35th Parliament, 3rd Session

FISH AND WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

WOODSTOCK GENERAL HOSPITAL AUXILIARY

COMMUNITY RECREATION FUNDING

LAND TRANSFER TAX

SENIOR CITIZENS

AGRICULTURAL LAND

RETAIL SALES TAX REBATES

ALCOHOL AND DRUG TREATMENT

ANNUAL REPORT, OFFICE OF THE OMBUDSMAN

SOCIAL CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS / NÉGOCIATIONS DU CONTRAT SOCIAL

RETAIL STORE LEGISLATION

SOCIAL CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS

UNEMPLOYMENT

SOCIAL CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS

ECONOMIC POLICY

ONTARIO HYDRO

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

CLOSING OF TREE NURSERIES

HEALTH CARE

PHOTO RADAR

WASTE REDUCTION

RETAIL STORE HOURS

POLLUTION CONTROL

GAMBLING

SENIORS' HEALTH SERVICES

PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES

CLOSURE OF AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES

GAMBLING

BICYCLING SAFETY

GAMBLING

COMMUNITY RECREATION FUNDING

PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES

GAMBLING

NORTHERN HEALTH SERVICES

LANDFILL

GAMBLING

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

GEORGIAN-SIMCOE RAILWAY COMPANY LIMITED ACT, 1993

MINING AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES MINES

WAUBAUSHENE RAILWAY COMPANY LIMITED ACT, 1993

PICTON-TRENTON RAILWAY COMPANY LIMITED ACT, 1993

WATERLOO-ST JACOBS RAILWAY COMPANY LIMITED ACT, 1993

EXTENDED HOURS OF MEETING

PAY EQUITY AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉQUITÉ SALARIALE


The House met at 1331.

Prayers.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

FISH AND WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): I want to bring to the attention of the Legislature the announced closing of the South Baymouth Fisheries Research Unit on Manitoulin Island. Bob Rae wants to close this unit and transfer the employees from the north to the south.

Bob Rae's government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading this facility in the past two years. The former Minister of Natural Resources, Bud Wildman, assured me at estimates committee last November of the importance of this unit to MNR and assured me that it would remain open.

Enter a new minister, enter a new deputy minister and enter a new budgetary policy. From nowhere, without consultation, came a complete reversal of government policy.

The unit has been instrumental over the years in research surrounding lake trout and back cross trout. The unit has played an important role in the rehabilitation of lake trout in Lake Huron. The facility is first class and even provides educational instruction for students across the province.

I have communicated my shock and disbelief at this decision to Minister Hampton in writing and, I might say, orally. My views are similar to the local reeve, Gary Brown, and to the people both on Manitoulin and elsewhere who are concerned with the rehabilitation of Lake Huron and lake trout.

I call upon the minister to rethink this ill-conceived closure which will save little and cost much.

YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): I would like to focus the government's attention on a highly successful youth employment, education and training project which is operating in downtown Kitchener.

This project is a unique and innovative partnership that unites the Waterloo County Board of Education, the Waterloo region Catholic school board, Conestoga College and Lutherwood in providing a coordinated, one-stop-shopping concept for unemployed young people between the ages of 16 and 24.

This project offers a job-information-resource service, employment counselling, self-directed high school programs, the Futures program, a housing registry and an independent living skills program. Indeed, it has become a model for cooperative and integrated delivery of services throughout the province. So far, over 2,000 young people in my community have been the beneficiaries of this project.

The integration and rationalization of these services in this partnership is a direction that the government has been encouraging to take place.

I have personally spoken to the young people such as the street kids and the single mothers who have been able to turn their lives around because of this project. Unfortunately, they will be the losers if the funds do not continue to be provided.

I urge this government not to abandon these young people and not to allow this unique project to fall apart. I urge you to reconsider your decision not to provide the necessary funding.

WOODSTOCK GENERAL HOSPITAL AUXILIARY

Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): I am pleased to have this opportunity to congratulate and acknowledge the 100 years of work and effort by the auxiliary to the Woodstock General Hospital in my riding of Oxford.

The auxiliary's work began in 1893 through a group of women who helped to raise funds for the opening of the hospital in 1895. The Woodstock auxiliary is the third oldest in Ontario.

Over the last 100 years, auxiliary volunteers have worked diligently to collect funds for medical and surgical equipment for the hospital by holding different social activities such as cultural events, bingos and bridge parties.

In the early days of the auxiliary, they were extremely dedicated to patients. Some of them even kept cows to provide patients with fresh milk.

The auxiliary funds have also contributed to professional development of hospital personnel, including scholarships for nurses, employee retraining and higher education for supervisors.

Our community is proud of its auxiliary. For a century, these volunteers have dedicated time and energy to help Woodstock and the surrounding communities.

In closing, I want to again congratulate the Woodstock General Hospital auxiliary for its 100th anniversary of serving people in our community. I believe that voluntary contributions of time and effort to our communities play an important role in our Canadian culture and particularly in our health care system.

COMMUNITY RECREATION FUNDING

Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): Members will recall that only a few short weeks ago I implored the Minister of Finance to make a decision on funding for the Long Sault Centennial Arena. I told the House that Cornwall township, minor sports associations and parent groups were very anxious to learn of the government's decision, since they were planning their winter activity schedule. Now even the school children in my area are asking the government to fund the project, which is ready to go at any time.

The fund-raising is in place. All that is necessary is for the government to allocate funds, through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, so that this very worthwhile and necessary project can get under way.

The children of St George's School in Long Sault have stated that they have worked very hard to raise their portion of the money needed to rebuild the well-used arena. Now we need funding from the government to help us.

I hope that the Minister of Finance will listen to the children of my riding and grant the funds that will allow construction to begin.

LAND TRANSFER TAX

Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): On April 26, I questioned the Minister of Finance about the non-resident land transfer tax of $95,000 that was demanded from the family of the late Albertus Boerkamp.

Mr Boerkamp died shortly after moving from Holland to his Ontario farm at Atwood in Perth county and therefore did not complete the two years of residence in Ontario to exempt him from the foreign ownership part of the tax.

The land transfer tax on foreign ownership was never meant to apply to individuals who legitimately moved to Ontario and then happened to die. The family remains on its Perth county farm and farms it actively.

The Minister of Finance has said he could halve the amount of tax, given that Mrs Boerkamp could be considered a half owner. Mrs Boerkamp has lived here for two years and qualifies to be exempt from the foreign component of the tax.

I'm sure the Minister of Finance considers this generous, but his actions amount to nothing more than a copout on the principle of the issue. The fact remains that because of an untimely death, the Boerkamp family, which acted in good faith, is being penalized for many thousands of dollars. Mr Boerkamp certainly did not know he was going to die, and had he, he could have registered the property in his wife's name or in the family's name or the children's name.

There was a time that the NDP would have been up in arms against a government which behaved in such a fashion. I cannot accept, nor can the supporters of the Boerkamps accept, that this is being done by this government.

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SENIOR CITIZENS

Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): June is Seniors' Month, and today I'd like to thank the organizations in my riding that provide services to seniors, like the workers and volunteers who lend a hand to families and seniors.

This year I hosted a spring tea in the Uxbridge Seniors' Centre and I had a chance to share some tea and some stories with some seniors. This facility provides the local seniors with a friendly place to meet, to socialize and participate in a wide variety of social activities.

These services are really important to helping seniors remain in their homes and active in their communities. Many of the organizations provide services to seniors in the community, such as: home support services, Meals on Wheels, home help, transportation, home maintenance, foot care, friendly visiting, care giver relief and a monthly luncheon for isolated seniors. Homemaking is a program that allows seniors to remain in their own home and can include shopping, meal preparation and personal care.

During Seniors' Month I hope to visit some of these groups like: in Uxbridge, Community Care; in Brock township, Brock Good Neighbours; the CHATS-North Branch (Community Home Assistance To Seniors); and of course the Markham-Stouffville branch of CHATS that provides services in the Whitchurch-Stouffville area.

To wrap up, I think we all should recognize the hard work done by the volunteers and staff, providing more seniors the healthy opportunity to continue on with a healthy lifestyle.

Of course, today I did have an opportunity to participate in the kickoff of the York Region Seniors' Games. There are over 860 participants registered for today's games.

AGRICULTURAL LAND

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): In opposition, the New Democratic Party used to wax eloquent about preserving prime agricultural land in the Niagara region and elsewhere in Ontario, and suggested that previous governments of another political stripe were negligent in protecting this important natural resource. When handed the reins of power, the NDP has been reluctant to implement policies that would save the farmer and ultimately the farm land which will be of such great value for future generations.

With favourable climatic conditions, excellent soils and an expert workforce, the northern portion of the Niagara Peninsula is ideal for the growing of tender fruit and other agricultural products. The produce grown is of the highest quality and is famous around the world.

If the government wishes to save the agricultural land of the Niagara region, it must develop policies designed to make farming viable and geared to producing a decent income for farmers.

The Minister of Agriculture and Food has before him a sensible, thoughtful proposal for conservation easements that appears to be collecting dust on his desk. The easements would enable farmers to survive on the land, grow top-notch produce and contribute to the preservation of an essential natural resource.

With a lot of fanfare, the Premier, when in opposition, visited the Niagara farm land and lamented its potential loss. He and his colleagues have an opportunity to preserve it. They need only act upon their own promises to leave a lasting legacy to our province, our country and our world.

RETAIL SALES TAX REBATES

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): In the spring budget the Minister of Finance announced that the retail sales tax rebate for out-of-province visitors will be cancelled, effective next month. The cancellation of this incentive to visitors to Ontario was not welcome news to the tourism industry, already on its knees because of excessive provincial taxes and the stubborn recession. Many tourist operators and associations have already spent precious marketing dollars to produce brochures and promotional literature advertising the rebate to visitors to Ontario.

Other provinces such as Quebec and Manitoba are aggressively marketing their harmonized visitor rebate programs. Quebec and Manitoba have harmonized the provincial tax rebate programs with the GST visitor rebate program. Foreign visitors to these provinces can enjoy the convenience of receiving their rebates instantly, in cash, at land-border duty-free shops when they exit either province with a land-border access to the United States. In Quebec, the combined PST-GST rebate amounts to over 15%, while in Manitoba the combined rate is 14%.

Quebec and Manitoba are aggressively marketing their harmonized visitor tax rebate programs. Manitoba rebates have increased dramatically. Ontario, on the other hand, is left behind in the dust as other provinces successfully attract foreign visitors.

Tax rebate programs can be effective, as evidenced by the Quebec and Manitoba examples, but only when foreign visitors know about the program and when it is easy to implement. I would suggest to this government that it reimplement the retail sales tax rebate program, fashioning the program after the successful models which Quebec and Manitoba are using.

ALCOHOL AND DRUG TREATMENT

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): We are becoming more aware of existing social problems in native communities worldwide. The harsh realities of native suicide have been brought to our attention, it seems, more in the past year than in the past 500 years. This, to me, indicates a strong message: Together we need to do more. As part of the healing process, we must come together to deal directly with the underlying issues that contribute to emotional distress.

For native communities in Cochrane North, part of the healing process will be made possible on June 22. The Sagashtawao Healing Lodge, meaning the dawn of a new day, is a drug and alcohol abuse treatment centre for native residents of the James Bay coast, opening in Moosonee. It will be the first of nine healing centres across Ontario offering services in the Cree language. Native people will be able to receive holistic healing methods which reflect traditional Cree values. In the past, people were being sent as far away as Edmonton for this type of treatment.

The establishment of the 12-bed facility was initiated by the Keewaytinook alcohol abuse program and involved input from the Mushkegowuk first nations communities. The lodge, funded by the provincial Ministry of Northern Development and Mines and the Ministry of Health and the federal government, will employ 11 people.

I'm extremely pleased about this initiative and would like to express my sincere appreciation to all who contributed to this development.

ANNUAL REPORT, OFFICE OF THE OMBUDSMAN

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I beg to inform the House that I have today laid upon the table the annual report of the Ombudsman for the period April 1, 1992, to March 31, 1993.

I would draw to members' attention, and indeed ask them to invite warmly to our chamber this afternoon, one of the officers of the assembly, the Ombudsman, who is seated in the Speaker's gallery. Welcome.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

SOCIAL CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS / NÉGOCIATIONS DU CONTRAT SOCIAL

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): The single most important goal of this government is to make investments and implement policies that will put Ontario back to work. The plan we have proposed to renew the Ontario economy includes the largest capital investments by any province to modernize our infrastructure. Through an imaginative array of programs under Jobs Ontario, we're putting tens of thousands of Ontarians back to work building the roads, bridges, subway lines and other public facilities that help improve the province's competitive edge and therefore its future economic wellbeing.

On another front, we're working in partnership with the private sector to make investments which secure existing jobs and provide workers with new skills, and to build modern manufacturing facilities that are the source of jobs for the future. We're achieving our goal of putting Ontario back to work in the face of the worst recession since the 1930s, despite drops in government revenues and increasing demands on public funds.

Our plan to renew the economy of Ontario is built on a tough, practical approach to managing the government's finances. This government has accomplished what no government of this province has done in 50 years. We have, for the first time, reduced total government spending on programs. Using principles of good management and fairness, we've implemented a program to reduce and then eliminate the provincial deficit. We have cut the government's own expenses by $4 billion. The recent budget introduced tax and other revenue measures worth another $2 billion. We've asked the people of Ontario to bear a fair share of the burden of controlling the deficit. Every sector and every region of the province has made a contribution to moving the province towards that goal.

The concept of negotiating a new social contract is a vital part of the government's strategy of economic renewal and job creation. The thousands of formal and informal agreements among those who deliver public services, those who benefit from them and those who pay for them all constitute the social contract which makes Ontario work.

The renewed and modern economy Ontario needs to move into the future requires that we also rethink and modernize the social contract that binds our society and makes it work. The government proposed this process of modernization and restructuring to public sector workers. It was clear to everyone that one of our goals was to achieve a saving of $2 billion in public sector compensation. We also made it clear that in this challenge there was an opportunity.

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We proposed to the province's 950,000 public workers that they participate in negotiating new ways of carrying out their work for the public, in fixing their compensation, their benefits and working conditions.

Quelques personnes nous ont dit et soutiennent toujours que ce n'était qu'une perte de temps, qu'il aurait été plus simple de ne pas penser à négocier et d'imposer tout simplement notre solution. Ce sont les mêmes premiers ministres de salon qui déclarent qu'il est facile de combler un déficit, de créer des emplois et de remettre l'Ontario sur la route de la relance économique.

Nous n'arriverons à rien si nous essayons de jeter le blâme sur quelqu'un d'autre ; ce n'est qu'en collaborant que nous trouverons des solutions.

We will not succeed by finding someone to blame. We will only succeed by working together to find solutions, and that remains the foundation of the government's approach.

The effort to build a new social contract between the people of Ontario, the government, the nurses, teachers, police officers and other public workers of the province is a difficult task. It's full of risk and frustration. Though the effort at the negotiating table did not achieve everything that we wished, it was none the less an important process. The talks focused the attention of all public workers, indeed of the entire population of the province, on the need to rethink how we deliver services and create the conditions that empower public workers to do the best job possible for Ontarians.

The social contract talks have broken rigid patterns of thinking about public services. They have set in motion a process of change and brought forth from public workers new ideas to improve public services and to keep them affordable. The representatives of public workers in every sector of society had a hand in shaping new ideas, bringing new approaches to the table, and in building through a process of collective bargaining an agreement not only to reduce costs, but to bring the public sector into the future as an essential support for the economic wellbeing and quality of life of people in Ontario.

The many ideas and new approaches that were arrived at during the social contract negotiations are a credit to all those who participated. They are an achievement for the people of Ontario, whose investment of support and hope in the talks will be justified by the results: better services delivered more efficiently and at a better cost.

The government is proud of what took place around the social contract table. I'm honoured today to report on the content of the package that had been negotiated by the end of the talks last week. Many people worked countless hours to forge these proposals. They drew on their individual experiences as public servants to examine how they work, how they can work better and how the exchange between public workers, those who use public services, those who pay for them and the government that manages the process can be made to work better for all the residents of Ontario.

It's not easy to change how we think about work and our routines, to adjust our expectations to reality and to put the common wealth or good ahead of private or partisan interests. Those who worked at the social contract tables achieved that objective. It is their efforts which brought about the offer which was on the table from the government when the social contract talks came to an end. That offer included:

-- Job security: The guiding principle has been to preserve jobs and to preserve services. The result was an assurance that every worker affected by the abolition of a position would have a priority for another job with the same public sector employer or with employers in the same industry or within the same region. For those affected by layoffs, we proposed a job security fund totalling $300 million over three years to top up laid-off workers' UIC benefits to 95% of take-home pay for one year or to be used to extend notice periods and allow time for retraining. The job security proposals had the effect of strengthening existing collective agreements in the critical area of job security. I'm proud of those proposals; I think they're very sound.

-- To recognize the link between the social contract and public investment in jobs, it was proposed to set up a provincial capital partnership board whose job it would be to participate in decision-making on capital investments aimed at improving public services.

-- Employees making less than $30,000 a year would be exempt from measures that affect compensation.

-- Wage increases and merit increases will be deferred until April 1, 1996.

-- The most significant savings would be realized by setting up a system of unpaid leaves of absence administered in such a way as to protect overall service delivery and to accommodate the preferences of individual workers.

-- Public sector workers would participate in eliminating wasteful expenditures and practices. Savings would be used as follows: one half to offset the social contract target for the sector where waste was eliminated; one half to be retained by the employer to preserve services and employment through training or redeployment.

As a result of this process, it was envisaged that there could be a saving of $500 million in contributions to pension funds: not to entitlements from those funds, but to contributions to them. The government proposed to utilize this amount to provide job security and to achieve part of the total savings target of $2 billion. This proposal would have in no way affected the pension entitlements of public workers, but rather was evidence of the government's flexibility in working with public sector unions to achieve the overall target for savings.

These and the other components which were on the table at the end of the social contract negotiations could not have been arrived at without the full and energetic participation of public sector unions, employers' groups and government representatives. They are the result of a new way of achieving our common purpose: to improve the quality of the services we provide to the public, to bring their costs in line with our resources, to make public sector workers participants in decisions that affect the cost and quality of the services they provide to the public.

I invite all members of this House to join me in congratulating everyone who laboured these past weeks to bring forth the ideas and solutions to establish a new social contract for Ontario. The government of Ontario welcomes these solutions and will ensure that they form part of the process of reforming public services in Ontario so they can better serve the interests of the people of this province.

That remains one of our key objectives and it remains our intention, as part of this process of reform and renewal, to achieve the savings of $2 billion in public sector compensation that was our initial target. The government will announce later this week how it will keep its commitment to achieve those savings as part of its plans to control the debt, to protect jobs and services and to put Ontario back to work.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): I find it a little bit difficult to relate the statement that the Premier has just made to the fact that there was no agreement reached last week and I simply cannot join in congratulating a Premier or his government on the failure of the process that he put in place, although indeed I do respect the very sincere efforts that were made by the participants in the process to make an absolutely impossible situation work.

I suspect that the Premier probably feels that as an opposition leader I take some kind of satisfaction in the failure of the talks. But I can assure him I take absolutely no satisfaction at all in this absolutely no-win situation which he has now put this province in.

