SOCIAL CONTRACT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE CONTRAT SOCIAL
Report continued from volume A
1752
SOCIAL CONTRACT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE CONTRAT SOCIAL
Continuation of debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 48, An Act to encourage negotiated settlements in the public sector to preserve jobs and services while managing reductions in expenditures and to provide for certain matters related to the Government's expenditure reduction program / Loi visant à favoriser la négociation d'accords dans le secteur public de façon à protéger les emplois et les services tout en réduisant les dépenses et traitant de certaines questions relatives au programme de réduction des dépenses du gouvernement.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Further debate, the honourable member for York Centre.
Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): I hope, during the course of the 30 minutes allotted to me in this debate, to speak through you, sir, not particularly to the members on the government side who I think have compromised and sold their souls on this bill, but to speak beyond them to the few people in the province of Ontario who are watching this debate and others who might consult what was said here through Hansard, to explain to the average citizen why the average citizen ought to be demanding, sir, that this Social Contract Act, this vicious little piece of business by the government, be defeated.
I believe this is perhaps one of the most important and one of the most crucial debates that has taken place in this Parliament. Certainly, for me, I consider it the most important piece of legislation I have ever debated or participated in debating in in the eight years I've been in this Parliament.
Bill 48 is one of the most arbitrary, one of the most dangerous and one of the most vicious pieces of legislation that has ever been presented in Parliament. It is because of that that I am asking citizens of Ontario to understand what is happening here and to understand how this piece of legislation ultimately will affect them in their daily lives as citizens of this province.
There is no doubt that Ontario has a deficit problem. That's kind of a no-brainer. We all know that. We've all followed and suffered the pains of this recession and this depression. We've got a problem with the deficit and that problem obviously has to be addressed.
There's no doubt that the government is obliged, as any government would be, to exercise restraint and to bring forward to Parliament and into the administration of public policy, new and effective ways in which to, as the saying goes, "reinvent government and make government more effective and more productive." There's no doubt about that. That's the agenda today. It's the agenda in every Canadian province. It's the agenda in the United States of America and the 50 states of the United States of America, and it's the agenda right throughout the European Community member nations. That's the agenda.
"Why is it then," the average citizen asks, "if that's the agenda, Sorbara is speaking against the bill? Why do the Liberals oppose the bill? Why is the bill so controversial?"
Let's begin with making sure that we understand what Bill 48, the Social Contract Act as it's called, does. It represents the most significant incursion into individual and collective rights that has ever been presented in any Parliament in Canada since the Second World War, and I include in that the War Measures Act that was brought to the federal Parliament by Pierre Trudeau almost 20 years ago; in fact, perhaps more than 20 years ago.
It is a greater incursion into our rights as citizens, not just the workers, the civil servants' rights, but our rights as citizens, a greater incursion than the War Measures Act. Remember, under the War Measures Act, the worst that could happen was that you could get arrested temporarily and held temporarily without being charged for something: a terrible violation of rights. But this bill in Ontario says: "We can take your salary. We can deny you the right to be heard and the right to grieve and the right to complain. We can open up your collective agreement, we can roll back your wages and employers in the broader public sector can do anything else that they want."
That's what the bill says. They can do anything else they want in order to meet Floyd Laughren's $2-billion problem. That's what this bill says the government is empowered to do.
Eight thousand collective agreements are hereby suspended. The wages of one million working people in Ontario are hereby rolled back. The wages of one million people in Ontario are hereby frozen: Zap, you're frozen, by virtue of this act. One quarter of the working people of this province are directly affected by this bill. Arbitrarily, summarily, the Minister of Finance, Floyd Laughren, the member for whatever it is --
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Nickel Belt.
Mr Sorbara: The member for Nickel Belt -- I thank my friend from Etobicoke -- becomes the chief single employer of every public sector working person in this province. He places himself in the seat of the chair and determines for one million people what their wages will be and whether or not they will have a job, the most arbitrary grab for power that has ever taken place in the history of Ontario, and I include in that Mitch Hepburn's war with GM workers back in the late 1930s in Oshawa.
Notwithstanding that there's this arbitrary grab for power, the people of Ontario are terribly confused and they want to know what it is about this bill that has raised the ire of so many people, not only as we debate it here in Parliament, but as it is debated in every union hall in Ontario and most of the dining rooms and restaurants and coffee shops right around the province.
I want to explain to the citizens of Ontario what's wrong with this bill, and I want to plead with the citizens of Ontario to realize what is happening here and somehow get to their local representatives, whether they be government representatives or Liberals or Tories, to get to their representatives and say, "Rethink this thing."
I'm going to discuss, in the time I have, five points, and I'm asking people to really think about these points. The first point is this: If a government can summarily cancel the rights of one million workers in Ontario, it can cancel your rights tomorrow. If we allow the government to do this arbitrarily in the way it's doing it, today it's public sector workers, tomorrow it's some other group, because once governments get an appetite for power they start to exercise it arbitrarily. Today, my rights are partially affected: My salary will be rolled back and frozen. That's okay, but a government that arbitrarily does that gets an arbitrary taste for power and starts attacking the next enemy, not the enemy of the economy but the enemy of the government.
1800
Today, for example, we heard in question period that Bob Rae spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to put a letter into the paper to explain his position.
Mr Stockwell: Because he can't do it himself.
Mr Sorbara: Because he can't do it himself, as my friend from Etobicoke says. So if you cut back the rights of public servants today, you're going to cut somebody else's rights tomorrow. It's a slippery slope into totalitarian government, and this is the first major sign.
Mr Stockwell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I'm enjoying this speech and I think everyone should. I think a quorum should be here. This government should be able to count to 20.
The Acting Speaker: I would ask the table to ascertain if there is a quorum.
Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
The Acting Chair: A quorum is now present. The honourable member for York Centre has the floor.
Mr Sorbara: My first point was simply that this is a totalitarian exercise of power. I invite my friends and I invite the people of the province to actually read the legislation. I'll just quote one section. Get a load of this; talk about individual rights.
"Actions of an employer" -- that's any employer in the broader public sector -- "taken in accordance with this act shall not be the subject of any proceeding brought by a person against the employer in relation to the terms and conditions of the person's employment and in relation to the person's release from employment."
What does that say in English? It says if you get fired, if you lose your job, you can't take any action, you can't appeal to any court, you can't grieve, you can't complain. You can go and collect pogey, and Bob Rae says: "I'll give you 95% of your wages for a year, but you've got to shut up. You can't complain."
You cannot take any proceeding. That means you can't have a hearing. You can't go to an independent arbiter and say, "I've been wrongfully dismissed." That's just part of it. I could go on in that regard for hours and hours, just looking at the little arbitrary measures, the power of the Minister of Finance, the denial of the right to grieve. If your employer arbitrarily docks your pay or whatever, as long as it's in furtherance of the social contract, you don't have a right to grieve.
How did we lose the right to grieve so quickly in Ontario? If the government can, in a fascist, totalitarian way, take away the rights of these working people, it can take away anyone's rights at any time.
Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I heard the member refer to the government as fascist. I don't think that's parliamentary and I think that should be withdrawn. We are not a fascist government.
The Acting Chair: I'm afraid I did not hear the actual comment, but I would ask the honourable member that if he did indeed say something that was so offensive to the members of the government or any other member of the House, he might perhaps apologize for that and withdraw that statement.
Mr Sorbara: Mr Speaker, I've described this bill as a series of totalitarian and fascist measures. I described the bill, I did not describe the government. I described the bill and I stand by my description.
Secondly, this bill -- I'm asking the government members perhaps to pay attention to this part of it -- destabilizes collective bargaining in Ontario in a way that no other measure could. Some people say: "That's okay. We don't like the fact that some employers have to bargain collectively with trade union representatives." To those people in particular, to those who say, "Couldn't we just get rid of the trade union movement?" I simply want to explain very briefly that although collective bargaining sometimes can lead to strikes and lockouts and sometimes lead to friction, the collective bargaining process, where representatives of workers and representatives of employers get together and negotiate the terms of the employment, is the best system we have. In every jurisdiction that champions rights and freedoms, particularly the rights and freedoms of individuals to come together and act jointly, that collective bargaining process is right at the heart of our economic system and ought not to be summarily challenged or destroyed or destabilized. This act, because it basically suspends collective bargaining in the broader public sector for the next three years, inflicts what could possibly be a fatal wound to the collective bargaining process.
My friends opposite in the government don't seem to understand why that is. What they don't understand is that when the province, particularly those reactionary elements in the province, get a taste for destabilizing collective bargaining, their appetite simply increases and the next target is brought up for public attention, to be dealt with by this government or some successive government, and this bill, Bill 48, becomes the precedent: "Look, if you can arbitrarily suspend collective bargaining in the broader public sector, we're now asking two or three years down the road to do it for our sector: Get rid of these representatives of workers who are demanding better working conditions, get rid of these labour representatives who are arguing that we have much more to do in terms of establishing appropriate conditions for employment." This is the first major destabilization of collective bargaining in Ontario since the war, and New Democratic Party members should hang their heads in shame that they are authoring and sponsoring this bill.
Thirdly, the great tragedy in this bill is that it's not going to work. That's the great irony: The bill is not going to work; it's not going to save the government hardly a thing. Yes, if you actually end up passing this bill, wages will be rolled back, the 5% take out of everyone's pocket will be accomplished, temporarily, and wages will be frozen for three years. I remind people, I remind particularly those citizens who think that we need this three-year freeze, I ask the government members, what do you do in 1995 if inflation is at 6% or 7%? What do you do then? What kind of crisis begins to boil in one million workers who haven't had a raise, basically, in five years and see prices going up by 6% and 7%?
Don't tell me it can't happen. The Treasurer can't predict a deficit one year to the next. Don't tell me that he can say what inflation is going to be a year and a half from now. The likelihood is that, as the economy starts to recover, we're going to go into a period of new inflation. This bill says to one million workers that they will have no raise. Their purchasing power will begin to deteriorate by 5% and 6% when that starts to happen.
This bill says, "Come back and see us in March 1996." There, my friends, the thing explodes; there it explodes. The new right to strike will have been implemented. One million workers will be counting the days until they can finally make it up. Mark my words, I tell my friends in the government, there will be demands for wage increases in 1996 of upwards of 25% to 30% by one million workers in this province. That could once again cripple the economy. It could once again so destabilize Ontario that we could fall into another recession, because at some point that's got to be made up. You're pushing it all to 1996.
It's going to explode; perhaps not in your faces, but it's going to explode in the face of some government. There will be so much anger and so much discontent, having locked up the collective bargaining process for some three years, that it could just set Ontario into its own private recession, separate and apart from the recovering economies of the rest of Canada and the US. Mark my words, we will see demands for increases in wages of 25% to 30% when this vicious piece of business comes to an end.
1810
So what should have been done? What's the alternative? I agree that today we need to deal with the wage question. We need to make one incision in those collective agreements and in a graduated way step wages back somewhat, in a graduated way, so that if you make $120,000 and you're a deputy minister, you might have to take a 12% cut, but if you're a worker making perhaps $25,000 or $30,000, the cut that you take is minimal, a half a per cent or 1%. Then you move the yardsticks back, and then you sew up the incision and you allow the process of collective bargaining to work itself out so that it can respond to the economy of tomorrow and next month and next year and two years and three years down the road. That is something that would work and that is something that I could support, because it's a single incision and it doesn't destabilize Ontario and freeze Ontario Bob Rae style over the course of the next three years.
The other thing that is so tragically wrong with this bill is this: Among the nine million people in Ontario who are not public sector workers, there's an appetite for this. There is a fantasy developing out there that somehow the teachers and the doctors and the nurses and the firefighters and the police officers and the clerks and the person who takes your form at the government office, there's a growing sentiment that these people somehow have been taking too much and "We've got to get to them."
That's a fantasy. It's a political fantasy, and you on the other side are playing on that. You on the other side are allowing that fantasy, that lie, to fester.
Who are these public sector workers who have grown fat? They're the people who teach my children. They're the people who protect my community. They're the nurse who sees my son when I take him to emergency at 3 o'clock in the morning. It's the guard who identifies my parking spot in this building. It's the man or woman who goes up to plant trees in northern Ontario all summer long. It's one million people who deliver collectively the services that we've demanded as a people.
I admit there is a mood out there that somehow we have got to exact some pain on those one million people, and you are playing on that. Politically, your Premier, your Minister of Finance and every one of you are playing on that sympathy, and that is dangerous territory. That is a foul and ugly thing to do, particularly for politicians and community leaders who have historically spoken up for the integrity of the workplace and the rights of workers.
You're playing on it. You're allowing editorialists to write about the inefficiency of our school system and the inefficiency of our health care system and the inefficiency of ministries of government.
I want to tell my friends opposite, those are lies. Our health care system, my friends, is not in crisis. Our education system is not in crisis. Our social service system is not in crisis. It is our economy that is in crisis.
If the New Democratic Party government could do something to restart the economy, then we could afford the kinds of services that historically we have come to enjoy and take advantage of in Ontario. If we could only get people back to work, if we could only rekindle the economic vitality that we had in the 1980s, then no one would be talking about laying off nurses and firing teachers and reducing the size of the police force. We wouldn't be talking about it. But after almost three years of New Democratic Party government, I have seen not one measure to rekindle the economy, to create new economic growth.
I'm glad to see that the Minister of Agriculture and Food is here, because he will understand this analogy. It is as if the government collectively went to the orchard and saw that the trees weren't bearing any fruit, or that it was measly and shrivelled, and instead of addressing the problem, they started to get the big shears out, pruning. "This branch is bearing no fruit; cut it off. This branch is bearing no fruit; cut it off," and you keep cutting at the tree and trimming it back and waiting to see if fruit will be produced on what's left.
And no one is feeding the soil, the economic soil in Ontario, which produces the wealth and the resources that we need to have a vital health care system and to educate our children in the way in which they deserve to be educated and to fund our universities and our colleges in the way in which they must be if we are going to be competitive in a global, information-based economy. None of you is talking about that.
None of you, I say to the government members, have really come to address the core of the issue: Our economy cries out for new growth. If we could ever address that question, then we wouldn't need this vicious social contract which plays upon the fear of Ontarians that somehow those who work for government have grown too fat. You play upon that and in playing upon that, you do a huge disservice to one million workers, virtually all of whom are ordinary citizens like you and I, who get up in the morning and send their children off to school and go to work and put in a full day. The difference is that what they receive comes from the taxpayers, and you have allowed yourselves to be sucked in by that fantasy that says: "It's their fault. The reason we have no economic growth is because those working people who serve us in our schools and our hospitals and our social service agencies have somehow missed the mark. They've grown too fat."
You mustn't do this. You mustn't destroy collective bargaining to play upon that sentiment. You mustn't pretend that somehow you have a crystal ball and can see what the economy is going to look like three years hence and therefore say to one million workers, "Zap, you're frozen." You will create such anger, such resentment, such hostility, that in the end our schools will become destabilized.
What do you think is going to happen once you've passed this bill or forced them into negotiations that call for the same thing that's in the bill in any event? The frustration of teachers will be such that they'll say: "Fine, we'll work to rule. We're done with voluntarily committing ourselves to our schools." The nurses and the doctors will say, "Fine, we'll work to rule or we'll go somewhere else." Those who work so hard delivering particularly the social services will say: "Fine, we'll work to rule. Forget the case loads, forget the problems out there." And they will wait and wait and when the three-year clock stops ticking and reaches zero, there will be an explosion in this province for catch-up and revenge the like of which we have never seen before, and you are asking us to vote in favour of that in this piece of legislation.
I say to the members of the House and those people who are listening to this debate that we must not quickly and easily curtail the rights of citizens. We have a 125-year tradition in parliaments like this of establishing and identifying and refining and enhancing those rights. Yes, we are in a recession; I think it's a depression. Yes, we must come to grips with the cost of government. Yes, we must begin to reshape how we deliver services. All of that is the subject of unanimous consent in Ontario and anywhere else. All of that is self-evident. But what is not self-evident is that in order to achieve that with one blow, you can set back the clock almost 50 years in terms of the rights of citizens and set the clock back 50 years in terms of the rights of people to organize together and express their rights together.
1820
This does not give you an excuse to destabilize collective bargaining, not just in the public sector but right throughout the private sector; and not just here in Ontario, because you know what will happen, you know how this game is played. You know that everyone in North America right now is watching to see how much pain Ontario can inflict on its public sector workers. They're watching in Tennessee and they're watching in Calgary and they're watching in Nova Scotia and they're watching in New Hampshire. They're watching everywhere.
This is the test: "If Bob Rae, the great social democrat, the man who used to speak with a social conscience, can do this to his public sector workers -- freeze them where they are for three years, cut back their pay arbitrarily, try and bribe them to the bargaining table -- if Bob Rae, that eloquent, fair-haired young Rhodes Scholar can do that, by God, just think what we can do here in Tennessee or North Dakota or California or wherever we are experiencing a nuisance."
I plead with the members of the House, particularly the government members, to rethink what they are doing and understand how important it is that this legislation not pass.
The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments.
Mr Stockwell: I'd like to pick up on a point that the member from York was speaking about with respect to the deferment. The deferment is a rather interesting issue. They have said in the legislation that if you're considered a necessary service or a mandated service, you don't necessarily have to give pay pause days; you begin to bank those days.
I think this is a rather interesting point, because when you're dealing with a place like, say, Metropolitan Toronto, this is what you people should think about: 60% of the employees of Metropolitan Toronto would be considered mandated. They go from homes for the aged to child care to police to ambulance services and so on and so on. So according to your social contract, these people could not take their pay pause days; they would begin to bank their pay pause days, and they would bank them for some three years.
Imagine that very quickly in rough calculations: The broader public payroll is some $43 billion, you're trying to save 5% of $43 billion, and roughly 50% or 60% of those people you're trying to make the savings on can bank their pay pause days; they can bank 36 pay pause days per person till 1996. Add up all those people who have banked pay pause days, and come 1996, there's going to be a bill owing by municipalities of some $2 billion or $3 billion. That's what this proposed saving would be: $2 billion or $3 billion in banked days, and municipalities are going to end up having to foot that bill.
So the suggestion to the public that you're saving 5% is grossly misconstrued and grossly unreasonable or unfair to any fairminded individual who would read this legislation.
Mark my words. Come 1996, municipalities, hospitals and school boards are going to have billions of dollars in payments to make because of your social contract, due to banked holidays not forced upon mandated services. If that's what you're trying to accomplish, it seems rather onerous for such a small period of --
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Further questions and/or comments?
Mrs Karen Haslam (Perth): I agree with a lot of people, and I'm not attempting to deny or minimize the deficit problem which exists. We all know it's been very difficult to grapple with this deficit problem. We talk about the private sector unions out there which had to meet, which had to come back to their people with a pay scale less than they wanted, which had difficulty in finding solutions. But when they did that, they had one thing going for them: They had the right to collective bargaining. It was tough to come back to their unions and say, "We have to take a wage rollback" or "There will be layoffs," but they had the right to bargain with their employers for that. And that's the one thing in this legislation that really hits me, when you look at putting aside the rights to collective bargaining.
I know there are unions out there who have brought in 0% because we asked them to. I know there are unions out there who have negotiated 10-month jobs instead of 12-month jobs because we've asked them to. Now we're saying to them: "Now we want you to come back, and we're facilitating" -- I love that word in this legislation -- "negotiations. We're asking you to come back and give up more, and if you don't give up more, then we're going to do it anyway." That is not collective bargaining.
I received a letter recently that I would like to say one quick thing about. "It's comparable to what is done in some jurisdictions when the guilty party is asked to choose the method of execution."
Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): I listened attentively as my colleague for York Centre gave a fairly good recitation of the concerns that focus on this legislation. It's a concern to me that unspoken in all of the high-sounding rhetoric that comes from the government are any words that would describe what will take place in the delivery of public services to the people of this province.
We're all in favour of restraint, but I think it's pretty fair to say, as I go from place to place in my riding and speak to so many individuals, that the concern is very genuine indeed about the ability to preserve health care, to ensure that education for our children's future is not only preserved but in fact enhanced.
There are a number of people who now reside in the public sector and broader public sector who are quite concerned that the mandates which they believe have been given unto them, in fact even required of them under legislative instruction, cannot now be met. In fact, the extended discussions that have emanated from the social contract and the compromising discussion that has resulted as a result of the meddling of the Premier and the Finance minister in the setting of budgets at local levels have caused the types of disruptions now, when we're in a process of renewing and revitalizing or at least attempting to do that with our public sector, of probably putting on hold all the reforms that might effect good in the broader public sector.
I have several areas which I'm sure the people would be interested in hearing, and I'll be talking about them later, but it seems to me that particularly the problems that will emanate from the financial crisis facing the conservation authorities and the ability to deal with what is going to be cut back from their budgets are obviously going to compromise the public trusts that have been allocated to those organizations.
Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I listened with great interest to the member for York Centre and his comments. His comments were very, very eloquent, as they always are. If he'd had the opportunity to speak longer than 30 minutes, I'm sure he would have on this particular bill, but I found a couple of things I wanted to comment on with respect to his presentation.
He is a former member of the Liberal Party, the government from 1985 to 1990, and certainly we find that during those years -- I'm sure the member would readily admit this -- in boom times, I give you, the money was spent as fast as it came in in those days. Had there been some sort of measure of restraint during those years, I think we would be in a different situation today, perhaps not even talking about a social contract. Had something like the Alberta heritage fund been set up with the money that was coming in at that time, setting aside some money for a rainy day, if that principle had been applied to those years in the late 1980s when times were booming, I think we'd be in a different situation today.
1830
The member talked about his concern about the end of certain rights and collective bargaining rights being trampled upon. I think he used the word "totalitarian." I've heard that word in this debate, but I wondered, listening to him, if he would support any initiatives put forward by the government which would reduce the annual compensation bill that the government has to pay within the Ontario public service and the broader public sector. Would he support any initiative to reduce that compensation? I would ask him that question.
Mr Stockwell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I think you need a quorum.
The Acting Speaker: I would ask the table to ascertain if there is a quorum.
Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
The Acting Speaker: A quorum is now present. The honourable member for York Centre has two minutes to make a response.
Mr Sorbara: I don't have very much to add. I do want to comment on questions or answer the questions that my friend from Wellington posed.
First, would I support any legislative initiatives dealing with wages; the answer is yes. I think if he refers back to my remarks in Hansard, I put a very specific proposal forward as to how that could be done without destabilizing collective bargaining.
The second issue, of course, is the one that the Tories are taking up now. That is to point back to the heyday of 1985 to 1990 when I and the Liberals were in power and David Peterson was the Premier. The suggestion is that there was a great deal of spending and taxes were rolling in at a record rate. Of course, it's true that we had the benefit of a very strong economy. We had unemployment levels that were at 3% and 4% in the urban areas and 5% perhaps in the rural areas, and these were very good times indeed. In Liberal times, most people had jobs.
I don't want to get into that debate except to make one point. It offends me to no end to hear New Democrats making that argument, because during that period, the New Democrats under the dramatic leadership of the dramatic crusader Bob Rae every day in this Parliament were identifying another agency of government that was underfunded. On day one, the universities were underfunded; day two, the colleges; day three, the welfare system; day four, the hospitals; day five, it was another agency. Every day in Parliament, the New Democrats were making proposals for additional spending. Do you know what? They were right; those agencies did need resources because we were in a period of dramatic growth, and we're proud of our record in responding to that growth.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): Before I get into the specifics of the legislation, I do want to make some reference to the comments made by the Liberal member for York Centre. I share his concern about the position of the NDP government in many respects, but I think it's unfair not to make some passing reference to the fact that Bill 48 is very much a part of the Liberal legacy left to this province.
