive, panic response to the kind of deficit that you've allowed to run up in this province over the last two and a half years.

I say that he has taken the budget deficit from zero in 1989-90 to what he now says is $17 billion. I won't quarrel with him. We don't believe it's $17 billion. We don't think he's done quite that badly. We think it's more like $14 billion. Nevertheless, I won't pick that quarrel with the Treasurer today.

But they've done that in three short years. They have allowed that deficit to grow to be five times larger than it has ever been in the history of this province. That deficit is five times larger than it was when the Tory government left office, five times larger than the $2.6 billion deficit that the Tories left. I recall very well that it took us four years to get the Tory deficit of $2.6 billion down to zero, and I still wonder how long it's going to take us to get the NDP deficit back down to zero again.

It seems to me that the leader of the third party had an answer to that question last week. The leader of the third party said that he would be able to get the NDP deficit, whatever it ends up being, down to zero in three years.

I would say to the leader of the third party, were he here, show us the plan to do that, and I would say to the people of Ontario when they hear the leader of the third party say that: "Look at the Tory record, 15 straight years of a deficit under the Tory leadership in the province of Ontario and a $450-billion debt from a Conservative government in Ottawa. There is the Tory record on fiscal responsibility."

But I think the Treasurer is listening to the leader of the third party, because I heard the Treasurer speak about the record of Liberal spending and that is a line which the Tory leader tends to use rather frequently.

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So let me put some more statistics on the table, factual statistical information, to make the record clear that the record of Liberal spending in the five years of a Liberal government was an average of 9.6%. I contrast that with the Tory spending record over the last five years of a Tory government, which was 11.9%. I ask, who are the big spenders in this province?

Mr Stockwell: It was inflation.

Mr Turnbull: Inflation adjusted; you were a lot higher than we were.

Mrs McLeod: But let me come back to the matter of the government responsible for the government of Ontario right now, the government that so proudly said that it was going to fight the recession and not the deficit. That is one promise this government kept, because it certainly didn't fight the deficit. But I would also ask: How successful were they in fighting the recession?

The Treasurer has just said that economic growth, getting people back to work, has always been the highest priority of this government; that's why it undertook to fight the recession and let our deficit grow to the point where we have to have such chaotic reductions in our spending right now. They fought the deficit with 575,000 people out of work and record bankruptcies and record unemployment and youth unemployment at 19%. I ask you, how successful was their fight against the recession?

We agree that the deficit must come down. We cannot live with a deficit that is going to leave the next government, even if the Treasurer fulfils his most optimistic projections, with a legacy of $86 billion in debt. We cannot live with a debt that is going to take $1 billion more just to pay the interest every year and we can't live with a debt that means that by the time the next government takes office we will be spending more on interest to service the debt than we spend to educate our children. We can't live with that kind of legacy, so we will support the need for restraint and we will offer the alternatives and the vision of hope for the future that this Treasurer has not been able to find.

But I am still going to keep asking, and without apology: Where was Bob Rae; where was Floyd Laughren a year ago when we said that budget was smoke and mirrors? This government was refusing to acknowledge how serious the financial situation of this province was even a year ago, and therefore refused to deal with it and created the chaos we're experiencing today. And I would ask: Where was Bob Rae and where was Floyd Laughren two years ago when they brought in that first budget and where they raised civil service salaries by 14%? And I ask the Treasurer: Surely, Treasurer, this isn't the kind of Keynesian economics that you used to teach.

Surely, Treasurer, both you and the Premier understood even then that you couldn't fight the recession by increasing your operating spending. It just doesn't work that way, Treasurer, and if you had controlled that spending two years ago when you knew we had no money to pay the debts because we were in a recession -- that's why we had no revenues to pay the debts you were running up, Treasurer -- then we would not be facing the need for drastic cuts in spending now.

Now we watch you, with concern and despair, desperately trying to recover what you so freely gave away two years ago, desperately offering crisis solutions to a crisis this government created. Let there be no mistake about that. This government created the crisis we are facing in the province today.

But my great concern is that they continue to say that their strategy is right on track. The Premier says, "We are right on track because we fought the recession when the economy was bad, and now the economy's recovering and we're ready to fight the deficit." But I just don't know where the signs are that the economy's recovering.

We saw 13,000 fewer jobs in the province of Ontario in April than in March. There were 24,000 more people looking for work. Our youth unemployment is still at record highs. That was before the college and university students were even at home looking for the jobs that aren't there.

No one feels that the economy's recovering. The plants are still closing. The businesses are still going bankrupt. People are still moving their businesses to the United States. Where is this recovery track that the Premier says he's on? We can't find that particular track.

Hon Mr Laughren: Where are the alternatives? We are waiting.