It is true that I have been pessimistic about this process having had any chance for success from the very beginning. I have said all along that I did not believe that you could successfully negotiate with the representatives of 9,000 individual collective agreements at one central bargaining table, and I believed that was particularly true when many of those people who are responsible for reaching those collective agreements were not even at that new bargaining table and there was no one there who could bargain responsibly on their behalf.

I have never understood how broad-brush solutions could work across all the sectors that were involved, and in fact I could not believe some of the proposals that the government put forward in the process of conducting those negotiations. We have been in fact as worried about some of the tradeoffs that might have been made in reaching a deal as we were concerned about the chaos if the talks indeed collapsed, and I believe that our pessimism is a direct result of our realism.

We have said from the very beginning that this government had two responsibilities. The first responsibility was to bring in a budget to set realistic financial targets that would have to be achieved. The second responsibility was for the government to sit down with its own employees and negotiate the way to achieve the reductions and let other employer and employee groups do exactly the same thing.

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We take absolutely no satisfaction at all in the fact that we have now had eight wasted weeks and we have nothing to show for that except a level of frustration and anger and confrontation of a kind that we have never seen in this province and that is going to make any resolution of these issues just that much more difficult. I take no satisfaction at all in what has occurred over the past eight weeks and I certainly do not feel it is a source for the government to feel some pride over.

I am as frustrated and as worried as everybody else in this province when I ask the question, what happens now? I am absolutely appalled that the Premier of this province, who put this process in place, had no backup plan to put in place if his talks failed. I am dismayed that he comes into the House today and still appears to have no backup plan at all, has no idea of what to do next. I am concerned that it is in fact too late now for any alternative to get us out of the absolute chaos that has been created.

On Friday, this Premier talked a lot about rhetoric. He talked about the rhetoric of union leaders who had been involved in trying to reach some agreement at the social contract tables, he talks about the rhetoric of opposition leaders, but he himself has been indulging in what I consider to be unrealistic and rather grandiose dreams of achieving an unprecedented social contract instead of providing real leadership that works on the ground.

He has said that we should not blame the people who were the negotiators for the government or the people who were the participants in the talks, and I could not agree with that more, because the responsibility for this whole situation belongs directly with the Premier. It was his mismanagement of this entire issue that has created this chaos. If he believed that this process could work, I ask why his government began by talking about wage rollbacks and job layoffs before it even called people together to engage in this cooperative new approach to resolving the issues. I ask why he added to the anxiety and the confrontation by continuing to make veiled threats of "settle or else." Surely, this is not the way in which you produce a constructive and cooperative result.

I finally ask why this all started so late. We are halfway into the year. Budgets have been set. Contracts have been reached. People are about to be laid off and this government knew at least last fall that its own budget was in trouble, yet it did nothing until six weeks before it brought in the budget. This is total chaos; it is complete mismanagement. It is the responsibility of this Premier and this government to deal with it. It is time for some real leadership here.

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): The Premier is a graduate of the University of Toronto. He'll be familiar with the E.J. Pratt Library just up the street from Queen's Park. I don't know if members of the House are familiar with any of Pratt's work, but today I'm thinking of Pratt's poem The Titanic:

"No wave could sweep those upper decks, unthinkable,

"The perfect ship at last.

"The first unsinkable."

The tragic story of the Titanic is one that I think about today. It's a story of overwhelming human pride, a story of hubris. They thought the ship was unsinkable. The ship designers and the builders didn't supply enough lifeboats. They didn't have sufficient evacuation plans. They ignored warnings from other ships, the America, the Baltic, the Californian.

I warned the taxing and the spending government of four years ago, I warned the Liberals they were not planning for economic downturns. The Liberal taxing and spending approach, whether by them or by you, Mr Premier, was leading to spending that could not possibly be sustained. It was leading to the size of government that not only would contribute to an economic downturn, but could not possibly be sustained during one.

I wrote the following in a Financial Post article in January 1991:

"We need long-term economic and fiscal reform. Controls on public spending, for example, are vital to the achievement of long-term fiscal stability....Massive tax hikes during an economic boom have failed to balance the books and high spending has clearly failed to achieve a commensurate increase in the quality of public service." What do we have to show for all this spending of the last 10 years, to be fair? It's a massive increase in taxation and spending, and not very much else.

That was 1991. I warned the Liberals. I've warned the NDP. You both kept stoking the fires of that huge ship called government, and the hubris of these Liberal and NDP shipbuilders has placed us in this disastrous situation. They were warned, but they continued the lavish spending. Like the champagne and roast duckling in Pratt's poem, the excesses continued, and now we face this very difficult situation.

The Premier has several options at his disposal. None will be easy. None are simple. My advice to the Premier is that panic is no substitute for planning. It took us several years to get into this mess. We need immediately to change direction. The important thing, though, is that we change direction, and it will take several years to get us out of this mess. The government's too large. It taxes too much and it spends too much.

There seem to be three options the Premier has left himself to implement his plan: (1) layoffs, (2) arbitrary cuts to transfer payments and (3) wage rollbacks.

It goes without saying that none of those options would have been necessary if the mess had not been created in the first place, but it was. We're in a mess and we need to get out of it. There is, however, a fourth option, and there may be many others. But I believe the Premier should move to institute the option that I presented as a fourth option, or a fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth, because the first three are unacceptable to Ontarians.

I believe the Premier could move immediately to institute a hiring freeze and a wage freeze in the broader public sector over the next three years. We must systematically begin reviewing the work performed by government and its employees. We must review the services provided and the method of delivering those services. The restructuring of government must be real and it must be permanent.

We must systematically begin downsizing government in this province. At the same time, we must pave the way for the upsizing of the private sector. We must allow our private sector to compete, to grow and to prosper. I've said this many times before. The Premier must look at this as a two-sided coin. You must have a comprehensive plan to see the private sector upsized before you begin downsizing the public sector, as you must do, and we agree with that.

So I say to the Premier again that I am willing to work with this government. Again, I'm willing to sit down in a non-partisan way. I'm willing to sit, if the Premier likes -- perhaps it would have been better if the Premier and the leader of the Liberal Party and myself were at the contract talks, because I didn't see a lot of experience, either on the union side or on the government side, at the bargaining table. If you would have taken some advice from those who have had some experience, both on the union side, the Canadian Auto Workers, for example, and on the public sector side -- but I say we are still willing to be part of the solution and we'll continue to offer alternatives.

RETAIL STORE LEGISLATION

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Just prior to oral questions on Tuesday, May 18, the member for St George-St David (Mr Murphy) rose in the House on a question of privilege.

The member indicated that the government had issued instructions that a provision in the Retail Business Holidays Act prohibiting Sunday shopping would no longer be enforced. The member also indicated that the government had issued these instructions after announcing in 1992 that it was introducing an amending bill which, if passed, would permit Sunday shopping. The amendment bill was given first reading in the last session, but has yet to receive second reading.

The member suggested that, by acting as if the amending bill were law, the government had violated his privileges and the privileges of all members of the House. Although the member did not indicate what specific heading of privilege had been violated, I reviewed the relevant authorities. I find that the member's concern does not amount to a prima facie case of privilege.

Furthermore, I want to assure the member that I am cognizant of the fact that, in recent years, Speakers in other jurisdictions have had to rule on whether certain government pronouncements on bills constituted a contempt of the House on the ground that the pronouncements openly suggested that the bills would become law. Having reviewed the submissions of the member for St George-St David in light of those rulings, I find that the member's concern does not constitute a contempt of the House.

I again thank the member, not only for his interest in the matter, but for the way in which he brought the matter to my attention.

It is time for oral questions, and the Leader of the Opposition.

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ORAL QUESTIONS

SOCIAL CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): My first question is for the Premier. We have kept asking you what your alternatives would be in the event that your social contract talks failed. You have responded over the last couple of weeks with vague threats that the parties at the social contract table had better reach an agreement, or else. The question we asked last week was, "Or else what?" It now becomes absolutely apparent that you had no backup plan. The question this week is, "What now?" After your statement today, we have no clearer idea of what you plan to do next than we had before.

I ask the question very directly, Premier, what now? What are you going to do now?

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): The Leader of the Opposition has repeated the canard which found its way into a headline in the Toronto Star when she says that I went around saying, "Do this or else." That's not my style. That's not what I said. That's not the direction the government is taking.

What the government is now doing is obviously considering what is the fairest and best way to ensure the reduction of $2 billion in public sector compensation costs while at the same time ensuring that services will be delivered in a fair way, that as many jobs as possible can be protected and that all the parties who are the parties to the hundreds, and indeed thousands, of collective agreements that the Leader of the Opposition keeps referring to can continue to take some ownership of a continuing challenge for the whole of the public sector, which does not belong exclusively to the provincial government.

As the leader of the third party has pointed out, this is something that's going to take some consideration. We are moving quickly to do it. We've had several meetings as a caucus and as a cabinet, and I gave the House the assurance today in my statement that before the House adjourns at the end of this week -- that's to say Wednesday; Wednesday's the last sitting day this week, because we've agreed to let the Conservatives go to their convention on Thursday.

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): We don't want to go. Let's stay.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the Premier conclude his response, please.

Mr Harris: We want to stay here.

Hon Mr Rae: No, we want to give the various campaigns a chance.

I will be making a statement before the end of the close of session this week indicating clearly the outline of the government's approach.

I would say to the honourable member that one has to be realistic about the kinds of preparations that go into making a decision of this kind --

The Speaker: Would the Premier please conclude his response.

Hon Mr Rae: -- but I can assure her that the matter is well in hand and the commitments of the government are very clear.

Mrs McLeod: Premier, it is just too late in the game to calmly tell us that everything is well in hand. Nobody believes that everything is well in hand. Even Stephen Lewis has reportedly called the social contract process hastily conceived and shabbily executed. It's quite clear that it was not very thoroughly thought through.

Premier, we happen to agree with you on one point, and that is that there is broad public support for financial restraint. Furthermore, I believe that people were ready to work with you to find some solutions to the financial problems that this province faces. I continue to be concerned about the fact that in this very grandiose process you set up, many of the people who could actually reach the agreements were not at the table. For the past month we have been asking you to sit down and negotiate with your own employees and allow other employee and employer groups to do exactly the same thing.

I ask you very specifically today, will you now get on with what needs to be done? Will you sit down at the table with your own employees and will you give others the tools they need to do the same thing?

Hon Mr Rae: Yes.

Mrs McLeod: I assume, since others cannot sit down at the table without the tools they need, that the Premier heard the emphasis in the question, because I was very particularly emphatic, and that he will then be able to tell us what his legislation will look like and when he is going to bring in the legislation. This is not a time for easy and flippant answers. There are a tremendous number of people across this province whose lives have been put on hold because of the failure of this process. They've waited eight weeks for resolution. They still have no answers. People are at the point of decisions.

I hope that the Premier, in responding to this third supplementary, will give some thought when he gives me a simple yes as to exactly what that means. I hope he will tell people specifically what his next steps will be, how quickly he will bring in the legislation which will be needed to give people the tools to sit down at the local contract table, what that legislation will look like, and I hope he will be thinking as he gives me this answer not of some flippant way of responding today, not of calmly telling us the situation's in hand, but of those people who are today waiting for their --

The Speaker: Could the leader conclude her supplementary, please.

Mrs McLeod: -- layoff notices and all of those college and university and high school people who are wondering whether they'll have a spot in school next year, remember that they are waiting for his answer today and tell us what he is saying to those people in very specific terms.

Hon Mr Rae: I would say to the honourable member that it's not the government negotiators who walked away from the negotiations on Thursday evening -- I think that's something she might want to reflect on and recognize as a fundamental reality of where we are today -- and then say to her very directly that I've indicated already in answer to her previous questions that the answers to the kinds of questions she's asking are answers that I think we can be much closer to providing later on in the week and that we will be providing to her and to the province later on in the week, but say to her directly -- she says, if I answer quickly to a question saying yes, she asks me, are we willing to sit down with our own employees? The answer to that is, of course. We were there on Thursday night. We were there Thursday night, and we're still willing to negotiate with our own employees. Of course. Of course we are.

Second of all, I say to her, are there the tools available for others to do the same? The answer to that is, of course there are.

As a result of what happened on Thursday night, the government is obviously going to have to take further steps to ensure that the kind of approach we've taken -- and I'm delighted to see the kind of positive response the member is giving in terms of our efforts to enter into a dialogue and say to her that if she has any more practical suggestions, we'd be glad to consider them.

The Speaker: New question.

Mrs McLeod: We'll wait to read the results of the scrum, when the Premier hopefully will be asked to explain specifically what it is he means in terms of tools he is going to give people to get on with this business of resolution.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): We are almost totally preoccupied with the social contract talks and people are tremendously concerned about them. I am nevertheless absolutely determined that we are going to keep pushing what the government says it recognizes as the other part of the agenda but refuses to do anything about.

There were recent unemployment figures that came out this weekend that confirmed what we all are only too well aware of, and that's that the economy is not producing more jobs. The fact that was shown was that Ontario lost 13,000 permanent jobs last month. The unemployment problem is being felt in communities across this province.

John Mirski, who is a local retailer in Kingston, has received over 1,000 job applications from local unemployed people who are desperate to find work, and I can tell the Premier that many of these 1,000 applicants are already highly skilled individuals. They include machinists and engineers and skilled tradespeople and university graduates. They're looking for jobs in the retail sector because there are no other jobs, but there are no jobs in the retail sector either. Mr Mirski sent us the 1,000 applications. He asked us to pass on these comments to you and he says:

"I hope that these applications put a face to the numbers that the government seems to so flippantly rhyme off. I hope you can present them to the government. Labour legislation and taxation have encouraged employers to do anything to minimize the number of people on their payrolls."

So, Premier, I ask you, how do you respond to the fact of 13,000 permanent jobs that were lost last month and to these particular 1,000 people in Kingston who are so desperately looking for a job?

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Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I would say to the honourable member that I don't think any of us go through a day when we don't recognize the fact that an unemployment rate of over 10.5%, which is where the rate still stands in the province, is too high, and that creating the new opportunities and new work and new opportunities for training has to be the top priority for the government.

I know the member says, "Well, it's the labour legislation which is causing the problem." I don't think there are too many objective observers who feel that way. Other provinces are facing similar challenges to ours. Other parts of the world are facing them as well. We are still further ahead this year than last year. That happens to be a fact. She may not want to get up and say that, but it happens to be true.

But I want to assure her and assure the members of the House that while she may not agree with the way in which this government is facing up to the problem, I can assure her that there's no priority that's higher. That's why we're putting as much as we're putting into the capital works program, that's why we're putting as much as we are into the Jobs Ontario Training program and that's why we're putting as much effort as we can into working with the private sector, in partnership with the private sector, in the creation of new employment opportunities there.

So I would say to her that we all recognize the fact that unemployment is a challenge for us as Canadians and we are doing everything we can to address the problem.

Mrs McLeod: I say to the Premier that this is not a training issue; this is a real jobs issue. We've lost 13,000 permanent jobs, and the unemployment statistics also show that our young people are facing increased unemployment. Part of that is permanent and part of that is the need for summer employment.

Youth unemployment in May was up by almost half a percentage point over April, and even more important than that was the fact that youth unemployment is a full two percentage points higher this May than it was in May a year ago.

We have certainly heard from Mr Mirski in Kingston, who doesn't have jobs for the 1,000 skilled applicants who are looking for permanent jobs, that he won't be hiring any more students this summer either.

Premier, I simply ask you, when you see this kind of increase in youth unemployment combined with the loss of permanent jobs in this province, why can you not understand the impact your policies and your budget, your labour legislation and your taxation are having on industries and businesses in tourism, in the retail sector, in hospitality, in the very businesses that normally employ our young people?

Hon Mr Rae: Again I'm sure the honourable member will want to say, "There's more you could do," and I know she put out a program in which she said: "Spend more money in every government program there is. Just go out and spend more." We'd love to be able to do that, but I would say to her that I hope she would recognize, after her discussions with some of her other colleagues, that we put $185 million into youth employment programs. No government's put more into programs, and if we can find more, we obviously will be prepared to invest it.

But the challenge we face is making sure that at the same time we stick to some realistic financial targets, that we recognize that even with the measures that were taken, even with the extraordinary measures we're taking, we still have a deficit situation of over $9 billion, so obviously there are limits to how much the government can simply spend to solve the problem.

I would say to her that we're working with the private sector. I've had some very good discussions with the retail industry, we've had good discussions with the people working in the auto industry, with people working in all the different sectors. We've had good discussions and we do believe that with a continuing sound management of the overall financial situation, here and in the rest of the country and indeed in North America, there are real prospects for growth this year.

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Our leader has indicated to you in percentage terms the impact of unemployment. The unemployment figure released last week indicated that 189,000 students are unable to find the jobs they need to go back to school in the fall. Premier, you have effectively destroyed the vision of hope of our young people. The OSAP grant is gone and they have to depend on loans. Those who have been trying to complete their education to improve their futures can't find the temporary positions they need to go back to school. What do you tell these young people when they wonder how they will be able to complete their education? There seems to be no future for them. Could you comment on that?

Hon Mr Rae: I say to the member from Scarborough, whose experience in this area I have a lot of respect for, that we're putting far more money into these programs in terms of youth employment and opportunities for people returning to school than any other government. Clearly, we need a national program as well: We have no national youth employment programs at the moment, and clearly, we need them. I think it's time they came, and came to the fore as issues that need to be addressed.

But what other government in the country is spending $185 million on youth programs? What other government in the country is putting together the kinds of programs for young people? There is no other government that's doing it on the scale and at the level and with the intensity that we are. Yes, I'm sure there's more that can be done. Obviously, in response to what we see here, we'll try to do even more, if that's possible. But it's important for everyone to recognize, and I hope even the Liberal Party will recognize, that we are investing a lot, we are putting everything we can into the process. As I say, if we can find more, we certainly will.

SOCIAL CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): My question is to the Premier. For the last two months you've been dancing, so to speak, with the union leaders. Taxpayers were willing to let you try this. I certainly was willing to let you try. But throughout this time it appears that you were dancing to the union leaders' tune, and now the dance is over.

People's futures, however, are on the line. We're dealing with students. We're dealing with families. We're dealing with children. We're dealing with both public and private sector Ontarians. The uncertainty out there of people who are worried about their jobs or people who want jobs is overwhelming.

I wonder if the Premier can tell me why he did not have a backup plan in the event, as happened, that the social contract talks failed.

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I would say to the honourable member that obviously we have an approach that we're continuing with and that we are now going to carry out in order to effect the $2 billion in savings. I would say to him that we've already indicated to everyone and to the House that the government's commitment to the $2 billion stands, that we wanted to allow a process of negotiation to take place without any kind of "or else," despite the newspaper headlines to the contrary.

Now that the unions decided on Thursday night, 24 hours before the conclusion of talks, to walk away unilaterally from the talks, the government has to look to other measures that will ensure fairness, delivery of services, a respect for the participation of employers and employees in finding a solution and our clear commitment as a government to the bottom line, and the bottom line is that the $2 billion has to come out.

Mr Harris: The union leaders whom I've talked to tell me that without knowing what the "or else" was, they didn't have a mandate from their members to negotiate away and break their contracts. In spite of the fact that you didn't want to be known for "or else," they're saying that the lack of that led to the failure of the talks.

Premier, you're management. You're elected to make the tough decisions. You're elected as management to lead and set the direction. Regardless of how confident you may have been of the talks, good management always has a contingency plan. We urged you for weeks to tell us, to tell the union leaders, what you would do the day the talks failed, what was the "or else."