He talks about taking positions which are in support of collective bargaining and organized labour in this province, and I think we should hark back to at least a couple of issues in respect to positions taken by federal Liberal governments in the past. I recall Robert Stanfield as the leader of the official opposition, the Conservative Party, back some years ago talking about the need to institute wage and price controls in a way in which we could get the Canadian economy under control. Of course, the Trudeau Liberal government was vehemently opposed to that and won the election, essentially, on that one issue, and then immediately went about instituting wage and price controls.
Back in I think it was 1979, the short-lived Conservative government of Joe Clark brought in a budget with a proposal to increase taxes on fuel by 16 cents a gallon, I believe, and again the government was defeated on that budget; that was the primary focus of the campaign. Mr Trudeau was resurrected, the Liberal government came back into power, and what did they do? One of the first things they did was immediately raise the gasoline tax by I believe it was in the order of 40 cents a gallon.
When we hear all these concerns by the Liberal representative about organized labour and infringing on contracts and the bargaining process, I think we should take it all with a grain of salt, because the fact is, as the member for York Centre made reference to, the Liberals governed during an economic boom, and during that time they increased expenditures at double the rate of inflation and paid for this spending binge with 33 tax hikes and a 30% or $10-billion increase in the provincial debt over their term in office.
Another concern, which certainly relates to Bill 48 and the whole question of the growth of government and the public service in this province and the cost that's associated with that growth, is that under the Liberals the size of the Ontario public service grew from 80,142 in March 1985 to 88,267 in March 1990, and the public service payroll costs, wages and benefits, during that period of time jumped by 60%, from $2.7 billion to $4.4 billion, during the Liberals' time in office.
Obviously, we can't lay all of that on their doorstep. For a period of time during the Liberal reign there was an accord with the NDP party and much of the agenda was a shared agenda between the NDP and the Liberal Party, so they as well have to assume some of the responsibility for what occurred during that time; they can't simply lay it on the doorstep of the Liberals. But there's no doubt that in terms of the three years during which the Liberals had a 94-seat majority in this House, they have to accept sole responsibility for what occurred during that time, and obviously they were not prepared to do that. They knew what was coming.
As we can recall, when an election was called in 1990, the Treasurer of the time, Mr Nixon, indicated that the province was going to be looking at a modest surplus. In fact there was a significant deficit when the NDP came into power and had a look at the books, and of course it's been all downhill since that time.
Of course, look at the initial response of the NDP in terms of the Treasurer making a very significant error in his first budget, his decision to try and spend our way of recession while every other government in Canada was cutting back, exercising restraint and trying to deal with the problem at that time. Mr Laughren and his colleagues decided they were going to do something different, based on the long-held socialist belief that they could spend their way out of a very significant recession, and of course it backfired, but part of that effort was a significant increase to the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, pay hikes of nearly 6%.
At that time, our party and our leader, Michael Harris, were calling on the government to apply a 2% cap on pay hikes in the public sector. We were very concerned back in 1990 and even before, in respect to the spending practices of the Liberal government and then the intended spending practices of the NDP with its first budget and subsequent budgets.
Look at what's occurred, with the significant deficits over the period of time that this government's been in office and then its reaction to a projected $17-billion deficit. There's a public relations game that's been under way for some time, that by instituting Bill 48 we'll have what is described as some sort of panacea, that we are going to get this deficit down to something like $10 billion. We doubt that can be achieved. It's still --
Mr Stockwell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The member for Leeds-Grenville is making a tremendous amount of sense and he should be listened to. A quorum should be present.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Is there a quorum present?
Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
1840
The Acting Speaker: A quorum is now present. The honourable member for Leeds-Grenville may continue his participation in the debate.
Mr Runciman: I want to make reference to some of the things that our party has attempted to do over the past number of years in terms of getting its message across to the government, through Mike Harris and various critics and I think virtually every member of the Conservative caucus, in delivering a message of fiscal responsibility.
In the first volume of our New Directions series of policy papers we called for, among other things, reductions in the size of the Ontario public service and the privatization of government functions and crown agencies. In our 1993 pre-budget opinion, our caucus called for a moratorium on the non-profit housing program, which I want to make some reference to again.
We've heard the Minister of Housing respond to questions from our critic, the member for Mississauga South, Mrs Marland, in terms of our concerns about the significant cost to the taxpayers of the province in respect to this government's policies related to non- profit housing. We believe the people of this province would be much better served if we got the private sector involved in the provision of housing, and not the government.
What's happening now is that we're putting people into these houses who make no real contribution to Ontario society, in many respects, and are being subsidized by the Ontario taxpayers, some up to the tune of $1,000 a month. I believe the average is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $840 a month. These are significant expenditures and ones that the current Minister of Housing and apparently her colleagues are unwilling to deal with, I assume because it conflicts with some sort of party ideology in terms of the government being the major developer and landlord in this province and squeezing out the private sector. As a result, the private sector development industry is suffering significantly and indeed the taxpayers of this province are suffering significantly.
We've talked about a crackdown on health care fraud. The Provincial Auditor has indicated that health care fraud could be in the vicinity of $800 million a year. Again we see very little happening in respect of this concern, a significant one. If we're talking about achieving savings in this government and not costing jobs in the public sector at a time when the private sector is certainly suffering, certainly this is one area which the government should have, could have keyed on in terms of rooting out significant fraud and significant cost to the people of this province.
We've also talked about a multi-year freeze on program spending as a key to a long-term strategy of deficit reduction, and of course we have not seen that occur. In fact, as we've indicated, the principle of restraint is something we've been talking about and calling for for a significant period of time, and Bill 48 is indeed a restraint measure.
We have significant concerns about a number of elements of this legislation. We may have to find ourselves at least in support of the principle, but we will have significant and meaningful amendments to make during the process in the hope that the government will agree with these amendments so that this legislation, while achieving the objective of restraint, will be much fairer in the way it deals with the public service in this province and will have much more beneficial long-term effects in terms of the restructuring of the provincial government.
Some of the things I'm talking about in terms of restraint are modest, but they're indications of this government being unwilling to deal with spending problems. Indeed, they have not exercised the spending restraint in many ways by which they could have achieved the same sort of saving they're hoping to achieve through Bill 48.
I want to talk about a couple of things. The expenditures on polling have been raised before in this House. Although the NDP in opposition were vitriolic in terms of their opposition to government polling, now we see a release through, I gather, a freedom of information request indicating that the government has spent something like $1.3 million on polling during its two and a half to almost three years in office. That may be modest when we're talking about a $54-billion or $55-billion total budget in this province, but it's indicative of the spending practices of this government.
Hon Elmer Buchanan (Minister of Agriculture and Food): And what are the Tories doing?
Mr Runciman: We're talking about positions you've taken in the past. If you want to review Hansard and some of the vitriol that spewed forth from this side of the House about polling by not only Conservative governments of the past but Liberal governments of the past, I think you'd have a tough time defending any spending on polling, and most of it political in nature.
I gather Liberal and Conservative governments of the past could have and have been criticized for this sort of spending, but I have never seen anything so blatantly political as the budget insert that was put into all of the daily newspapers, trying to defend the government's recent budget and spelling out the benefit of this wonderful document for all the taxpayers and residents of the province of Ontario.
I can remember some of the things we were involved in as a Conservative government, some of the slogans. What was it, "Preserve Ontario" or something like that? It was questioned by opposition members because of the analogy between Progressive Conservatives and "Preserve Ontario," and a bunch of slogans that came out of our party when we were in power, but I've never seen anything as blatant and as political as this budget insert that cost the taxpayers of this province, we're told, $300,000.
I don't know how much the full-page ad that was inserted to defend the government in terms of the social contract cost. I don't know how many papers it ran in. Someone was suggesting it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I can understand that. I know a full-page ad in the Toronto Star is not an insignificant expenditure.
Individually, these are modest numbers when we look at the total spending effort of the government, but collectively, they add up and they certainly indicate the priorities of this government.
An item that I have raised on occasion, and the member for Perth has responded to me in her capacity in cabinet in respect to this matter, is TVO. I've had a lot of trouble in respect to TVO and its operations, specifically the operation of La Chaîne. When you raise this sort of issue, it's a sacred cow. Once you raise this kind of issue, you're accused of not understanding the fact of a minority in this province and recognizing its needs and its rights. I say baloney.
I'm certainly one who is very supportive of providing services to the language minority in this province, but I believe in providing services that are needed, that are merited and that are utilized, and La Chaîne is an excellent example.
Mr Bernard Ostry appeared before my committee some time ago in respect to spending concerns at TVO, about having eight television sets in his office, that sort of extravagance which upset members of the NDP and members on this side of the House. But the other side of an extravagance that came out during those deliberations was that an exorbitant amount of the TVO budget, I think it was $35 million or $36 million, was going towards the operation of La Chaîne. The other element that came out during these discussions was that virtually no one is watching La Chaîne; virtually no one is watching this network.
What we have is a French-language network and an English-language network. Before the creation of La Chaîne, which was a political decision, with the support of both the federal Conservatives and the provincial Liberals, TVO, the English-language network, offered 14 hours, I believe it was, per week of French-language programming. We have now created a French-language arm which is taking up at least a third of the budget. Virtually no one is watching it, and we're still providing the 14 hours of French-language broadcasting on the English arm of TVO.
1850
That's the sort of thing, when we have these political sacred cows, that means we don't deal with real needs of real people in this province. Instead, and I've seen it for over 12 years in this place, we're meeting these so-called political needs, sending out these symbolic messages which cost us millions and millions and millions of dollars and meet no real need out there in the regions of this province and do not really satisfy the needs or aspirations, in my view, of the francophones in this province. I think most of them, if they're prepared to sit down and talk about the fiscal realities of this province, would be quite prepared to see one network providing service in both languages in this province at a much more economical cost to the taxpayers of Ontario.
I don't want to go on about that particular subject because I'm sure I'll get letters; once you touch this subject, you're accused of all sorts of nasty things and you can't offer common sense. I've faced those kinds of bullets in the past and I've lived through them.
I want to talk about a couple of other modest things. I won't say La Chaîne is modest, at $36 million. I put a couple of questions on the order paper respecting some things that happened with the Ministry of Financial Institutions. The government has abolished the Ministry of Financial Institutions and merged it into the Ministry of Finance. A couple of things have happened over there recently.
One of the deputy ministers, Mr Robert Simpson, I understand was looked upon as being too close to the Liberal government and too close perhaps to the member for Bruce because of all of the deliberations that were undertaken during auto insurance deliberations and the development of the no-fault auto insurance program. Mr Simpson, I believe, was felt to be by the current government, the NDP government, too closely aligned with the Liberal Party of Ontario. As a result, he was given his walking papers, but I want to say, those were pretty expensive walking papers. He's been out of the government for over a year now, but he's been on full salary for all that time. So we have this one Deputy Minister of Financial Institutions who's been effectively fired by the government out there drawing a full salary for two years while he's not employed and not providing any useful service to the taxpayers of Ontario.
What did the NDP government do? They reached into Manitoba and brought in a Mr Charles Kang as the deputy minister in Financial Institutions. Then a very short period of time after Mr Kang was here, they decided to do away with that ministry, so again they had to reach an accommodation with Mr Kang. So now Mr Kang is on almost full salary because he reached a negotiated settlement with the NDP government.
In effect, we have no ministry any more, no Ministry of Financial Institutions, but we have two deputy ministers being paid one full salary and one almost-full salary for no ministry.
That's the sort of thing this government has undertaken, rather than biting the bullet and dealing with tough matters. This is the sort of waste the public is unaware of that goes on on an almost daily basis while the NDP members over there laugh their heads off about this sort of waste. It's atrocious, it's offensive and it should upset all of the hardworking public sector employees out there who feel their jobs are in jeopardy, because many of those people see this sort of waste occurring around them on a daily basis. These two issues were brought to my attention by a public sector employee who is very concerned about her job and said this is the sort of waste.
When they went to move Financial Institutions from 555 Yonge, they brought in someone. They have accommodation officers in the ministry. What did they do? They brought someone in on contract, a $75,000 contract, to coordinate the move from 555 Yonge down to the Eaton Centre. That's the sort of waste: 75,000 bucks out the window, while they have all these accommodation officers in the ministry sitting on their fannies.
It's no wonder that public sector employees are very much upset, very much concerned about their own security and at the same time concerned about the waste this government is engaged in and not doing anything to deal with.
This has been talked about and I'm not going to get into it at length: all of the changed attitudes we're witnessing on the part of the NDP in respect of positions you and I heard and the member for Markham heard for many, many years, and the vehemence of its views with respect to collective bargaining, the sanctity of collective bargaining, the sanctity of collective agreements, that there's no way these agreements could be touched. Now we see them supporting, endorsing and defending legislation that in effect is going to, in many instances, gut the negotiating process and create chaos in the public sector.
As I said, we very strongly endorse the principle of restraint. We have been calling for it for some time. We've been consistent. Mike Harris and the Ontario Progressive Conservatives have been consistent in calling for government restraint, downsizing the public sector and making the public sector much more efficient and much more effective. We believe most public sector employees would agree with that, and we believe it can be done without loss of employment. It can be done and could be done without loss of employment.
We see this dramatic shifting of views by members in the NDP, though. I don't want to get away from that without some comment. There's the old comment that power corrupts. Power corrupts.
Hon Gilles Pouliot (Minister of Transportation and Minister Responsible for Francophone Affairs): We are not corrupt, sir. Be careful.
Mr Runciman: I saw it in my day. I was a backbencher when Premier Davis decided that he was going to buy into Suncor. I don't know if Mr Pouliot was a member at that time or not. Mr Davis made a decision that he was going to buy into Suncor, which I felt went against everything I believed in as a Conservative. I had a very difficult time dealing with that, and my final decision was not to support it. I decided not to support it because it went against what I believed were Conservative principles. I suffered somewhat as a result of that decision, but I want to say I've never regretted it, never regretted it for one moment, and certainly history has proven me to be correct with respect to it being an extremely bad decision that did not benefit Ontario in any way, shape or form and in fact cost at least half a billion dollars, a sinkhole once we got into that mess.
But when I'm taking the position I am taking here -- I saw it in government and I suppose I fell victim to it on occasion as well, that once you get involved in government and the perks of office, they're very difficult, they're very persuasive, they're very seductive. In this case, we see members over here who I felt over the years were very strong, principled individuals who would not in any way, shape or form stand up and support this kind of gutting of the collective bargaining process, but what we're seeing here is nodding and smiling and defending of this kind of process.
Even though we on this side of the House personally support the principle of restraint, it's very difficult for us to accept the fact that we've heard members like the minister who's sitting here today, the member for Lake Nipigon, talking about the sanctity of the collective bargaining process and that it has to be protected at all costs and now we know that when this bill comes to a vote, he's going to stand up and vote with the government. Why? Why is he going to vote? I'd like to hear him get up during the course of this debate and offer his views. But I don't think any of us on this side of the House will be able to accept them. I think he has been corrupted, if you will, by the perks of power, by the salary, by the driver, by the expense account, by the fancy offices, by all the perks of office. I think it's a fair conclusion to draw.
1900
Hon Mr Pouliot: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your leadership on whether it's a point of order or a point of privilege. I will quote. I have a lot of respect for the member, but when the member says the member from Lake Nipigon has been corrupted by the perks of office, I think it goes --
The Acting Speaker: That's not a point of order.
Hon Mr Pouliot: The tone goes somewhat beyond the decorum and good manners that are the tradition of this House, and I take offence. I am not corrupted. I am not a corrupt person; indeed, quite the opposite.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you.
Hon Mr Pouliot: Like all members here, I am an honourable member trying to serve my constituency.
The Acting Speaker: Order. All members are honourable members and all members, if they wish to participate, should stand up, be recognized, and the Chair will recognize them to participate. The member for Leeds-Grenville has the floor.
Mr Runciman: The comments I made related to the member for Lake Nipigon, the Minister of Transportation, I made with no animosity. In fact, I made those comments with deep regret, because I have respect for the member. I worked with him on this side of the House in opposition, and I've seen him as a member of the government as well. I certainly had a great deal of respect for his views, his principled stands, in the past.
Like most of us on this side of the House, I have a great deal of difficulty with the fact that he can now stand in this House and say that this sort gutting of contracts and of the collective bargaining process is something that he can live with. I have a great deal of difficulty accepting that, and I have to draw the conclusion in terms of what I said. I can see no other reason for this enormous flip-flop occurring on the part of him and a significant number of other members of his party.
I want to get a few things on the record in the brief time I have in respect to the public service and relate them to some things that have happened in my own riding. I know some of the public servants have a great deal to be concerned about, justifiably so, in respect to what's happening in Bill 48. But I think there's another message that we're hearing from the public as well. We've seen significant problems in the economy in Ontario. We've seen significant job losses, many manufacturing jobs lost for ever in this province, and the private sector prepared to -- we had the member for Cochrane South talking about steel workers. In my riding, Phillips Cables is a company that I would like to use as an example.
That company was faced with significant losses, the closure of its plant in Brockville. They were not being competitive any longer, and they had to sit down with the union. The options were either to look at concessions, reopening the collective agreement and looking at concessions to make it competitive, or closing the company down. That union was prepared to sit down and save jobs and make its company more competitive. They agreed to a four-year wage freeze, they reduced shift premiums, and they've adopted a much more flexible job description process where employees can work at a variety of jobs.
That sort of innovative approach, cooperative approach, has to be achieved by the public sector as well, and public servants have to recognize that that sort of accommodation has to be achieved. I don't think the heavy-handed approach of Bill 48 is the appropriate way to go, but they have to recognize that those kinds of accommodations are made necessary by the reality of the current Ontario economy and the fiscal reality faced by this government. Many of the difficulties that we're now facing, of course, were brought upon by the free spending of the Liberal government and the free spending of the NDP that succeeded them. But we have to come to grips with it.
If anyone watched W5 last night, it talked to former Premier Blakeney of Saskatchewan and about the public service there again having difficulty in coming to grips with the fact that Saskatchewan is effectively bankrupt. Their bond issues are now described as junk bonds. I'm told a lot of the latest issue in Ontario, the $3-billion issue, is languishing, $400 million to $500 million, at very attractive interest rates. We're now coming out with another issue. Ontario is facing a similar problem where no one wants to buy our bond issues unless we elevate the interest premiums, which again puts another burden on Ontario taxpayers. We're in a very difficult situation.
Our party has been strongly supportive of restraint, and I believe we're going to give serious consideration to support of this legislation in second reading because of the restraint message it sends out.
We're going to be bringing in substantive amendments during the process. Hopefully, the government is going to listen and adopt those amendments, because they will make the bill much fairer in terms of how it deals with the public servants and also in terms of the long-term restructuring of government in this province and also achieving long-term benefits for all of us as residents of this province. Thank you for your time, Mr Speaker.
Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): I would like to record my appreciation for the remarks from the member from Leeds-Grenville. I think one of the major thrusts in his address has been the waste in government and the unusual amount of excessive spending, self-serving spending, that has gone on over the past few years. When you crystallize that, it's hard to think just of one event; it's the accumulation of all the different things that have gone on. His illustration of the Ministry of Financial Institutions, as much as any, conveys the tremendous amount of waste at the top. We see this within every ministry.
If government had a program review within its organization, and this is really the question I want to ask the member to specifically address, if there were a program review of all government programs, would that not be the kind of beginning that should be taken?
The problem is probably that the New Democrats have been so busy promoting spending for so long that it becomes very difficult for them now to have a comprehensive review of government and say, "Let's be fairminded in what's going on." I think the government also has forgotten that its job is not just to knee-jerk in a panicky way to what's going on today, that there should be a long-term resolution of the problems we've got.
That is a lot of the concern we have as a caucus with this bill. Enforcing 12 days off for three years is really only going to provide an interim solution to the high spending of government, and then three years from now, we're going to be right back into it. What we're proposing instead is that there be a wage freeze and a hiring freeze during that period of time. I think the member for Leeds-Grenville has addressed that very adequately; none the less, there is a structural change needed, and it would be important for us to begin to look at the programs --
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Further questions and/or comments?
Mr Elston: I listened intently to the speech at the same time as I was listening to the member for Etobicoke West explain some of the difficulties in which the government obviously finds itself as a result of its movement from what was once described as the people's agenda, or Agenda for People, that has now become sort of the Tory manifesto of Ontario, and how difficult it must be.
But I was interested, even while we were going through that very intellectually inspiring discussion with a member from the government party, that I was able to overhear the member for Leeds-Grenville talking about the member for Lake Nipigon, about how that member, who is a member of the cabinet, the executive council, is going to support the government in this funny piece of legislation.
I missed the part where I think the member for Leeds-Grenville said he was also going to be supporting this bill. I was surprised to hear the earlier speaker, the member for York Mills, likewise say that the Tories in Ontario were going to be supporting the government. That would seem to indicate to me that the member for Leeds-Grenville and the member for Lake Nipigon are brothers in arms in this particular endeavour.
I used to describe the member from Leeds in other days, more halcyon days, as we like to think of them, as the left-leaning member from Leeds; at one point, I thought he was becoming extremely progressive. But it turns to me now to say that I misjudged him, because he has become as Tory has the NDP has. It seems to confuse me just a slight bit that the member from Leeds would be critical of a government member for supporting bad legislation when he and his leader are likewise supporting bad legislation.
All this to bring us back to the topic of what public services are going to be left after the Tories and New Democrats are done with this province.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. The member's time has expired.
Mr Stockwell: First I want to compliment the member for Leeds-Grenville on his comments. They were well stated and I think a lot of sense was made, particularly when he spoke of the issue with respect to Suncor, that his principles were offended on that issue and that he said so.
I will say too that I note the member for Bruce, the Liberal -- this is the one time the Liberals finally make a decision about something and they can't stop crowing, for heaven's sake. It's been two and a half years that we've been in this Legislature waiting for this Liberal crowd to make a decision on absolutely anything and they wouldn't, until finally Bill 48 comes down. They must have caucused for about a week. They probably wrung their hands, saying, "Gosh, if we make a decision, we're going to offend somebody." Eventually, they finally made a decision. Let it be said: They finally made a decision.
Maybe it's a first; probably the last. Thank you. We admit it: You made a decision. I am not sure how they get dressed in the morning for fear of understanding which suit they're going to put on.
Mr Elston: We only have one. We can only afford one. We are not New Democrats and Tories.
Mr Stockwell: The member for Bruce suggests that he only has one. Thank goodness, or he'd never be here on time.
1910
To get back to the member for Leeds-Grenville, his was in fact an excellent dissertation and some of the questions he brought forward I thought were very germane and should be answered by the members opposite. I note that they're not taking the opportunity. It's a shame, because I would really like to see some of these cabinet ministers, who have completely sold out any principle they had, defend 8,000 collective agreements being reopened, rollback of wages and freezes. I really would love to see them, as they're beavering away there signing forms, defend this kind of decision, because I don't think they can.
The Acting Speaker: We can accommodate one final participant.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I listened with a great deal of interest to the member for Leeds and East Grenville as he spoke on this issue, and he dealt to a very large extent with the issue of restraint and government spending.
Mr Elston: Just Grenville.
Mr Bradley: It's Grenville, I understand, not East Grenville.