Mrs McLeod: The Treasurer's telling me that we don't have the alternatives. Because we are limited in the amount of time we have left in this session, I'm going to deal with one alternative only, and that's the fact that our questions today are serious questions. They're not questions here solely for the purpose of debate.

We have a very real concern that while this government now seems to have understood how desperate our financial situation is, it still has not understood that in addition to getting spending under control, in addition to making the expenditure reductions -- and we understand the necessity of that; we have some other proposals for where he could cut more waste, more money, more programs that are not operating effectively -- there is another part to deficit reduction, a critical part, and that is to provide the basis for this economy to get going again, for people to get back to work.

Treasurer, that's how you begin to really get hold of the deficit: when we can get people off social assistance, off unemployment, back into the workforce because there are jobs for them to go to. And when people can go to those jobs, when people can be in the workforce, not only do we reduce our costs but your treasury will feel the benefit of the increased revenues from economic growth.

What you do not understand, Treasurer, what your government does not understand is that the reason we are not on a recovery track, as the Premier would like to believe, is because of the misguided policies of your government. Until we can make you understand that, we are not going to be able to make you understand the kind of alternatives that the people of this province need and that we keep urging you to adopt.

Treasurer, we need to have your government understand what you are doing to make the economy worse and what you could do to make the economy better. We will tell you over and over again: Change your labour legislation, get back to a balance between labour and management, change your constant use of regulations, and bring in a budget, Treasurer, with no new taxes, because that is the clearest economic signal that you could send to business in this province.

Treasurer, I am not saying, "Read my lips." The people of Ontario do not want to read your lips; they want to read your budget. Bring them in a budget with no new taxes. Give them a signal that you care about business in this province, that you want to open the province for business, that you want people to have jobs so they can get back to work and that this is your real priority and your major way of dealing with the deficit.

I understand that the time is up. I believe our alternatives make sense. We will urge the government to hear them and to act on them, and it is for that reason that we moved this motion today.

The Acting Speaker: Ms McLeod has moved opposition day motion number 2. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion 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.

Call in the members; five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1758 to 1803.

The Acting Speaker: Mrs McLeod has moved opposition day motion number 2. All those in favour of the motion will please rise one at a time.

Ayes

Arnott, Brown, Callahan, Caplan, Chiarelli, Conway, Cordiano, Curling, Daigeler, Eddy, Elston, Fawcett, Grandmaître, Harnick, Henderson, Kwinter, Mahoney, McGuinty, McLeod, Miclash, Morin, Murphy, O'Neil (Quinte), O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau), Offer, Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt), Poirier, Poole, Ramsay, Runciman, Ruprecht, Sterling, Stockwell, Tilson, Turnbull, Villeneuve.

The Acting Speaker: All those opposed to the motion will please rise one at a time.

Nays

Abel, Akande, Boyd, Buchanan, Carter, Charlton, Christopherson, Churley, Cooke, Cooper, Dadamo, Duignan, Farnan, Fletcher, Frankford, Gigantes, Grier, Haeck, Hampton, Hansen, Harrington, Hayes, Hope, Huget, Jamison, Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings), Klopp, Kormos, Lankin, Laughren, Lessard, Malkowski, Mammoliti, Marchese, Martel, Martin, Mathyssen, Mills, Morrow, Murdock (Sudbury), North, O'Connor, Owens, Perruzza, Philip (Etobicoke-Rexdale), Pilkey, Rae, Rizzo, Silipo, Sutherland, Swarbrick, Ward, Waters, Wessenger, White, Wilson (Frontenac-Addington), Wilson (Kingston and The Islands), Winninger, Wiseman, Wood, Ziemba.

Clerk of the House (Mr Claude L. DesRosiers): The ayes are 36, the nays 61.

The Acting Speaker: I declare the motion lost.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Mr Speaker, on a point of order: Since this is the most cabinet ministers we've seen in this place for a week and since the Premier is here, can we have unanimous consent to have question period?

The Acting Speaker: That is not a point of order. Is there unanimous consent? No.

Pursuant to standing order 34, the question that this House do now adjourn is deemed to have been made. The member for York Mills has given notice of dissatisfaction with the answer --

Mr Elston: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Business of the week must come first.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable House leader.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): Pursuant to standing order 55, I would like to indicate the business of the House for the coming week.

On Monday, May 17, we will give second reading consideration to the Ryerson Polytechnic University Statute Law Amendment Act, Bill 1, followed by second reading consideration of Bill 38, the Retail Business Holidays Act.

On Tuesday, May 18, we will give third reading consideration to the Ryerson Polytechnic University Statute Law Amendment Act, Bill 1. Following that, we shall resume second reading consideration of Bill 38, the Retail Business Holidays Act.

On Wednesday, May 19, at 4 pm, the Minister of Finance will present the 1993 budget.