But you continued, it seems to me, to live in this dream world, Never Never Land, thinking that the union leaders, many of whom I have talked to -- who, if they had a mandate from their membership, would have been prepared to negotiate a deal, as long as their membership understood what the "or else" was.

Now, to attack the deficit your way, you can do one of three things. To implement your plan (1) you can cut transfers by $2 billion, leaving hospitals and school boards in chaos, (2) you can force layoffs and throw thousands out of work with nowhere to go in the private sector, or (3) you can look for $2 billion in rollbacks from existing wages.

The time for action's long overdue, you would agree with me. Which one of those three do you intend to do?

Hon Mr Rae: I'm not sure I quite agree with the characterization of all the options that have been put forward, but I would say to the honourable leader of the third party that the government's commitment to a reduction in the overall size of the broader public sector payroll by some $2 billion remains firm, our view that this can be done by building on the experiences and the information and the knowledge and, frankly, the experience of the last two months, which has not been lost and has not been wasted. In fact, there's been an extremely valuable process.

I'm not saying that it resulted in a successful conclusion on Thursday night; of course not. But I am saying that none of that experience has been lost, and it must all be built on. I've found in my discussions with our public sector partners a real willingness to say: "You gave it your best shot in that regard. Now let's look at what the next logical stage is, moving on from there."

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In our view, the next logical stage is to carry on, in the spirit of the social contract, to look at the ways in which the parties themselves can come up with creative and effective solutions and to make sure that the parties themselves have the effective tools with which to do the job while respecting their historic relationships and while respecting the need for us to preserve jobs and to protect services at the same time as we get that $2 billion out. The government's commitment to getting it out is clear. Our strong, strong commitment to the people of the province to ensure services is there and our commitment to the working people of this province to save as many jobs as we can is there as well.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the Premier please conclude his response.

Hon Mr Rae: All of those steps, it seems to me, must be taken, and those are the kinds of steps that the government will be looking to implement in our announcement later on this week.

Mr Harris: Premier, you have all these directions and all these philosophical views, but you have no plan. You have no specifics, and if you did have, shame on you for not sharing them with the union leaders, because they're telling you that if you'd done that, they might have been able to reach a deal.

You wouldn't accept any of my advice on how you could have made your plans work better, bringing in people who actually have some experience negotiating, telling people where you stood, what the "What if" was. You ignored all that. In addition to that, last week I presented you and your Treasurer with a fourth option. It was contained in our Prosperity Agenda, as part of that plan. This was an agenda that dealt not just with social contract talks but also with a prosperity agenda and upsizing the private sector. It dealt as well with controlling your own costs and your own spending.

This agenda, in my view, put Ontario, not just the public sector, first. I explained to you that natural attrition in dealing with the public sector would result in a 2%-per-year reduction in staff. Over three years that's 56,000 fewer public servants, 16,000 fewer than your plan seeks to downsize by. There's a three-year plan with natural attrition, with a hiring freeze. It would mean a permanent downsizing of government, no unnecessary layoffs, enough flexibility to ensure priority services are maintained, and quite frankly, no legislation is even required to implement that one. Can you tell me why you will not look at the fourth option plan that I've presented to you that would allow you to get the savings that you need and provide a three-year plan with no unnecessary layoffs and with no legislation?

Hon Mr Rae: I would say to him that his off-the-cuff view -- and I don't want to be too critical of it -- that somehow attrition alone will solve the problem is a view that is not shared universally by others in the field and I would say to him directly that if he has any serious proposals, we would be glad to look at them.

Mr Harris: I tell the Premier that the figures that I give him come from his government. They're his government figures.

ECONOMIC POLICY

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): My second question is to the Premier as well. Your refusal, along with your predecessor government's, to recognize that government has had a serious spending problem for the last number of years in Ontario, not a revenue problem, and your refusal to recognize that for your first two years in office, has left more than just the public sector in a mess -- your social contract talks are trying to deal with that -- it has also left the private sector in disarray. It has left taxpayers in disarray. It has left families and left young people with loss of hope and in disarray. Your mismanagement of the province's affairs is responsible for your $2-billion tax grab. Your $2-billion increase in spending before you're going to claw back wages is responsible for that in your budget.

But, Premier, as well as all of the problems in delivering government services and downsizing, there's a struggling private sector out there, outside of this building, that has been left out in the cold. I would ask you this: When we finally do see what your plan is -- you keep telling us you have one, but it's hidden away -- when we see what your plan is for the public sector, will you also unveil your plans for growth and prosperity and an upsizing of the private sector?

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): The government's policies on the private sector -- we brought in the budget. You may not agree with it, but we think it has provided some real sense of certainty to the marketplace. Also, we think that on a sector-by-sector basis, we have a very good relationship with the business community and with the private sector. We see signs of investment decisions being made, we see signs of jobs being created and some very significant decisions. So I would say to him that as far as the future is concerned of our relationship with the private sector, I have a much more positive outlook than the leader of the third party.

Mr Harris: The Premier says I may not agree with the budget. What I agree with is not important. The private sector doesn't agree with it. Those who may invest five cents don't agree with it. The only people I can find who agree with it are those who never have and never plan to invest five cents of their own money in this province. That's the problem. It's not whether I agree; it's whether the private sector, the job creators, agree. You now need the private sector more than ever. So while you've been fixated on this social contract process, one that I agree needs attention, businesses have gone bankrupt, people have lost their jobs, and $2 billion in new taxes will only deepen the economic woes in the private sector.

You know my views on taxes, Premier, but there are many other things that you can do that will help the private sector and allow it to create jobs. You can scrap Bill 40 and you can look at other regulations that are barriers to allowing our private sector to compete. You can immediately move to reduce the interprovincial trade barriers, towards scrapping them. You can scrap lot levies, something you opposed when you were in opposition, when the Liberals brought them in.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Would the leader place a question.

Mr Harris: Now you continue to collect all that money, thwarting the building of private sector housing.

Why have you rejected all these solutions and many more that are presented to you to help our private sector grow and prosper?

Hon Mr Rae: The leader of the third party may want to spend his time debating legislation that was passed over a year ago; that's up to him. I would just simply say to him that if you look at the decisions that are being made week by week by large and small companies, you will see a sign that business formation is up, that business investment is up; General Motors making its decision last week.

You may well think that your recipe for what is going to carry you into this office, what's going to sweep you to power, is a message of doom and gloom, and that if you vote for Mike Harris, you'll never have to pay any taxes for the rest of your life. Free beer tomorrow. I don't think that's a program that has any credibility.

This government is taking the toughest decisions that any government has had to take in the last 50 years. We're proud of them and we're seeing now that the economy is starting to turn around. We're beginning to see some positive signs in terms of the investment climate and we're dealing with government spending in a way that your party never had the guts to even start to deal with when you were in office and when you were in cabinet. You never sat around in cabinet and had to deal with the kind of issues we've dealt with in managing the public sector. So I just don't take your rhetoric very seriously.

Mr Harris: I'm always amused that when they can't defend their own policies, they try and make up some things about others who are questioning those policies. If you can't defend your policies, step down and move aside. Let's get some leadership in this province.

Let's face it: The only plan you've had for the private sector is your plan to use it to finance your spending binge. That's the same plan the Liberals had before you: Use the private sector and the taxpayers to finance a government spending binge. That's the only plan you've had. In a few weeks, every single man or woman who is lucky enough to still have a job in Ontario will feel what you're going to take out of their pocket in July.

We look at the bankruptcy figures: 353 new ones in April; 1,500 to date this year; 2,000 consumer bankruptcies in April; 8,000 individuals this year; 353 in companies alone this year. Everyone, because of your budget, is now going to pay more money.

I would like to ask you this simple question: What makes you think, after a 10-year record of Progressive Conservative, Liberal -- in a monumental way -- and then two years of your government, where government thought it could spend money better and fairer than individuals and families and taxpayers, what makes you think, after a 10-year record of disaster, that you now have a plan that you can spend the money better than taxpayers can?

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Hon Mr Rae: There might be some real basis for the member's questions if this government wasn't the first government in 50 years to actually be reducing program spending. So I find the premise of the question to be really quite out to lunch and quite out of keeping with the facts of the situation.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Order, the member for York Mills. New question, the member for Renfrew North.

Interjections.

The Speaker: The member for York Mills, please come to order. The member for Renfrew North has the floor.

ONTARIO HYDRO

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): My question today is for the Minister of Environment and Energy. In the last six months there have been some rather significant, I would say perhaps even dramatic, developments at Ontario Hydro. I would like, just for a moment today, to turn the attention of the House to those developments and ask a couple of questions to the new Minister of Energy.

In the past number of months, we've seen at Ontario Hydro, among other developments, the following: The announcement that this year, the Hydro corporation will take at least a $1-billion loss. They have announced next year's rate increase at 0%. They have announced that there will be at least 4,500 positions eliminated. There is a major restructuring of the grand old corporation. There is a dramatic change in the policy of private power acquisition.

Most recently, there has been a very interesting announcement that the Hydro corporation is embarking on an experimental deep discount policy to a certain number of selected big industrial power consumers.

Having regard to those and other developments, and accepting that this government has said that a hallmark of its energy policy is accountability, particularly for Ontario Hydro, would the Minister of Energy, on behalf of his government, be prepared today to indicate to the House and to the province that, under section 36 of Ontario Energy Board Act, he will refer all or some of these matters to the energy board for an independent adjudication of these issues, just to assure the public that these developments are, as we hope they will be, in the public interest?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy): No.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): "I can't find the page. No, I can't answer" is what he meant to say.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Somebody send him in an answer over there.

Hon Mr Wildman: The answer is no.

Mr Conway: I appreciate the answer. The answer is a declaratory no. I hope the member from Ottawa Centre doesn't choke as she hears that, because some of us remember a time when, for example -- and I'll take a supplementary on just one issue.

The energy board act states in section 37 that where Ontario Hydro proposes to change any of its rates or charges, Hydro shall submit that proposal to the minister, who shall then submit that proposal to the energy board: "shall." That's what the energy board act says.

About six weeks ago, very quietly, the Rae cabinet passed a regulation that amends the impact of that section, giving Hydro an exemption from that accountability if those changes are deemed to be experimental. Now, in light of the long-standing position of the New Democratic Party that we've got to have a good independent adjudication of significant developments at Ontario Hydro, surely the minister understands that while this may be very good policy -- in my view, I think a number of the developments are quite positive --

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

Mr Conway: -- surely in the public interest there should be a reference of these issues, and, I'd ask specifically, if not of all of the issues, at least the issue of the so-called experimental deep discounting rates to big industrial users.

Would the minister not agree that that would be a timely and useful thing to do?

Hon Mr Wildman: The member is correct in his preamble to both his first and his second questions in saying that the corporation is right now experiencing and going through a significant restructuring of its operations which will affect the public, certainly the ratepayers, and the employees of Ontario Hydro.

The member is correct that when Ontario Hydro proposes a rate change to the minister, the minister can refer and should refer the matter to the Ontario Energy Board. In this case, Ontario Hydro is not doing that, and the member for Renfrew North knows that.

The corporation has suggested, on an experimental basis, looking at the possibility of a differential rate in relation to its major customers as they consume the surplus. The government has responded by saying that on an experimental basis -- Mr Speaker, surely my first answer was concise. You can give me a little bit of time here.

The Speaker: I appreciate that, but perhaps the member could still conclude his response shortly.

Hon Mr Wildman: Well, after a one-word answer on the first one, to be hurried along on this one --

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

Hon Mr Wildman: The point is this: In response to the proposal for an experimental approach, the government responded with a regulatory change that would facilitate that. If at any time the corporation proposes that kind of an approach on a permanent basis, that matter would then be subject to an Ontario Energy Board hearing.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I have a question for the minister responsible for auto insurance. Mr Minister, when you first introduced Bill 164, you promised the people of Ontario cheaper auto insurance premiums on the understanding that they withdraw their right to sue for economic loss. Thanks to the Treasurer adding a 5% tax on premiums, premiums will definitely not be going down. They will be increasing a maximum of 10% to 40%, depending on which studies you use, yours or of course the auto insurance companies'.

Bill 164 is a lose-lose situation for consumers of Ontario who rely of course on automobiles. Why are you going ahead on a piece of legislation that is not only flawed but will mean only fewer options for accident victims and higher rates for consumers?

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): The member opposite seems to indicate that he and his colleagues in the Conservative caucus have forgotten the entire debate around Bill 68, the Liberal legislation which led us here. For the member opposite to talk about Bill 164 as a lose-lose situation when the current legislation, the Ontario motorist protection plan legislation, which they seem to be now defending, leaves without coverage virtually at all significant segments of the population of this province: children, students, homemakers, women who decide to take a few years off work to raise a family and those who in the middle of a recession like this one find themselves temporarily unemployed -- people who under the current legislation are significantly left without coverage, this legislation will provide coverage to.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Hey, it's not right. They are covered. There is coverage.

Hon Mr Charlton: Yes, $185 a week for life.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order, the member for Bruce. Would the minister please take his seat.

Mr Elston: When he becomes an honest man, then I will be quiet.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Bruce knows that's not parliamentary language. I realize he'd like to ask a question, but would he please withdraw --

Mr Elston: When he's honest, I'll withdraw that.

The Speaker: I ask the member, first, to take his seat, and second, would he please withdraw the unparliamentary remark.

Mr Elston: I will withdraw but I will not stop interjecting while he refuses to tell us what the bill actually does.

The Speaker: Would the member please take his seat and would the minister conclude his response, please.

Hon Mr Charlton: Very quickly, the members opposite, it would appear, would prefer to leave all of those people without any adequate coverage under the current legislation. It is possible that there will be small price increases associated with the passage of Bill 164, but it is a small price to pay to ensure that the people of this province, no matter who they are, have adequate coverage under their auto insurance legislation.

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Mr Tilson: At the very least, the small price increases that you're giving are 3% in the hidden premium tax your Treasurer gave last year and 5% this year. That's without even the flaws of Bill 164.

In committee, the committee members of the opposition have asked a number of questions on all of the areas that the minister has been putting forward, and, Mr Minister, your committee members, the government members, either refuse or won't answer the questions that we put to many of the flaws with respect to Bill 164. They simply won't answer or they're unable to answer.

Now you've prepared a motion as House leader to limit debate of Bill 164 for one day in committee and two hours in the House. Why are you proceeding with Bill 164 when you haven't even brought forward your amendments in the committee and they're so painfully unprepared to deal with the results of Bill 164?

Hon Mr Charlton: As is quite often the case, the member opposite is incorrect. All of our amendments have been tabled with the committee.

Mr Elston: That's not true. What is wrong with you? Why can you not tell the truth?

The Speaker: Order, the member for Bruce.

Mr Elston: Why can he not tell the truth?

Hon Mr Charlton: All of the legislative amendments have been tabled with the committee. The member refers to the fact that I've tabled a time allocation --

Mr Elston: That's not the issue.

The Speaker: The member for Bruce: I understand his concerns about the issue, but the honourable member knows that he should not be using that kind of language in the chamber and I would ask him to please simply withdraw.

Mr Elston: Mr Speaker, the issue is important, but the manner of the presentation of the material here is what really is getting me. We are supposed to tell the truth here. I have not heard it, but I will withdraw my question, which was, "Why can he not tell the truth?"

Hon Mr Charlton: I'll resist the temptation to respond to the member for Bruce and respond to the member who raised the question. The member referred to the fact that I've tabled a time allocation motion before the committee. That is because the opposition House leaders before Christmas agreed on a time schedule in the committee for two weeks of public hearings and one week of clause-by-clause during the intersession.

Since that time, I've allowed an additional three days and now a fourth day for the committee to deal with clause-by-clause and it's still only at clause 7 because the members of the Conservative and Liberal parties have been conducting an intentional and nonsensical filibuster. I must proceed and I will.

CLOSING OF TREE NURSERIES

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): New question, the member for Durham East.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would the member take his seat.

Interjections.

The Speaker: The member for Durham East with his question.

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): My question this afternoon is to the Minister of Natural Resources, and it's about the Orono Nursery. About 18 months ago, the Orono tree nursery was threatened with closure and, through the intervention of the past Minister of Natural Resources, that was averted. Now, with the cuts in government spending --

Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): Oh, come on.

Mr Mills: I want to ask my question, and he keeps shouting at me. It's awful. I want to hear my question. I'm fed up with it.

The Speaker: The member for Durham East --

Interjections.

Mr Mills: I'm shouted down.

The Speaker: Would the member for Durham East just relax. I ask the honourable member to direct his question to the minister.

Mr Mills: Mr Minister, we averted that trauma at the Orono tree nursery about 18 months ago. Things have calmed down. Now suddenly rumours are starting circulating again about the fate of the Orono tree nursery --

Interjections.

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

Mr Mills: Mr Speaker, these rumours are circulating and I suspect I know where they're circulating, but I'll ask my question.

My question, Mr Minister: I want you this afternoon to stand in your place and tell me that there will be no job cuts at the Orono tree nursery, that there will be no reduction in staff and that people can go to bed tonight, sleep happily and get this thing off their chests. It's such a worry. Can you answer that? Can you give me that assurance?

Interjections.

Hon Howard Hampton (Minister of Natural Resources): I'll attempt to make myself heard over the noise on the other side.

Through the expenditure control plan we had to look at a number of Ministry of Natural Resources operations. We announced that we would close 18 small field offices and work stations at various locations around the province. We've completed that list of 18, and there will be no job losses associated with the closure of those small offices, although there will be significant savings.

I can tell the member that there is no plan to close the Orono tree nursery. I should say to the member that we will be looking at reducing in particular --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Etobicoke West.

Hon Mr Hampton: -- levels of management within the Ministry of Natural Resources, and as we reduce some of the management numbers, that will have repercussions for the whole system, so that in the end some employees at the Orono nursery might be affected. I doubt it at this time very much.

The Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr Mills: Just to thank the minister for being honest and straightforward to the people I represent. Thank you, Mr Minister.

HEALTH CARE

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): In the absence of the Premier, the Deputy Premier and the Minister of Health, I'd like to address my question to the junior Minister of Health.

On Thursday I raised the chaotic approach this government had taken with respect to its physician resources policy. That very afternoon the minister indicated through a letter, which was signed by her assistant deputy minister and written to Dr John Evans, that --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mrs Sullivan: Mr Speaker, shall I redirect the question to the Minister of Health, who has finally arrived for question period?

That very afternoon the minister indicated through a letter which was signed by her assistant deputy minister to Dr John Evans --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. I'm sorry to interrupt the member, but I cannot hear her question.

Mrs Sullivan: I will reiterate. Last Thursday I asked questions in the House with respect to the chaotic approach that the government has taken to physician resources in Ontario. That very afternoon the assistant deputy minister of health, Margaret Mottershead, signed a letter which indicates to Dr John Evans that the Minister of Health, "accepts the committee's package of recommendations totally," which was a totally different position than that which the minister had enunciated the day before. In the letter she says that there is an "explicit commitment" to the plan, but there is a caveat: The minister doesn't know if her cabinet colleagues will ratify the proposal.

I'd like to know if the Minister of Health will indicate to us if the recommendations of the Evans committee report will be ratified by the government and accepted as the government's final policy statement on this issue.

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): Let me say to the member, I apologize for being late. I was in Niagara Falls speaking to the association of local health authorities and it took me longer to get back than I had planned, so I regret my absence.

Let me say to the member that I think the committee Dr Evans heads has done some very interesting and creative work in dealing with post-graduate -- medical graduates and human resources management for the profession.