One thing I would like to note for the members of the House is that I can recall as a minister having to answer questions of the other side of the House. I cannot recall one time that I was ever asked a question in which I was asked to reduce the resources of the Ministry of the Environment, reduce the staff of the Ministry of the Environment or reduce the budget of the Ministry of the Environment. In fact, members from all sides of the House, including government members in those days and Conservative and NDP members, constantly asked questions that implied that the government should be spending more money, should be hiring more staff, should be purchasing more equipment and should be intervening to a greater extent in environmental matters.
I don't criticize them. I do not stand here criticizing members of the House for that. I simply think it's important to remember the context of a booming economy, of a strong economy, and what members of the Legislature asked for. Members are actually trying to reflect what people in their communities want and the pressures of the day as they might relate to the popular media.
We have a different circumstance now. This government can't possibly be meeting all those obligations, can't possibly be meeting everyone's expectations, and the questions coming from the House from opposition members and from the government's own members by and large reflect a different economic context. So I think it's important when we talk about this issue to remember the context in which it is found today and compare it to the context of just a few years ago.
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Leeds- Grenville has two minutes in response.
Mr Runciman: With the encouragement of the Liberal House leader, I want to put something on the record again. Bill 48 is very much part of the Liberal legacy. Despite the fact that the Liberals governed during an economic boom, they increased expenditures at double the annual rate of inflation and paid for this spending binge with 33 tax hikes and a 30% or $10- billion increase in the provincial debt.
Under the Liberals, the size of the Ontario public service grew from 80,142 in March 1985 to 88,267 in March 1990, and the public service payroll costs, wages and benefits, jumped by 60%, from $2.7 billion to $4.4 billion during the Liberals' time in office. I think that speaks for itself.
My colleague from Markham was talking about spending restraint. One of the things the public service employees have talked about is the fact that they witness this phenomenon in government of everyone spending their budgets as we get close to the end of the fiscal year; that every department in government, every ministry, wants to make sure it spends to the last penny what's allocated to it for the fiscal year. They've indicated that if indeed we could institute some measures in respect of that, we could achieve and realize the $2-billion savings that they're looking for in terms of Bill 48. I don't know. I can't talk to the merits of their argument, but I certainly think it's something worth pursuing.
We're going to consider supporting this legislation on second reading in principle, the principle of restraint. But I have often wondered about the fact that within the senior levels of the bureaucracy there have not been incentives built in for senior civil servants to come in under budget and then determining, based on the level of underexpenditure, some sort of bonus factor which could be built in which would encourage civil servants to come in under budget.
Mrs Irene Mathyssen (Middlesex): I'm pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the debate on Bill 48 because I believe that in the midst of what is a very emotional and difficult situation for the people of Ontario, and indeed for the government of Ontario, there has to be an examination of how we got here. How on earth did we find ourselves in a situation where provincially our expenditures are rising at an alarming rate and our revenues are in decline? That is the basis of this social contract, the need to manage at a time when demands on provincial resources are at record highs and our revenues are falling away. And manage we will: manage in a fair and sensitive manner so that the health programs Ontarians depend upon, the public education that is the key to an equitable future and the social safety net for the vulnerable and marginalized in our society are all preserved.
We will indeed manage a very difficult situation, at a time when federal Tories have abdicated responsibility, downloaded costs on to the provinces and tabled a do-nothing budget; and despite the Liberal solution in this province, which was to take the easy way out, to call an election in July 1990 and sidestep facing the public when Ontarians were faced with the difficulties of the present.
We'll manage despite the external problems that have brought us to this point, to this place. I'd like to remind the members of this House about the economic policies that have deindustrialized Ontario, deindustrialized this nation, and have caused this debilitating recession: a high Bank of Canada interest rate policy, a high dollar policy, and of course the free trade agreement.
The promise to Canadians of economic prosperity and job creation from FTA deserves a critical re-examination by all of us. When the federal government entered into free trade with the United States, we were promised jobs, training for displaced workers, access to American markets and protection for our social programs. The legacy of the free trade agreement has been less than positive, less than ideal. Supporters of the FTA and its successor, NAFTA, claim that the economic downturn in Canada is the result of a worldwide recession. However, this claim does not explain why the recession started first here and lasted longest here in Canada, why we have the highest unemployment of all industrialized countries -- about 10.5% in Canada compared to 7% in the US -- and why we lost three times as many jobs in Canada as did the Americans. Of the 300,000 jobs in the manufacturing area lost in Ontario, 45,000 were a direct result of free trade.
Claims that our exports have increased are also suspect. According to Statistics Canada catalogue 65001, 46.4% of Canadian exports to the US consisted of semi-processed materials like wood, pulp and paper, oil and gas, ores and chemicals. That means that the manufacturing processes that required these materials and meant Canadian jobs are now done in the US.
In the first half of 1992, Canada exported $1 million of equipment to the Americans. We hear about these wonderful exports; we hear about them ad nauseam. However, those who would hail that statistic forget to say that we imported $2 million worth of equipment. In 1991, sure, we exported $3 billion in consumer goods, but we imported over $16 billion worth.
Since signing the free trade agreement, the Canadian federal government has reduced unemployment insurance benefits by $1.5 billion, forcing unemployed workers on to provincial welfare rolls, and even stopped funding unemployment insurance at the insistence of the Americans because the US claimed that unemployment insurance was an unfair trade practice.
1920
Interjection: Shocking.
Mrs Mathyssen: Shocking indeed. All this down-loading and the loss of the manufacturing base has been devastating. Since 1989, we've lost 25% of our own market to the Americans because we no longer have Canadian content laws.
In 1990, we as the government in Ontario knew that we would have to make up to Ontarians what had happened, that we'd have to put Ontario back on its feet. So in our first budget we injected money into the economy by transferring money above the rate of inflation to our transfer partners and put in place a $700-million anti-recession fund.
In our second budget, we put in place a job strategy with Jobs Ontario Training, Jobs Ontario Capital, Jobs Ontario Homes and Jobs Ontario Youth, and we borrowed on behalf of municipalities, school boards, colleges and hospitals in order to provide those services.
We've borrowed as much as we can without jeopardizing the future, and now we have to control the deficit because the province's total accumulated debt now stands at $68 billion. That's $6,600 for every man, woman and child in Ontario. This past year, the province spent almost as much paying interest on the debt, $5.4 billion, as it did on education, which was $5.8 billion.
Ontario is now the largest non-sovereign borrower in the world. About 65% of its money is borrowed outside of Canada. The province spends about 13 cents of every revenue dollar paying interest on the debt. In three years, that would increase to 26 cents if we followed the path we're now on. Interest payments would then be the second-highest area of spending, after health, with all of those interest dollars going out of this province, making someone else the beneficiary.
Ontario's economy would have to grow by over 8% annually for the next three years in order to reduce the 1995-96 budgetary requirements below $10 billion. In fact, and unfortunately, we expect the growth to average about 3.7% for the next three years, clearly far below that 8% requirement.
That's why we came up with the idea of the social contract. Our aim is to work with employers such as municipalities and their unions to develop approaches that will lower the costs of the broader public sector while preserving services and protecting jobs.
A week ago we introduced legislation, and that was a very difficult decision, there is no question. But that legislation encourages representatives of sectors in the public service, such as hospitals, school boards, municipalities and colleges, to sit down and to bargain agreements on reducing costs. These agreements will have to meet targets for cost savings in specific sectors while minimizing job loss, will have to exempt workers who earn less than $30,000, must guarantee that pay equity will not be affected, and provide workers with retraining-redeployment if they are laid off, in addition to a $30-million job security fund. Agreements can also include clauses on openness and accountability, alternative work arrangements, joint worker-employer committees, pension savings and, importantly, joint trusteeship of pensions.
It's a sharing of responsibility, it's a sharing of decision-making between employers and employees, and it's an empowering thing. It's the kind of thing that's never been attempted here in the province before, and I think ultimately it will benefit all who participate.
Finally, and most of all, this is an attempt to manage, to manage a situation from which we cannot run, a situation that has caused great pain but will be managed because we are the government. The people of Ontario are depending upon us. We will deal fairly with workers. They are depending on us, and we will not let any of them down.
Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): I was struck by the last comment of the speaker, that they were going to manage the economy. I wonder where this member was during the first budget when we had to do everything in this Legislature. We had to stand up, had days where we tried to protest that budget. This government was going to spend its way out, it said. I remember looking across at the flocks on the other side when we said: "You can't do it. Every other province, every other jurisdiction of every other political stripe is cutting back. Don't do it." What did this government do? They came in with a 5.6% increase to the civil servants and they increased the number of civil servants so the bottom line went up 13.5%.
Where was this speech then, I say to the member? Where was this speech on the budget then when we told you: "Don't do it. You can't continue to tax, spend and borrow like there is no tomorrow"? This member across sat silent and said nothing. She said nothing until she was told by her Finance minister and her Premier that it was time to stand up and reel off the lines.
The per-person deficit, going way back, was almost as bad a couple of years ago. Where were you then, talking about the $7,300 for every man, woman and child? You, my friends, have doubled it in the time you have been in office -- doubled it. Now you're worried when it's $7,300. Where were you two years ago when we told you, "You can't do it"? We went across this province with public hearings. We said, "You can't do it." What did we hear from this side? They were going to spend their way out.
For this member to stand up and talk about the free trade agreement at a time when her government is laying off nurses, doctors, teachers, is scaling back salaries -- it's typical socialist ideology to blame somebody else. It's always somebody else's fault. When they were in opposition, it was always somebody else's fault. Now they are in government, it's always some other level: It's the nurses' fault, it's the teachers' fault, it's the municipalities' fault. Where were you a year and a half ago when we were standing up for the same people you're pretending that you're standing up for today? Quite frankly, that's why people are cynical about politicians, because of the speech we just heard from that member.
Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): I want to compliment my colleague for her comments today, because she talked about a number of issues. I know she wanted to mention the good work the CAW is doing with the tombstones that have been travelling the province around the Tory policies that have been implemented and their effects, why in 1990 and 1991 and in this budget we had to present budgets to help workers. The member for Middlesex also indicated about Jobs Ontario. The Liberals refuse to even acknowledge Jobs Ontario now, but they were in my riding where Jobs Ontario is working very well for those people who have been on social assistance without UI. That was caused by that party's fathers in Ottawa, and it's called free trade, which has had a devastating effect. We talk about training, which we have done, and the benefits that have been there.
I notice the opposition does a lot of talking about what was going on then. There were good economic times; they didn't have to battle free trade. I know when the election was called, they said "We are doing it the democratic way." Yes, doing it the democratic way so they wouldn't have to go in 1992 before the electorate to deal with the difficult situations that were here.
The member for Middlesex raised a number of good issues that were very important, and very important to my community. I heard Mr Bradley talk about the concerns he faced as the Minister of the Environment. We're still faced with those issues in our community today. In the budget around the capital initiatives, a community like Dover township is just waiting for water to be provided to that community, so it can provide economic growth. In Mitchell's Bay, they're waiting for that tower. Those were things that were there a long time ago because we were having wells blocked. The people in Bothwell were waiting for that economic growth and providing water for that community.
The Minister of Transportation has made sure that community is dealing with the health and safety issues around garages in two of my communities; a very positive statement. So I thank the member and compliment her.
Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): I listened with some interest to the member, who spoke as if she really believed what she was reading. I guess it came out of the back room, but that's fine. That's probably what bothered me more than anything. That's what bothered me more than anything.
Mr Cousens: Oh, come on. You shouldn't knock that. It was well read.
Mr Mahoney: It was well read, I agree. I didn't say it wasn't.
I say to the member from the Conservative Party, we hear the response from the Conservatives, who say, "These guys do nothing but blame everyone else." Every time one of the members of the Tories stand up, they forget conveniently about 15 consecutive years of deficits run by former Tory regimes. It's great to have a convenient memory at a time when perhaps that kind of spending was more than just a little bit irresponsible. Frankly, there's probably enough blame to go around this entire place for some of the troubles.
1930
What we should be trying to do is talk about this legislation and what we think is wrong specifically with the legislation. Talking about the 12 days off right in the legislation, and I didn't hear the member for Middlesex talk about this, it says that anyone who is designated as having a critical job -- and who might that be: fire departments, police departments, simply employees of other levels of government? -- anyone who has a job designated as critical will be able to bank those 12 days off and take them back in the form of holidays just like sick pay, and that's going to happen in 1996 when this social contract and this government will have expired. That is going to create an absolute catastrophe for the province.
I don't hear anybody over there talking about the reality of 1996, the reality that the taxpayers in 1996 are going to be facing a catastrophe. Talk about the bill. Forget about the stuff you did in your first budget when you made a terrible mess, and talk about what you're doing today.
Mr Cousens: The revisionist historian from the Liberals has just spoken. I suppose if you could rewrite history, his Liberals would do it.
What I'd like the New Democrats to consider, as they're participating in this debate -- and it is refreshing that one of the honourable members from the New Democrats will at least stand up and put something on the record; I think you are to be given credit for that. But I wish you would also start facing up to, as I give you the opportunity now, the waste that's gone on within government. How can your government continue to proceed with the building of the workers' compensation structure, this new edifice, head office in downtown Toronto, for $185 million? There's $185 million that could be identified right now. That process could be stopped. You wouldn't save it all because of the property costs and the other parts of it, but that's a cost item I'd like to see you somehow come to grips with.
Then you, as a party, have spent government moneys to the extent of over $300,000 fighting NAFTA. I understand how upset you are with the North American free trade agreement, but it's a federal issue, and the fact that the New Democrats have spent provincial money to that extent on this again causes me to ask you, why don't you start addressing your own government waste?
We have brought to the attention of the government and the Provincial Auditor has pointed out that the social assistance program in the province of Ontario is out by at least 10%; 10% of the moneys being spent on social assistance is being wasted, fraudulent. That amounts to over $620 million. Why don't you as a government look at saving some of that $620 million and applying that to the deficit and applying that to a new form of efficiency in government?
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Middlesex has two minutes in response.
Mrs Mathyssen: I'd like to begin by saying that I'd be very happy to give the member for Mississauga West a lesson in speechwriting if he's so enamoured with my ability to write speeches.
To the member from Oakville, I say to you that the spending this government did in its first and second budgets was responsible spending. It was intended to put the province back on its feet at a time when federal Tories had deliberately abandoned us. Remember the $4.5 billion in transfer payments and how desperately those are needed in this province in order to meet our obligations.
That money in those first two budgets was directed into anti-recession funds, into Jobs Ontario Capital, Jobs Ontario Homes, Jobs Ontario Youth, in the infrastructure we will need to build this province, the infrastructure we will need to be strong in the future, because strong we will be in 1996 when this government is re-elected.
The recovery that's been talked about, that I mentioned, will be about 3.7% this year, next year, the year after. It's a very fragile recovery. We have to protect it, and the only way that we can protect it is by ensuring that our interest payments are not in excess of what we can afford. We have to reduce our deficit, plain and simple.
I thank the member for Markham for his remarks, but I would like to remind him that this government reduced its own spending by $4 billion this year and by $4 billion last year. We know we cannot build a future on sand. We'll build it on responsible spending, responsible saving and by managing, and manage we will.
Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I really appreciate the opportunity to speak on this bill. I'll try my best to be as calm as possible through this 30 minutes of time which they've given me to do this. I think the best way I can be calm is to just remind the House what we are debating. Bill 48 is an act to encourage negotiated -- oh? -- settlements in the public sector to preserve jobs and services while managing reductions in expenditures and to provide for certain matters related to the government's expenditure reduction program.
Mr Elston: Is there anything in the standing orders about misleading titles?
Mr Curling: I couldn't believe the bill talked about negotiated settlements, and they're going to do that through a term called "social contract." That's one of the terms.
First, I want to say to you and my colleagues in the government that we do acknowledge that the province of Ontario is in a deficit position. We all know that. We know how it got there, too, as a matter of fact. I don't want to sound the trumpet and play the harp for the Liberals, but as you know, Mr Speaker, as you were here at the time, and quite a few of the members here -- not many of the government members; they were watching from the sidelines, seeing us balance the budget twice.
This was quite an achievement because previous to that the budget was never balanced in this province for decades and decades. That is quite an accomplishment. I think what it is saying to the people out there is that whatever we collect in revenue we shall spend; not that we will spend more than what we collect. We did it twice.
Here comes now a new government that came in and we have found that we are in a deficit position, severely so. As a matter of fact, they got obsessed with it to the state that they even got nervous enough to say it would be $17 billion. On this side, we said to that government: "We don't think it'll be $17 billion. Stop behaving what it will be." I remember my colleague from Scarborough-Agincourt pointed out to them, "How do you intend to get $17 billion?" They said, "Oh, no, we're going to get to $17 billion." They wouldn't even deal with the fact that there was about an $11-billion deficit to be dealt with. They start dealing with $17 billion.
So here they went about, "We should be able to do something about that." But before that, as many of the colleagues here brought to the attention of the members earlier, when the socialist government, the New Democratic Party, came into power, it felt here was an opportunity to pay off and pay its way out of this debt it presumes the Liberals left them, and we said, "That's not the way you do things." If you consider that a recession is coming and that we have to deal with it, you don't spend your way out of a recession.
To bring you back home -- many of you have run your homes, of course -- if you find that with the income you're getting in, you can't pay your hydro bill and you can't pay your grocery bills and things are getting worse, you don't go out and buy more groceries and run up your debts, because the income is less.
1940
But they had a lot of friends they promised faithfully, "If you let us win this election, we'll pay you off." So we find ourselves today in a vicious deficit position, and we members in this House -- I said I'd be calm -- are prepared to get this government out of this terrible deficit position. The reason: It comes home to roost, because you and I will be paying for that, and your children will be paying for this. So we have to hope they'll be listening very attentively and taking our suggestions. Stop pointing your fingers and saying it was the Tories in Ottawa who did it or the Liberals who did it, but take a constructive way to reduce that wanton spending you went on, on a freebie there.
Remember that accord? I went across to my colleagues over there and tried to ask them if they had a copy of the accord. Some didn't know of the accord, the famous accord; couldn't remember it, had never seen it. I was really shocked. At that time, in 1985, I had just arrived in this House and all I heard was the accord, all the good things, and we heard that we should spend money on programs that were necessary, that were neglected by previous governments and here is the opportunity. The only time we have a responsible government in this province, they said, is when we have a minority government. The NDP said it had an opportunity to bring the Liberal government to its senses by signing the accord.
Not one time did I ever heard them say that on the programs we had in place, we should spend less. I heard them say we should spend more on housing. I heard that we should spend more on day care. We heard on all these accord things, "We will spend more," and sometimes we heard, "Too little, too late." When the programs were successful, they stood in the House and said: "If it weren't for that accord, we wouldn't be here today. People would be on the street, no housing." They were saying that needed social programs would not have been funded efficiently.
My golly, they didn't remember the accord. I just walked over there. Not one remembered the accord of that time. It was a program which they were so very proud of.
I don't even want to bring you to the Agenda for People, because that's taking us back a little further. Mr Speaker, you remember the agenda: what should be done, promises; the conscience of the people, the socialist government, the NDP. People would say: "I am so glad they're there. They are the conscience of government." My golly, upon winning, they have lost that kind of conscience itself.
Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: There is an absence of quorum in the House.
The Acting Speaker: Is there a quorum present?
Acting Table Clerk (Mr Franco Carrozza): Mr Speaker, a quorum is not present.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
The Acting Speaker: A quorum now is present. The honourable member for Scarborough North may resume his participation in the debate.
Mr Curling: I am appalled to know that this serious matter we're debating today concerns the people of the province of Ontario but that the government itself can't even be present to participate. But I will continue, and I hope they'll get an opportunity to read the Hansard. I think it's important, because I'm not speaking for myself; I'm speaking specifically on behalf of the people of Scarborough North and also for many of the concerned citizens of this province who feel their province has gone into the hands of people who are so irresponsible.
I want to leave you with one thing, another matter I would like to raise before I really get into the social contract. I want to tell you at the outset that I don't really care about the bickering that is going on between the executive body of the NDP, and I don't even really care about the unions and you trying to cut the deal quietly, silently or what it would be. I really don't care. When they were at their retreat on the last weekend to decide whether the executive body supports Uncle Bobby Rae, I really didn't care, because the fact of their coming out smiling with a few of his selective group of people who say, "I have won the day," didn't say a thing to those people who were losing jobs, who are threatened with bankruptcy, who have been bankrupt, who have seen this irresponsible government go on its way and find these people today uncertain of their future. I really don't care.
What I do care about, as I said, is the destruction and the disillusionment of our seniors, who today are not quite sure if they will have a health care plan that will see them through their days. What I care about is our youth, who aren't quite sure, having done the things that they were asked to do and encouraged to do to get an education, who say, "I now have the skills or the education and can't get a job." As I said, I don't care if those union bosses and the NDP executive don't like Bobby's smile or if they like his smile. But I'm telling you that our young people are in danger, are so disillusioned by the direction of where this government is going. The fact is, they don't interpret it that way. How they interpret it is, can they get a job? Then here comes the brag, Jokes Ontario -- I mean, Jobs Ontario. The thing has become a joke.
Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): It's not a joke.
Mr Curling: If you don't think it's a joke, I tell you that on Friday I was in my constituency office and I had a call from an individual who was running a business and decided to employ 12 people under Jobs Ontario. When he called the broker office, or whatever they call that group, the number was no longer in service. No notice. Jokes Ontario. He was wondering if the joke was on him. I said to him, "Phone the head office and find out what happened." We phoned and they got through. They don't know why that Jokes -- Jobs Ontario office was closed down. They come every day and brag about jobs that have been delivered to people, because this is the way of recovery.
I'm more concerned about that. I'm much more concerned also about those young people who were promised that their tuition fees would be reduced when they go up and they would get a good OSAP grant and loan. Then the same government here took away the grants from those students, reduced the loans.
Mr Martin: No, we didn't. We didn't take away the grants.
Mr Curling: If you don't know they took away the grants, go back and read your program. They took away the grant portion of the OSAP program and gave the loans and spread the loans and then bragged that there are more students getting loans. Sure there are. But they're getting less.
Mr Martin: No, they're not. It's $500 million this year.
Mr Curling: No one student is getting $500 million, as this individual thinks. When you spread it over more, your math will tell you that they got less. Those students aren't able to go back to school because they have to find more money for tuition fees. Then you talk about a social contract. You're talking about the disillusioned youth in our society today, who have no faith in you, who felt --
Mr Hugh O'Neil (Quinte): They even took their Ontario scholarships away from them.
Mr Curling: As my colleague from Quinte said, they took away the Ontario scholarship program. I'll tell you, they're saying, "What is my future then if this government continues to make all these promises, make all these fancy things about social contract?" They can't even go back to school.
Some who would not like to go back to school at this time, at this juncture, would have liked to work, would have liked to more or less get a job now, to contribute to this society. No jobs.
Of course, it's not only this government that caused the recession. The economic times have done all of that. We saw it coming as a Liberal government and thought that we should go to the people and ask them, really to say, "We have to change our strategy of what is happening." We were going to go the people in a democratic way and do that. The people said to them that, "I think that we gave you five years to govern, the maximum, and you should govern," and we said, in a democratic way, "We'll ask the people." They said, "Here are some people who made some wonderful promises about school tuition fees, OSAP and what have you, and jobs, so I will give them a chance to govern." What do they do? They're trying to renegotiate again.
1950
Go to the polls if you have the guts and ask the people if we are in the right direction, and then you will find out. If you really want to have a social contract, ask the people of the province through an election if you have a social contract. Ask those young people who will be voting for the first time.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order. Order, please.
Mr Curling: Ask those people. You're running and hiding now.
The Acting Speaker: I want to remind the honourable member to address the Chair, and interjections are out of order.