In the morning of Thursday, May 20, during the time reserved for private members' public business, we will consider ballot item number 9, a resolution standing in the name of Mrs Witmer, and ballot item number 10, a resolution standing in the name of Mr Farnan.

Thursday afternoon will be reserved for the opposition parties to respond to the budget address.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Pursuant to standing order 34, the question that this House do now adjourn is deemed to have been made.

1810

DRIVERS' LICENCES

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): The member for York Mills has given notice of dissatisfaction with the answer to a question given yesterday by the Minister of Transportation. The member has five minutes to debate the matter and the minister or parliamentary assistant may reply for up to five minutes. I call on the honourable member for York Mills.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): Yesterday, I was dissatisfied with the Minister of Transportation's reply to a question that I asked.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): And rightly so.

Mr Turnbull: As my colleague the member for Etobicoke West points out, rightly so. For about two years, I have been pushing for the implementation of graduated licences. I called for a section 125 study of this potential legislation and I was constantly put off by the government with suggestions that legislation was impending. Had I known the tactics of the government, I would not have been put off; I would have pushed forward with my 125.

The fact is that over 1,000 people a year are killed on the roads of Ontario. It's absolutely critical that we bring forward legislation immediately, before the summer season, before we have these deaths. We know that to a tremendous extent, younger drivers, inexperienced drivers, are responsible for the carnage on the roads. Surely, with all-party support, it would be easy to get first, second and third reading of this legislation before we rise for the summer.

The fact is that last year we saw, within a matter of days, an opposition member bring forward a private member's bill which sought to protect minors from buying lottery tickets, and within days, this Legislature was able to get this through.

With that kind of attitude, there's no reason that we couldn't turn to this important legislation. I suppose the minister's weak comments would suggest that this is terribly complicated legislation and it requires a lot of time to prepare it. That is absolutely incorrect. There is legislation in Newfoundland at the moment. With a little time being spent with the minister and the two opposition critics, I'm confident that in an afternoon we could put together, essentially, the outline of a bill and we could have it drafted by legislative counsel within a matter of days to bring before this Legislature. I'm absolutely confident there would be no delay if this government would bring the legislation forward to first, second and third reading.

As things stand, the government wants to bring in legislation in the fall after having studied it in committee during the summer recess. It isn't reasonable to go out for consultation without the legislation, given the fact that there is such broad consensus among the public, as evidenced by the literally thousands of names of people who have signed petitions that have been presented on all sides of this Legislature urging the government to introduce graduated licences, the cooperation of the Insurance Bureau of Canada and, in addition, the results of the CTV poll which occurred some week and a half ago, in which the overwhelming number of some 38,000 respondents suggested that they would be in favour of much tougher legislation along the lines of graduated licence legislation as proposed.

The proposal by the government is relatively timid and doesn't in my estimation go as far as it should, but at least we could put that timid legislation in place now, and then after the fact go and review it in a few months and find out what the experience is, and in the meantime, we would have saved valuable lives.

In view of the fact that the minister is not in the House, does not find it fitting to spend time responding to my questions, I won't go on any longer. I'm disappointed that the government will not lend itself to an all-party approach of getting this important legislation through to save lives. I know I'm not going to get any response, so with that, I will sit down.

The Acting Speaker: A motion for adjournment has been deemed to have been passed. We will meet next Monday at 1:30 of the clock.

The House adjourned at 1815.

May 13, 1993

PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BUSINESS

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REFORM

INTERPROVINCIAL TRADE / COMMERCE INTERPROVINCIAL

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE REFORM

INTERPROVINCIAL TRADE

AFTERNOON SITTING

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CONSERVATION AUTHORITIES

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

JUNIOR HOCKEY

REST HOMES

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

ROSE OF DURHAM

SARAH MCLAUGHLIN

POLICE WEEK

MOTORCYCLES

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

HIGHWAY SAFETY / SÉCURITÉ ROUTIÈRE

ORAL QUESTIONS

LABOUR RELATIONS

YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

SOCIAL CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS

MUNICIPAL FUNDING

LAND REGISTRATION

CONSERVATION AUTHORITIES

IMPAIRMENT TESTING DEVICES

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

X-RAY SERVICES

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

PETITIONS

PHARMACEUTICAL SERVICES

GAMBLING

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

ACCESSORY APARTMENTS

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

GAMBLING

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

POST-POLIO SYNDROME

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

BRUCE GENERATING STATION

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION

GAMBLING

BRUCE GENERATING STATION

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

HUMAN RIGHTS CODE AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LE CODE DES DROITS DE LA PERSONNE

OPPOSITION DAY

FISCAL AND ECONOMIC POLICY

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

DRIVERS' LICENCES