The recommendations they have made to me are ones I believe will lead us in the direction of being able to both manage our resources better as well as deal with the critical problems of underserviced domains. I certainly feel it is a step forward from the rather blunt instrument of a 75% discounting, which was our initial proposal to the OMA --

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): That was your instrument for goodness' sake.

Hon Mrs Grier: -- and I recognize it was my instrument, as we began negotiations.

The response of the committee is one that I think is preferable, and I will certainly be discussing that with my cabinet colleagues as soon as I can. I can assure the member that I will inform her of that conclusion as soon as I have it.

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Mrs Sullivan: Two weeks ago the minister was going to use exactly what she calls a blunt instrument to lock out all new paediatricians, GPs, family practitioners and psychiatrists by paying them only a quarter of what they have the right to earn under the negotiated fee schedule. Last Thursday night, the minister speculated that maybe other doctors and older doctors should be "discounted," and I use her word. Friday, we have a new position which accepts the Evans committee report, but once again with the caveat of not knowing whether she can get the agreement of her cabinet colleagues.

What is the position today? What is the government's policy on insuring that we have the right number of doctors in the right places with the right skills? What is your policy today?

Hon Mrs Grier: The policy of this government is to reform the health care system, and that to us, with respect to physician management, means making sure we have the right doctors in the right place. We do that through our discussions with the OMA, discussions and negotiations I am not going to have in this House. Our second policy is to maintain our fiscal targets and reduce the increase in expenditures on health care that under previous governments have been allowed to run unchecked.

I'm confident that we can do both of those things and at the same time ensure that underserviced areas, whether they be populations or regions of the north, that I know colleagues on all sides of the House have been concerned about for a very many years, will in fact be dealt with, and I'm confident that this will be the outcome of our discussions with the OMA.

PHOTO RADAR

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): My question is to the Solicitor General. How are you planning to handle the implications of photo radar to car rental agencies?

Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General): That question would rightfully belong to the Minister of Transportation, but he's not in the House, so I'll attempt to answer. My understanding is that we would attempt to deal with that in the same fashion that one now deals with parking tickets, wherein people who own the cars are responsible for those tickets, not the people who are driving them.

Mr Turnbull: Quite obviously, that's just simply abdicating any dealing with it at all. That is a problem for those car rental agencies, and quite clearly we make ourselves more uncompetitive in the tourist market when we do that.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mr Turnbull: I've got a specific suggestion to you as to how you can mitigate this. I would suggest you develop a form the agency would get the customers to sign which would pre-authorize their acceptance of responsibility for the ticket and would also authorize withdrawal from a credit card for anything which may be incurred by way of charges.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Turnbull: That is a way of making sure you don't harm the businesses of Ontario, the hundreds and hundreds of small rental agencies that are already burdened with a lot of government red tape. Will you do that?

Hon Mr Christopherson: I don't understand the question. Sorry, Mr Speaker. There's been so much commotion in the House today I've had a great deal of difficulty listening to the member, and he is on the other side of the House. If I could hear the essence of the question again, I will be glad to attempt to answer it.

The Speaker: Could the member briefly place his question, and it would be helpful --

Interjections.

Mr Turnbull: Mr Speaker, I cannot -- I must -- if he doesn't --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. There was a considerable amount of noise in the chamber. I had trouble hearing the question. I would ask all members to please allow the member to place his question.

Mr Turnbull: You have added a considerable amount of red tape to the administration of car rental companies by doing this. You also injure the tourism business by adding extra costs which will be distributed across all people who rent cars. A solution that I'm offering to you, Minister, is quite simply to create a form on which auto agencies would undertake on your behalf, the government's behalf, to get a signature from those people who are renting. This form would automatically make the onus on the person renting and would pre-authorize on behalf of the government a deduction from any credit card for any amounts which would be owing, rather than spreading it across the cost of renting all cars. Will you do this?

Hon Mr Christopherson: I'm glad I asked for the question to be repeated and clarified, because it's what I thought the first time when I heard the pieces of it through the roar on the other side.

The reality is that essentially what the member is talking about is exactly what we are planning to do, which as I understand it is very similar to what is done with parking tickets. So there's no intent to put an onus on business. There's going to be an opportunity --

Mr Turnbull: You're doing nothing with parking tickets. it's the responsibility of the car agency.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Christopherson: Mr Speaker, I really question whether the member wants to hear an answer to a question or whether he just wants to make a lot of noise here today.

Mr Turnbull: On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: The suggestion by the minister completely distorts what I have said. The government does not take any responsibility to --

The Speaker: The member does not have a point of privilege.

WASTE REDUCTION

Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): My question is for the Chair of Management Board. I believe that this government takes seriously the need to control garbage, because the materials we throw away are valuable, because our environment is damaged by the excessive extraction of resources from it and because there's really no satisfactory way of disposing of garbage. Could the minister tell us what this government is doing to support the measures that the Minister of Environment and Energy recently announced around the 3Rs program?

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet): I thank the member for Peterborough for the question. The government of Ontario has undertaken what I can only describe as the largest 3Rs program taken on by any institution in North America. We have attempted through the way that we've proceeded with our program to try and provide leadership to the private sector and to the public at large. We have, through the reduction of some 7,700 tonnes of waste each year over the course of the last several years, saved between $3 million and $4 million in tipping fees at landfill sites across the province. We've established composting sites at some 30 institutions. We've used over 8,000 tonnes of recycled paper, saving roughly 68,000 trees, and recently we've initiated the --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Hon Mr Charlton: In recent days, we've had as many as 87,000 government employees in 760 locations across the province involved in the green workplace program and involved in reducing waste in government operations.

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Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I'm serving notice of my dissatisfaction with the answer provided by the Minister of Environment and Energy to my question. I'll be happy to debate it later in the week.

The Speaker: I trust that the member will file the necessary document with the table.

PETITIONS

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario re Bill 38, an amendment of the Retail Business Holidays Act to permit wide-open Sunday shopping and eliminate Sunday as a legal holiday.

"We, the undersigned, hereby request you to vote against the passing of Bill 38. We believe that this bill defies God's laws, violates the principle of religious freedom, reduces the quality of life, removes all legal protection to workers regarding when they must work and will reduce rather than improve the prosperity of our province.

"The observance of Sunday as a non-working day was not invented by man. It dates from God's creation and is an absolute necessity for the wellbeing of all people, both physically and spiritually. We beg you to defeat the passing of Bill 38."

It's signed by 114 residents of the province and I've affixed my signature.

POLLUTION CONTROL

Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): I have a petition signed by the residents of my riding which says:

"We have been residents of southeast Oakville since 1974 and have been increasingly concerned about the pollution being emitted from the St Lawrence Cement plant and we request that testing of contaminants in the dust be done."

GAMBLING

Mr Mike Cooper (Kitchener-Wilmot): I have a petition from the St James-Rosemount United Church and it's addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and it states:

"Whereas the Christian is called to love of neighbour, which includes a concern for the general wellbeing of society; and

"Whereas there is a direct link between the higher availability of legalized gambling and the incidence of addictive gambling; and

"Whereas the damage of addiction to gambling in individuals is compounded by the damage done to families, both emotionally and economically; and

"Whereas the gambling market is already saturated with various kinds of government-operated lotteries; and

"Whereas large-scale gambling activity invariably attracts criminal activity; and

"Whereas the citizens of Detroit have since 1976 on three occasions voted down the introduction of casinos into that city, each time with a larger majority than the time before,

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

"That the government of Ontario cease all moves to establish gambling casinos."

SENIORS' HEALTH SERVICES

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I've been provided with a petition from Margaret Brocklebank, who is the secretary of the Streetsville Senior Citizens' Club 111, and the members would like to express their concern regarding changes proposed to the Ontario drug benefit program. They are concerned that the changes may result in user fees for seniors and it's my pleasure to sign this petition on their behalf.

PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I have a petition addressed to the Honourable Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We, the following undersigned citizens of Leeds and Grenville, members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, Local 441, Brockville and Area Centre for Developmentally Handicapped Persons Inc, in Brockville, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"The Ontario government must immediately reset its course to build an Ontario society which is fair and just, protecting those who are most vulnerable within it and not scapegoat public sector workers in times of economic difficulty.

"Further, the government must respect these fundamental principles: free collective bargaining, a strong public sector and the strengthening of public service."

I'm affixing my signature in support.

CLOSURE OF AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE

Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): I have a petition here addressed to Premier Rae, Treasurer Laughren, Minister Buchanan:

"We, the undersigned, request that you seriously consider reversing your decision to close New Liskeard College of Agricultural Technology."

It's signed by about 99 constituents and I'll affix my signature to this too.

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES

Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): I have a petition addressed to the Parliament of Ontario:

"Whereas there are many cases in which mothers have not abused or neglected their children and are treated unfairly;

"Whereas children's aid societies do not recognize single mothers and children as a family unit;

"Whereas single mothers lose all rights once their children become crown wards; and

"Whereas some case workers of children's aid societies have lack of communication with single mothers; and

"Whereas children's aid societies, in placing the children in relief homes, reduce meaningful visits with their mothers; and

"Whereas children's aid societies plan visits at their discretion and not in the best interests of the children; and

"Whereas parents of the children's aid societies should be screened before becoming foster parents; and

"Whereas the words 'the best interests of the children' are not fully defined by the children's aid society and in our courts; and

"Whereas single mothers are becoming victims of children's aid societies in losing all access to their children;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Parliament of Ontario to have the children's aid societies investigated when the children become crown wards at the discretion of the children's aid society, for the purpose that the visitations are being removed from the mothers and their children, to allow the courts to have more say for mothers and their children to remain as a family, and to have children's parents of the children's aid society screened before becoming foster parents."

That's signed by some 523 signatures and I have signed the petition.

GAMBLING

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): I have a petition which has been signed by about 20 people in Bloomingdale, Maryhill, Kitchener, Waterloo and London.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the Christian is called to love of neighbour, which includes a concern for the general wellbeing of society; and

"Whereas there is a direct link between the higher availability of legalized gambling and the incidence of addictive gambling; and

"Whereas the damage of addiction to gambling in individuals is compounded by the damage done to families, both emotionally and economically; and

"Whereas the gambling market is already saturated with various kinds of government-operated lotteries; and

"Whereas large-scale gambling activity invariably attracts criminal activity; and

"Whereas the citizens of Detroit have, since 1976, on three occasions voted down the introduction of casinos into that city, each time with a larger majority than the time before;

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

"That the government of Ontario cease all moves to establish gambling casinos."

I hereby affix my signature.

BICYCLING SAFETY

Mr Mike Cooper (Kitchener-Wilmot): I have a petition against the mandatory requirement for individuals to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle, and it's to the Speaker of the House and the Parliament of Ontario:

"Whereas we, the undersigned, support the voluntary use of bicycle helmets promoted as part of a comprehensive bicycle safety program; and

"Whereas we, the undersigned, oppose the province's plan to mandate the use of bicycle helmets as being an excessive restriction of personal rights to choose for ourselves as guaranteed under the Constitution;

"We respectfully submit this petition for your consideration."

GAMBLING

Mrs Joan M. Fawcett (Northumberland): I have a petition 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 have signed the petition.

Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): I have a petition signed by 25 members of the congregation of St John's Church, Ida, in my riding:

"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 have affixed my signature.

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COMMUNITY RECREATION FUNDING

Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): I have a petition signed by 100 school children at St George's school in Long Sault, Ontario, which asks the government to support the construction of the Long Sault Centennial Arena. The petition reads:

"We, the youth and our families, along with the members of our community, have been working very hard to raise a portion of the moneys needed to rebuild our well-used arena. We need government funding to help. Unfortunately, we can't do it alone. We need our arena."

I fully support the petition and affix my signature and applaud the efforts of the St George's school children and their teachers.

PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I have a petition to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"We, the following undersigned citizens of Leeds and Grenville, members of Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 440 employed by the Ministry of the Attorney General in Brockville, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"The Ontario government must immediately reset its course to build an Ontario society which is fair and just, protecting those who are most vulnerable within it and not scapegoat public sector workers in times of economic difficulty.

"Further, the government must respect these fundamental principles: free collective bargaining, a strong public sector and the strengthening of the public services."

I have affixed my signature in support.

GAMBLING

Mrs Irene Mathyssen (Middlesex): I have a petition respectfully submitted to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by 24 Middlesex residents who ask that the government of Ontario cease all moves to establish gambling casinos in the province of Ontario.

NORTHERN HEALTH SERVICES

Mr David Ramsay (Timiskaming): I have quite a massive petition here, primarily signed by the folks from the town of Englehart in the riding of Timiskaming, and it says in regard to health care in northern Ontario:

"We, the undersigned, wish to strongly suggest the following recommendations:

"(1) Governmental officials legislate doctors to practise in northern Ontario by making northern postings a part of their curriculum. This could be a way of paying back subsidies given them, government grants, community sponsorship etc.

"(2) Issue a number of licences to southern Ontario and an equal number per capita to the north.

"(3) Open up immigration practices again to allow foreign doctors to practise in Canada. This practise has worked well in the past.

"Where there is a lack of governmental services, there is no community. Because we have chosen to live in the rural north, we should not be penalized. The closing of small northern Ontario hospitals and the reduction of government funding that causes bed closures is not the only answer to the health care crisis. As it is, when beds are needed in the southern hospitals for patients requiring specialist care, the wait is long, as it is in the list of patients awaiting beds. If more hospitals and beds close, these hospitals will be even further overloaded. The cost of increased transfers will escalate, along with the number of people requiring travel grants and other types of assistance.

"In addition, the north cannot afford to shoulder the burden of reduced income in any way of lost jobs. What we need is more doctors in the north to keep the facilities and services operational."

I affix my name to this petition.

LANDFILL

Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): I have a petition here:

"Whereas the town of Georgina has traditionally been a mixture of agricultural, residential and recreation/vacation lands; and

"Whereas these areas would drastically be affected by a megadump; and

"Whereas the Interim Waste Authority has identified sites in the town that would consume large tracts of number 1 and 2 farm land, the areas identified by the Interim Waste Authority would disrupt the vibrant agricultural communities and farm families in these areas that have continued to invest large sums of money in their farms; and

"Whereas these communities would be destroyed by the Interim Waste Authority putting in a megadump; and

"Whereas most of the people in Georgina depend on groundwater for their drinking water supply and a dump would threaten their clean supply of drinking water; and

"Whereas Lake Simcoe is the ice fishing capital of the world; and

"Whereas Lake Simcoe provides a strong draw for tourists year round; and

"Whereas the effects of a megadump would destroy the local economies in the community;

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

"We oppose the Interim Waste Authority's proposal to take prime farm land and turn it into York-Metro's megadump.

"We further petition the Legislative Assembly to renew its efforts to seek alternatives like waste reprocessing to landfill and implementation of progressive reduction, reuse and recycling programs.''

I affix my name to this petition like the many people who were out in front of the Legislature this weekend at a GAG rally.

GAMBLING

Mrs Joan M. Fawcett (Northumberland): I have another petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the Christian is called to love of neighbour, which includes a concern for the general wellbeing of society; and

"Whereas there is a direct link between the higher availability of legalized gambling and the incidence of addictive gambling; and

"Whereas the damage of addiction to gambling in individuals is compounded by the damage done to families, both emotionally and economically; and

"Whereas the gambling market is already saturated with various kinds of government-operated lotteries; and

"Whereas large-scale gambling activity invariably attracts criminal activity; and

"Whereas the citizens of Detroit have, since 1976, on three occasions voted down the introduction of casinos into that city, each time with a larger majority than the time before;

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

"That the government of Ontario cease all moves to establish gambling casinos."

I have signed the petition.

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): Pursuant to standing order 60(a), I beg leave to present a report from the standing committee on estimates on the estimates selected and not selected by the standing committee for consideration for the fiscal year 1993-94.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals (Mr Alex D. McFedries): Mr Jackson from the standing committee on estimates presents the committee's report as follows:

Pursuant to Standing order 59, your committee has selected the estimates of the following ministries and offices for consideration:

Ministry of Agriculture and Food, seven hours and 30 minutes; Ministry of Housing, seven hours and 30 minutes --

Mr Jackson: Dispense.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Agreed?

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): No, no, carry on.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals: Ministry of Health, 10 hours;

Ministry of Labour, five hours;

Office responsible for women's issues, seven and a half hours;

Office of francophone affairs, seven and a half hours;

Ministry of Education and Training, seven and a half hours;

Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, seven and a half hours;

Ministry of Community and Social Services, 10 hours;

Ministry of Natural Resources, five hours;

Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, seven and a half hours;

Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, seven and a half hours.

Pursuant to standing order 60, the estimates of the following ministries and offices not selected for consideration are deemed passed by the committee and reported to the House in accordance with the terms of the standing order and deemed to be received and concurred in.

Ministry of the Attorney General: law officer of the crown, $261,832,257; ministry administration program, $27,949,700; guardian and trustee services, $20,794,400; crown legal services, $99,552,500; legislative counsel services, $4,272,300; courts administration, $291,395,200; administrative tribunals, $26,978,100; special investigations unit, $2,099,400.

Cabinet Office: Cabinet Office program, $5,775,100; Premier's councils, $4,565,100.

Ministry of Citizenship: ministry administration, $5,496,765; program support, $26,371,400; anti-racism strategy, $8,478,900; disability and seniors' issues, $15,516,100; ministry agencies, $21,566,100.

Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations: ministry administration, $23,876,457; business practices, $14,804,200; technical standards, $18,211,300; registration, $72,425,200; agencies, $43,474,900; casino development, $2,960,500.

Ministry of Environment and Energy: ministry administration program, $43,585,173; environmental services, $114,500,000; environmental control, $104,679,600; utility planning and operations, $217,795,200; energy planning and development, $26,001,700.

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Ministry of Finance: ministry administration program, $57,099,907; treasury and controllership, $7,155,977,000; taxation and intergovernmental finance policy, $7,048,000; economic policy, $21,215,600; treasury board, $449,549,500; office of the budget, $1,004,100; financial standards, $50,167,800; tax administration, $202,260,400; property assessment, $109,293,900; Province of Ontario Savings Office, $12,403,100.

Ministry of Intergovernmental Affairs: ministry administration program, $2,425,808; federal and interprovincial relations, $5,738,100.

Office of the Lieutenant Governor: Office of the Lieutenant Governor program, $662,000.

Management Board Secretariat: ministry administration program, $29,577,107; realty services, $377,832,500; supply and services, $65,574,600; computer and telecommunication services, $15,406,500; human resources, information technology and management policy, $64,345,800.

Ministry of Municipal Affairs: ministry administration, $6,519,507; municipal policy, $9,266,600; municipal operations, $950,980,300; Ontario municipal audit, $1,809,800; Ontario Municipal Board, $7,967,100; office for the greater Toronto area, $1,717,400; board of negotiation, $143,200; waterfront regeneration trust, $1,916,900.

Ontario Native Affairs Secretariat: Ontario Native Affairs Secretariat program, $18,343,608.

Office of the Premier: Office of the Premier program, $2,363,748.

Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services: ministry administration program, $59,238,165; public safety, $46,619,300; policing services, $22,787,300; Ontario Provincial Police, $498,076,400; correctional services, $563,088,700.