Mr Curling: I am, Mr Speaker. Ask them for me, then, if they feel they're not running and hiding while they should be doing that. Ask those people, the young people, should we give them another tenure? They are not dumb. The dictatorial attitude of this party is telling you that, "We will negotiate, circumvent the democratic process." But I tell you, the people are waiting for you and the young people are waiting. If it takes you one year, if it takes you two years, when they get you, they're going to make sure they give you that message, just like they're going to give the message to those Tories in Ottawa because of the way they're pork-barrelling and the way they've treated this country and this province. They won't forget, because they're intelligent people, the working people.
This government, the NDP government, as soon as they came in, do you know what they did? They lowered the level at which they could tax people and then taxed those poor people, gave them a great increase of taxes, and said, "Now you are earning a lot, we'll tax you more," because they dropped the level on which they could put income tax. On the backs of the poor; that's what they did. People were struggling at a difficult time, losing their houses, losing their jobs. They were taxing them more and turning around and saying that we had taxed 33 times. But we balanced the budget in that time. What did they do? Taxed and gave away and talked about $17 billion in deficit, which truly, as you know, is about $11.7 billion in deficit. I say to them that they should stop blaming other governments and let's get down and work.
This social contract will not work. Imagine, a socialist government is going to go back and tamper with collective bargaining agreements. I recall when I was here in 1986, I think, when the TTC was on strike and people were concerned that the disabled might not get the buses and people couldn't go to work. We were contemplating what we should do: How long should the strike continue? We got threats over there that if you touch that collective bargaining agreement and force people back to work, that's not the way you go. You sit down and you negotiate settlements. That's what the bill says, their bill. And you try to preserve jobs; you don't get rid of jobs.
Lo and behold, here is this government coming in now, the socialist government which is going to go and tamper with 9,000 contracts that people have worked so hard for over the years and negotiated at bargaining tables, all of them. You know what is so ironic about it, Mr Speaker? I think about 50% of those socialists over there, the comrades who are sitting at many of those tables, are ministers they begged, they beseeched to participate in the 1990 election because they couldn't get people to run. They said, "Listen. We can't win, really, but we need to put people together. We need people to run so we don't look too bad as a party." Guess what, Mr Speaker? They got elected.
They remind me so much of the dog who chased the car down the highway: The car stopped and the dog didn't know what to do with it. They ran in an election and they won, and they don't know what to do with the province; with the amount of money they collect for revenue, they don't know what to do; even try to go back and interfere with collective bargaining agreements and say, "After we have spent it all, we want it back."
Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): What was the end of that story?
Mr Curling: Since the member didn't get it, Mr Speaker, maybe I should, as you said, speak through you. He said, "What happened to the dog and the car?" and he didn't get the message: He didn't know what to do with it. Mr Speaker, could you ask him to see me after the speech and I'll explain it to him.
Of course I am also concerned about the shortfall in transfer payments to the municipalities. That's what I'm concerned about. I'm not concerned about you having a retreat and getting popularity contests, whether Bob Rae's popular still with his party. Not at all. I am concerned about Scarborough, the municipality or the city of Scarborough, not getting the proper transfer payments.
Take for example, over the next two years the municipality will have to come up with as much as $18 million to cover recent provincial cutbacks, stemming from, of course, this so-called social contract with a gun at each head to say, "If you don't" -- what do they call it? Failsafe. "If you don't, we'll do this. Jump or I will push," and if I want to explain that again to you, put them at the precipice and say, "Jump or I will push." Eighteen-million-dollar shortfall, and in order, Mr Speaker, to cover the anticipated shortfall, do you know how many jobs will be lost in Scarborough? Two hundred and fifty jobs will have to be cut.
A few ministers are here and I'm so happy they're here. So when you get back to the cabinet table, I want you to know that -- or just drive around Scarborough and see the amount of businesses that have been folding and have been bankrupt. Bankruptcy itself has caused people to lose jobs.
Mr Wood: The Liberals like taxes.
Mr Curling: Again he blames the Liberals. I'm saying the reality is, bankruptcies caused people to be out of jobs, and then you took away $18 million of transfer payments to the municipality and that will lose a further 250 jobs.
It will also add to the city's share of the property tax, of course, 9% more to the property tax. And that same government that flip-flopped all the time when it had market value assessment, at one minute yes -- because many people in Scarborough are concerned about excessive property tax and want a fair market value assessment. They stalled. They said yes; they got to the door, they said no. And I'm sure my colleague from Markham, who's right allergic to the government and its spending, as you can hear him in the background here, Mr Speaker -- but I tell you, this government had flip-flopped and, because of its indecision and indecisiveness, had cost money and jobs to the city. The only good news about all this is that there's a time limit to how long the people will tolerate this government. The government itself will expire in another two years and that's the beautiful thing about democracy. You could play your game wherever you want.
2000
I want to just add to the fact, when I talk about the municipal taxes, what it does to individuals, because many times when we speak about things we talk about big numbers and it's lost to the individual. That's what I talk about in the additional property tax. It will translate to an additional $60 to the city's portion of the tax bill to an average assessed value of $6,000. That is a concern. Every increase to pay out is extremely difficult for any individual when people are losing jobs.
They are concerned out there. If the government should listen, I think it could learn a lot in that process. I don't think they want to listen. Bob Rae is focused on one agenda and he's going to go there whether the whole ship is going down or not. It is unfortunate. Even his own members, his own diehard supporters, those who not only support him in principle but also support him in funds, are coming apart. In his own caucus the wheels are falling off, members are jumping ship, giving up partial rides on what they're having on this wagon of doom that they're going to in wrecking this province. In the meantime, extremely concerned we are.
Interjections.
Mr Curling: You see, there they are. They are concerned. They are extremely, extremely concerned that they don't even follow their leader any more. You see?
You know, it's peculiar. I have to mention this, the fact is when the government talks about its restraint policy and reducing ministries because of cost itself, the addition itself over there was remarkable. They got more ministers but they said they have reduced; more costs.
The fact is, one of the concerns I have especially is the Minister of Education and Training, the Minister of Colleges and Universities, the Minister of Skills Development. When we need mostly a minister to concentrate on training and retraining, we find that this minister will be too busy to focus on that direction.
Training itself is extremely important at this stage, because more people are unemployed and the age group that has been unemployed, many are over 40, which I find is rather difficult to get jobs, and the government here has done little about the training process. They talk a lot about it, of course, talk extremely a lot about how we're going to train people, and we haven't seen any great results on this.
I remember too, and you'll recall, which is coming up shortly, and I would have a moment to debate that maybe tomorrow if they dare bring in the employment equity time for reading, that the internship program of employment for minorities and employment equity that they are so committed to they have cancelled. The minister was here a minute. Maybe he stepped out for a bite, as usual, or a sleep. The fact is they had cancelled that program. People were finding it more difficult for the workplace at a time when they can't get jobs and their rhetoric doesn't even match their act.
I'm extremely concerned that this party's in a popularity contest with its own membership, and the people there who are in need are not getting those needs addressed. The seniors and their medical programs, as I said, are wondering what's happening. You saw just in this last weekend one of the hospitals in Toronto close its emergency section, and the impact it had on the other hospitals was tremendous. It's a signal to tell you that there are needs, and they closed that emergency department because they said they had no doctors to monitor that.
Who suffers? Is it the doctor? No. Is it a member over at the government? No. It's the people who need those services. You just can't go around cutting programs the way you see and feel that it has no impact. The impact is there.
A young lady came to me on Friday. She's 23. She got her honours at York University and she said to me that she wants a job. She's feeling so disillusioned she feels she should go to the United States and she's asking me what part of the United States I think will take her, because it doesn't seem that the government or anyone is interested for her, to contribute for her training and her education here. It's a loss of vision, a loss of hope.
We as legislators, we as parliamentarians must keep that hope alive. We must make concrete strategies and put proper programs in place so that those young people out there will feel that even through tough times they can hang in there and there is hope for them.
In conclusion, let me appeal to all out there not to give up, because I feel that we live in a great province, a province of people who are concerned. I think this government is concerned, extremely misguided, out of focus, but we hope that with some of this debate in the House it will come to its senses and see that people are hurting.
Their overexpenditure in housing, the at times out-of-focus way in which they have done things -- I feel that if you can tell people that it is managed properly, that it is fiscally responsible, that we don't intend to expend all this amount of money wantonly, they will listen as much as they listen after when we tell them you can't spend your way out of a recession, they will find their way on the road of recovery, because I think every single member in this House is willing to see this province return to the kind of economic stability it had and the hope that it had that we can give hope to our young, to our old and to all our citizens in this great province of ours.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Questions and comments? The member for Markham.
Mr Cousens: In listening to the honourable member from Scarborough, it raises the question as to what the status symbol of the 1990s will be. I think the status symbol of the 1990s is a job. If there's anything that we can do in government, in opposition or in power to help find jobs for people, then that really has to be one of our major objectives.
The fact that the member was able to spend some time on that subject goes into his whole background as a former lecturer or professor at Seneca College. I think the sensitivity that we all have to have to this subject is something that is all part of the environment that's created for business that the government can create.
Unfortunately, this government has made it extremely difficult for business to want to establish, advance their business, build upon it, expand or do anything here in this province, because when the private sector is strong, then through that private sector jobs will be created for young, middle-aged and old alike. It will give them opportunity to participate in the business environment. Not all jobs are with the public sector. We've got to find ways so that the private sector can expand and grow.
To the extent that the member touches upon this, I appreciate that he is correct. I also agree that it's a tragedy that's taking place here in Ontario now, that in fact the confidence level of the business sector is going down to such a degree that there are fewer jobs, there's less investment and there's less opportunity. You see that in the young people who are searching for a chance to get started, you see that in every age group.
The challenge then goes back to this government. Look for ways to give encouragement to business. Look for ways to give long-term incentives, not just the short-term solutions that they're looking at now, but may there be something like reversing Bill 40, the labour legislation that the government brought in. I mean, the Liberals aren't on record as to replacing that. That would be a good start for the Liberals to come and say that they're going to something specific with regard to these punitive, terrible methods.
Mr Mahoney: I want to congratulate the member from Scarborough because he really, I think, hit on some very salient points, particularly with regard to our young people.
Today I listened to a radio show earlier this morning on a local station out of Toronto where they had young people phoning in talking about how they had left school, why they had left school and what their prospects were. It was really very depressing being the father of three young men who are now going out. One of them finished university and looking for work, another going back for a third final year perhaps and another one coming along and saying, "What is my future?"
2010
I think what the member spoke to is exactly what is wrong with this particular legislation and the direction this government's showing. In fact, the young people are saying that there's nothing to stimulate the economy; there's nothing.
The member from the Conservative Party talked about Bill 40, which has totally eroded the confidence in the business sector, and you talk about trickle-down economics. The trickle-down impact of the negative legislation being brought in by the NDP is really very catastrophic, and the biggest difficulty is that, frankly, most of us will likely survive one way or another, but it's the young people in their early 20s, in their late teens, who are going out into the workforce, who are going back to university because they can't possibly get a job, who, as was pointed out by the member, are receiving less assistance by this government to go back to university, increasing the standards to get into university, which then, in a trickle-down effect, also increases the standards to get into community colleges and it takes away the options of all our young people.
If there's one legacy that this government is going to leave to this province, aside from the massive debt, it will be a lost generation of young people who simply have very little hope and very little future.
Hon Mr Pouliot: I too listened intently, as always, when the member opposite, Mr Curling, the member for Scarborough North, availed himself of the opportunity to address the assembly. I've learned over the few short years that I've had the privilege, the honour of serving, to look for an analysis, to look for the focus and to look perhaps beyond for alternatives. When all is said and done, the sentiment that was expressed was one of --
Mr Mahoney: More is said than done.
Hon Mr Pouliot: I'm referring to the remarks and so on. I make the same mistake in five languages, Mr Mahoney. I wish you so well.
When all has been consumed and when you look for the alternative, who is going to pay for all this? No one on this side of the House -- I want to remind the member, with respect -- likes doing less for people, but in order to save the core of the system, you have to make some difficult choices.
The member, with respect, should have mentioned that we did not shy away from the opportunity under these difficult times -- not impossible times but difficult times -- to make the tough decisions. We could have bypassed our friends. We could have said, no, the collective agreement will cease to exist. We didn't do this. We are sharing the responsibility so the very same people who the member wishes to protect will indeed, yes, see the future, short term and long term, with more and more confidence; not the other way around.
The member, with respect, should keep in mind that you never lose by being positive, that if the role of the opposition is to disagree, so be it. By the same token, there is the responsibility during difficult times to share with us and to say and to find what is good about the alternative that we are proposing.
Mr Murphy: I want to join in the universal approval of the remarks from the member for Scarborough North who is, as usual, eloquent as always, although I would want to add briefly to his remarks. I'm sure he won't mind when I make a few comments about the Conservative position on the social contract.
As we know, the leader of that party has said, "Bang, bang, bang"; that would be the approval of the bill on first and second reading. Well, I think the T.S. Eliot poem, The Waste Land, is a more accurate description of their policy, where he says it ends not with a bang but with a whimper, because we've heard one day Mr Harris saying he's in favour of it, the next day he isn't in favour of it. On April 14, he starts off in favour of social contract legislation. On April 28 --
Mr Cousens: I don't think you got it right at all. Get the facts right if you're going to quote somebody. Quote him accurately.
The Deputy Speaker: Order. The member for Markham, you had your turn. It's his turn.
Mr Murphy: Mr Speaker, they advised me when I came into this House that I should be careful not to feed the animals and that was obviously good advice.
On April 28, the leader of the third party said, "Bang, bang, bang; first, second reading." Then later, on June 7, he said, "No legislation is even required." Two days later, he wants the legislation back on. Five days later, he says, "No, I don't want the legislation." Well, we're concerned, and we're trying to figure out where exactly that party stands. I hear that maybe they'll vote on second reading but not in favour on third reading. Well, I think we've taken a clear position, and I'm glad to see that the member for Markham shares in our concern.
Mr Cousens: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Honourable members in this House are directed by the Speaker to respond to the speech that has been delivered. The dissertation that's been given by the member for St George-St David had nothing to do with the speech that was given by the honourable member. I therefore would say that his remarks were totally out of order.
The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. It is the responsibility of the Speaker, of course, to notice if he was out of order, and I do not consider him out of order.
The member for Scarborough North, you have two minutes to reply.
Mr Curling: The member from Nipigon asked me to try to find a positive thing about the social contract, and I did search it. The only positive thing is I feel that it is important, of course, to look at what we have in the expenditures and see if we can curtail it.
Then I looked a little deeper and the social contract -- I have to go back to some rather negative things it's going to do. One of the things it's going to do is take away the equity gains that all three parties have fought so hard for, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the NDP, and many of the equity gains they have done. People who are going to be hurt by all this will be women, visible minorities, the disabled. I'll tell you, when the layoff comes, most of the time those are the first people to go because they have not moved up in the ranks properly. It's going to hurt them.
I would appeal to this government: It's going to hurt the young people. It is extremely important that we make sure that they are not disillusioned about all of this. The member from Nipigon also stated that it is short-term, maybe, pain for long-term gain. I think he has it all mixed up. It's a long-term pain because they postpone that payment in many ways, especially with the leave arrangement that they want to do. When people ask for payback in two or three years down the road, this government may be long gone, but the costs on the young people will be there, and they will wonder: "Why is this burden upon me? I didn't create it."
So while you're looking for positive things in this bill, I'm saying to you, listen carefully. You can redirect your pain somewhere else, but not on the backs of the poor, the young, the disabled and the seniors.
Mr David Johnson (Don Mills): I'm not going to rise to add to the universal approval of the speech from the member for Scarborough North, although I have a great deal of respect for the member for Scarborough North.
Nevertheless, I was very taken by his analogy of the dog chasing the car, and the car stopped. The dog was a member of the government, I guess, and caught the car, and it didn't know what to do with the car. But it occurred to me, when the member of Scarborough North was creating this analogy, that in this race, the Liberal dog had been out ahead in that race. When that race started, the Liberal dog was well ahead of the dog from the government. I wondered, in my own mind, what happened to that particular dog. I guess we can only hope it got a decent burial. But I can tell you that the Progressive Conservative dog is still running in that race, and we're going to catch that car next, in the next election. It's going to be the Progressive Conservative that's going to catch that car.
I would like to speak largely from the perspective of municipalities and the impact of the social contract with regard to the municipalities. One of the speakers previously tonight indicated at some great length as to the fine job that the civil servants were doing in the various sectors. I can speak from firsthand experience, having worked within the municipalities. I know full well the excellent work that the people in the municipalities do: the people in the building departments, the people collecting the garbage, the firefighters, and on and on. They do a tremendous amount of good work.
2020
I can speak from experience with the people in the hospital sector, being a member of the Toronto East General Foundation, and having spent some time in a hospital myself not too long ago, I can tell you the excellent work that the hospital workers do. Having a daughter in the education system, I know just what a tremendous job the teachers do under some very trying conditions in this day and age.
I guess the point is that they do a wonderful job, the workers, but we have another problem to address. We have a problem to address of spending. Through the whole public sector, unfortunately, the spending has gone beyond our means, and this has to be addressed. Notwithstanding the wonderful job that's being done at all levels of government by various employees, we are simply spending too much money.
In the fiscal year of 1992, we brought in revenues through the province of Ontario of $42 billion and we spent $54 billion. Now, members of the general public will know what happens in their own budget if they have a salary of $42,000 and they spend $54,000. It doesn't work. You might get away with that for a short period of time, but in the long run you've got a problem and it has to be addressed.
This government should have addressed that problem a couple of years ago. They've waited too long. They should have addressed it at least in 1991, but at least at the present time it's somewhat heartening to see that the problem is attempting to be addressed.
I heard comments earlier this evening, "What about the Progressive Conservatives? What about 15 years of deficits that the Progressive Conservatives ran up?" We can spread the blame. We can look at who should be blamed, but I'll tell you, the general public doesn't look at it that way. Yes, the Progressive Conservatives ran up deficits and yes, they ran up a debt of some $30 billion, I guess, in this province of Ontario.
Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): Since Confederation.
Mr David Johnson: Since Confederation. Since the start of Confederation. It was a debt that was controllable. They were deficits that were controllable. The Liberals ran up deficits in all but one year. Yes, they balanced the budget one year, but during a period of tremendous revenue growth they ran up the debt from $30 billion to about $50 billion in five short years, almost doubling the debt. Almost doubling the debt, as the member across the way says.
Now the NDP have taken over and in two or three short years the debt has climbed to where it will be by the end of this fiscal year to, at best, $78 billion; another $28 billion that's been added on. But I don't really think that the general public wants to hear about that. They want to hear about what we are going to do now. We are here today. This is not 1975, this is not 1985, this is 1993. What are we prepared to do about this awful situation, this tremendous mortgage on the future of our families in the future?
I can tell you that the municipalities have been prepared to go to battle on this issue, and the municipalities, I suppose somewhat equivalent to the hospitals and the school boards, are foot soldiers in this war. They are people that didn't cause this war. They are people that have looked after their own turf and their own territory and managed well, but they are being called upon to go to battle in this war for the deficit of the province, and they are prepared to go to war. They're just hoping that when they go to war, they'll be given the proper weapons to fight the war, and up to this point they haven't been.
Now I can tell you the municipalities have gone to war over the past couple of years. They didn't wait till 1993 to recognize this problem. The municipalities, at least two years ago and many before that, had started to pare down. The municipalities have been fighting the battle of the budget by implementing planning. This is a word that I wish was more in vogue here in the province of Ontario, "planning," planning ahead.
They start their process in about September of one year for their budget of the next year. They go through a period of consultations, they go through cuts, they go through scrutiny on the budget and they bring forward a budget that is very responsible. Over the past couple of years they've implemented measures such as flat-lining, where a department has only been given one year what it received the next year.
I was interested in that regard to hear the comments of the member for St Catharines. The member for St Catharines was a cabinet minister back a couple of years ago and he related to us this evening that not once during the period of time when he was a cabinet minister did he hear any comment from any of the government members other than they wanted more spending. He said the NDP came to him and wanted more spending. The Tories came to him and wanted more spending. I presume his own members, the Liberals, came to him and wanted more spending.
That is exactly the same as what happens at the municipal level, and the municipalities have had to learn the word "no." It's a very special word. It helps to keep budgets in order, the word "no." I've had to say no. I've had deputations in front of me at the regional level and at the local level asking for more and more money, more and more spending. I wonder if the member for St Catharines was able to say no. From his comments and from the record of spending during that period of time, I think the answer is that he was not able; he didn't. Is that the answer? He didn't say no. The spending went up. The spending went double digits.
So that's what has to happen. Municipalities are looking at other ways to pare their budgets. They're looking at contracting out where there can be savings made in contracting out. They're looking at days off with no pay, and they're doing this and they're keeping their budgets in order.
Now they have also set their budgets for 1993. They went through this process, they've set their budgets, and because we seem to have such a lack of planning here at the provincial government, they weren't told the proper amount of money that they would have to deal with in 1993. They had every right to believe that they would have a certain level of provincial grants. Indeed they were informed that they would have a certain level of provincial grants.
Then well into their year that information changed and they were told: "Sorry. You went through your whole process, you did all your planning, you've set forward a budget. Many of you sent out tax bills. That's too bad because you're not going to get the money we told you you were going to get. Indeed, you're going to be cut back because of a program we'll call the expenditure control program. Mississauga, you're going to be cut back over $1 million because of the expenditure control program."
I just wonder if the people of Ontario know the amount of money that some of the municipalities are being cut back. Brantford, Ontario, is going to be cut back $1,200,000 because of this program; St Thomas, over half a million dollars; Windsor, over $3 million Windsor's going to be cut back because of that program; Owen Sound, over $300,000 Owen Sound is going to be cut back because of the expenditure control program, moneys they believed they had when they set their budget.
But the municipalities, to their credit, did not complain. It wasn't fair, but they said: "Yes, we understand. We understand that spending has to be cut. We understand that the deficit can't continue to grow, that the debt can't continue to grow. We understand that, so we're going to help." They recognize that the public understood that, and I might say that the Progressive Conservatives understand that, that spending has to be cut. Only the Liberals, for some reason, don't seem to recognize that spending has to be cut and they carry on criticizing spending cuts.
Then came the second leg of the spending cuts, the social contract. Again, I think that we all recognize that spending had to be cut still more. We had a $17-billion deficit. It never should have been. Had the government, in 1991, not tried to spend its way out of a recession, had it had reasonable budgets in 1991, then we wouldn't have been in this spot. But here we are.
2030
We're in a spot where the deficit would have been $17 billion in the 1993 fiscal year. Even with the cuts of the expenditure control program and even with the tax increases, tax increases that I oppose, tax increases that the Progressive Conservatives oppose, still the deficit would have been too high, and the government looked at a second wave of cuts, the social contract.
The cuts to the municipalities are even deeper through the social contract program, and I think the people of Ontario should realize how much money is being taken from municipalities. An equivalent amount of money has been taken from hospitals and school boards as well.
In North York, it's almost $6.5 million through the social contract; in East York, $1.5 million; in Oshawa, over $2 million; $1.5 million in Burlington; in Hamilton, almost $5 million; in Kitchener, over $3 million; in Ottawa, over $10 million is being taken through the social contract program.