Ministry of Transportation: ministry administration program, $35,591,857; policy and planning, $18,775,300; safety and regulation, $109,592,000; program delivery, $595,122,900.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Pursuant to standing order 60(b), the report of the committee is deemed to be received, and the estimates of the ministries and offices named therein as not being selected for consideration are deemed to be concurred in.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

GEORGIAN-SIMCOE RAILWAY COMPANY LIMITED ACT, 1993

On motion by Mr J. Wilson, the following bill was given first reading:

Bill Pr27, An Act respecting Georgian-Simcoe Railway Company Limited.

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): Do I get a short explanation on the bill?

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): It's a private bill, so there are no introductory remarks.

MINING AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LES MINES

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

Bill 43, An Act to amend the Mining Act / Loi modifiant la Loi sur les mines.

WAUBAUSHENE RAILWAY COMPANY LIMITED ACT, 1993

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

Bill Pr32, An Act respecting the Waubaushene Railway Company Limited.

PICTON-TRENTON RAILWAY COMPANY LIMITED ACT, 1993

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

Bill Pr29, An Act respecting Picton-Trenton Railway Company Limited.

WATERLOO-ST JACOBS RAILWAY COMPANY LIMITED ACT, 1993

On motion by Mrs Witmer, the following bill was given first reading:

Bill Pr31, An Act respecting Waterloo-St Jacobs Railway Company Limited.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Orders of the day.

EXTENDED HOURS OF MEETING

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): Mr Speaker, I would like to rise on a point of order with respect to government notice of motion number 2, which is also on the order paper as orders of the day today, which motion, as I'm sure you are aware, states: "That, notwithstanding standing order 9, the House shall continue to meet from 6 pm to 12 midnight on June 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, and 24" etc.

That, of course, is the usual motion that is passed some time before the last eight sessional days of the parliamentary calendar. I would submit to you, Mr Speaker, that that motion in this particular case, as it's worded, is out of order. The reason I submit that to you, sir, is that on May 10, 1993, in this place the government proposed a motion, which was unanimously passed, "...that, notwithstanding any standing order of the House, the House meet in the morning of Wednesday, June 9, 1993, for the consideration of private members' public business, and when the House adjourns that day, it shall stand adjourned until Monday, June 14, 1993, and that Monday, June 14, 1993, be not considered as one of the last eight sessional days in June for the purposes as set out in the standing orders."

My submission to you very simply, Mr Speaker, is that this House having passed on May 10 unanimous motion that June 14 was not to be considered one of the last eight sessional days, it is clearly out of order for the government today to introduce a motion including June 14 as one of the last eight sessional days and therefore granting permission to sit from 6 pm until 12 midnight.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): I agree with that in the sense that I understand the House has the opportunity to do whatever it does wish to do with the standing orders, but it seems to me, having given precedence to one change in the standing orders, with the consent of the people here, because there were special arrangements being made because of the Thursday early rising this week of the House, we have agreed that the last eight days not include June 14 because that means the government can actually do certain other business, ie, they can actually introduce a bill which they can require to be dealt with in those last eight days otherwise. It seems to me, therefore, because the previous motion, which now must be given precedence and priority over the standing orders, has taken away June 14 as a day of one of the last eight sessional days, that we can no longer be asked to comply with the rest of the standing order which tells us that we can have a motion, almost a right -- it has a two-hour debate time limit as you know -- that will require us to sit evenings, the reason being that June 14 now is available for the government to do business that it would otherwise be excluded from doing, ie, introducing more legislation for the last eight sessional days.

Mr Speaker, I think that therefore means that this particular motion is indeed out of order because we're dealing with something other than the last eight sessional days, as the standing orders have been amended by prior agreement of the House.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): It's an interesting but expected position that the two opposition House leaders put.

I should, I guess, point out to you, Mr Speaker, that the business which the House leader of the opposition referred to as business that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do on June 14, we seek to do in order to accommodate the wishes of the third party not to sit on the Thursday so that its members can attend the convention.

But all that aside, there is no point of order here. The motion, as the House leader of the third party has indicated, which was passed on May 10, is a valid motion. The House also has a right to pass a subsequent motion which will in effect change that order because it will be an order of the House.

The motion that stands framed before you today, the one that hopefully I will be moving in a few minutes, is a motion which deals with standing order 9 and standing order 9 alone. The other parts of the motion passed on May 10 will still stand and be valid. But in any event, there's nothing out of order. The House has the perfect right to debate a motion and to order its business, and that's what I'm requesting we do this afternoon, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker: The three House leaders have given me something to think about, because indeed I find that the member from Parry Sound's arguments with respect to the previous order declaring that the 14th would not be included cause me some concern when the government then wishes to pass a new motion that includes the 14th in the number of days for evening sittings.

I think that under the circumstances it would be best to pause for a few moments. I think 10 minutes would be sufficient. If the current motion is permissible, it would allow enough time to complete the debate, and if it's not permissible we will go on with other business. So this House stands in recess for 10 minutes.

The House recessed at 1543 and resumed at 1554.

The Speaker: First, before addressing the point of order, I realize that all members in the assembly make every effort to do the public business as expeditiously as possible, and sometimes extra hours are required in order to do that.

The member for Parry Sound has indeed raised a valid point of order. There was a special order of this House which indicated that June 14 was not to be considered as one of the eight sessional days during which time the hours could be extended.

The question of the point of order rests on the wording of the motion which was placed at that time.

The government may wish to come back to this House tomorrow with a new, revised motion, with suitable notice and placed on the order paper, so that it in fact can be debated and would stand in order. But I must, under the circumstances, find that the honourable member for Parry Sound indeed is correct, that he has a valid point of order and that the motion is not in order.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PAY EQUITY AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉQUITÉ SALARIALE

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for third reading of Bill 102, An Act to amend the Pay Equity Act / Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'équité salariale.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I believe the member for Waterloo North had the floor last when we completed the debate.

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): Yes, Mr Speaker. When the House adjourned on May 12, I was speaking to the pay equity bill. At that time I was reviewing some of the communications I had received from people throughout the province, both in the form of written letters and verbal communication, regarding their concerns about Bill 102, the pay equity legislation. I would just like to add again that there has been a tremendous amount of concern expressed regarding this issue.

The first letter I had dealt with that day was a letter from the YWCA of Kitchener-Waterloo. It was a letter to the Honourable Bob Mackenzie and was dated February 15, 1993. In speaking to the bill, they mentioned, "We strongly support your government's proposal to extend the implementation period of pay equity to 1988," in order that they don't have to reduce their service and in order that they don't have to lay off their staff.

That was the concern they were bringing to our attention. If they were forced to go ahead with the implementation of pay equity at the present time, because of the economic recession and the fact that they are struggling to meet their needs, the cost of pay equity was going to result in layoffs and service cuts to the YWCA. As a result, the women this bill is supposed to help were the women who were going to be suffering from the cutbacks, as well as the children. It was the women and the children who need the emergency housing who were going to be the ones who were going to suffer as a result of the implementation of pay equity.

The Y also indicated that it had concern about the implementation of pay equity by proxy comparison and it urged the minister to examine the effect of pay equity upon the internal equity within a place of employment. They felt that by adjusting one or more female-dominated positions to a male-dominated comparator position that may be compensated at an inflated wage or salary, the equity among many or all positions may be disturbed significantly, thus bringing about conditions which are certainly contrary to the intention of this act.

That concern had been brought to our attention by numerous sectors throughout the province, including the nurses and the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses. It appears that the cost of this pay equity bill is certainly going to be greater than any benefits that could accrue to the women in this province.

I'd now like to focus on the next interest group reaction, and that is the reaction from the Canadian Manufacturers' Association, which has some very legitimate concerns about the pay equity bill. They have indicated that when one considers the amount of resources expended to implement legislated pay equity and the results achieved, one must question the value of the entire initiative.

A recent study indicated that more resources were expended to implement pay equity than were expended to make the required wage adjustments. That was a study by Sibson in 1990. Certainly, I have heard from many other groups in this province that have said the same thing: The resources to implement pay equity were greater than those required to make the necessary wage adjustments. I'd like to give just one example, and that is the Kidd Creek mines. They spent $216,000 on consultants and lawyers, because they're the people who do the job, to put only $215,000 in the pocket of the working women, the people whom the legislation was intended to help.

The Canadian Manufacturers' Association goes on to say that companies which have, in good faith, followed the legislation thus far and have implemented pay equity are now going to find, because of this bill, that they have to go back and address any female job classes for which there were no male comparators. In doing this, if the company addresses only the jobs for which there are no male comparators, it could skew the entire compensation system. They also say that Bill 102 will require many companies to expend more resources, again to ensure compliance with the proportional value amendments.

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They go on to say that it is far too late in the game to require employers to reopen or change their pay equity plans to require proportional value comparisons, and then say that government must also recognize -- and this is a very important point I'm going to be making -- that over the last five years, certainly during the time the Liberals have been in power, and now the NDP, the employers of this province have been hit with an onslaught of legislation, an onslaught of regulatory reform, high taxation and other initiatives which have had a very negative impact on their ability to compete.

Changes are occurring, or they have already occurred, in the area of labour relations; in employment standards; in workers' compensation, which has an unfunded liability of $11 billion; in occupational health and safety, which has tremendous new costs for employers; employment equity; taxation -- employer health tax; and the environment. The list goes on and on and on. It is time to stop, they say, the regulatory production line and it is time to let the manufacturers and the employers of this province deal with the current regulatory framework, and of course get on with the job of creating new jobs for the people in this province who are so desperately looking for them.

The final point they make is that although proxy comparisons will create serious administrative problems, their main concern pertains to the costs. That's something this government should know it can't ignore, as it is presently trying to reduce its deficit by $2 billion through negotiations with the unions, and so far very unsuccessfully. The only thing that's happened in this province is that we've had greater uncertainty created than ever before in the life of this province. I can't believe it when I walk down the streets in my riding or when the phone rings. This social contract discussion has created a tremendous amount of uncertainty in this province, and people are concerned that it's going to somehow impact on them. I would hope that the government resolves this issue as quickly as possible.

The government is already in a financial crisis, and proxy comparison is only going to exacerbate the problem. Therefore, the manufacturers' association concludes by saying, "Do not introduce a proxy comparison system into the legislation." We know that proxy comparison is only for the public sector. It's only going to make their costs higher.

I'd now like to quote from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in a letter that it wrote to the Treasurer, Floyd Laughren, on November 27, 1992.

"The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is deeply concerned by the double-standard approach of the Ontario government to the issue of pay equity. The announcement of yesterday, November 26, to delay the implementation of Bill 168 came complete with the rationale that the economy was too weak at this time.

"The weak economy your government faces is the same one that thousands of small firms fight against for survival. Accordingly, these firms, these small firms, should receive the same consideration as others in the public policy process.

"Therefore, in addition to delaying Bill 168, the federation requests you also delay the implementation of pay equity in firms with 10 to 49 employees from January 1, 1993, to a time when the economy is more able to accommodate it. This measure would be especially welcome in view of the fact that these small firms are least equipped to handle the burdensome and costly administrative and regulatory process of Ontario's complex pay equity system in such difficult economic times."

That sums up the position of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. They are concerned about that double-standard approach, and it's an issue that I discussed on May 12 in my comments. The government is certainly not being fair when it pushes back its own implementation time line and totally fails to disregards -- the private sector has the same financial struggle to cope with as the government does. Certainly, in all fairness, they should take a look at delaying the implementation time line as well, and they should remember it is the small business community that creates new jobs in this province, and at the present time, as I've said before, it's jobs that our people are looking for.

Finally, one more interest group reaction to pay equity -- this is the fourth -- and this is from the Equal Pay Coalition, which is not happy either with the bill:

"In particular, we are dismayed by the government's decision to extend the final payout date for pay equity until 1988. We feel that it is shameless for the government to be using this legislation, which is the fulfilment of promises made by this government during several elections, as an opportunity to diminish rights previously achieved by working women. We do not believe that this giving with the one hand and taking away with the other is justified by our present difficult economic circumstances.

"The coalition does not accept the proxy methodology introduced in Bill 102, on the basis that it is inconsistent with one of the fundamental principles of pay equity, specifically, the principle that female job classes should be compared to male job classes."

The coalition proposed a cross-establishment method of comparison as an alternative.

I think you can see there is widespread opposition to the pay equity bill that is before us at the present time. Certainly, the concern does focus on the proxy methodology. There seems to be universal opposition, almost, to that method being used in the comparison.

I think I also would like to make the point at this time that pay equity isn't and doesn't totally explain the wage difference. If we're going to really understand the wage difference, we need to look at a few other factors, and three of them are education, hours worked and marriage, because those are very essential to our understanding.

In a Globe and Mail article in January 1993, reference was made to a Statistics Canada report of 1991, and in that report it indicated that women's wages rose to 69.6% of men's from 67.6% the year before. That's a 2% increase. But what does this 2% increase mean? It doesn't mean women are being paid nearly one third less to do the same job, even though there are some within this government who suggest that men are being paid one third more to do precisely the same job as a woman within the same company.

What these statistics also show, what we would expect, is that since society's attitudes towards woman's work and education have changed only relatively recently, the difference in average wages would be least among the young. We find that while the full-time working woman over age 55 earned 63.6% of the income of her male counterpart in the same age bracket, the same woman who is younger and aged 15 to 24 earned an average of 86.4% as much as a man in the same age group. That is 23% more between women over age 55 and women between the ages of 15 and 24. So you can see that age is making a difference as far as the payment for women in jobs is concerned.

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Also, if you look further, you see that education does play a very critical role as far as the wage gap is concerned. Women today with a university degree earned more, not less, than men with lower levels of education. If you take into consideration the fact -- and I'm still quoting now from the Statistics Canada poll of 1991 that was found in the Globe and Mail article of January 1993. When you remember that a majority of those enrolled in Canadian universities are female -- indeed 55.3% of the full- and part-time students are women -- it is obvious that according to the trends that have been established, the wage difference is going to continue to narrow, and it's not going to narrow because of pay equity; it's going to narrow because of the increased accessibility of education for women.

Unfortunately, this government and its cutbacks to universities and colleges is going to prevent some women from accessing post-secondary education and, as a result, it's going to prevent them from accessing those higher-paid jobs. They need to give very careful consideration to what they're doing when they implement those cutbacks to the universities and the colleges, because it also almost always appears that it's women who suffer the most from any cutbacks that this government is making.

Marital status also impacts the wage gap. There is already only a small wage gap between single men and women. In 1991, single women's average earnings were 91.1% of those of their male counterparts. For some women, there was even less of a difference. For women aged 35 to 44, their income was 94.5% of that earned by men of the same age. Indeed, if we look at the most educated members of that age group, single females with a university degree, women actually made 6% more than single 35- to 44-year-old uneducated men. I think what's happening throughout this province is that women are going back to university and college and they are, as a result, accessing the higher-paid jobs. As a result, we're going to see that wage gap narrow in the future.

Statistics also show us that women now hold almost half of all management and professional jobs in Canada. Between 1985 and 1990, the number of women in the high-paying fields in Canada rose 53%, while men rose only 1%.

It is obvious, if you take a look at this report, that women have made very significant gains since the 1980s and I think it's quite obvious as well that it isn't because of pay equity. It's because of increased educational opportunities for women, and certainly marital status has an impact as well. That's something the government needs to remember, and I would hope that they would focus more of their resources on providing educational opportunities and training opportunities for women in this province. I understand, if you take a look at the statistics of Jobs Ontario, that there are far fewer women who are accessing these programs at the present time, and I think this government needs to reprioritize and take a look at what it can do for women in creating new job opportunities through Jobs Ontario.

This government should also remember that people need to be free to make choices, parents need to be free to make choices. Although the government presses for universal day care, it is ignoring the women who feel that the tax system is unfair to families where one spouse chooses to stay at home.

I believe that this government, along with its federal counterpart, needs to take a look at the issue of pensions. There is certainly strong public support that homemakers should be allowed to participate in the Canada pension plan. The all-invest Gallup poll several years ago showed 73% support for this.

However, to date there has been no widely accepted method of allowing homemakers into the Canada pension plan. Unfortunately, women today who choose to devote their lives to raising their children and keeping house for their husbands are the ones who suffer the most from the inadequacies of our pension system. If women are truly to have equity, more than just pay equity, we must recognize their equal contribution to the marriage as well as the homemakers' contribution to the country's economy, and this government should work with its federal counterparts to do everything possible to implement a pension plan so that the older women who today are living in poverty do not need to do so in the future.

I'd like to also indicate that I'm disappointed that the government still seems intent on addressing some of the perceived imbalances in a given profession or a given job through quotas or setting lower standards for women. Not only do these measures border on discrimination, which is something that women in this province have long decried, but they also imply that women cannot make the grade without a head start. I believe that everybody in this province should be encouraged to do whatever they can to seek out women and encourage them and to allow them to develop their potential to their fullest and then make sure that they are well equipped for the job. If this is done, a giant step would be taken towards equal opportunity.

Again, I go back to education and training. I believe that's where this government should focus its attention. If we're going to eliminate the wage gap between men and women, we need to make sure that women have the same educational and training opportunities as men. Only then are we going to have true equal opportunities in this province, and obviously, the more capable the female applicants for any job, the more difficult it's going to be for even the most regressive elements in this province to ignore them. That's where I believe the government needs to focus its attention at the present time: in the area of education and training and providing the equal opportunity for men and women. I would suggest that they take a look at their Jobs Ontario program to see how many women compared to men are getting an opportunity for access to new job positions.

At this time, I'd like to summarize some of the concerns that I have expressed regarding pay equity. I'd like to say that I believe all of us on both sides of the House should do everything possible we can to ensure that women and men do have equal representation and status and opportunity in pay equity, and we should do everything we can to create a society in this province through consensus and compromise which allows the unique differences in the talents and desires of each male and female to be celebrated.

However, I'd like to indicate to you, as we draw this debate on the Pay Equity Amendment Act to a close, Bill 102, in this third reading of the bill, as we discuss the issue of reimbursing women with equal pay for work of equal value, a principle, by the way, which I have indicated before that the PC Party does support, we do have some very serious concerns about this legislation. I talked about them on May 12 and I've talked about them today, and we really do question whether indeed this bill which is before us does support the principle. As a result, I'd just like to summarize some of the concerns that we have at the present time.

Unfortunately, because of the cuts in services that have been occurring across the province, women who might have benefited from pay equity have instead been losing their jobs, so it appears that at the present time there is absolutely no net gain whatsoever.

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It is extremely unfortunate that this government, since it was elected in 1990, has not focused upon job creation as a priority; not that the government create jobs, but it should have been creating an environment for the private sector to create the jobs. We know it is the private sector and we know it is the small business entrepreneur that create the jobs in this province, and unfortunately, that's not happening, and as a result women have lost many of the benefits, because they appear to be the people who are eliminated first from the payroll, who are at the bottom of the scale.

Although we might see some gains being made within the public sector, we've seen so many cutbacks made by this government, we've seen so much downloading to the municipalities and the universities and the school boards and the hospitals, that as a result it has been women who are losing their jobs. This loss of jobs for women has been particularly unfortunate, and this pay equity bill is not going to make that situation any better. In fact, we have heard from those in the public sector that indeed they're going to have to cut their services further if pay equity is forced upon them because they simply don't have the resources to meet the needs they're expected to meet. Again, oftentimes it's the needs of the women and children that are not going to be met, so we certainly can't support the bill on that point.

I think I've mentioned also the fact that there's a double standard that this legislation creates: There is a different time line for the private sector as opposed to the public sector. The PC caucus did attempt to introduce an amendment for the small business community which would push back the first pay equity adjustment date for companies with 99 or fewer employees to January 1, 1998. Currently, as we know, it's January 1, 1993. In introducing this amendment, our caucus wanted to correct the double standard that the government had established, because the bill extends the time lines for the government and its payment schedule in the area of pay equity but it totally neglected to take into consideration that the same economic hardships that were being faced by the government were also being faced by the business sector in this province, particularly the small business sector. They're just struggling to keep on their feet and out of bankruptcy. We heard today from our leader, Mr Harris, about the increase in bankruptcies that we still continue to see at the present time.

Unfortunately, the government defeated our amendment to help the small business community and push back the first pay equity adjustment date for companies with 99 or fewer employees to January 1, 1998, and as we know, the Liberals voted with the NDP against our amendment. We're very concerned that this government continues to place demands on the private sector, demands that it refuses to place upon itself. Certainly, what they have here is a double standard.

We're also opposed to the legislation because it adds another cost of doing business in this province. Just as workers' compensation is a burden for people in this province, the new taxation that's been introduced by the government in the form of $2 billion is going to be a tremendous cost to business people in this province. Pay equity legislation, for some people, is going to be the final blow, and it's something they simply can't afford at the present time. They know they don't have the expertise, they know they're going to have to hire consultants and lawyers to do the job, and we know that many times the cost of hiring those individuals is more than the actual implementation of pay equity.

For that reason, we certainly have a lot of concern with this legislation, and again I go back to one of the original points I made. We're very concerned with the proxy comparison, and most groups in this province appear to be.

For that reason, I would like to indicate to you that as a result of the concerns that have been raised by women's groups, business groups, employee groups, community groups, non-profit groups, as a result of that concern about the Pay Equity Amendment Act, 1993, Bill 102, we will be voting against this bill when it comes before this House.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Questions or comments?

Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): It was an interesting speech from the member for Waterloo North. She talked about how her party supports the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. She didn't say when they were going to support it. It's great to say that in principle you support it, and then she says, well, her caucus is going to vote against this piece of legislation. When are they going to support it? Are they going to support it in this century? Are they going to wait till the next century? Are they going to wait till the century after for it to occur?

The speaker from Waterloo North said it should come about as a result of consensus and compromise. All of us wish it had come about that way; it would have been great if it had. The point is that it hasn't come about that way, and many women are still, in many, many jobs, doing the same work and, in some cases, probably doing more work and getting paid less.

The other comment the member for Waterloo North made was about the small business community and how this government hasn't been supportive of the small business community. I say getting rid of the tire tax and the commercial concentration tax is probably very supportive of the small business community.

I think the member for Waterloo North was remiss in not mentioning her colleagues up in Ottawa and what they've done in harming the small business community and throwing a lot of women out of work because of their high interest rate policy, the difference in real interest rates between this country and our neighbours to the south, and small businesses trying to compete in a free trade environment with the United States, with higher interest rates at the federal level.

Then you have the governor of the Bank of Canada last week saying, "No, I don't think interest rates can come down right now because inflation's still a problem." Less than 2% inflation, hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people, out of work in this province, and the governor of the Bank of Canada says interest rates can't come down. He's still going to support, and the federal government, whether it's Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell or Jean Charest, is still going to support that type of policy, because they have this obsession that somehow 2% inflation is going to be the undoing of the country when millions of people and millions of women are out of work as a result of that policy. It's shameful, and the member for Waterloo North should have talked about that.

The Deputy Speaker: Further questions or comments?

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): First of all, I want to congratulate the Labour critic for the Tory party for pointing out a number of areas of concern about the bill. I think what members opposite fail to understand is that it's not our job to fall in line like a bunch of trained seals and support legislation just because the honourable whip tells you that's what you're going to do. It's our job to try to look at some of the problems of implementing this particular bill.

Nobody in this House, in my view, would ever support the principle of not having equity for work of equal value. I think that's a given, whether it's the member who spoke or any members opposite or any members of my caucus.

But I find it fascinating to hear a member of this party stand up and say that they support small business because they removed the tire tax and the commercial concentration tax. They don't tell you about the insurance premium tax that replaced both of those at a net increase of some $500 million in taxes out of everybody's pocket. Small business, consumers, seniors, young drivers, everybody in the province felt the bite. At least the taxes that you eliminated were specific towards certain purposes. The point is, don't try to fool people by telling them that you've eliminated taxes when you in fact quadrupled the revenue with one stroke of the pen.

With regard to the comments on pay equity, I know that the member of the Conservative Party is trying to get a point through to all of you; that is, it isn't black and white. There's a terrible recession, a devastating recession, going on out there in small business. More regulatory problems and implementation problems are going to strangle them more than they're already being hurt.

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Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I am pleased to rise and add my comments to the member for Waterloo North's presentation. I think she gave an outstanding speech on behalf of our caucus, as she always does.

I was interested in the member for Oxford's question and comment afterwards and his impassioned response. I know he's getting married later on this week, I gather, and he's putting forward that sort of approach in this House this afternoon. But when he got on the issue of the interest rates and continued to try to -- I don't know how he reached that point, the federal interest rate policy, and we all know that interest rates are now at historic lows -- he said there's a major difference between the interest rates in Canada and the United States, which is entirely true. But I wonder if the member understands that there aren't too many jurisdictions in the United States that are borrowing $1 billion a month, as the province of Ontario is at the present time, and that the extensive borrowing requirement that this government is putting forward month after month on the foreign bond markets is meaning that interest rates have to be, unfortunately, higher than they would be otherwise.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Order.

Mr Arnott: I would once again commend the member for Waterloo North.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Wellington. Yes, please go ahead.

Mr Arnott: I'm finished. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker: Any further questions or comments? If not, the member for Wellington North, you have two minutes to reply.

Mrs Witmer: Waterloo North.

The Deputy Speaker: Waterloo North, sorry.

Mrs Witmer: Thank you very much. Certainly I appreciate the comments that were made by the member from Mississauga West. I'm glad he corrected the member from Oxford concerning the tire tax and the concentration tax and the fact that they really pale in comparison to the new insurance tax this government has levied on all employers and employees throughout this province, which, I can assure you, if the phone calls are any indication and if the letters are any indication, is going to again create tremendous economic hardship for many people in this province.

Your budget, with its $2 billion in taxes, is going to create further job loss, and certainly it's women, as I've mentioned before, who are going to be extremely hard hit.

I thank the member for Wellington for his comments. I would just like to say that I do hope that in the very near future, the wage gap between males and females will be totally eliminated and I am confident that this will happen. I am confident it will happen if we continue to ensure that women have equal access to the education and training opportunities that have so long been made much more readily available to the males in our society. It's certainly not going to be pay equity legislation, and I would add again that this pay equity legislation, although it's well intended, is going to be hurting the very individuals it was intended to help, and that's the women.

As I said before, my YWCA has indicated that because of pay equity, there will be service cuts, there will be job cuts and the women who are desperately in need of housing and shelter and counselling and support are the women who are going to be prevented from accessing those opportunities. So I would suggest to this government, let's all work together to create equal opportunities for men and women in this province.

The Deputy Speaker: Any further debate?

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I'd actually hoped that the government itself would have had some comments to make in regard to this very, very important bill.

It's indeed an honour and a privilege to address this Bill 102, and of course the replacement of Bill 168.

Let me put in perspective what I understand pay equity to be. As I understand it, it is a bill to address the inequity in the pay structure that talks about equal pay for work of equal value. People who are generally discriminated against in that respect are individuals like women, visible minorities and the disabled, people who are not paid in the proportional way that they should because of those characteristics.

You can recall that in 1987, when the Liberal government introduced the Pay Equity Act, it was then the only jurisdiction in North America that asked that it be done in both the private and the public sector.

Mr Donald Abel (Wentworth North): It excluded a lot of people.

Mr Curling: Of course, as my colleague across the floor from Wentworth North stated, even with that bill, it excluded some people. I just want to make a comment on that aspect of it and my view on this.

I think it was inadequate, of course, because when we start to address pay equity and we only see women as the individuals who are being discriminated against, not being paid equally for work of equal value, I think we're not being completely open about the discriminatory practices in pay. Many people, as I said, who are visible minorities and those who are disabled were not being addressed. I think, as legislators, we must not be halfway in what we do, because it creates more problems. However, the act that we enacted in 1987 did concentrate on mostly women, or all women, it seems, and was not in any way appropriate.

At that time too, the Liberal government established the Pay Equity Commission to oversee the implementation of the act, as well as an independent tribunal to resolve any disputes that came out of that.

The act is intended to redress systemic gender discrimination, of course, in compensation, comparing work traditionally performed by women to work traditionally performed by men. We know, for instance, in the hospitals, the work of nursing assistants had been compared to the work of plumbers and electricians. They in that category of nurses were continuously being discriminated against for years and, of course, men did not enter into those professions, or enough men, so to speak, to encourage the level of pay to rise. So a gender-neutral comparison of skill and effort, responsibility and working conditions was made so that we could address that condition.

You may recall that some time when this new government came into power, they introduced their new bill -- I think at the time they called it Bill 102 -- and they felt they were going to address all the inequities that were left out by the previous government.

Then we felt, well, here is a progressive move on behalf of this government which had promised -- as a matter of fact, I recall, before anything really got going properly, the Premier of the day took credit for enacting this pay equity legislation, and many times in the House my colleagues here brought to his attention that the bill had not yet been enacted into law. Lo and behold, alas, that bill didn't see the day.

Here they come again, introducing a new bill to replace this old bill that they didn't get on. And just typical that this government would be looking at an extension of time now because they're running out of time to put their bills in place, that here it is, they had scrapped the first bill, put the second bill in, and there are no differences. I felt at the time, if you want to save time, what they could have done was amend their first bill and proceed on with it. But oh, no, they put this new bill in, and we haven't seen any differences with regard to the current bill that is before the House to be looked at now.

The act currently, as we know, provides a job-to-job comparison which cannot address pay equity for female jobs for which there is no male or female comparable in the establishment. As we know, this method of comparison was preferred because it would clearly show the actual wage disparity, and thus it hopefully would increase public acceptance of the concept of pay equity. It was also easier for small employers to implement, and that's how we proceeded in our days as a Liberal government.

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The act brought pay equity, as we know, to about 1.4 million women out of the approximately 1.7 million women working for employers covered by the act. As we know, the job-to-job comparison could not be utilized where there was no male job class which can be used as a comparator for a female job class.

We saw those difficulties and we acknowledged the fact that there were difficulties there and proceeded with the bill in order to put those 1.4 million people within the aspect of getting equal pay for work of equal value. We know what problem we had with that was that without the male comparators, the female job classes covered by the act really could not benefit from the legislation even if the jobs were undervalued.

Again, as I said, we knew that, we acknowledged that, as the Liberal government, and we still decided to proceed with pay equity, knowing that there were difficulties. There was a commitment made in 1986. What we were to do was to study and propose changes to the act to enable employees in female jobs without appropriate male comparators to achieve pay equity, and in October 1989 the Pay Equity Commission released a report recommending that new comparisons be introduced to increase the number of employees able to benefit from the act. Mr Speaker, you will recall that the proxy method, recommended for the broader public sector, would involve cross-employer comparison.

The other aspect of the debate today is that proportional value will be used mainly in the private sector and it would involve comparing jobs performed mainly by women indirectly with jobs performed mainly by men in the same establishment. Therefore, unlike the job-to-job method, proportional value does not require that a direct comparison be found between every female job and similarly valued male jobs. It relates compensation to the value of the work performed.

Then we have this government, which came into power, and in February 1990 the Minister of Labour recommended adoption -- at that time it was the Liberal government -- of the proportional value method of job comparison for any female job for which there is no male comparator's job in the same establishment.

We, the Liberal government, rejected the proxy method, because it was quite a problematic comparison to do it with other establishments. It involves very rather complex administrative difficulties, the sharing, of course, of confidential payroll information. You can see where this itself would create a tremendous amount of problems, of people sharing their payroll in order to get comparative relationships with other jobs in other companies, and the confidentiality could not be preserved or contained there.

In regard to the proxy, the proxy would also require a very active government involvement in the process, which would really add to its delay and complexity. The Liberal government of the day, then, wished to leave the actual implementation of pay equity to the workplace parties, which I feel is very much democratic.

Well, there were many complaints from several interest groups, and the Liberal government did not feel that the act was the appropriate vehicle for addressing the problem of what we would call those chronically low wages in certain all-female jobs. As we know, the very popular one that we always use is the child care sector. Instead what we did is that the Liberal government set aside that extra funding to improve the wages of those poorly paid social services workers and also made direct operating grants to child care centres for wage improvement. You may recall too under that plan, Mr Speaker, certain workers, such as the child care which I speak about and the community workers, received a wage increase up to 25%.

But we strongly believed that adoption of the proportional value, that is, one without the proxy, would permit the majority of women currently excluded to benefit from pay equity. With proportional value, about 90% of the excluded women would benefit from pay equity, and we admitted and accepted that.

Again, despite the concern which the Liberal government identified with the proxy method of pay equity, this government, the NDP government, decided to establish today, as you can see, both the proportional value method and the proxy method of job comparison, seeing all the problems that it would have created.

According to the minister's own statement, this act will widen the coverage of the pay equity legislation from, as he stated, 630,000 women to just over a million women. The proxy method of comparison will be used, as they said, mainly in the broader public sector and will cover between 70,000 and 80,000 women currently excluded.

This part of the bill, he said, would apply to the public sector employers if a female job class could not be compared to any male job class in the establishment using the job-to-job or the proportional value method of comparison.

They set aside an estimated $1.12 billion for the broader public sector and the private sector for the implementation of the proxy and the proportional value. But again, we have insistently asked this government to show us any kind of study or what is the estimated cost of implementation of these two methods of pay equity. We've not seen any type of study or statement made as to the cost of this implementation.

It is consistent of this government all the time that today it's in one direction and, if it doesn't work, it's like trial and error; then they go to the other direction. You have to have plans, visions and a strategy in which to implement your plan, your programs. It costs.

As a matter of fact, when they introduced their budget two years ago, I recall they were saying, "We cannot fight the recession on the backs of the poor and we will spend our way out of this recession." There were many appeals on this side of the House that stated to them: "You cannot do that. It is very easy: If you have no money, you can't spend. If you depend on your credit card, you either pay me now or pay me later."

When they decided to pay back all the debts and all the money they gave out, they realized there was nothing in the kitty, so they come blaming the federal government for their mismanagement, knowing the fact that there's a recession abound, bankruptcy was abound, but still they continued to spend their way out of a recession.

It wasn't as much as a year later, or less, that they reversed their decision again: "We cannot spend our way out of the recession. As a matter of fact, all the funds that we had spent and given out to other people, we're going to ask for them back." Typical of this government changing its direction one day and another.

The social contract is a splendid example. Here is a government that has gotten a mandate. As a matter of fact, they had three mandates in which to govern. They had a social mandate because people liked their ideology and said, "That's the government I would like." They had another mandate, an economic mandate they put forward in their campaign, how they would go about spending their funds and spending the taxpayers' money in a responsible manner. They have a strategy. They have an economic mandate.

What they did in the middle of it all, of the three - and I recall, when the Liberal government was in power and David Peterson, that leader had looked forward and said, "There's a recession coming and what I will do is I will go to the people because we have to have a new strategy." The people spoke and said: "I gave you five years to govern. You're coming back to us again to govern. I feel that we will use someone else who's prepared to govern. We will look at a New Democratic Party which has been shouting rhetoric for a long time, and we're going to see, whatever it talks, if it can walk the walk."

We gave them that mandate: to govern in that direction, to carry out the laws and the ideology and the vision, which they said they would do.

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In three years what they tried to do is they tried to renegotiate or circumvent the aspect of democracy and talk about a social contract and get a certain amount of people together to see if they could get $2 billion of the money they have spent already. This side of the fence has told them, "You should not spend your way out of the recession." Now they want $2 billion from certain sectors.

We few have said to them: "If you need a new mandate, what you should do, instead of getting people in a corner, one sector of society, to negotiate that kind of money, is to say to them, 'Listen, let's go back to the people,' because we have to change our direction. We don't have a social contract any more. What we spoke about, we cannot deliver." Just like 102 and 168: When they talked about 102, they said, "We will do this." Then they had to change their minds again to 168 -- or 168 and change to 102.

What happened when they tried to renegotiate a new social contract, not to go to the polls? The people rejected them because they could not believe that people in the New Democratic Party would have gone back on their word and even tried to tamper with the collective bargaining agreements and things they fought for. They believed that if any of the three parties would have respected the collective bargaining agreement, it would be the New Democratic Party, but it didn't.

They decided that absolute power will corrupt them absolutely. They were so incensed with that power that they went to the people to negotiate and today they rejected them and turned them back. Now, it would be rather interesting to see, as they do with this pay equity bill and trying to get equity, that the people do not believe them.

This is an extremely serious matter. The member would say to me, "Why don't you smile?" It's not a smiling matter one bit. It's a very serious matter. I say to you as you look at your pay equity -- and all governments, whoever takes charge of getting equity, equal pay for work of equal value -- we don't only look for women in itself but we look for all those people who have been denied equal pay for work of equal value.

I had hoped that this bill itself would have addressed that and gone further, not only looking at women who have been discriminated -- of course, have in greater numbers been discriminated in that sense -- but looked at visible minorities who have taken jobs where they been consistently denied good pay or equal pay for the same work they were doing with other comparatives; or the disabled who are being discriminated every day, constantly about being paid equally.

This bill doesn't go far enough. This bill does not address equal pay for work of equal value for all those who have been denied that. Of course, the expression would be that when the Liberals had it, did they address that? No, they did not. I'm not here as an apology for the Liberal Party; I am here to defend the real concerns of pay equity, of equal pay for work of equal value regardless of gender, class, creed or colour. That's how we address pay equity in this province.

The fact is that these people, the New Democratic Party, which spoke so eloquently in the time in opposition, which talks about addressing inequity, has failed miserably in every equity aspect of its legislation. In every administration too, they have failed. They have failed in employment equity. They have dragged their feet and have not brought in any type of progressive move, seeing that they're moving forward in employment equity.

Pay equity is following the same way. You introduce one bill; you pull it back. Then when you pull it back and bring another bill in, it itself does not say anything new but a matter for stalling tactics, so they would say, "We're working on it."

We, the Liberal Party here, are prepared to support a pay equity bill that addresses all those concerns. This one doesn't. It doesn't itself. I'm telling you that sometimes when I do listen to my colleagues on the government side there, I almost want to believe them. But I'm so glad they had an opportunity to rule and to govern, to realize that to say one thing and to do something else is something different, that they must govern for all, not interest groups themselves, which you came in to do.

You know, the chicken has come home to roost. The chicken really has come home to roost when they said that the interest groups they were catering for all the time, solidarity for ever -- "We will send all of our money to the NDP because they articulate the things that we are fighting for in pay equity and employment equity and all those things." Alas, they have not come through. They have failed on pay equity. They are miserably failing on employment equity because they are dragging their feet.

The poor ministers, who had good intentions, have had some poor leadership, not having a chance around the cabinet table in order to advance their cases. Let's say they are advancing their cases strongly. I am saying there is no vision. There are no inclusions at all of all the people who can be addressing pay equity that are being looked at seriously. They are more concerned about addressing single-interest groups. I would want all my colleagues there -- I have spoken to them all individually, wonderful people and I think good of heart, but so misguided.