I've been really amazed with the attitude of the municipalities because I think they have been very, very cooperative. They have certainly put forward the problems they're going to face with such enormous cuts; cuts, I might add, that in many cases will represent up to 10% of their budget. In other words, they would have to increase local taxes by about 10% to cover the size of these cuts -- enormous, when almost all of those same municipalities had targeted a zero per cent tax increase, no tax increase, because they recognize that people are fed up with tax increases. Still, the municipalities are struggling with this. They're not happy, naturally. They're going to have severe problems, but they're going to try to deal with it. I must say that it's a tremendously commendable attitude on behalf of the municipalities.
The obvious criticism of this whole process, and I've alluded to it, is that it was a very untimely process. It should have happened years ago, but at the very least it should have happened last year so that the municipalities, the school boards would know where they stood when they set their budgets.
The social contract process was just doomed to failure. There are too many people. Union leaders, leaders of various organizations, many of them, had no mandate to break the contracts, to strip the contracts. As a matter of fact, it's against their very essence. It's against their very essence of the union leaders to accept their contract being opened and rolled back and the compensation of their members reduced. Why would they ever accept a situation like that? It didn't make any sense.
Some didn't even have the authority to deal. The association of municipalities was at the table -- I mentioned this in a question to the Finance minister -- and did not have the authority to negotiate on behalf of the municipalities. They simply haven't been given that authority. They were there at the table because they felt they had to be, that they'd be criticized if they weren't, but they didn't have the authority to deal on behalf of the municipalities. So the whole thing was doomed to failure, and here we are, we've lost time.
The proposal's going to be legislated by August 1, I gather. They're still hoping that some sort of agreement will be made before August 1, but of course that won't happen, and the municipalities will be legislated on August 1. What sort of tools, what sort of weapons will they have to go to war with? These are the wonderful social contract mechanisms that are available to municipalities.
Number one, they'll be given a freeze. But a freeze is too late. The municipalities have already done that. Municipalities almost unanimously, almost without exception across this province, have not provided for any wage increase, any compensation increase in their budgets for 1993. So they won't get any money out of that, precious little money out of that to offset the reduced grants from the provincial government. That's weapon number one.
Weapon number two is the pause day. This is a work of art, the pause day. It's anybody's guess how this is going to work. The idea is that those in the public sector will take a day off and will not be paid. They'll be taking a day off every month and will not be paid. That'll represent about 5% of the compensation level and that's how the money will be saved.
The only problem is that we're already a good chunk of the way through the year. Although the arbitrator didn't realize that the municipal year was different from the provincial year, I gather that's been set straight and as a result, the municipalities have been given the provincial year, until March 31, to make the cuts. But still, by August 1 we are four months into that year and there is nobody who believes that the pause days could be implemented before September 1, which means we'd be five months into the provincial year with only seven months left to realize the entire savings of the pause day. It's just impossible in seven months to have 12 pause days.
Not only that, but in certain areas, such as homes for the aged, there are legislated staff requirements, where there must be a certain number of staff on duty at all times, depending on the number of residents in the building. The same is true for day care. There must be a certain number of day care workers on staff at all times. There's a ratio that is legislated that must be obeyed. The only choice that the municipalities would have in terms of laying somebody off would be to violate this legislation. They can't do that, so they simply cannot realize a saving in those areas. In the area of health there are mandated programs from the province of Ontario to the municipalities that must be obeyed. I find it interesting, if the province expects days to be taken off and those mandated programs not to be realized.
There are essential services, the police, ambulance, fire. You can't take people off these essential areas. In some cases, for example in the area of fire prevention, there must be a certain number of firefighters on a vehicle: four on a pumper. You simply can't have three. You can't have one off on a pause day, because there must be four people or else the truck can't go out. Again, legislation.
So what's the answer? The government says to bank those days. If you can't take them right now, bank them for the future. Let the next government pay for it. That's a wonderful solution. We will take the day on a holiday that we'd be off anyway and let it roll along. In the case of many of these workers, there would be 36 months involved -- a three-year program is 36 months -- so 36 days of banked days would have to be paid for in 1996 or somehow have to be accommodated in 1996. That would be a wonderful situation to inherit in 1996, this tremendous amount of compensation that would have to be recognized in some fashion. And not only that, but the pause day provision of course would expire for all the other workers in 1996 and they would expect to work a total year, not minus one day a month. So by the time 1996 rolled around, there would be millions and millions of dollars and there would be an explosion of costs to pay for the banked days and the pause days that would kick back in.
2040
The third tool municipalities have is the layoffs. This is not one that's contemplated very energetically by the legislation, but given that pause days won't work, given that the freeze won't work, it only leaves layoffs left to be considered.
The problem with layoffs is that it's difficult to achieve the saving, because we have a valid approach here in Ontario that you must give notice to employees before laying people off and you must give severance to employees. An employee who has worked five years, for example, would get a four-week notice of termination and would get five weeks of severance, over two months of notice and severance together, and given that we're five months into the year with only seven months left, rather than saving seven months in terms of costs, only five months would be saved in costs. I think that's a very painful way to go for the saving entailed, but that's the kind of predicament that municipalities are left in.
It's been asked here, I guess all night long, what should be done? I can tell you what should have been done. If only we had the luxury of rolling back the clock. Then in the good times that the Liberals enjoyed, they shouldn't have spent like drunken sailors, they shouldn't have spent in the double digits. We should have had a little more fiscal responsibility in the province of Ontario, and then the government, in its first year in office, wouldn't have been put in the awkward situation it was from a budget point of view. Then the NDP shouldn't have tried to spend itself out of a recession. If those things had happened, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today. And yes, of course, if you go back years ago, then I guess the Conservatives shouldn't have run up various deficits as well, although those deficits were minor by comparison to today.
But we can't turn back the clock, so the question is, what do we do here today? I think the member from Leeds-Grenville earlier this evening outlined the kind of approach we really need to take. We have to cut expenditures, and the expenditures have got to be cut in a long-term sense so that the impact is not just a short- term gain to address an awful predicament in this year. The expenditure cuts should look at the long range; they should keep our expenditures down this year and through the years ahead. They should involve a hiring freeze over the three years of the social contract, they should involve a wage freeze on the anniversary date and, on overall program, should look very closely at the problems the Provincial Auditor has outlined, the problems pertaining to non-profit housing, the problems pertaining to welfare control and many of the other problems that we're facing, where we can get the expenditures down.
That's what we have to do. We have to, through a long-term plan, get our expenditures down and get the deficit down to zero so that the debt isn't increasing. That's the kind of program that certainly I want to support and that this Progressive Conservative Party wants to support.
There is another side that has to be done at the same time. It's fine to get the expenditures down, and certainly it will involve a hiring freeze and I have no doubt that through the general public sector there will be layoffs to accommodate the social contract reductions. But what happens to the people who are laid off? What is their outlook? Where do they get jobs? It's fine to get them off the government payroll, in a sense, and reduce our cost, but if they can't find jobs, then they need government support, and what have we gained? We haven't gained anything. As a matter of fact, we've gained a lot of anguish and heartache.
So what we need to do at the same time is improve the business environment, encourage business growth in the province of Ontario to get people back to work, not on a government cheque, not being paid by government but through the private sector. That has to be an integral part of our long-term program. We need to get that going as fast as possible.
We've heard suggestions today as to how we could accomplish that: Eliminate the tax increases because the tax increases are going to kill jobs. The tax increases in the budget that we have just seen this year will probably kill 50,000 jobs in the province of Ontario. Rather than kill those jobs, we need to keep those people at work.
We need to repeal the labour bill because that bill is certainly discouraging investment in the province of Ontario. We need to repeal that. We need to tell the business community, the investment community, that we are open for business in the province of Ontario. We want your money. We need expansion. We need business growth in the province of Ontario. We need to get people back to work. That's how it should be done, not on the government cheque.
I think I've run out of voice and verbiage at this point, but the social contract is, in many respects, a very unfortunate attempt, an untimely attempt by the provincial government -- it was a job that had to be done, but if it had only been accomplished when it was timely, then it would have been much more supportable. But I think perhaps with some amendments, amendments that we're going to put forward, we really need to get on with the job of cutting expenditures here in the province of Ontario.
Mr Turnbull: I would like to congratulate my colleague the member for Don Mills for an excellent debate. I would like to suggest that in the comments from the government side, hopefully there will be some answering of these questions that he's raised about pause days, because so far in this debate the government has ducked out of answering the problem that those people who are deemed to be essential services will have to take their pause days during holidays and that the pay for that time will be due and oweable in April 1996.
That's a cost that the next government is going to have to bear, and it's time we heard from this government on this issue. They have refused to answer this particular question. It is essential that we hear from the government some sort of response because that is its responsibility when it's listening to a debate about a substantive problem that we have with this bill, and we've heard so far absolutely no answer on this issue.
Perhaps we might hear something from the Liberals on the fact that during their days in office, in real terms, they were increasing spending by 5% per year, year over year, and the NDP has only been slightly worse at 5.5%, in real terms, in expenditure increases. That's fundamentally where the problem started, with the Liberals.
Let's hope that we can hear from both the NDP and the Liberals on these two essential elements as part of the debate that my colleague from Don Mills brought.
Mr Mahoney: I'm interested to hear the former mayor of East York in his comments on the impact on the municipalities because we have been calling on this side of the House for the Premier to explain what he means when he says he's going to take into account the impact on municipalities which have already made their cuts.
Last week, I enjoyed the day in Atikokan and heard from many people in the great northwest about the cuts that they had already made. You have a community of 3,500 people that has already made cuts. They're on four-day workweeks. They're already on four-day workweeks and they've laid off two of the people who work in their outside workforce. Now they're being told by this government they have to come up with, I think, if I recall correctly, the figure was another $125,000.
That may not be a lot of money; this government seems to spill more than $125,000 every day. But to a community like Atikokan, which has already pared to the bone, which has already told its citizens that they have to close down all the municipal services one day a week, that they have to lay off the people who work in Atikokan one day a week to try to meet the cuts, we don't know if this government is going to react to that.
We hear about Hamilton which has made major cutbacks. All of the municipalities I've been talking to are saying, "We've cut to the bone; we have suffered the pain," yet the Premier's now saying he's going to take into account, although he won't admit what exactly he's going to take into account, perhaps the cuts that they've made, but no "broad-brush exemptions" I think is the term that was used.
They don't know what's going on. Whether it's Mississauga, whether it's Hamilton, whether it's East York or whether it's Atikokan, they're very, very frightened of what this government's going to do to them.
2050
Mr Carr: I'm pleased to comment on the member's speech tonight. I think it goes a long way to saying that here's a member who came in and won a by-election just a short period ago, here he is, he can come in and in a relatively short period of time, this individual has represented the people in his area and come to grasp issues that people on the other side have not.
For a year and a half, we've told you we are in the financial position that we are in and you continued day after day in here to say that you're going to spend your way out of it.
Quite frankly, I'm very proud to sit with a member who has come in here, who has a background of fiscal responsibility, who is going to take some of the things that he learned at the municipal level and bring them here to the Legislature. I might say that I'm very confident this individual will represent us very well when he forms part of the cabinet when this government is thrown out in 1995. It won't come too soon. Here's a man who has come in and has offered clear alternatives.
I understand, having watched Global news at 5:30 tonight, that the government is now going to follow some of the amendments we have proposed putting forward and that the public sector wage freeze will not commence until the anniversary date of the contracts. That's one of the things that we said we can do. I understand from Global television that's going to happen as one of the byproducts of allowing the unions to get back together.
I guess more than anything else, to see a fine member like the member for Don Mills come in and be able to talk so articulately about a situation, wherein he has been a new member, I think does us well, because in the future it's the individuals like the member for Don Mills who are going to form the government that gives the people of this province hope that there are people out there who have the ideas, offering constructive solutions, who are not like the cynical old politics of the past where they just criticize. I take my hat off, as all members do, to the member for Don Mills.
Mr Bradley: I listened with a good deal of care, because I'm very interested in what members of all parties have to say on this legislation, and I wasn't able to determine whether the member for East York had indicated whether the Conservative Party was voting for or against the legislation.
I know that the leader of the party had, on many occasions, expressed a great desire to see such legislation increased. I've heard some of the members and their speeches and they've made some pretty compelling arguments that would point to voting against this legislation. Perhaps the member will help me out a bit when he gets a chance to respond whether he will be voting in favour of or against this legislation.
I think most people recognize there is a need for some kind of legislation to ensure that there is efficiency in government, to ensure that there is restraint, but I'm going to be very interested to hear what that constructive position will be on the part of my colleagues who sit to the left of me in the House. I know that the member, being a very straightforward individual, will help me out with that particular dilemma.
He also mentioned the municipalities. Those of us who have served on municipalities recognize that they are going to be hit rather significantly, having trimmed their own budgets, having their increases in provincial grants much lower than they had anticipated. They have gone through an exercise, as the member and other members have appropriately pointed out, of having trimmed any fat that might be there in the municipal budgets. They're now forced to cut some very essential services and are feeling the pinch once again as the government aims its financial guns at the municipalities.
I certainly hope the government will reconsider and assume its fair share of the cuts as opposed to simply thrusting them on local levels of government.
The Deputy Speaker: The member for Don Mills, you have two minutes to reply.
Mr David Johnson: In response to the member for St Catharines, what I intend to do, and I'm sure what my party intends to do, is to do what the people of Ontario want us to do, which is to cut expenditures in the provincial budget.
I can tell you, wherever I go, to the town hall meetings I go to, talking to people on the street, people recognize that the number one problem we've got to address at this point in time --
Mr Mahoney: Is this government.
Mr David Johnson: -- it may be this government, but it's also to get expenditures down and not to increase taxes. So what I intend to do is to work through this process and to reduce expenditures everywhere possible.
I thank the member for Oakville South. I'll be very delighted to join the member for Oakville South in the next cabinet, along with my other colleagues in the Progressive Conservative caucus. I thank the member for Mississauga West for his comments. I'm not sure what they were now exactly, but I'm sure they were excellent comments, very supportive.
I think the member for York Mills made the comments that are perhaps most germane in terms of we still don't understand how this pause day is going to work because it is going to result in the banking of days. There are a couple of other concerns too. For example, how does the province get the money from the Metro school board and the Ottawa school board when it doesn't pay those school boards any money today? Where is that money going to come from?
There are so many holes in this legislation that we really have to deal very seriously with it, but the one thing we don't want to do is simply to pass along the costs, the expenditures from today to three years down the road and have a tremendous burden on the taxpayers of Ontario three years from now. I think that's what the member for York Mills is pointing out and he's bang on.
Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): I am pleased to speak about this most important and most difficult piece of legislation.
What is the social contract all about? It is a framework for negotiations between employers and workers in a time of massive structural change. Things cannot go on the way they have always been in Ontario. This framework will protect as much as possible the employees and the services in Ontario. These two underlying principles, our workers and their jobs and the services to every single person in Ontario, are what Bill 48 is based upon.
Everyone in Ontario knows we must achieve greater productivity, greater efficiency in the delivery of public services, and who know better than those front-line workers, whether they're in the hospitals day after day and giving that service or whether they're in the municipalities, whether they're out on the streets, cleaning the streets or whatever? These are the people who should be part of the negotiations. They know where the efficiencies should be and that's what we intend to do.
Let's talk a little bit further about the social contract. This framework introduces some very progressive measures to the unions of Ontario; for instance, some novel ideas on job security, also, the opening of the financial books to the employees. The social contract also ensures that the low-income public sector employees -- that is, $30,000 and less -- are not affected. Thirdly, it also contains firm deadlines. Negotiations cannot go on and on as we know we're dealing with a crisis now.
There are also strong incentives to negotiate in good faith. If negotiations take place before August 1, there are both reduced targets for the amount of savings in each sector and, secondly, access to a job security fund for workers.
Yes, this is extremely difficult to do and I believe the people of Ontario out there who are listening understand. In Niagara Falls, whatever street it is, whatever crescent it is, people live together. There are in the same street people who have worked for Cyanamid -- the plant closed more than a year ago and one worker is now trying to start his own small business -- and right next door is a worker at GM in St Catharines who is about to be laid off a year from now, and next door to him is a teacher, and next door to him is a social worker and next door to her is a small businessperson. They all know the hurt that is going on in Niagara Falls, that is going on across this province.
2100
Saturday morning I was in my office and I was returning some phone call messages. The first person I spoke to was a man who was representing the firefighters' union in the city of Niagara Falls. He was very concerned about his pension and I had to stop and explain that. The next person I happened to call was a woman who's husband had been laid off, and I believe it was from Cyanamid, and she said to me: "Yes, you must do this. You must do it fairly."
This morning I was in my office at about 9 o'clock and just as I was leaving, I got a note from a man who is a teacher at Stamford Collegiate and this is what it said, "According to information received, the NDP is reducing its lump sum payments to the unfunded liability of the teachers' payment plan; this is not fair ball," and he goes on. I would like to answer this teacher clearly and carefully.
There are significant savings in the government's overcontribution to two pension plans, one covering teachers and one covering our own government employees. Now, this is the crucial part: In both cases we have independent, actuarial advice that because of lower wage settlements and lower inflation, we are overcontributing to the plans, and that without in any way affecting the pension rights of our public sector employees, we will be able to reduce our contributions and still make sure the pension plans are well funded and sound.
The question is -- this is the question that's been put to me and many of our colleagues here in the House -- does the legislation strip the pension funds? The answer is no, the pension entitlements are not affected.
Teachers have every right to be concerned about the pensions after the fiasco of the Liberal years and what happened to their pensions then.
About a week ago, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Peter Salter, who is the president of District 7 of the OSSTF. We were talking about some of the suggestions that we might have for saving money. This man, who is the president of the local teachers' union, brought up a very interesting option and that was, he said to me: "What about the storm days during the winter when the school buses don't run, the schools are virtually closed and yet the teachers have to attempt to get there through the snow, maybe risk their own liability and health to get to school, to get paid. Why don't we just close the schools on that day and the teachers not get paid?" It makes sense. So the people who are out on the front lines do have options. They do know that there are places and room to negotiate.
One other thing that I have heard people complain about and be quite concerned about is that they say to me: "Margaret, what about job loss? You will hurt the economy." I say to them, "That is the last thing that this government wants to do, have job loss and hurt the economy."
Let's look at it. Across the province there has been an attrition rate; that is, people retiring or leaving, of about 1% to 2%. Out of 900,000 broader civil service folks, normally there would be about 18,000 who would be retiring or leaving, and the target of our government through the social contract has been a reduction of about 11,000 workers. Clearly, this is not about job loss at all. It is about efficient government, and that is what the people want. It's about efficient government right from the top down, and that's starting with the Premier, the cabinet and our MPPs. Whatever happens in the social contract, we will have to take too.
We have been in an era of more: Through the 1960s, through the 1970s, through the 1980s, we have had more taxes, more wages and more benefits for the unions and for the workers, but we are now in an era of less.
I'd like to quote from an article in the Toronto Star. It was May 22, from Mr Desmond Morton, who is from the University of Toronto: "Now let's examine this era of less. For union members, the alternative to the NDP is not job security, wage increases and free day care. No. It is NAFTA, it is the repeal of Bill 40" -- which the previous speaker just indicated they would do -- "and it is the bosses' agenda and the systematic union-busting. That is the alternative to this government's plan."
Mr Sorbara: Union-busting? This is the biggest union bust that's every been presented in this Legislature.
Interjections.
Ms Harrington: I would really like to go ahead and finish, Mr Speaker.
"Rae's model is Algoma Steel and northern paper mills, where his government has helped save companies in return for serious worker involvement in ownership. The idea that an NDP government would expect the 900,000 people whose wages come from the provincial coffers to accept lower wages in return for saving jobs and getting a voice in management is, well, socialist."
"So what happens next, I ask you. I ask the people of Ontario, will the union leaders continue fighting or will they grasp an opportunity? Will they pool their negotiating skills, accept economic realities and reap all the rewards a grateful NDP government can offer short of hard cash?"
These are the types of questions and difficult situations that we are in, and as the previous speaker on our side has said, this government will manage and we will manage this province well.
Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I'd like to respond briefly to the present speaker. I think without question that she has overlooked a very fundamental point, and that is that the legislation the NDP government has introduced, is one which strips away the rights of collective bargaining. It opens up contracts. It puts aside collective agreements which have been properly and reasonably negotiated.
I think it is clear that as a result of that, there will be a new order in terms of how governments are viewed, in terms of agreements that have been negotiated, and I think that is something that is going to weigh very heavily on the government. Many people are saying, how is it that someone can bring forward a piece of legislation which strips aside those particular rights?
Now there is another aspect to the discussion which I think somewhat goes overlooked, and that's the effect it may very well have on medical services and the provision of medical services. I know there are many growth areas in the region. In fact, I represent an area in Mississauga North in the region of Peel in which there is a growth region. I think the proposals that have been promoted through Bill 48 and through Bill 50 will have no other option but to seriously erode the medical services in many regions, especially growth regions. I hope to be dealing with that particular issue as the evening unfolds.
I think there are some real concerns as to how the government has utilized numbers in terms of doctors, how it has just haphazardly divided some numbers into population. I believe that many people will in the future feel the impact of chaotic, inconsistent and faulty reasoning that the government has promoted through Bill 48.
2110
Mr Carr: I'm pleased to enter the debate. I think the public would have more respect for the members opposite if they would also talk about some of the other areas of spending cuts. For a little over a year, we've been giving them some alternatives, and it's interesting how one man changes his mind, the Premier changes his mind, and all of a sudden the speeches from all the backbenchers changed with him.
Where were you people when we were telling you for two years we couldn't continue on with this? While I respect that you have changed your minds and you have come to the realization that we are in trouble now, I think it is more driven by the fact that all of a sudden you realized that the people in the rest of the world are saying, "We're not going to renew our bonds in the province of Ontario."
The members opposite would have more credibility if they would take on some of the other areas. In our minority report, we talked about 15 points of things we should be doing, everything from social assistance reform, to Workers' Compensation Board reform, to non-profit housing, to the whole situation the way the finances are done, to the tax structure, to what should happen to the civil servants, to what should happen to municipalities, universities, school boards, hospitals, the entire public service.
We heard during that period, during the three weeks or so that we were on the finance committee, of the terrible economic condition we are in. Day after day we heard people on the government side saying that we had a difficult problem, but they weren't offering solutions. Then all of a sudden they come in with this particular bill, and quite frankly, the members of the public would have more respect if they would look at the other areas where we are spending and overspending.
When you look at the spending record of this government, it should be absolutely ashamed of the first year and a half. Their spending has now brought us to the situation we are in now, where we need these tough measures. I say to the members opposite, we appreciate the fact you recognize it now; we just wish and the people of this province just wish it had been done a lot sooner.
Mr Hope: I compliment the member for her comments. During the weekend I met a close friend of hers and a close friend of mine, Terry Savoie. I believe his wife, Phyllis, would totally disagree with what the Conservatives are saying in cutting social housing, because I know Phyllis was very active in the social housing movement, in making sure that housing was there for individuals when the private sector wasn't there. I know Phyllis, in her capacity and her boisterous voice that she has, would disagree.
I also notice you mention the issue about the free trade agreement, and it was amazing. Terry was right there again with his earring. He was talking in front of the graveyards about the effects that free trade has had in the area of job losses in the private sector. When I listen to the opposition talk about the devastation and the revenue loss, they keep forgetting about a trade agreement that has been haunting a lot of people in the private sector, both the auto industry and the agricultural industry. It's amazing that all of a sudden, in only three years, we start to identify the problem, but agricultural communities -- I know that you can share this with a number of other colleagues of yours -- have been feeling this for a number of years.