Who hurts from all this? The people who had expected some sort of redress for their inequities in legislation. What this has done is it has done nothing in itself to do that. The fact is that the Liberal legislation had moved a little towards addressing that; limited, as I said, in addressing women, of course, but the other sectors of the society were left out, those who were denied equal pay for work of equal value.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission already addressed one of these conditions. In the human rights commission legislation, it showed that you may not be discriminated because of gender, class or religion etc. It is there. Sometimes I feel that we create legislation and we create commissions to give people jobs. Jobs to whom? Jobs for those commissions that will be established but do not address the inequities in the society itself.

I would be one who would be advocating strongly: They could scrap the Pay Equity Commission, scrap the employment equity commission, put one equity commission in place and let it look after the inequities of this society. We have all kinds of equity commissions being established, billions of dollars being spent in administration, no redress for those people who are being denied, or few people are being addressed on this.

We can be caught up, of course, with the technicalities of legislation: who will get it and how it will be implemented. But I choose not to address that aspect of it. I wish I could wake up my colleagues to the fact that we're talking about people who have been left out. How long can the visible minorities wait to be paid fairly? How long can the disabled wait to be paid fairly? Until one sector of those groups that have been discriminated have been addressed?

It is not sufficient, because families and daughters and mothers are starving out there, literally starving, not able to meet their bills, and being denied, not because of their education, not because of their ability, but because they are women and because they are visible minorities and because they are disabled. If we as legislators can't recognize that, we have failed miserably in our task to address that.

The fact is that we hear it each day. It's not the fact that they sit back and say, "I think you're proceeding in the right direction." They are knocking at your door every time you go to your constituency office. I'm sure people are saying, "I have been denied a job because I'm disabled and I'm not being paid properly because I'm disabled, or a visible minority or because I'm a woman." To use one bill just to address one sector of it is inadequate.

My concern, as I said, is to raise that awareness within my colleagues in this House so that they look at this bill and say, "It's inadequate." Be bold, I ask the ministers, all the ministers who are there. I remember the minister when a question was asked about a women's issue. They denied to answer the question. We asked, "Who is the women's issues minister?" They said, "All here advocate for women and we are all women's issues ministers." My golly, if I asked the same question, "Who advocates for the visible minority or the disabled?" they would then say to me, "All." But it's funny that although they all do that, what happens? We hear nothing. The legislation does not reflect that. So the bill itself is inadequate. The bill itself must speak and address all those who have been left out, because otherwise we have failed.

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At any opportunity I get in this House -- which is not very much -- to speak, I will be making that point over and over. Of course they will say it will be rather boring, but it is so important that I feel it must be said over and over and over again because we have not progressed in the way we could. I feel we will measure progress when all people in this community, in this province, in this country, feel a sharing part of that progress and that building of this country, if they get to participate equally; not denied, because they are women, from being paid properly, not denied from participating because they're a visible minority and not denied because they are disabled. We have not moved very well.

In summary, it is important that I appeal again not only to the government side but to all my colleagues who may speak after me to understand the emotion and the reality and the actuality of what is happening out there, that people are not able to feed their families on basic principles alone. So I would like to say that I will not be supporting this. We have the opportunity to go beyond this, and until we can address that and have a good bill that talks about pay equity, not about women only, not about visible minorities only, not only about the disabled and all those who are being discriminated against, but to be paid equal pay for work of equal value, then we would have what we would call a good pay equity bill.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): I thank the honourable member. Questions and/or comments?

Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): I just want to comment on one of the statements made by the honourable member towards the end of his debating period, and that is in regard to the fact of minority women being recognized under this legislation.

I just would like to put it on the record for the benefit of those people who are listening and also for the member that this bill is equal pay for work done by women. It is specifically addressed to women's work. That is not to say that there isn't visible minority women's work that could be identified, but this is to address a long-time difference in how women are being paid for doing the job that others do for more money, and I think the member from Scarborough North knows that. I think too that it's important that it could be a minority person doing the job, it could be a disabled person doing the job, and it is very gender-specific. It is to make women have the same pay that men make.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Mahoney: I think Mr Curling, my colleague from Scarborough North, points out a number of concerns and flaws in this legislation that the government members are prepared to just overlook. That's somewhat frustrating.

If this bill were really going to help women and minorities and disabled, then perhaps there would be a stronger sense of support from this side. In fact, we've struggled, in the two years that this government has been in office, to try to find a bill we could support, because it just seems to miss the mark all the time.

The problem with this bill that the opposition members don't understand is that this is one more piece of regulatory problem being piled on top of everything else that the business community has to face. The reality is that what you could wind up with here is that instead of getting pay equity, we're going to wind up with people being out of work.

The first people to go will indeed be the people at the bottom end of the scale, and that's the difficulty we're facing. I mean, the economy is in such terrible shape that what we should be doing is finding ways -- we don't discard the principle of pay equity, by any means. We don't discard the principle of fairness, to pay someone an equal amount of money for work they're doing in comparison to someone else doing a similar job.

The problem is that you put in place a regulatory system; we have pay equity police. I'm going to go on at some later time today and tell you the example of the region of Peel, which in 1986 brought in a pay equity program that made a lot of sense, and it put in place the proper time to implement this thing and phase it in.

The problem that has been pointed out with this bill is that it will not help the people it's designed to help and will create greater problems for business.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Further questions or comments? Seeing none, the honourable member for Scarborough North has two minutes in response.

Mr Curling: The member from Sudbury --

Mr Mahoney: North? Centre? East? West? Centre.

Mr Curling: -- from Sudbury made the exact point I made: She said this is gender-specific. That's what I spoke on. I talked at length about the women who were described in there and some of the inequities that women face in job comparison, and that the bill is gender-specific. She'd have liked me to more or less have blinkers on to deal with that as pay equity, and I said no. The fact is that we must deal with pay equity in the sense of all those who have been discriminated against, regardless of gender, regardless of class, regardless of ability, because this bill itself will address gender-specific: They are called women. So when you say gender-specific, let's be specific. Gender: women. I'm saying we must have pay equity legislation that makes sure we deal with all people who are clustered into an area where they're not getting equal pay for work of equal value, and women are not the only people who have received that.

I did not single out visible minority women. I was saying to you, beyond all of this, that we have visible minority and we have disabled. I'm not talking about women. I'm saying there are other people: male. Visible minority males are underpaid, and disabled males are also underpaid, and maybe all the women too. My debate here is to raise that awareness, and I hope I have done so.

The Acting Speaker: I wish to thank the honourable member for his participation and his response. Further debate?

Mr Arnott: I'm privileged to rise this afternoon on behalf of the people of Wellington to put forward my views on Bill 102 at third reading, An Act to amend the Pay Equity Act.

This bill was introduced for first reading in this Legislature on November 26, 1992. It received second reading debate on December 10, 1992, and went out to committee over the winter break. I was pleased to be able to represent our Progressive Conservative Party on the committee during those hearings.

The substance of Bill 102 is as follows. It replaces Bill 168, which received first reading on December 18, 1991. The new bill introduces all the same amendments as the previous bill, with a few additions and changes.

The most important feature of this bill, I believe, is that due to the fiscal situation of the province, the deadline for achieving pay equity in the public sector has been moved from 1995 to 1998, and pay equity plans may be reopened to extend payouts over that new time frame. In addition, the effective date for proportional value adjustments has been delayed one year, until January 1, 1993, and the proxy approach has been delayed one year, until January 1, 1994.

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Like Bill 168, the amendments will expand pay equity to cover an additional 420,000 Ontario women by adding two new methods of comparison: proportional value for employees in the public and private sectors and proxy comparison for employees in the public sector only. The new bill explains the proxy comparison method in greater detail than in Bill 168.

A good deal of jargon, but proxy value comparison is a way of indirectly comparing female and male job classes in the same organization. It looks at the relationship between the value of work performed and the compensation received by male job classes and applies the same principles and practices to compensating female job classes.

Proxy comparison, on the other hand, from which the government has estimated approximately 80,000 women will benefit, is a new approach. Where comparisons cannot be made in the public sector using job-to-job or proportional value comparison methods, proxy comparison can be used. The proxy comparison method allows an organization to find male comparators for its female jobs in outside organizations. Only organizations that are in the broader public sector will be able to use the proxy approach. This will include female-dominated sectors such as home care, nursing homes, corrections, child care and others.

I think the two most important issues that we want to talk about with respect to the pay equity debate are the cost of pay equity and the fairness of pay equity.

During the course of the hearings that the committee on general government, I believe, conducted on Bill 102, I had the opportunity to move an amendment in the committee to request that the Ministry of Labour, or actually the Treasurer and Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet, provide the committee with information as to what pay equity has cost since it was first introduced by the Liberal government.

My motion was as follows: "Would the Treasurer and Chairman of the Management Board of Cabinet provide the committee members with the following information:

"(1) The annual pay equity adjustment costs for the Ontario public service for the years 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993;

"(2) The projected annual pay equity adjustment costs for the Ontario public service for the years 1994 to 1998;

"(3) The company name and total amount paid for any consulting services that the government acquired to assist with the development of pay equity plans for the Ontario public service;

"(4) The annual pay equity adjustment costs for the broader public sector, with a breakdown for school boards, hospitals, municipalities and colleges and universities for the years 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993;

"(5) The exact dollar amounts transferred from the government to public schools, hospitals, municipalities and colleges and universities to assist the broader public sector with pay equity adjustments;

"(6) The projected annual pay equity adjustment costs for the broader public sector, with a breakdown for school boards, hospitals, municipalities and colleges and universities for the years 1994 to 1998;

"(7) The estimated pay equity adjustment costs for private sector employers with 500 or more employees for 1991, 1992 and 1993;

"(8) The estimated pay equity adjustment costs for private sector employers with 100 to 499 employees for 1992 and 1993."

The effect of this motion was to provide a complete accounting of the cost of pay equity since the NDP came to power. That was, I felt, important information that the committee required. I felt it was very, very important that we had a full understanding of what the cost of pay equity was going to be, especially given the difficult fiscal situation that we knew the province faced, even in January and February of this year.

My motion was defeated and we didn't get an opportunity to receive that information.

The second issue that I think is very, very important with respect to pay equity is the issue of fairness. We all support equal pay for work of equal value. I think that's been brought out in this debate. I venture to guess that there is no member of this Legislature who does not support the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. Where we differ is how to achieve that end.

I remember in the course of my research for this bill, from my involvement on the committee, I read a journal article from a political science journal -- I forget the name of it -- but Premier Davis in 1981, as leader of the government, indicated at that time that the position of the Progressive Conservative Party -- during the course of an election campaign -- was that we supported the principle of pay equity; we supported the principle for equal pay for work of equal value. However, we were concerned about the complexity and the administration and the cost of administration of going forward and having the government step in and intervene and try to bring in these pay equity increases and adjustments.

I still think that experience has demonstrated that he was in fact correct. It has been enormously expensive and enormously complex and it has created a new bureaucracy which has made it very, very expensive, and it will continue to be so over the next few years.

This bill, as part of the government's agenda, has a lot to do with wealth redistribution. I believe that the government's motivation behind this bill is to redistribute wealth to people who it feels have been discriminated against with respect to their pay. I think that's their motivation. But again, we see the government's focus on wealth redistribution instead of where it should be. The focus of the government should be on wealth creation, especially at this time in our economic cycle, when the government is having difficulty with its revenues, has -- yes, Mr Speaker?

The Acting Speaker: I want to thank the honourable member and he will certainly have the floor just as soon as we introduce some very distinguished guests in our midst today. In the west members' gallery we have the chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, Mr Wan Dao Han. We also have with us the vice-chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, Mr Tang Shu Bei. And we also have the consulate general for the People's Republic of China, Mr Tang Fu Sin. Gentlemen, welcome to the Legislature of Ontario and do have a good stay in our province. Thanks for being here.

The honourable member for Wellington.

Mr Arnott: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Unfortunately, you neglected to mention that my wife is also in the members' gallery. I know you overlooked that, but it's very important that all the distinguished guests in the chamber be recognized.

Mr Mahoney: That's called major sucking up.

Mr Arnott: Well, we're dealing with pay equity.

When we talk about the importance of the focus of what this government should be looking at, we continue to see the need for a focus towards wealth creation. We all know that the economy continues to be in the persistent doldrums that we've been experiencing for the last three years and it's important that the government's every initiative is looked at in terms of its potential for wealth creation. When we get our economy back on sound ground and sound footing, then, I would submit, is the time to start looking once again at the issue of wealth redistribution. So I would put that point forward to the government and hopefully it will consider that.

During the course of our committee hearings I also moved an amendment to the bill, and the effect of it would have been to allow the private sector some degree of extension for implementing pay equity similar to what the government has given itself. I find it interesting that during the course of this third reading debate we see that the government is patting itself on the back for coming forward with pay equity, when in fact it tends to overlook or it's forgotten or some of the government members don't understand that this bill in fact gives the government a greater time frame, in effect delaying the implementation of pay equity. Some of the government members obviously don't understand that, because in their zeal to pat themselves on the back they're overlooking that important fact.

But the effect of the amendment that I put forward, again, would have been to allow the private sector some measure of extension on the implementation of pay equity. If indeed the government and the public sector need more time to implement pay equity because of a difficult economy, that same argument is valid for the private sector.

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I think the government should have given consideration to allowing that amendment to pass, because Bill 102 allows three more years for the government to achieve pay equity. All existing requirements to implement pay equity plans in the public sector by 1995 are extended to 1998, but the bill does not affect the time lines for private sector implementations of pay equity.

Private sector companies are required to begin making pay equity adjustments according to the following schedule: For a company of 500 employees and more, the first pay equity adjustment had to be January 1, 1991; for a smaller company, 100 to, say, 499 employees, the first pay equity adjustment had to be at the first of the year in 1992; for companies between 50 employees and 99, the first pay equity adjustment had to be last January, January 1, 1993, and for even the smallest of companies, 10 to 49 employees -- this is a lot of companies, certainly in Wellington county -- their first pay equity adjustment by statute has to be made on January 1, 1994, so January 1 next year.

Again, we see an issue of fairness, where the government has given more opportunity, more time for itself to implement pay equity and not given the same consideration to private businesses, the job creators in this province, that are experiencing difficulty just as the government is with respect to our difficult economy. Business and industry in this province have been devastated by the recession, but no changes have been made to their pay equity obligations. I would ask the question: Why is there one standard for the government and another standard for the private sector?

I could go through probably 16 minutes and 48 seconds more of statistics and information as to the difficulty that small companies have had with respect to the recession. I think there's ample evidence -- the government is aware of this -- that would indicate that the private sector needs to be given more time, if indeed the government needs to be given more time, with respect to pay equity.

There's another important issue that I think we should talk about with respect to this debate. This bill was introduced, as we know, some time ago -- actually last December, I guess it was -- before we knew the full implications of the government's fiscal position. The government has just spent the last two months going through its social contract negotiations. The whole purpose of that negotiation process, two full months of government resources at the senior levels, including -- I have no idea, but I'm sure the Premier spent many, many hours on that particular portfolio during the past two months -- the time of the Premier, the most important time that any of us has, spent on what proved to be ultimately a fruitless process that has gotten us nowhere.

In that whole process, the focus was the fact that the government today cannot afford the total compensation that it is paying to the public service and the broader public sector. The government has said that $42 billion, which is presently the aggregate amount it is paying in terms of salaries and wages to its employees, is not affordable and is unsustainable. So the government's saying it's got to shave $2 billion off that amount. Our party agrees with that. Fundamentally, we support the government's initiative towards that end if indeed it results in a permanent downsizing of the cost of government in Ontario.

But when we talk about doing third reading of Bill 102 at this time, when we talk about a bill that in many ways will actually increase the total cost of government, the total cost of the salaries and wages of the provincial government, it seems to me that we're being fundamentally inconsistent, and I would argue even further, fundamentally insane.

It doesn't make any sense, if we're talking about on one hand the need to decrease the broader public sector salaries and the Ontario public service salaries by approximately 5%, that we're going ahead with this bill, the effect of which will actually increase, in many, many job areas and in many job classifications, their salaries.

What are we going to do if over the course of the next couple of months the government decides it's going to have to legislate a 5% pay reduction to all civil servants? We're going to legislate a 5% reduction in everybody's pay and then come forward with this bill and give them an increase again? It doesn't make sense. It lacks common sense.

I do not understand why they would go ahead. It seems like they're causing themselves a great deal of grief and problems. If in fact they would look at the total situation, if they would look at the ability of the government to pay these amounts of money and make a decision based on the ability to pay, then we wouldn't be engaging in this discussion at this time.

There's one other thing I'd like to add to this debate. A number of members have mentioned it but I would like to also because I feel that it's a very important element to this debate. This is an editorial which appeared in the Globe and Mail on January 21, 1993, and it talks about the wage gap which is brought out from time to time in various studies, the wage gap which appears to suggest that women are being systemically discriminated against, because on average they're making less than men.

There was a recent study by Statistics Canada which indicated that the women's wages have risen from 67% of men's in the year 1990 to 69% relative to men's wages, so they've gone up. But the study also indicates that there is more to the difference between men's and women's salaries and wages than just what the government would put forward as a simple reason for the difference: systemic discrimination.

There are other differences that have to be looked at. One is education, the amount of education that individual has. This study demonstrates that women with a university degree earned more than men with lower levels of education. That seems to suggest that there isn't the degree of discrimination that some are arguing.

Hours worked are another important factor, which explains the difference between the wages earned by men and women. We also find that marriage has an impact, whether or not a woman is married. In fact --

Interjection.

Mr Arnott: No. Single women make about 90% of what single men make, which is a significant difference from the overall picture. So I must say that those are three very important criteria that have to be brought into this discussion.

We also see, I think, that there has been significant --

Ms Murdock: It's okay for a married woman to make less? Excuse me, just because she's married and makes less it's okay?

Mr Arnott: I hope the member for Sudbury has an opportunity to speak in response.

Ms Murdock: I think it's reprehensible that you would use that argument.

Mr Arnott: No, it's in the Globe and Mail. I know the member for Sudbury has seen this article and I know that during the course of the committee hearings she fundamentally rejected the entire argument, although she didn't address the specifics of it.

It's factual that these factors have to be brought into consideration to explain the difference. It's not just systemic discrimination. This government wants to point the finger at different areas of our society and state that there are some sort of awful forces out there that are doing ill to people. I don't think that the government fundamentally understands this.

I intend to vote against this bill because I think the key issues of cost have not been addressed. We still do not know fundamentally what this bill will cost, what pay equity is going to cost, and I will not vote in favour of something if I have no idea what it's going to cost. Second is the issue of fairness, that this bill does not extend to private business the same extension that the government is giving itself through Bill 102.

Those are the two reasons that I am going to be voting against this bill, and I would conclude with that remark.

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The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments on the member for Wellington's participation?

Ms Murdock: Again I thank you and I thank the participation of the member, but I just want to make sure that there's a clarification on the record. I believe I clarified it in the committee but I'll do so here in the House.

There has never been a deadline on the private sector, so the deadline that has been moved for the public sector is not -- we regret the necessity of having a public sector deadline and having moved it, but I think what's really important here is that we're going to be including significantly more women in the pay equity process who are presently excluded. I mean, 400,000 more women will be affected, and that's important.

In terms of a proxy, for instance, the proxy method of comparison only applies to the public sector; it doesn't apply to the private sector at all, so that's important. As well, despite the fact of the extension to 1998, each of those employers still has to keep the 1% back and allocate it for pay equity purposes, so it isn't like they can abrogate their requirements and the responsibilities of doing that.