When I listen to the members opposite who talk about the destroying of free collective bargaining, I question some of their motives with what was taking place back by the Liberals when they were in the federal House. I remember the great train ride that took place on 6 and 5, and most of us will remember the 6 and 5 that took place. I find it very ironic when the members from the Conservative Party speak. I guess you will agree that one of the things that they're bringing forward is the whole issue about privatization.
Again, with the Liberal Party, we've heard from the Liberal leader about 18 points and I'm still trying to figure out if that was 18 holes or if it was 18 points, because to this day we still haven't heard one of those 18 points that we've been waiting to hear.
Mr Sorbara: I was fascinated to hear in the remarks of the member for Niagara Falls a suggestion that somehow these measures have the general support of the people of the province. Do they not yet get the message? If they really believe in democracy, let's look at the reaction of the people not only in Ontario but across Canada to the policies of Bob Rae and the NDP government in Ontario.
It was only a couple of months ago that we had two by-elections in the province of Ontario. One of the seats was held by the government party; the other they had lost by just some 62 votes in the general election of 1990. I think the people spoke at that time. Both of the NDP candidates in that election got less than 10% of the vote. They lost their deposits. The people now and again express themselves and express an opinion through the democratic process about how the government is behaving and the extent to which the policies of government have general support. Look at what happened in the recent general election in Alberta: The NDP, the New Democratic Party, was completely wiped away from the political spectrum.
In the upcoming federal election, if Audrey McLaughlin wins two seats in Ontario, those seats will belong to Steven Langdon, who stands up for principle, and Howard McCurdy, who stands right next to him, down in the Windsor area. Do they not understand that the policies that they are bringing to Ontario are seen by the people of Ontario as destructive? And the people of Ontario are waiting for bated breath for an opportunity to rid themselves of this government.
The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. The member for Niagara Falls, you have two minutes to reply.
Ms Harrington: Yes, it certainly is a difficult time, and the people of Ontario, as the previous speaker has mentioned, are very worried and they're very concerned.
This is a turning point, and I think the unions across Ontario are dealing with that mental problem now of how to deal with a real turning point. What this government is actually offering them is an invitation to power share with the government and with private employers, something that is really new. It will take time to understand, and we are asking them to please come to the table and work with us. We know what the alternatives are -- I have outlined them -- and it is a repeal of Bill 40 and it is NAFTA. That's what the other parties stand for.
The member from Oakville spoke about the spending patterns of this government. I'd like to remind him, going way back to 1980, of the health care costs of this province were and how they escalated for the whole decade, from 1980 to 1990: 10%, 11%, year over year compounded. That is the kind of spending that this province is used to. It can no longer happen. This is indeed a turning point.
The people out there in Ontario realize this. They are worried. They want their sons and daughters to have jobs. They don't want the interest payments to overtake the amount we spend for education. That's what is happening at this very moment. The amount we spend for education is $5 billion and more in this province, and the amount we spend on our interest payments is $5 billion. Two years from now it will be substantially overtaken, both the amount we spend for education and health. People realize something has to be done.
Mr Bradley: I cannot say this evening that I am pleased to participate in this debate, because I'd hoped that it would not be necessary for the government to bring in the kind of legislation that it has, legislation which, in my view, upon reviewing it, is impractical, unworkable and ultimately simply isn't going to achieve what the government had hoped it was going to achieve by introducing such legislation.
I could go into a number of different areas tonight but, of course, we're all confined by Bob Rae's new rules to a mere 30 minutes to be able to deal with legislation that is as complex as this. Unfortunately, in a democracy, that is something that I don't think the government should be particularly proud of as it enters its third year of public office.
I've listened with considerable interest to the strategy of the Progressive Conservative Party, which is next to us. For the first couple of years they spent some time attacking the government. They have now made the assumption that the government is dead in the water -- an assumption that I would not agree with, by the way; I never agree until election time that there are any conclusions one can draw -- but they have concluded that and have now trained their guns on the party which is well ahead in the polls at this point in time, the Liberal Party, instead of dealing with the legislation that's before the House.
They have a very selective memory, because I've sat in this House since 1977. I well recall what the expenditures were on such things as Suncor, the government advertising -- which this government appears to be falling into the trap of now -- and of course, at one time, the Premier of the province of Ontario wanted to buy a new jet for the convenience and comfort of the cabinet and senior members of the government. I recall rising in the House day after day to ask the Premier about the jet: what was new in it, what the new costs might be. Eventually, they withdrew that proposal for the jet, I'm sure to the chagrin of the present Premier and anybody who has had that particular portfolio since the time of Premier Davis.
2120
Everyone in this House -- at least most people in this House; I can't say everyone -- probably agrees that this is a time to concentrate on government efficiency and frugality. You won't find many people in Ontario who will quarrel with that, except those who are directly affected by that efficiency and frugality.
I join, as I did when I was the critic of the present Minister of Finance, then called the Treasurer, in the first year of the recession when we recommended to the government -- and I recommended to him at that time, because I had sat around the cabinet table and I know what the demands are, that they examine each expenditure, line by line, in each department and postpone some programs that may be attractive, eliminate other programs that in the 1990s were no longer necessary and perhaps not proceed at all with some new programs that may have been attractive and nice but not necessary.
Instead, the government made a specific decision. It made a decision to try to spend its way out of the recession. I wish the government had been successful for the sake of my fellow citizens in the Niagara region and in other parts of the province, but it was not a successful strategy. It was probably doomed to failure from the beginning because if we look at ourselves as individuals, if when we find that we're in economic difficulty we begin spending a lot of money, we find out that down the line we're in worse debt, we're in worse problems than had we addressed it at the beginning of the downturn. The government did not do that. That's history, and the government finds itself in some difficult positions today.
I have made the argument with those who are interested in social programs and those in the field of the environment, where I was involved for a number of years, that although the NDP's heart would be in the right place for expanding those programs, increasing those programs, for addressing a variety of needs in our society, its inability to manage the economy, its policies which are not geared to attracting investment but rather redistributing income would have the effect of ensuring that there would be less money available to spend on those programs and fewer resources. I think that probably those circumstances have been borne out by fact as we are in the midst of 1993.
I've heard members, because it's a good headline with people to use it, go overboard talking about slashing and cutting and restraint. I think as all of us embark upon this -- and it's as important for members of the opposition as it is for the government -- we must recognize that when we start cutting, people start getting hurt, that when we invoke severe austerity measures on a province or any jurisdiction it means there's a reduction in services. So when I'm talking to people in my constituency and other parts of the province who talk about the fact that programs are being cut and that they don't want that particular program cut but please cut some other program -- that there are consequences to being in these circumstances, and they're viewing those consequences on a daily basis.
I met last Friday morning with a group of people -- and people I am very sympathetic with. I've said in this House on many occasions that it seems to me that most of us at least, and I certainly consider myself in this category, are elected to represent those who are unable to adequately represent themselves, that the rich and the influential really don't need the services of MPPs, but those who are disadvantaged in many ways, those who are the most vulnerable in society, require our services.
I met with a group of people -- there were two categories of them: One, they were called care givers and these are people who have at home Alzheimer's patients or others who are suffering from similar kinds of dementia; and the second were respite workers who are employed, on contract in our case, by the regional municipality of Niagara.
These are people who are on -- and they use this terminology -- a 48-hour-a-day basis. Of course, they said that for emphasis. We all know there are only 24 hours in a day, but to them it seems almost like a 48-hour day, where they care on an ongoing basis for Alzheimer's patients and other patients who suffer from dementia.
The respite workers serve a purpose. They come into the homes for a few hours, perhaps up to 20 hours a week, and give some relief to those so that they can maintain their own sanity so we can avoid circumstances where there might be elder abuse just out of frustration and so that they provide some variety and spice of life to some of these patients who still have some grasp of what's going on about them.
This program has to be cut. Now, when I say cut, I want to be fair here. It doesn't mean the government is coming in and slashing the program, but as the number of people increase who are in need of this particular service, it means that fewer hours are going to be available if the government isn't prepared to increase the amount of money.
So that's what we mean when we talk about restraint, and if we're going to be spending money, and I'm going to be recommending that we spend money in this area, then we have to find other suitable areas to cut.
I must mention at this point in time -- and I'm not trying to be cheap politically to say it; I've discussed this with the Chair of Management Board through questions in the House -- two different things that the government continues to do, and that is, it's involved in polling -- and from one point of view, ethically the NDP was always opposed to it, particularly the man who is presently the Premier of this province and who was the most sanctimonious opposition leader I've ever confronted. But I actually believed, I was under the impression, that he was going to be different; that ethically and morally the NDP was opposed to polling. They knew where they stood anyway. They didn't need to wait for the latest puff of wind to come along to see which way the flag was blowing. One thing I liked about NDPers then is they knew where they stood.
I want to mention -- I'm going to have an opportunity to speak about him tomorrow -- that one such New Democrat passed away this past weekend: Bud Germa in Sudbury. Bud Germa was a person who knew where he stood. I express my condolences to the family. I met Bud at Floyd Laughren's 20th anniversary celebration of his service to the people of Nickel Belt and to the people of Ontario. I always admired Bud Germa; I didn't always agree, but I always admired him because you knew where he stood. He would be the kind of person who I think would be uneasy about what is happening at this time.
I know that the kind of polling that goes on has gone on before. I know that the kind of advertising that's going on has gone on before. But it seems to me that when the government is trying to set the example, is trying to encourage others to accept very difficult cuts in essential services and is prepared to abrogate contracts and to demand concessions from those in the public sector unions, the least the government can do is eliminate those expenditures which are unnecessary.
The full-page ad I saw by the Premier was a blatant -- excuse the word -- Mulroneyesque tactic. That's what the federal government does all the time. You get the pamphlets in the mail, paid for by the taxpayers of the country. You get the full-page ads. Last summer we had Canada 125 where they sang that nice song that we were all singing by the end of the summer. And here it is: The NDP doing exactly the same thing. I find this disconcerting when you're trying to persuade others to accept the kind of severe austerity that you are recommending.
If I were to talk to people in my constituency and ask them what is there number one problem, they would undoubtedly say "employment" and they'd say it more bluntly: "I need a job." They're worried that their own jobs no longer exist.
You know, industrial workers over the years have lost their jobs and they've been on temporary layoff, and they bounce back. It's never easy, but they have a resiliency that some others do not have.
The number of people who are out now who have the so-called white collar jobs, who've never been unemployed, who've never had to adapt, who've never had to adjust, are finding it extremely difficult at this time when faced with unemployment. You can see it in their faces as they come into our constituency offices that they're genuinely worried, that they don't know where they're going to go next.
The industrial workers are in the same position. They've lost their jobs, but many of those people have experienced those job losses before and they've fought back and they've come back into the workforce, sometimes with the assistance of government; sometimes without.
It pains me to see the kind of unemployment that we have in this province that the Premier is prepared to entertain. I'm not saying he wants it; he doesn't. Nobody on any side of the House wants it, but the figures are just rattled off in the budget as though somehow this is to be a fact of life.
2130
It seems to me that we have to produce jobs for older workers who are losing theirs, that we have to have a climate in the province where we have jobs for women and men and others who have not been able to get into the workforce, that young people have to have some hope. There's a lot of hopelessness among young people out there who can't find, not only summer jobs, but can't find any jobs. They've perhaps expended a lot of money on an education for that purpose or they've worked hard for it or perhaps they simply need the money and do not have those jobs. But I think we cannot forget that this is the number one problem confronting this province.
When we talk about restraint, I think it has to be targeted. I think we all want the efficiency, but we can't simply throw everything away and allow these people who are unemployed to fend for themselves, because they can't fend for themselves, nor should they have to, and I think that the overwhelming majority of those people actually want to work and do not want to be on any kind of public assistance.
I don't think it was helpful for the government to bring in tax increases in the midst of a recession. Other governments have brought in tax increases. The Conservatives -- for years I recall talking about the many tax increases they brought in. The Liberal government brought in tax increases.
In the context of a booming economy, the economy is often able to sustain those. Nobody likes them and the member for Middlesex should listen to this instead of simply yapping over there. Nobody likes tax increases, but in the midst of a recession, the very time you want to pull out of the recession, the very time when people who are investing want to make a choice as to where they're going to invest as the economy improves, you don't smack $2-billion worth of new taxes on them. The economy can't sustain it. There are times when the economy can sustain a lot of things and there are times when it can't. I think it was a calculated error. The Treasurer wants the revenue.
The Premier saw the W5 program on New Zealand. I see the Fraser Institute -- by the way, the Fraser Institute is going be praising this government soon because of the policies that it's bringing forward. But they got spooked by the New York lenders and so on, and all of a sudden the Premier says, "There's going to be a $17-billion deficit and we're going to have to throw everything at this and forget about some of the other important programs out there."
So I feel bad for those people. I find it unbelievable that an NDP government, of all governments, would be bringing in legislation of this kind. I sat in this House through the debates on the wage and price controls, and I well remember Bob Mackenzie and the group to the left -- because I had to scour the Hansards and I had to find all this information: what they had done in BC when they were in power; what the NDP had done in Manitoba when they were in power; what they had done in Saskatchewan when they were in power and faced with difficult, financial circumstances.
I was able to find what NDP -- it doesn't surprise me so much what this government has done -- governments had done. Hansards quoted Dave Barrett castigating the unions for being unreasonable, Ed Schreyer for bringing in wage and price controls in that province or agreeing to the federal ones, and in Saskatchewan, legislating nurses back to work before they even went on strike. This was a necessity the government saw, but I remember those debates where Mr Mackenzie, who is now the Minister of Labour, and others were so vociferously opposed to wage and price controls and now impose something far more drastic than that.
I'm surprised to see that there is an NDP government which is demanding concessions. When I talk to people in the trade union movement in my community, the one word they don't like is "concessions." They don't like it. It doesn't mean that they don't entertain them from time to time if there's something to be gained when there's a concession given; but here is a government where many of the people have fought against the demand for concessions for years and are now being forced to vote in favour of a bill that in fact demands concessions, that demands the abrogation of contracts, that demands backward steps on the part of public sector workers.
We all know that public sector workers, and I think many members on the government side would agree with this, are an easy target today because people who have been unemployed out there, people who have been in business and so on look at public sector workers and say: "There's been some security over the years. There's been some remuneration which has caught up with the private sector and, in some cases, surpassed it."
So to bash the public sector is always easy. My belief is that many people in the public sector are prepared to play their part, are prepared to work with the Legislature to see what changes can be made so efficiencies can be effected without the kind of drastic legislation that we see before us.
So I wait. I listen to people who have been critical of Liberal and Conservative governments in the past.
I watched with great interest the show at Gananoque this weekend. A lot of people thought that in fact there would be a big fight at Gananoque and they leaked out to their favourite government writers these stories that it was going to be a tough clash and Bob was going to have a tough time.
You have to recognize who goes to the provincial council. The people who go to the provincial council, many of them are the ring kissers from all parties --
Mr Hope: Oh, you wait until I start telling some of the boys from St Catharines.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): Order, please.
Mr Bradley: -- who go there to kiss the Premier's ring.
Mr Hope: I'm going to send them a copy of Hansard.
Mr Bradley: And what they do is, they say, "Well, Premier, whatever you say, it's right, because you're the person who leads our party," and I invite the member for Chatham-Kent to send whatever he wishes, because so many people who in principle -- in principle -- oppose this kind of legislation and the kind of measures that this government has brought in for two and a half years are often silent today when the present government does it, but they wouldn't have been silent with a Liberal or Conservative government in power. So if they're prepared to kiss the ring of the Premier as he is making his speech and, "Bob, you're doing a great job," well, at least I admire those people out there who have been strong enough to challenge the Premier and members of the cabinet, and I'm sure all of my friends from St Catharines who were at the meeting would be people who would be challenging the Premier, because they are people of principle who over the years have fought for collective bargaining rights and who have fought against Tory restraint.
I belong to a coalition -- we want to save jobs in the Niagara Peninsula -- and they asked a question at one of the meetings. They were going to Ottawa to protest the federal government policies, and some of them asked at the meeting, "Is it all right for us to take signs representing our coalition for the future of the Niagara Peninsula?" I said to them at the time, "I find it quite all right for you to carry those signs or wear the badges when you're going to Ottawa to protest Tory policies, because I carry those signs and wear those badges when I'm protesting Tory policies at Queen's Park, the Tory policies of Bob Rae." So they were quite prepared to go off to Ottawa and make their protest, and I'm quite prepared to come to Queen's Park to talk about some of the Tory policies that I have seen implemented by this government.
I want to talk about the effect on boards of education and municipalities. Those people have been forced, over the last couple of years, to trim their expenditures rather drastically. That's because this government has not transferred to them the kind of money that they would hope for and expected. They used to complain when a Liberal government wouldn't give them 8%, in some cases. There would be a great complaint. Now they're asked to take a freeze and perhaps even a cut. So what we see is that the municipalities are being very hard hit.
Has the government said, "Well, in consideration of this, you're no longer obligated to deal with the following programs"? They have not said that. If they had said that, the municipalities and the boards of education would say: "We understand. We no longer have to meet those requirements set out by the province and therefore we're better able to trim our expenditures." But no such thing exists.
So the local municipalities have to cut essential services, and in education, special education is being cut back and other programs which might be useful to the children who will be the future leaders in our province and our country, and those students who are in community colleges and in universities. My colleague the member for Ottawa South, Dalton McGuinty, asked a question in the House not long ago about the future places available for young people in our colleges and universities, for the girls and the boys coming through the system now, the young men and the young women who are going into that system, and we find that there are going to be fewer spaces available, and for those who are going out to fill those spaces, it's going to cost them more. Even though the NDP was always in favour of abolishing tuition, we find that in fact tuition has gone up, and the grant which was available to alleviate problems for some is gone and we find that those students are in difficulties. So not only are the spaces not there, but the cost is higher for those students, and that's most unfortunate in NDP Ontario.
2140
I talked to a couple of students when I saw them in St Catharines not long ago. This puts a name to the real problems: a girl by the name of Megan Gilgan and a boy by the name of Brad Ryder, who both attended the University of Ottawa. These are people who have to put out a certain amount of money to get their education, who were fortunate enough, in their case, to be able to be accepted a couple of years ago to participate in a university education. Well, those people today, if they went knocking on the doors of a university, might find it much more difficult to obtain the program they had hoped to participate in, and they would find that the cost is increasing. As the tuition goes up, as the amount of money going to the universities is diminished, perhaps even the quality of education might be diminished significantly as a result. So we find that people in that category are very difficult. To people like Megan and Brad, we wish them the very best in the future, but we know that there could be problems for them.
I want to go back for just a moment to the polls and the advertising, because I could have taken the same questions I asked of Bill Davis and the government and used exactly the same questions, except that I had the quotes of the Premier. One thing I think the government wishes would happen is that we would destroy Hansard after two years, the record of everything that's said in the House, because Bob Rae had some good speeches on polling and on government advertising. I wish he were here. He was unavoidably not here today, but I wish he had had the opportunity to be here so that he could hear his words read back into the record about matters of polls and advertising.
I want to touch on something I did in one of the two-minute responses a while ago, when I listened to some of the speeches in the House, particularly from members of the Conservative Party. I cannot recall receiving a question, in five years, three months and four days as Minister of the Environment of Ontario, that asked that the government reduce its expenditures in the field of the environment, reduce its staff, reduce its activity or reduce the amount of equipment available. In other words, virtually every question, either directly or indirectly, suggested that the government should be spending more and putting more resources into it, and I suspect that would be the case of all ministers. So my good friends in the Conservative Party who sat in the House at that time, including my good friend the member for Mississauga South, who was very concerned and continues to be concerned about the environment, asked questions which were largely asking that the government play a greater role in the environment, with the implication of greater expenditure of funds, more staff and more resources available to them. Every minister was in that position.
So when we look back and we hear people talk about, "Well, money was spent in the old Tory days or money was spent in the old Liberal days," it was often at the demand of members of the New Democratic Party, whom I commend for their effectiveness in being able to communicate to the public at large, certainly to the news media, certainly to the CBC and certainly to Radio Noon where the public could hear an NDP voice in the morning or in the midday or late in the afternoon, an NDP voice on the radio demanding more money be spent on something. They were good advocates, those people, the same people who now say that the Liberals were wild spenders or the Tories were wild spenders. Again, my good friends in the Conservative Party had asked for expanded programs, new projects in those days when there was money.
Everybody recognizes today that the revenues are not coming in, that the economy is not strong, and it seems to me what we have to do is restore that economy, restore to the province of Ontario a circumstance where people want to invest, a climate where people who have dollars to invest are prepared to invest those. You can't do it by using regulations and legislation which is interpreted as being anti-business. You can't use it with anti-business rhetoric.
Sometimes it isn't pleasant to do it, and there are occasions when the Premier has to go on bended knee to business or on bended knee to New York City to make those pleas so that the people there will give him a reasonable credit rating. I don't criticize the Premier when he does that. In fact, I wanted him to go to Detroit so that he could speak to the leading people in General Motors and try to persuade them to keep their operations open in St Catharines. Instead he headed off on a trip to Asia and other places, all well and good in its time and its place, but I would have thought it would have been timely for the Premier to go to Detroit at that time to make the plea on behalf of workers in our part of the province.
What we have to do, it seems to me, is have a situation where we have public sector people brought together on a sector-by-sector basis to discuss their problems and find some solutions. I don't say that it's easy. I suspect that most people in the province of Ontario, including those of us on this side of the House, hope that this problem can be solved. If the government gets the credit for it, so be it. I think we hope it can be solved.
I don't think this specific piece of legislation is going to solve the problem. I think it's a very drastic piece of legislation which is an attack on public sector workers and public sector contracts, on one hand; on the other hand, for those who might be attracted to it for that reason, they should recognize that it provides no solutions at the expiry dates of these contracts, that in fact that's where problems could arise, where everything would break loose at the end of the time lines for this legislation and we would find mass strikes in the province and we would find a good many dissatisfied people.
I'll be interested to see two things. I'll be interested to see how my colleagues in the Conservative Party vote on this, because I think there are many in the Conservative Party who would like to vote against this legislation, and with justification. I'll be even more interested to see how many people on the government side who have spent a lifetime fighting against this kind of legislation and these kinds of policies, how many of those people are in the House to vote against this legislation.
I commend my friend, formerly of St Catharines, the member for Perth for, on a matter of principle, resigning her position in the cabinet. Whether people agree or disagree with that position, she felt strongly about it. She has been a supporter of trade unions and the sanctity of contracts and she chose to resign. I simply ask that members of the government who disagree with this legislation join with us in voting against it.
Mr Stockwell: I think the comments from the member for St Catharines certainly spoke a great deal about previous legislators, previous governments and their capacity to spend. I think probably from even 1980 on Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats tended to spend significant amounts of money that the public in fact didn't have. I think it got progressively worse.
That's probably partisan, you're going to suggest, but I think it did get progressively worse from the Conservative administration to the Liberal administration, and now the socialist administration I think is particularly bad. Probably, mindful of the deficit numbers they've rung up in two years, three years, I don't think they've got a rival in the camp of spending.
I will note, though, that the member for St Catharines did point out that when in opposition the socialists themselves, every time an announcement was made, would say, "Spend, spend, spend." The Liberals would in fact spend and then their rally cry would be, "Not enough, not enough, not enough." Now, upon being in government, they've certainly changed that tune.
But there is one thing that I do recall, and I'd like the member for St Catharines to comment on it. When they were in opposition they did have two areas of concern that they thought too much government money was being spent on, and those were polls and advertising. I note that previous administrations were dressed down on a regular basis by the then Leader of the Opposition, Mr Robert K. Rae QC, for spending far too much money on polls and far, far too much money on advertising.
Maybe he did comment on it, but I think it's something that needs to be emphasized once again, considering the fact of the hundreds and thousands of dollars you spent placing partisan, cheap political ads in all the major dailies across this province, considering where you came from and how terrible that kind of situation was in previous administrations.
2150
Mr Sorbara: I had an opportunity to listen as attentively as I could to the remarks of the member for St Catharines. My colleague Mr Bradley for St Catharines is one of the people in this chamber who really can bring a sense of history and a sense of perspective to a debate. He's able to go back to the Bill Davis years and most particularly he is able to call Bob Rae's activities now into question, given the Bob Rae some of us knew when Bob Rae was in opposition.
The amazing thing about this debate, I think, is that this now is the pinnacle of the converted Bob Rae. This is the Bob Rae who has not only turned his back on promises made during election campaigns, not only turned his back on policies that he vigorously held during his years in opposition, but the Bob Rae who has turned his back on his strongest and most committed supporters, those people in the trade union movement.
But the thing that my friend from St Catharines pointed out, I think, in the gist of his speech was that in the end the people of Ontario are not going to tolerate this. They are looking for politicians who are committed to a set of principles and committed to implementing those principles if called upon to do so. What we have seen over the past three years in Ontario, from government advertising, to vicious little pieces of business like this Bill 48, to a turnabout on virtually every policy that the NDP stood for, is a denial of principle and a violation of the trust that is at the very foundation of politics. My friend from St Catharines points out that again and I think he does so very effectively and in that respect adds very greatly to this debate.
Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): I just would like to comment on some of what the former Minister of the Environment, the member for St Catharines, has said.
Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy): Heavy on the "former."
Mrs Marland: The current minister says I should be heavy on the former minister.
First of all, I think it's important to address the fact that we have more cabinet ministers in the House at this moment than we did --
Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Than we had for question period.
Mrs Marland: Than we do in question period.
Hon Mr Wildman: This is a time of substance, though.
Mrs Marland: The member for Mississauga North pointed out that's probably the reason that you're all here tonight, because you don't have to answer any questions. If you do wish to stand up, if you feel compelled to stand up and answer any questions, especially my minister who didn't answer my questions earlier today, please feel quite welcome to stand up and use this valuable time.
But the member for St Catharines did talk about when he was Minister of the Environment and I was his critic. Now, he and I had an excellent relationship. Everything I asked him, he did answer. I do give him full marks; when I asked him questions when he was Minister of the Environment, he did answer those questions. He wasn't like the current government. We used to get answers; not always the answers that we agreed with, but at least we got answers. As the Minister of the Environment, he did more in this province, I must say, that the successor in your government unfortunately, and that was a big surprise and a big disappointment to us.
Mr Elston: I want to join with the people who have indicated pleasure with the content of the member's speech. In fact he went over some ground, I think, which needed to be reviewed, information about how the members of the New Democratic Party of Ontario have changed their attitude.
What he didn't say and what I would add to some of the words was that they have not only changed the tone of their attacks on problems, they have changed their orientation and the way they deal with matters. They no longer advocate for anybody who has a need in this province, but they adopt words which are well chosen to defend themselves from attack, because of their new posture with respect to social problems and obligations.
That they try to indicate that their new-found zeal for the job of government, their new-found zeal for being Tories in tweed, as they have been described several times, is for me not much of a job. They have in previous days been, if not the best advocates, if not the best --
Hon Mr Wildman: No one is wearing tweed.
Mr Elston: The member for Algoma says there are no NDPs wearing tweed any more. That was before they found all the money that they get paid as ministers. They only wore tweed before then.
Hon Mr Wildman: Corduroy.
Mr Elston: Corduroy and tweed. They were wearing tweed too.
But what these people have done is they have turned their backs on the traditions of their party, including a good number of the principles for which they stood: things like not allowing gambling, things like not pushing people to try desperate means to protect their heritage and other things. Common pause days were part of their orientation.
I think we should commend the member for St Catharines for his remarks.
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for St Catharines has two minutes to make a response.
Mr Bradley: I appreciate the interventions of various people. I'll try to respond to them, as I fairly should.
First of all, Mr Sorbara, the member for York Centre, I thought reinforced many of the comments that have been made. I appreciate that.
Mr Stockwell, because he was out taking important telephone calls from his constituents regarding the social contract, missed the fact that I had mentioned a number of times within my remarks that they were spending over $1 million on polls and spending all kinds of money on government advertising. I know he'll feel relieved that I did manage to mention that in my remarks.
Mrs Marland, the member for Mississauga South, was very kind in her remarks. I share her surprise, because I think both of us would have anticipated that there would have been a very activist government in the field of the environment. We have not seen the kind of activism that many people who are NDP supporters would have hoped for. The economic circumstances may be what dictates this, but certainly I agree with her that there was a great expectation there.
Mr Elston, the member for Bruce, recalls the history. I think it's very important to have that historical perspective on the House. I always like to look at people when they were in opposition, what they had to say. I recognize there's one role in opposition and another in government, but I must say that I used to read carefully the speeches of the man who is now the Premier of this province.
I used to make sure I was in the House when they spoke: Mr Rae, Mr Lewis, Mr Renwick, Mr Lawlor, many of the speakers in this House. I would hope that upon reaching government they would not forget those principles. Unfortunately, I understand some of the changes that have to be made and I accept those. What I don't accept are those changes which have been made in terms of their ethical approach to government.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The honourable member for Mississauga South.
Applause.
Mrs Marland: Was there some applause on the government side of the House?
Hon Mr Pouliot: After the performance.
Mr Paul Klopp (Huron): Yes, we are not like them, sucking up.
Mrs Marland: Oh, that's right.
Hon Mr Wildman: Even after what you said about the Minister of Environment.
2200
Mrs Marland: Actually, I would point out to the current Minister of Environment that I only spoke about the successor to the member for St Catharines; I did not speak about the current Minister of Environment.
I wish I could say that it gives me great pleasure to have this opportunity to stand in my place and speak on Bill 48, the Social Contract Act, but in fact, I really believe these evening sessions of the House are an absolute waste of time. If you listen to the dialogue that goes back and forth across the floor of this House, added to the fact that when we should be productive during the day, during question period, as I pointed out a few minutes ago, we very often do not have -- I think today we had seven cabinet ministers missing, which is seven out of, what do you have, 25 in your cabinet? In any case, one day last week, I was shocked to see how few cabinet ministers were here for question period.
Frankly, I think the whole exercise is a waste of time because of the fact that the government has such a stranglehold on this House since it amended the rules for the proceedings in this House a year ago. So we get up now and we have at most 30 minutes to speak.
Hon Mr Pouliot: You ain't seen nothing after this bill.
Mrs Marland: You say we haven't seen anything until after this bill. You see, that's how it works. It's all a big threat, and I object to being threatened. That has been our experience in opposition with this government.
The shortsightedness of this government, however, is amazing, because you can be assured that when we win the next election and these government members are on our side of the House, sitting in opposition, they will then know, the few of them who will be left, what it's like for a government to have a stranglehold on the House whereby debate is limited. We have motions to introduce closure and to limit debate even further than it's already limited. We had in fact two speakers on the budget.
In talking about Bill 48, I want to say at the outset, first of all, that I have a motion here that was faxed to me today by the regional chairman of Peel, Chairman Emil Kolb. This is a resolution which was passed by the GTA mayors. It was the GTA mayors' social contract resolution and it was adopted in principle on June 18, 1993, which was last Friday, three days ago. I want to read this resolution into the record:
"Whereas confusion, frustration and chaos exist over the social contract legislation; and
"Whereas many municipalities are not able to give some essential service workers 12 days off and still function safely and effectively; and
"Whereas the present social contract is pitting one sector against another within the same municipality (eg, emergency services versus office workers); and
"Whereas a number of municipalities have already implemented days off without pay in 1993 in order to keep property tax increases either low or at zero; and
"Whereas the social contract seriously undermines the flexibility necessary for democratically elected municipal leaders to fulfil the mandate given to them by their electorate;
"That notwithstanding the present status of the legislation, the mayors of the GTA petition the Premier to immediately amend the social contract legislation to allow the simple, workable option of a basic across-the-board wage reduction for all municipal politicians, employees and workers directly employed by the municipalities as an acceptable way to meet the $165-million reduction plan if a municipality's individual situation makes the across-the-board rollback or blend of options the most practical, effective and responsible means to achieve the provincial targets imposed upon municipalities."
I believe that is a very reasonable resolution passed by the greater Toronto area mayors. I'm very happy to place that resolution on the record and, needless to say, it is a resolution that is supported by my own mayor, Hazel McCallion. Obviously, we are hoping that the Premier and his cabinet will give due consideration to that motion.
Further on the subject of the Social Contract Act, while governments today and parties of all political stripes have taken up the cause of debt reduction and spending controls, the Ontario PC Party has been calling for years for smaller, affordable government and has put on the record a range of measures to achieve those objectives.
In a 1988 pre-budget report, long before it became politically correct to express concerns about such matters, Mike Harris proposed that debt reduction and expenditure control become the primary focus of provincial fiscal policy, that the government develop a mid-term fiscal plan to balance the budget, that sunset provisions be attached to all direct and tax expenditure programs and that any in-year revenue windfalls would be dedicated to deficit reduction.
During the NDP government's first year in office when it was signing contracts with its OPSEU buddies that provided for pay hikes of nearly 6%, the Ontario PC Party was calling for a 2% cap on pay hikes in the public sector. In the first volume of its New Directions series of policy papers, the Ontario PC caucus called for, among other things, reductions in the size of the Ontario public service and the privatization of government functions and crown agencies.
In its 1993 pre-budget opinion, the PC caucus called for a moratorium on the non-profit housing program, better control of welfare spending, a crackdown on health card fraud and a multi-year freeze on program spending as the key to a long-term strategy of deficit reduction. The record clearly shows that the Ontario PC Party was pushing the fiscal responsibility bandwagon long before anyone else jumped on board.
While Bill 48 was introduced by an NDP government, the names of David Peterson, Bob Nixon and Lyn McLeod should appear on the front cover along with Floyd Laughren, because the Liberals and their tax-and-spend fiscal policies bear much of the responsibility for the financial and fiscal problems confronting the province. Bill 48 is very much part of the Liberal legacy. Despite the fact that the Liberals governed during an economic boom, they increased expenditures at double the annual rate of inflation and paid for this spending binge with 33 tax hikes and a 30%, or a $10-billion, increase in the provincial debt.
Under the Liberals, the size of the Ontario public service grew from 80,000 in March 1985 to 88,000 in March 1990, and the public service payroll costs, wages and benefits, jumped by 60% from $2.7 billion to $4.4 billion during the Liberals' time in office. The Liberals elevated and broadened the expenditure base to an unsustainable level, and as they had at the same time substantially exhausted the province's tax capacity, when the boom ended and the revenues dried up, the house of cards collapsed.
The NDP compounded the problem they inherited from the Liberals by making the fatal error in their first budget of trying to spend their way out of the recession. This misguided strategy, which drove up program spending by 12% in the first year, did nothing to shorten or weaken the recession but did institutionalize the multibillion-dollar deficits which have become the norm in Ontario.
2210
The Liberal Party's record of mismanagement in government makes its declared opposition to Bill 48 easy to understand but difficult to accept. Although they helped to cause the mess, the Liberals don't have the decency to help clean it up. It is even more difficult to accept in light of that party's failure to advance a comprehensive, comprehensible and consistent policy alternative to the government's program.
The Liberal position is dictated more than anything else by the old political reflex which puts the interests of organized groups and lobbies with money and access to the process ahead of the interests of the taxpayers and the public generally. This allegiance to the vested interests may generate campaign contributions and reduce the heat on Liberal members, but it will never generate the types of reforms required to streamline the public sector and protect the taxpayer.
The Liberals' opposition to Bill 48, their failure to commit to a policy of restraint, shows that they still opt for the expedient position as opposed to a responsible one. By refusing to be part of the solution, they remain part of the problem.
Because Floyd fiddled while Ontario's financial house was burning down around his ears, Bill 48 is a panic-driven, ad hoc response to a fiscal crisis the government did its best to ignore. It was not until it became obvious that debt service costs would soon dominate expenditures and that the province was headed for a major and damaging downgrade that the government acted. But even then it did not want to bite the bullet. Instead of bringing in legislation to signal the seriousness of both the situation and its intention to achieve savings, the NDP opted for the so-called "social contract" process.
The NDP government counted on its so-called "special relationship" with labour to help bail it out of the fiscal quicksand. The unions, however, had other ideas, and when "Solidarity Forever" with the NDP went out one door, Bill 48 came in the other.
The PC Party has, unlike the Liberals, offered the government a plan which would achieve permanent reductions in the size and cost of the public sector and facilitate restructuring, without the chaos and inequity associated with Bill 48.
The PC Party's commitment to the goals of expenditure control and deficit reduction do not blind it to the fact that Bill 48 is a seriously flawed piece of legislation. To improve the process, correct some of the flaws in Bill 48 and attain a broader range of objectives, the PC Party has suggested a number of principles and policies which it believes will achieve permanent reductions in the size and cost of the public sector and facilitate government restructuring:
(1) A three-year hiring freeze, which has the potential to reduce the annual cost of public sector compensation by over $2 billion in the third year of this legislation.
(2) A public sector wage freeze that would commence on the anniversary date of all contracts and continue for a three-year period from that date.
(3) Whistle-blower provisions to protect public servants who report fraud, waste and other abuses from workplace retribution, while netting substantial additional savings.
(4) Provisions to discourage government departments from spending their budgets within the fiscal year, eliminating year-end burnoff or face roll-backs.
(5) Performance bonuses for public servants based on the efficiencies and productivity gains similar to private sector agreements such as those involving the Canadian Auto Workers union.
(6) Establishment of an expenditure review committee to identify non-productive government programs and to prioritize existing programs.
If these sound, fair and effective management principles and measures were adopted, with attrition as a primary management tool, up to $3 billion could be permanently removed from the public sector wage costs over three years.
Further, these guiding-principle solutions could be done without chaos and without retroactively cutting transfers or gutting collective agreements.
The PC Party believes that downsizing, while an important source of savings, is but one component in a broad, critical, strategic re-evaluation of the structures and function of government.
To assist in that process, the party has proposed the GVA procedure -- government valuation assessment -- which would establish a framework for the assessment and evaluation of government programs and functions in relation to clear and measurable criteria to determine, for example, whether a service could be more effectively and efficiently delivered by the private sector or the public sector.
The restructuring of the public sector must be based on a recognition that governments can no longer afford to be all things to all people, but must abandon those functions and services which analysis says it cannot deliver and can only deliver poorly and ensure that the services it does provide meet the strict value-for-money guidelines; not, for example, like the non-profit housing program which not only doesn't meet value-for-money guidelines; that minister in the Ministry of Housing cannot even tell the Provincial Auditor how much her program costs.
PC leader Mike Harris has said that downsizing the public sector is only half the answer to the economic challenge facing the province.
While the NDP government has made a small step in the direction of controlling public sector costs, it has done nothing to upsize the private sector, the other key component of an economic strategy, to ensure that this province has a future as prosperous as its past.
To enable Ontario to attract and retain job-creating investment, to exploit new market opportunities and to build a more entrepreneurial economy, the PC Party has called for: (1) the repeal on the NDP's job-killing labour laws, for example Bill 40; (2) a clear statement that wealth taxes will not be imposed in Ontario; (3) a small business exemption from the employer health tax -- the employer health tax, I wish to point out, was an initiative of the previous Liberal government; (4) a competitive test for all new government taxes and regulations; (5) the implementation of an aggressive policy of privatization; (6) reforms of the workers' compensation system; and (7) a linkage between the welfare and skills training systems in the form of employer subsidies.
The PC Party believes it is essential that the government pursue policies which both upsize the private sector and downsize the public sector.
It's very difficult in the time available to us to talk about many of the other areas that this government needs advice and help with, but one comment I can't leave unexpressed is that earlier tonight one of the government members -- I can't, unfortunately, recall who it was that said it, but it was this evening, about the fact -- actually, I think it was Irene Mathyssen who said it, the member for --
The Acting Speaker: Middlesex.
2220
Mrs Marland: Middlesex. Thank you, Mr Speaker. She talked about this government reducing its budget $4 billion last year and reducing it $4 billion this year. I was in my office watching and I could hardly contain myself when I heard her say that, because Irene is a very nice person, and I'm sure the member for Middlesex, in all her innocence, actually believes what she said. She actually believes that this government reduced its spending $4 billion last year and $4 billion this year. It's so ludicrous that that is the line that this government's cabinet feeds to its backbenchers, because all that the member for Middlesex has to do is read Bill 17. She will find right away where some of that money is now not under the umbrella of the government expenditure; it's under a number of umbrellas, namely, crown corporations.
We now have the Ontario Financing Authority. We have the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp. We have the Ontario Clean Water Agency, the Ontario Realty Corp. How wonderful for this government to be able to say: "We've reduced our government spending. We've reduced our operating costs." What in fact they've done is an absolutely perfect example of the typical government shell game, where they've taken the expenditures out of this pocket so that they're not now listed in the budget that comes in that pocket, and they've put them in this pocket under crown corporations, at arm's length, nothing to do with them, not their expenditure, not their responsibility any more. Very clever, but not fooling the public and certainly not fooling the opposition. Unfortunately, it apparently fooled the member for Middlesex, because she actually believes what she said or else I'm sure she wouldn't have said it.
When we talk about crown corporations, I think it's a unique way for this government to say, "This is how we're going to save money." We've heard that this is the first government to balance the budget in 52 years, I think the Treasurer said a couple of weeks ago.
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): Balance?
Mrs Marland: Pardon me, not balance the budget. Thank you. The member for Grey has corrected me. He said it's the first government to reduce government spending, isn't that what he said? Reduce government spending? That wouldn't be so scary if the member for Middlesex was saying that, but this is the Treasurer who's saying that. The Treasurer believes that.
I don't really want to get into the subject of non-profit housing, but it's very hard, as the shadow cabinet person for Housing for our caucus, not to say something about it today. Today we did receive a report from Clayton Research Associates. They're an independent company that in fact, I understand, the Ministry of Housing itself often requests to handle its research. Today the Clayton Research report confirmed something that we in the Progressive Conservative caucus have been saying for the last three years, and that is that the non-profit housing program in this province is an absolute sham. It is not addressing the needs of people who need affordable housing.
What we are saying and have said for the last three years is that if you are really committed to looking after people in this province who need help with affordable housing -- I may use this opportunity to emphasize that we in the Conservative Party are -- then you do it in the most economical way to look after the largest number of people. What we're saying is, it's so archaic for the government to keep spending taxpayers' dollars building more and more government-owned and operated housing and all the capital investment that that involves, when all it has to do with the same amount of money is have a program of shelter allowances, which are direct shelter subsidies to the people who are eligible.
The advantage of direct shelter subsidies is that, first of all, we don't have to use the taxpayers' money to build the buildings that people will be housed in. If you don't have to do that, instead of subsidizing one unit to the extent of anywhere between $900 and $2,000 a month, you end up, for as little as $114 a month, according to the Clayton Research study that came out today, being able to help people who are the working poor get out of that poverty level by giving them a shelter subsidy.
If you give a shelter subsidy directly to the person who is eligible, they then can use that money and choose where they live. They can use that money and reside near their work, near their babysitter, maybe near their family who help them with babysitting, or closer to transportation, which is another cost-saving factor for them. You give them all kinds of choices. Most importantly, you don't put them in a building with a label on it.
You see, the irony is that the whole non-profit housing program has been designed around trying to get away from the old Ontario Housing model, because we all know the problems that were associated with the ghettoizing of people into totally subsidized housing in an entire building, which the old Ontario Housing model was.
The non-profit housing program, which was started, incidentally, in Peel in 1975 by the Peel Non-Profit Housing Corp -- I sat on their board in the 1970s as a member of council. It was the first non-profit housing corporation in Canada. Today, we still have the best-operated and -controlled buildings. But what is happening is that in order for non-profit housing programs not to have the stigma of the old Ontario Housing model, they have to have a percentage of rent-geared-to-income units and a percentage of market units. Now, the tremendous irony is that we have non-profit buildings in this province with vacancies, and guess what? This government is now spending thousands of dollars on advertising programs on how to rent these market-value units, these market-rent units in these government-owned buildings. You can be sure that if they don't get them rented, in order to balance their books in these non-profit housing corporations, they're going to have to raise the ratio of the rent-geared-to-income units, because they can't possibly leave these units empty. So eventually we're going to get back to the old Ontario Housing model where everybody is subsidized in the building.
What we're saying is, even with that program, we have a quarter of a million families in this province on waiting lists for affordable housing. What we're saying is, forget about the buildings and owning them and operating them and all the expense that's associated with that and deal directly with the people who need the help. Say to them: "If you're eligible for a subsidy, we will give you a shelter allowance and you can choose where you want to live. You don't have to live in a building with a label on it. Furthermore, we don't expect you to be ghettoized into a community where everybody is on assisted housing in one small community."
It's a very big subject, and even if this government didn't want to listen to us and what we've been saying for three years, I hope they will consider very closely the report that came out today from Clayton Research Associates, the same people they hire for a lot of their own information.
2230
Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): I'm glad to have this opportunity to spend a few moments commenting on what the member for Mississauga South had to say about the Clayton Research report. I'm sure that its authors, who were working in this instance for the Fair Rental Policy Organization of Ontario, would nevertheless find her description of what the report says to be highly inaccurate.
She has made statements which must be corrected. There are not a quarter of a million people on waiting lists in this province. As the report indicates, quite correctly, there are over a quarter of a million households and people in this province in need of assistance with housing costs. They're not all on waiting lists for social housing. Those waiting lists are long, but they're not a quarter of million long.
What she is proposing out of the Clayton report is adding an add-on program to the existing programs of $80 million in rent subsidy programming through the Ministry of Housing and $2.5 billion that's spent through social assistance for shelter allowances. Now she's going to add another program, which is generous of her, but I think we had better sit down and cost this out and figure out what is the best way of adding to the number of people who are going to get housing subsidies in Ontario. I think she would want to make sure she was going to cost out this add-on program she is proposing.
We are proposing to reform social assistance, and some of the ideas from the Clayton report are very useful to the consideration of how we should be reforming the social assistance system. If the member for Mississauga South would sit down and figure out the concepts involved, I'm sure she could help us in that discussion.
Mr Offer: I'd like to join in with the debate from the member for Mississauga South, because she has brought forward a number of very important points.
I think that in a two-minute wrapup, as members have at this point in time, we should tell it as it is, that much of Bill 48 is a result of the NDP's first budget in 1990. In 1990, when all other governments in this country recognized that we were in something much deeper than a recession, that something much more significant was going on, that something much broader was going on and that you couldn't spend your way out of whatever this recession or restructuring was, the NDP government in the province of Ontario did what no other jurisdiction in all of Canada, no matter what its political stripe was, did: It tried to spend its way out of something which it couldn't spend its way out of. As a result, there are many people today who are suffering from the mismanagement of the government of the day.
There is no question that Bill 48 is founded on chaos, is founded on inconsistency, is founded on total confusion. The reason for Bill 48 is not anything other than the first budget of the NDP government, which was to do what no other jurisdiction would even attempt to do, and that was to try to buy its way out of something that just couldn't happen. When the proper decisions, when the right decisions had to be made, the government failed. As a result, many people today are going to suffer. When those many people outside of this place come to the government and say, "Yes, we understand the need for restraint, we understand what a debt is, we understand what a deficit is and we have solutions to help, ways which will not devastate families," the government, as has been its custom from the day it was first elected, turns its back on these people.