I just want to make one more comment on some of the statistics read from the Globe and Mail, and of course, as we all know, the media never lie, never misrepresent any kind of information --

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): Well, where are your facts? You don't even know how much this is going to cost.

Ms Murdock: I'm just commenting on the issue of single women make 90% of what single men do, even though that statistic is not the same for married women. I would say that I think it's totally improper and unacceptable that just because a women chooses to marry, it should be quite acceptable for her to make less than what a man would make doing that same work, that it doesn't matter whether you're married or not, you make the same money.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?

Mr Tilson: I would like to congratulate the member from Wellington on a well-prepared and thought-out presentation to this House. I think it's been quite clear from all sides of this House that no one is opposed to the principles of pay equity, no one is, but it's an ironic fact that this particular bill is coming to this House at a time when the Premier of this province has stood up in this place, even today, to say that he's going to cut back $2 billion from the public service, a very ironic twist when we look back to 1991 when Ontario's wage bill grew by 14.5%. That was in the first year of office for the NDP government. Spending on public servants' pay rose certainly much faster in that particular time than it did in the 1980s.

We still, as the member from Wellington pointed out, have no idea, we haven't the foggiest idea, as to what the financial implications of this bill are going to cost the people of the province of Ontario. We do know that there will be a further $120 million that's going to cost pay equity for government employees, although that's being delayed, but we have no idea, and it is strange that at this particular point in time this bill is being brought forward for debate, on the very day that the civil service in some form or another is going to be cut back by $2 billion.

So I will say that is one of the two issues that were raised by the member from Wellington and I congratulate him on a very well-thought-out speech.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? The honourable member for Wellington has two minutes in response.

Mr Arnott: I want to thank the member for Dufferin-Peel for his comments, and also the member for Sudbury for her comments, but I want to address a couple of the points that she made.

She indicated that there has never been a deadline for the implementation of pay equity in the private sector. In my view, it's not entirely correct to say that, because there still is an initial payment deadline for businesses in the private sector.

Ms Murdock: Unless the plan is in place. One's there, but there's no guideline to their plan.

Mr Arnott: That's right, but there's been no extension given to them in recognition of the difficult economy. There's been absolutely no extension given to them, and there still is a requirement upon small business to do the pay equity plans and to make the first pay equity adjustment. So I still think that my initial points in that respect will in fact hold up in spite of the member's comments.

She also indicated in her two-minute rebuttal that it doesn't matter if a woman works or not, it shouldn't have any impact on her pay, and I certainly agree with that.

Ms Murdock: Oh, no. Married, not works.

Mr Arnott: It doesn't matter if a woman is married or not, she should receive pay that really is irrespective of the fact that she is married.

I just want to read one brief portion out of this Globe and Mail editorial that I referred to earlier, starting here:

"But the biggest factor is marriage. The earnings of single women, single men and married women working full-time are roughly comparable. But the earnings of the average married man rise above those of everyone else. That is the only real 'wage gap.' Whether or not it is a problem is a subject worthy of discussion. Its existence suggests that, as one would expect, married men and women choose certain career and life paths different from those chosen by singles. But why is it that many married women work only part-time or adopt less time-consuming (and less well-paying) full-time careers? Are they forced to by their husbands? By circumstance? By entrenched social attitudes? Do many, for a whole variety of unquantifiable reasons, freely choose this path, thinking it best for their families?"

The Acting Speaker: I want to thank the honourable member for his participation and his response. Further debate?

Mr Mahoney: It's obvious the government members, I guess, have been muzzled. They don't want to get up and talk about this.

Ms Murdock: We made an agreement.

Mr Mahoney: Well, we're going around the rotation. The tradition around here is that we speak, the Conservatives speak, and then we hear someone from the government try to defend their position. It's obvious to me that the strong work of the whip, as they get excited --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Thank you. The member for Mississauga West.

Mr Mahoney: As I was saying, I guess they've been told to keep quiet.

Hon Karen Haslam (Minister without Portfolio in Health): Mahoney, you know darn well if we make a deal, we keep the deal. Come on.

Mr Mahoney: I say to the junior minister for whatever, who's chirping in the background, maybe if you'd answer a couple of questions in the Legislature, you wouldn't feel so frustrated that you have to yell and scream.

Hon Mrs Haslam: I can keep it up as long as he can.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. The member for Perth, please. Thank you. The member for Mississauga West.

Mr Mahoney: I'll try again. I don't know why it is that they get so excited when I simply try to point out some obvious problems.

I think a lot of what we've been hearing today about pay equity and about the problems with Bill 102 have to do with the difficulties of implementation. I want to bring an example to this place that proves the difficulties and the inconsistencies, particularly the inconsistencies of this government, although they say you should never shoot someone who's committing suicide. So rather than just slamming the government, I'll try to deal with the specific problems that have been raised for my attention and that of other members of this place that surround the children's aid societies in the province of Ontario.

As I'm sure you know, Mr Speaker, there are 51 of them in existence in the province of Ontario. They made a presentation in my constituency office last week, where they highlighted a very serious problem surrounding Bill 102, surrounding a decision by a pay equity tribunal on three specific areas in the province and surrounding implementation of this particular bill.

I'm going to have to read you some of this information, which comes directly from the Peel Children's Aid Society, in the presentation, because it's information that's vitally important in relationship to the implementation of this bill:

"On September 14, 1992, a pay equity tribunal ruled that the Ontario government was the employer for the Kingston-Frontenac Children's Aid Society for the purposes of the pay equity legislation."

That means the tribunal said that the people who work for the Kingston-Frontenac CAS are employed by the provincial government instead of being employed by the Kingston-Frontenac CAS.

As a result, Management Board of Cabinet did three things: First, they introduced corrective legislation in the form of Bill 102, which we're debating today; two, they appealed the tribunal decision; and three, amazingly enough, even though they appealed the decision, they "provided a one-time annualized base adjustment to the Halton, Kingston and Norfolk children's aid societies to enable these societies to pay their staff at the same level of public servants performing similar or comparable work."

While they appealed the decision, saying, "We don't believe that these people who work for those three children's aid societies are employees of the province; we believe they indeed are employees of the children's aid societies who pay them; we think that's who they work for," they also said, "But even though we don't agree with that decision, we're going to give those three -- three out of 51 -- children's aid societies the money to allow them to implement and negotiate a pay equity settlement with these people."

1740

This special pay equity decision, which the people at Peel children's aid call a pay parity decision, for only three children's aid societies, will enable these societies to raise the salaries of their staff, if you can imagine this, by an average of 17% this year. However, the government is unwilling to provide funds for the rest of the children's aid societies in the province, all of whom provide exactly the same services under the same funding arrangements. Thus, due to this special pay equity funding decision by this government, our workers, Peel Children's Aid Society, and all other CAS staff in the province are being paid substantially less than our Halton CAS colleagues to the west. Now, how can this be pay equity?

Interjection.

Mr Mahoney: The parliamentary assistant shouts across that nobody should fight the issue of equity in pay. Try listening to this example.

How can it be fair that three children's aid societies should be given money to increase their staff's pay by 17% this year based on the tribunal ruling that your government is appealing, yet give them the money and tell them to increase their pay to bring them up to the same level as social workers who work for the government -- what about the other children's aid societies? What do you say to the people in Peel? Could it be because they're non-union in Peel? Most of the children's aid society staff is organized. Could it be that there is some concern that the government wants one of the largest children's aid societies in the province to follow the path of unionization? Maybe this is a way of doing it, saying, "If you were part of the union movement, we would then grant you the extra money to raise salaries."

Well, I don't know what the reason is. Maybe I'm being a little cynical in suggesting that could be the reason. I would like the government -- and so, by the way, would the people at Peel Children's Aid Society -- to explain. What do you say to the people who work for you when here's the difference: In the Ontario public service, the pay scale for a social worker is $43,943 up to $52,545. Currently, the pay scale for that same social worker working for children's aid is $35,707 up to $47,213. Now the children's aid society workers in the region of Halton, right next door, a nine-iron away, for goodness' sake, are going to be getting paid at the rate of the Ontario public service, whereas the people who happen to work for Peel children's aid, because this government decided to make an exception of Halton and two other communities in the province --

Ms Murdock: But you're talking about wage parity. You're not --

Mr Mahoney: What do you mean, "You're talking about wage parity"? It's the same job, the same person, the same work, the same sex, the same qualifications, and because you guys have decided to give this extra money in those three children's aid societies, they're going to make $10,000 to $12,000 a year more just because they work for Halton.

Ms Murdock: I'm not saying that information is wrong --

Mr Mahoney: It isn't wrong. I'm sorry. The information is right here. Let me go on to help the government members understand this.

"By way of background, children's aid societies are non-profit corporations, each with their own board of directors who have legal governance responsibilities for the overall management of the society. All receive funding from both the provincial and regional governments on an 80-20 split. Thus the boards are the sole employers for the staff within the society regardless of the sources of funding. Each society has its own particular labour relationship with its employees. Of the 51 non-native CASs in Ontario, 41 are unionized, mostly with OPSEU and CUPE, and 10 are not, with Peel children's aid being the largest society that is not unionized."

It's interesting, when I refer to the union pressures, that since Bill 40 was passed -- and people ask, "What's the impact of Bill 40?" -- all of a sudden, out of the blue, there's a move to organize the entire social services department at the region of Peel. Nobody knew there was a problem, even the employees. All of a sudden the playing field has been tilted, and all of a sudden there are people coming in trying to infiltrate and organize.

I just wonder if it's a coincidence that the largest children's aid society in the province, being non-unionized, is now told that its neighbours to the west are going to be given -- it's over half a million dollars, by the way, at a time when this government in its chaos with its social contract is going to be legislating layoffs, 40,000 people put out of work by this government through legislation because of the incompetence of the Premier and his negotiating team to get a deal. At a time when they're doing that, they're writing a cheque to the Halton Children's Aid Society, Mr North. How about your community? Talk to your children's aid society, find out what their workers are making and tell them why someone in Halton doing the same job, with the same ticket, with the same credentials, has a right to earn $10,000 to $12,000 more.

The thing that makes this even more incredible, though, is the fact that your government has appealed the decision of the tribunal. They've appealed the decision of the tribunal that recognizes the employees of those three children's aid societies as employees of the government, Ontario public servants. They've said: "We don't agree with the decision of the appeal tribunal. However, we're going to give you the money anyway."

It's incredible. I see all the puzzled looks. Maybe you folks didn't know this. I don't know how you wouldn't know it, being that surely to goodness the Ministry of Labour is aware. I can tell you, I've got letters here from Dave Cooke at Management Board and from Marion Boyd explaining. Let me just share some of this with you. Maybe this will help.

Here's a letter to the Honourable Marion Boyd last December. This is not new news; this has been around for a while. December 21, 1992, from Peel Children's Aid society, and the letter says:

"I'm writing to you on behalf of the board of directors of the children's aid society of Peel. Through the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, we have received a copy of your letter to the children's aid societies of Kingston-Frontenac, Norfolk and Halton indicating" -- and this is a quote from the letter -- "the government has decided to provide allocations to Kingston-Frontenac, Halton and Norfolk which will be sufficient to permit the boards and their local bargaining agents to negotiate new salary grids that reflect the pay levels of public servants performing similar or comparable work. When the new pay adjustments take effect," the minister goes on to say, "these allocations will be added to the base funding for the three affected agencies."

Ms Murdock: That is not pay equity.

Mr Mahoney: Well, excuse me. It's not pay equity. The blatant unfairness -- Mr Speaker, I ask you, follow me, help me on this: I'm a children's aid society worker in the region of Peel and I make $35,000 with my social worker's position. I know you, sir --

Interjection.

The Deputy Speaker: There's a period for questions and comments, and if you want to wait for that, you'll have ample time to discuss it. The member for Mississauga West.

Mr Mahoney: Mr Speaker, I again ask you: I'm that Peel children's aid society worker and I make $35,000 a year and I have an accredited ticket that allows me to do that. Then you, sir, are working in Halton. You have the same job, you have the same qualifications, and you make $47,000 a year. If that's not inequity, I don't know what is; two women.

Ms Murdock: It's wage parity.

Mr Mahoney: The parliamentary assistant keeps shouting that it's wage parity. The point is that you will have one worker, and you will realize most of them are women, making $12,000 a year more than the same worker 10 miles away, and you call that fair. You've made a decision --

Ms Murdock: No, we don't call that fair.

Mr Mahoney: Well, if you say it's not fair, then you'd better do one of a couple of things: You'd better either continue to appeal the decision of the tribunal and get the money back from those three CASs in a heck of a hurry, because I'm told that the people in those communities are ordering new cars, they're so thrilled -- and who wouldn't be? A 17% pay increase: Maybe this is your idea of how to help the economy. Give the money out to some people and let them buy something. Maybe you've finally discovered a secret to help improve economic development in this province. Maybe that's what it is. That's wonderful.

1750

Now there are 48 other CASs, all with employees doing the same work who would like to buy a new car too. All the people who work there say: "Hey, we don't have a problem with a 17% pay increase. We kind of think that's neat." If you can get it, those -- you shake your head, but I don't know how you can sleep with it. This is absolutely absurd; not to me, to the 48 children's aid societies which are looking at this, to the people in the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies. It's not to me that it's unfair; it's to them. They say: "How do we negotiate with our staff? How do we go to our staff?"

Get this, here's the second shoe that's going to fall. This Premier is going to come in with legislation that's going to do either one of two things. It's either just going to lay off 40,000 people across the province or it's going to be enabling legislation for all the municipal corporations, for the hospitals, for all the what you people call "partners," which is a bit of a joke, but all of the people who deliver services at the community level, including children's aid societies, I might add. You're going to pass down some kind of enabling legislation that will allow them to cast aside their legal agreements with their labour people and tell them to renegotiate.

Not only have you given a pay increase of 17% to three select special children's aid societies; now you're going to come back to the rest of them and say: "We want you to cut your payroll. We want you to freeze wages. We want you to deduct 5% more. We want your people to take unpaid vacations. We want all of these things to happen." It just truly is an incredibly stupid decision made by your government that is putting in jeopardy all of the existing labour relations that are working quite well with the children's aid societies.

I have some questions for you that I feel somewhat obligated to put here on behalf of Ray Martins, president of the Peel children's aid society, who asked last December, and has yet to receive a satisfactory answer, a number of questions to the minister.

(1) What are the underlying principles that have provided the context for this decision, the decision that he refers to as blatantly unfair to the staff of -- he says 51; he means 48 -- other children's aid societies in the province of Ontario?

(2) How does the government justify providing this additional base allocation to three children's aid societies and not to any other? You see, I'm only talking about one sector here that shows the problems of implementation that my colleague from Scarborough North and the labour critic for the Conservative Party and others have been speaking about. I'm talking about one sector, children's aid societies, the problems of implementation.

He goes on and asks, "Is there something intrinsically different about the work of the staff within those societies?" Because in pay equity I don't care if you know all the details of how you're going to compare one job to another job and what system you're going to use. I mean, the bottom line is that if you're doing the same job, then you should get paid the same money. That's not happening as a result of a government decision in three children's aid societies. He asks a simple question, "Is there something intrinsically different about the work of the staff within those societies?"

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): Is it unionized?

Mr Mahoney: No, Peel's not unionized. My colleague from Mississauga North asks the question somewhat rhetorically. No, they're not, but maybe somebody in this province thinks there's a little gold mine there. You can see why. It's a tragic thing to watch every day when you read about another local of some union that votes to dissociate itself from the New Democratic Party, that votes to pull the plug and says: "We no longer support these guys. These guys act more like Tories than Tories do." It's hard to imagine anyone would nickname Bob Rae as Preston Rae. But the unions are bailing out, so maybe you've got to look for some new fertile ground and just maybe the largest non-unionized children's aid society in the province is fertile ground for the NDP to move in and to get them -- maybe. I don't know. Is that too cynical, folks? What do you think? Maybe. I'll try to get back to this.

We have some other questions that Mr Martins has asked me.

Mr Offer: They have stopped heckling.

Mr Mahoney: They have stopped heckling, I think. Now they're not just dumb; they're dumfounded. Anyway, there's a third question. Oh, that's not parliamentary, Mr Speaker. My apology.

Mr Offer: "Dumfounded" isn't?

Mr Mahoney: "Dumfounded" isn't? I don't know. I've been dumfounded. I've been dumfounded by some of the dumb things that these guys have been doing ever since they got elected. But I'll get back to the issue. The third question --

Ms Murdock: You have not been on the issue.

Mr Mahoney: Well, you see, that's the amazing thing: They don't think this is the issue. You think it's okay for somebody doing the same job next door and getting paid $12,000 a year more; although I don't know if you do, because you're appealing the decision.

So what Dave Cooke is saying, when he wrote this letter, is: "We would really like to see all children's aid society employees be employees of the local children's aid society, because we believe in local autonomy. But, by the way, enclosed please find our cheque for $537,000. How would you like to split it up among all those fine folk who work for you and give them a 17% pay raise, even though we don't agree with it?" What in God's name forced you to send that money?

Ms Murdock: The tribunal.

Mr Mahoney: The tribunal did not force you to send that money. There is no requirement in the tribunal's decision that says that you have to send that money. All the tribunal says is that in the opinion of the tribunal, an opinion that is not shared by the current government, the employees of those three CASs are public servants, Ontario public servants; they do not work directly for the local CAS.

Anybody can see the impact of that. If you look at the grid, if you look at the scale, you can see that there is a major impact. Now, how on one hand can Management Board say, "We don't agree with the decision of the tribunal and we're going to appeal it"? Follow me here. What happens if you win the appeal and all of a sudden the tribunal ruling is overturned and the decision is that the people who work for those three children's aid societies are now not classed as government employees but rather work directly for the local children's aid? Are you going to take that 17% back? Do you really think you're going to be able to do that?

It's absolutely incredible, the mistake that's being made, and I might add that we're only talking in this particular case about children's aid societies. What about all the other agencies that sit there and see the discrepancy that exists?

I only have a couple of moments left. I want to get these questions on the record on behalf of Peel children's aid.

The third question: "Is it now the government's position that public servants are a legitimate comparator for the determination of the salaries of transfer payment workers? How does this fit with the pay equity legislation?" Tell them it's not pay equity. "How does this fit with the recently announced delays in the implementation of the pay equity policy?"

The fourth question: "How does the government plan to pay for these increases in light of its announced intention to reduce the allocations to transfer payment agencies by hundreds of millions of dollars over the next year or two?" We're going to give you a pay equity legislation, a pay equity increase to give out 17% increases, and then we're going to slash your budget down to the bone, and you're going to take it back substantially. You're going to take back more.

The fifth question: "What is the government's expectation of the municipalities in this situation, who have to pay 20% of the cost and in others that will inevitably unfold in the future?"

The final question: "What support is the government prepared to provide other CASs as they face similar demands for fair treatment from their own employees?"

The inequities are obvious. The problems of implementing the pay equity legislation are clearly right here in front of us, documented, and this government is totally, totally embarrassed on this and I hope as we wind down they can come up with a solution to be fair to all of the fine men and women who work for the 48 other CASs, children's aid societies, in this province.

The Deputy Speaker: There is still five minutes left.

Mr Mahoney: I thought we were out of time.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: No, he's not finished. He still has five minutes.

It being 6 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow afternoon.

The House adjourned at 1800.