Mr Carr: I'm pleased to add to the debate. I appreciate some of the comments from the member for Mississauga South. No matter what the people on the other side say, we are going to continue to give you the solutions that you need. I sat here a year ago when they said that they were going to spend their way out of it. In spite of everything, we said: "No, do not do it. You can't continue to tax, spend and borrow like there's no tomorrow."
To hear the Minister of Housing a year later now getting up and trying to defend a program which the auditor, if you read the report -- don't believe us; all you have to do is read the auditor's report -- says is an absolute, overwhelming condemnation of non-profit housing in the province of Ontario, how this minister, day after day, can stand up and defend that waste when the cost is two and a half times what the private sector is -- when you speak to all the housing, the non-profits, they say: "We're not that bad. It's the other guys who are bad. This one's bad, but we're okay." All that means is that somewhere out there there's even more abuse.
Hon Ms Gigantes: Now you are just being dishonest.
Mr Carr: As you go around and see the tremendous amount of waste at a time when we're laying off nurses, doctors and teachers, I say to this member, we're going to continue to hammer on it. When you look at programs, Ataratiri will spend probably $800 million and we won't have one new unit. For $800 million, we bought a piece of land that can't be used for anything because of the environmental problems, and this minister stands up and thinks it's a good idea to build these units at a time when the private sector could do the job faster, better, cheaper, and know at what expense.
I say to the minister opposite that most of the people out here wouldn't mind cutting back on the public service if they thought you wouldn't blow the money on all your stupid programs, like non-profit housing. Quite frankly, day after day we've hit you with this problem, the auditors hit you and you continue to waste, but I say we're not going to give up. Eventually, we're going to hit you and get rid of these programs that are killing the province of Ontario.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr Mahoney: I find it unfortunate when a minister of the crown would shout across that a member here is being dishonest. I find that really a sad commentary on life in this Parliament.
But let me talk about the member for Mississauga South's speech, because it would be interesting for the Housing minister and all members to know how that member and many other members have arrived at a position of asking this government to revisit their Ontario Housing program or their -- in fact, it is. That was a Freudian slip. That's exactly the problem: It is Ontario Housing.
The member for Mississauga South and I both used to sit on the board of Peel Non-Profit Housing Corp for some time.
Mrs Marland: I already said that.
Mr Mahoney: I know you said it, and I'm just repeating it. As a result of that, we worked at providing housing in the community. The ratio of subsidy was 25% and 75% were at market value. Then it went to 60-40. It was a reasonable split. The principle was that we're not going to create the ghettos and the slums that had been created by former governments. I won't mention the party. You know who they are. Former governments created the serious problems and we wanted a balance. We wanted a mix in the community.
Then the ratio increased to about -- well, they call it 40-40-20; 40% deep subsidy, 40% shallow and 20% market. The reality is that it's becoming 100% subsidized. The whole principle has been thrown out the window. You're not helping the people who are moving in. You're not helping the people who need the help at a time when there is a higher rate of vacancy throughout the whole province than we've ever experienced. What we're asking for -- you shake your head if you want -- is for you to put a moratorium on it and revisit the issue. Quit being so stubborn. Maybe, just maybe you're wrong.
The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Mississauga South has two minutes to make a response.
Mrs Marland: I didn't know that the Minister of Housing was going to be here tonight and I didn't realize what a bonus it would be for me, because every time this minister comes into this House she reconfirms what we already know, which is that she does not have a clue what her non-profit housing program is about in this province.
She or her staff cannot even answer the questions of the Provincial Auditor. It wasn't me or the PC caucus who said last year that her Ministry of Housing non-profit housing program had lost $200 million; it was the Provincial Auditor who pointed out there was $200 million wasted and unaccountable. That is not a statement from a partisan opposition party. That is the Provincial Auditor. It's the Provincial Auditor who has asked her ministry for figures.
Do you know they can't even give the figures to the Provincial Auditor? They have no idea what this program costs in this province today. We have a guesstimate, and in our guesstimate all we're saying is that by the end of 1995, the taxpayers in this province will be subsidizing non-profit housing to the tune of $2 billion a year. We're saying there's a better alternative.
I'm not asking this minister to spend more money on affordable housing. I'm just asking her to come forward and be honest and say: "We know there's a better way to do it. We can spend the same money and look after four times as many people." If you subsidize an apartment at $1,900 a month at the same time that you can open the Toronto dailies and find an apartment for rent at $450 a month, which is the case of bachelor apartments they built last year for the subsidy of $1,900 a month, we're saying it's outrageous, and there has to be an end to it.
2240
Mr Bob Huget (Sarnia): I'm pleased to participate in the debate this evening and happy to see so many of my colleagues here, smiles and in good spirits, to continue an important debate for this House and for the people of Ontario.
I think it's important, at least from my perspective, to try and get an understanding of what's happening, not only here in Ontario but right across the country, and some of the reasons for that as I see them and perhaps some of the potential solutions, which include the measures in Bill 48.
I think it's no secret that many provinces in this country are wrestling with deficits and wrestling with revenue problems right across the country. I'll try and be non-partisan in referring to the goods and services tax. You can be for it or against it. I happen to be against it. But I believe one thing that federal measure has done to each and every province in Canada is to severely affect its ability to raise revenue. The federal government has moved into an area of revenue-raising that has been traditionally one of the provinces', and many provincial programs have been funded across the country by that revenue source. In this province, it was no different. I think that has had a very serious impact on the economies of every province in Canada, including Ontario.
I think the other fundamental structuring issue that we need to pay some attention to is the industrial and economic restructuring that is under way in the province of Ontario and indeed is under way right across the country. There's no question in my mind, and I have been involved, at least in industry, for quite some time, that the changes that are taking place in this province are severe. They are not minor downturns, they are not blips on a chart, they are not minor variances along a path; it's a complete restructuring of the economic base of this country. In Ontario, I think it has an even greater impact than many other provinces in the country.
As you well know, Mr Speaker, and my colleagues in the House well know, we have a very strong manufacturing base in the province of Ontario, and one of the things that appears to be the latest trend in terms of Canada's economy, and indeed the world economy, is a trend away from the manufacturing sector and a rationalization of the manufacturing sector. I think that's had a very serious impact on the ability of Ontario to raise revenues, and to a lesser extent, depending on the involvement of the manufacturing industry in other provinces, the same is true.
I think that everybody in the House can agree that this province, and indeed other provinces and in fact the federal government, are in a serious situation in dealing with deficit issues. If you look at the federal initiatives, when it was elected, it was a government that was elected to reduce the deficit. In their eight years in office, they haven't done much of a reduction in that deficit. I think, if memory serves me correctly, they've managed to achieve $8 billion in savings over eight years. It's not a lot of money.
The goods and services tax, for example, was implemented to reduce debt, and they've championed the cause of reducing debt right across the country, and they haven't done so to any measurable amount. When you take $8 million out of a debt the size of the federal debt, there isn't much there in terms of actual expenditure and debt reduction.
In the province of Ontario, because of the revenue issues, because of the economic restructuring issues, because of a very serious recession -- indeed some have termed it a depression -- there's no question that we need to get our financial house in order. It's in the best interests of everybody in this province, whether you are a public sector employer, whether you are a public sector employee, whether you are a consumer of public services, of what we hold very dear to us in terms of a standard of public service and a standard of public programs that sets this country and this province apart from others.
It's clear to me that the very future of those programs, the delivery of those services, is at risk unless there are some serious looks at how we deliver those services. How much do they cost? How do we deal with the revenue issues? Are the right services being delivered by the right people? Is the money being spent as cost-effectively as it can?
I heard earlier today from the member for York Centre, who would have me believe that there is nothing wrong with the education system in the province of Ontario, there is nothing wrong with the education system in any other province in the country, there is nothing wrong with the health care system, nothing needs to be fixed. Frankly, that's contrary to what I hear on a daily basis from many people right across the broad spectrum of both those sectors in Ontario, that indeed there are positive changes that should be made.
I'm somewhat dismayed by the approach of the Liberal Party on these particular initiatives and on this particular issue, in that I hear from several members from that party that there are no problems, there is nothing that needs to be done, everything is going to go along just the way it always did. I find that, although dismayed by it, not surprising because I think, during the period of 1985 to 1990, they certainly had an enthusiasm for spending.
They also had the revenues of a very good economy during those five years, and they would have me believe that they were somehow responsible for that. I happen to believe that they simply rode the waves of a very good economic time. I guess it's a question of responsible fiscal management. I know we are criticized from the Liberal Party that we are not able to responsibly manage an economy.
I would suggest to you that the Liberal Party, in all those good years, raising taxes as many times as it did, having the revenues that it did in a very boisterous industrial economy, would have put a dime away for a rainy day. That didn't happen and it's raining today. These are problems that I think we need to deal with, all of us in this House. It doesn't serve much purpose to point fingers, and I'm doing my best not to.
Mr Offer: Is that why your hands are folded?
Mr Huget: Yes, it's why my hands are folded. I'm simply relaying what I know to be the situation over the last four or five years. I think that we need to pay some attention to the criticism from the Conservative Party as well. This is a party which again would have me believe that they have the answers to managing an economy. They are the same Conservative Party that is involved and responsible for managing the federal debt. They are the same Conservative Party which, for example, in the province of Saskatchewan took a balanced budget and in two years arrived at a $20-billion debt.
That, to me, I guess perhaps means a little more than most people because it's a province that I was born in and I have some knowledge of the situation in Saskatchewan. Under a Conservative government in Saskatchewan that $20-billion debt was racked up in eight years and it's a serious problem for that province because they have a population of approximately one million people. Less than 400,000 of those work, and those 400,000 people are saddled with a $20-billion debt.
In my estimation, they'll pay off a little bit at a time for about two generations or three generations, so I always take the Conservative Party's comments on fiscal management with a bit of a grain of salt. They have not got, quite frankly, the track record that they would allude to or suggest that they have. When you look at the federal Conservative policies in terms of debt reduction, they have been failures. When you look at the province of Saskatchewan, which had a balanced budget under an NDP government for 11 years, and inherited a balanced budget, they are now in that $20-billion debt situation. So I have to have some reservations about the Conservative Party having all the answers.
2250
But I guess more to the point, and Bill 48, what we've tried to do in this province is approach in a responsible way a very serious issue that I believe threatens the survival of programs and services. We've done as much as we can, in fact indeed more than any other government in this province's history, to actually reduce government expenditures. We've taken $4 billion out of government expenditure programs. That's a significant amount of money by anybody's estimation. We thought that to simply take it out of government programs was not entirely fair; to take it simply from the taxpayer was not entirely fair; to take it simply from the public sector and its employees was not entirely fair.
So we have tried to proceed with what we think is a balanced and a fair approach. We've taken $4 billion out of program expenditures, we're going to raise another $2 billion through revenue increases and tax increases and we've asked the public sector and the public service to take a little bit less, to the tune of approximately $2 billion, to be the third prong of that three-pronged approach. We think it's that balanced approach that's in the best interests of all the people of Ontario, including the public sector and the public service aspect of the Ontario economy.
I think that it's easy to criticize if you are charged with no other responsibility than to criticize. I know that all of those in opposition, although I have not had the privilege of sitting in this House in opposition, have as their prime purpose, I suppose, to make sure that there is the necessary criticism levelled at the government of the day. But I believe it may be in the best interests of the people of Ontario and the public sector in Ontario that we perhaps move past that partisan approach and look at the problem in its proper perspective and look at the solution in its proper perspective.
I know it has been referred to several times this evening and over the course of other debates about the advertising campaign on the social contract, as it's referred to by the opposition at least, and the fact that we should not be communicating that message. Well, we think these are very important issues, and we think they're very important not only to the public service but they're very important to the public interest.
That communication needs to be done in a fashion that people get information that is accurate and timely rather than interpretations of information by opposition parties, which may wish to put, if you will, their spin on what's going on and communicate that to people in the province. I don't find that acceptable either. I don't find playing politics with a very serious situation to be in anybody's interest.
I think there's no question many of us on this side of the House have had to wrestle with these decisions for a long time. They have not been easy decisions to make, and they will continue to be difficult decisions to make. I think the measures we've announced in terms of the program reductions and expenditure reductions, the tax issues and now the social contract, will move us towards the end of a path, but I don't think it, by any stretch of the imagination, will take us there entirely.
I think every level of government, the federal level, the provincial level and the municipal level, will be under continuing pressure, both now in the short term and in the long term, to make sure that the services we deliver, as delivered by the public sector, are delivered in the most cost-efficient, effective way they can be delivered. There is, I believe, a situation that all government representatives from all levels of government are experiencing, and that is a great deal of concern from their constituents about the delivery of government services.
What I find interesting, particularly in the area of education, is that although people are concerned about the amount of dollars that are going into the education system, they very much want to ensure that their children have the best quality of education that's available to them. If they are convinced that the money that's allocated to education and funding in the province of Ontario is spent in the best possible way and the most cost-effective, efficient way, they're prepared to accept that.
I think the restructuring that is under way in the private sector can be compared to the restructuring that will have to go under way in the public sector. The private sector has reorganized the way it does business for a very simply reason: It had, in some cases, lost its competitive edge. It found that the old pyramid structures, the old structures of doing business and the old structures of how systems worked weren't responsive enough to allow it to remain competitive. Therefore it wasn't, I don't believe, out of the goodness of anyone's heart that they changed; it was simply a matter of competitiveness.
I think the delivery of public services can be looked at in somewhat the same way, although they are clearly different issues, but I think the approaches could be viewed as similar. I think there's a lot more room for the streamlining of government services. I think there's a lot more room for people at the bottom of that pyramid to be empowered to take more of their worklife into their own hands.
After all, if we ask public servants to make decisions at work, then surely we can ask public servants to make decisions about the way in which that work is structured and about the way it's performed. I think there are tremendous initiatives that could be undertaken in those areas to streamline and flatten out the government structure so that indeed we do achieve the necessary, I believe, efficiencies in streamlining and productivity improvements that all of us will have to see. Otherwise, I fear that public services themselves will be threatened, and I think that's a far less palatable alternative.
I think as well there have been many comments, certainly not from this side of the House but from the other side of the House, about the will to public-service-bash and take on the public service in the province of Ontario. I want to assure you, Mr Speaker, and members of this House, that I have not heard during all these deliberations, from anyone on this side of the House, a single derogatory statement about a public servant in the province of Ontario. I have not heard a single statement that would suggest for a moment that the government is attacking the public service.
I, like some members of the opposition, am very disappointed about the public reaction to what they perceive as perhaps an opportunity to grind an axe with somebody they may have wanted to grind an axe with in the public service over the years. That's very unfortunate, because it certainly is no one's intent. There are public servants in this province at all levels who do a tremendous job, always have and always will.
I think it's interesting, from my perspective, to understand that there isn't a public servant in the province who wants to go out and do an inefficient, cost-inefficient job. That's just not the way they are. In my experience anyway, they've wanted to do the best job they could. However, in some cases the system doesn't allow them to do that.
Laughter.
Mr Huget: I was distracted by the laughter over there. I somewhat regret that I am not privy to the joke; however, I can only hope that I'm not the joke. It is a serious issue and I can appreciate that it's late in the evening and people may be a little bit giggly, but I really think it's an important issue and it should get the respect it deserves.
In any event, again I want to make sure that people fully understand that the public service in this province is not the enemy. I'm interested by the Conservative leader's approach to the public service over the last couple of years that I've been here. He's been much harsher than certainly I could even imagine. He has suggested I guess many times that his answer would be much more severe than ours.
What we've done in attempting to deal with this entire public sector issue through a social contract approach was to do exactly the opposite of what Liberals and Conservatives would do. We are very proud of the fact and have wrestled a great deal with the approach to make sure that we are fair and balanced in our approach with the public sector.
I think this government has got an obligation to the people of Ontario, including the public sector, including the public service, but also including the public interest. We were, in my opinion, elected to protect and preserve all three of those, not the least of which is the public interest.
2300
I believe that if we choose a course of non-action at this particular point in time, the result of not taking any action whatsoever would be very, very detrimental to the future of this province and its public services and its programs, and no doubt would be very detrimental to the future generations that have to come along. I refer specifically to the Saskatchewan example, where I believe firmly that many generations will be paying off that debt.
I want to make it clear that the Ontario government is keeping an eye on the debt because we'd rather spend public dollars on job creation and on services like health care and education than on interest payments. If we didn't, the province would continue to see a massive transfer of its wealth from average Ontarians to bond holders, many of whom live outside Canada. I think that's important when you look at the level of borrowing that this province does and where we borrow it, the fact that not very much of it, I believe, is borrowed within Canada and not very much in North America. The debt problems and the public debt interest are significant financial problems for us and a significant financial windfall for people in Zurich and Tokyo and London and New York. Frankly, if we're dealing with public money, in my humble opinion that money is much more advantageous to the people of Ontario if it's here in Ontario rather than being transferred overseas in the form of public debt interest.
In closing, I'd like to say that the measures being implemented through this legislation were tabled at the previous social contract negotiations. They represent the fairest way to achieve the government's $2-billion target while preserving jobs and services. The legislation encourages the social contract partners at the sector and local levels to negotiate ways to achieve their savings targets. The deadline for those negotiations, as we all know, is August 1. On that date, the legislation imposes measures to achieve the savings targets if the parties -- and I have to stress, if the parties -- have not agreed. This is part of the government's fair and balanced plan to control the debt in order to invest in jobs and services. The other components of the plan have already been implemented. We've cut spending by $4 billion and increased tax and non-tax revenues by $2.7 billion.
The social contract legislation is about a framework for sector and local negotiations between employers and workers. It's about achieving greater productivity and efficiency in the delivery of public services. It has in it very progressive measures on job security. It ensures that low-income public sector employees are not affected. And it has firm deadlines and realistic objectives.
We on this side of the House believe these measures will help to put Ontario back on track and will help to preserve and ensure quality public services in the province of Ontario.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I thank the honourable member for Sarnia for his contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments.
Mr Elston: Listening to the member for Sarnia, I couldn't help but think that this, like that of so many of the other members over there, must be quite a turnaround from where they used to spend most of their time in advocating for various things to occur, generally in respect of collective bargaining and other activities resulting in higher wages and a whole series of better benefits and better working conditions for the people who were working in the union movement. I understand that the member has been very active in his home community. I know his record has been an enviable one as he's asserted the rights of working people in Sarnia. I can't help but ask myself how it is that there has come to be so much of a change in the way that party now approaches government.
I'm not trying to be mischievous really, because I have seen so many of the people there through the years, as a minister at one point, but as a brand-new member from 1981 to 1985. In my first term I sat in the justice committee and dealt with Bills 179 and 111 which, you may recall, were the Davis government's attempts at controlling the escalation of wages. In those days, and I think I'm right, the one amount was 6% and the other amount was 5% hikes in the wage rates for those years 1981 and 1982.
The New Democrats were the ones who pushed and screamed and yelled the loudest, I think, although some of us Liberals who were there also took exception to the fact that collective agreements were being opened up; in fact, in many ways were being terminated and recast by this legislation brought on by Davis and his colleagues. It was defended in those days by the Tories as being necessary. Now the New Democrats as government are defending this vile turnaround as necessary because they are government.
Mrs Marland: I welcome the opportunity to comment on the member for Sarnia's 30-minute speech. I noticed there was an absolute dearth of any reference to a very major budget item of your government, that being the non-profit housing program. I think it's a little unfortunate that you chose not to speak about non-profit housing, because that is going to be one of the biggest millstones around the neck of your government in the next two years that you remain in office. It certainly will be an issue when you run for election. By that time, people will understand just how serious it is in terms of the ongoing legacy of your government, the colloquialism that is often used about shopping with our grandchildren's and our great-grandchildren's credit cards. The non-profit housing program in this province is not a solution.
For a party which always proclaimed when it was in opposition that it wanted to look after those people in our society who need support, we are completely disappointed, because there are programs we would initiate where we would fulfil our responsibility in society.
Hon Ms Gigantes: Spend, spend, spend; another add-on program.
Mrs Marland: The Minister of Housing says, "Spend, spend, spend." It's almost criminal for that minister to say we are suggesting spend, spend, spend. What we're saying is, use the money wisely and look after four times as many people.
Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): I just wanted to get up and say to the members of the House and those watching that once in a while it's good to see somebody stand in their place, like the member for Sarnia did, and talk about the difficult situation we're in, how we're grappling with it. Give us a little bit of understanding, because it's too easy to get wrapped up in the rhetoric of this place.
It's important that the viewers at home who have a chance to see this realize that this is something that is very difficult for a lot of members to deal with. Of course, the opposition members keep saying, "It's shameful for you from the trade union movement to be doing such a thing" like offering a collective bargaining process to people to work through this process.
2310
The member for Sarnia said it quite well this evening about the very difficult process we're going through. He talked about the need for the collective bargaining to continue. It would have been easier, I suppose, if we were opposition members, to stand back and say, "This isn't collective bargaining," but the fact is that we've extended the deadline. The unions walked away from the table, which disappointed an awful lot of us. We all got phone calls back in our constituency offices about this. In fact, many of us were even picketed. But when we had a chance to talk to some of those people, a lot of them didn't even know exactly what was on the table and what was even being talked about.
The member for Sarnia talked about that and explained the issue in far greater detail, of course, than the rhetoric we've heard. All we've heard is, "We told you that you shouldn't spend the money," and then they stand up in question period and say, "Why don't you give me some more money for this program?" That's a darn shame, because it just adds to the cynicism out there.
I want to commend the member for Sarnia because he got up, he stood in his place and talked about exactly the difficult situation we're in and explained the process quite well.
Mr Offer: I'd like to respond to the statement from the member for Sarnia. It is just a little bit tough to take, and I'll tell you why it's a little bit tough to take.
It wasn't more than a year ago that this Legislature was debating Bill 40, the changes to the Ontario Labour Relations Act, and the member for Sarnia not only took part in that debate but also was on the committee that looked into Bill 40 and the amendments to the Ontario Labour Relations Act. As he was in favour of that act and I stood opposed, that member would say how important it is to protect the collective bargaining agreements.
Mr Stockwell: Who said that?
Mr Offer: The member for Sarnia said, day in and day out, that what is required is a framework that ensures a smooth collective bargaining process that protects the rights of workers, that enshrines in legislation, if not an awareness, at the very least a feeling of justification so that there will be real ongoing bargaining between workers and management, that this is how we are going to build the province. I was opposed to the bill because I believe it took away rights of workers, but the member, day in and day out, said how important it was.
Now the member speaks about cynicism on the part of the general public about government. I must say, with all due respect, it is a real stretch to listen to the member speak about Bill 48 today and about Bill 40 nine months ago. Believe me, it is like day and night.
The Speaker: The member for Sarnia has up to two minutes for his response.
Mr Huget: I listened very carefully to the comments of my colleagues on the other side of the House and to the member for Mississauga North. I would have to say that while he may find this a stretch for his imagination, I certainly find his position on this bill a stretch for my imagination.
When it comes to working people in this province, I am particularly proud of what we've been able to achieve for working men and women in this province. He refers to the Ontario Labour Relations Act, and he's quite right, I'm very proud of that act and very proud that bill was passed. I want to remind people in this province that this member's party and the other party were opposed to that legislation and, I imagine, continue to oppose it. In fact, the Conservative Party, as I understand it, would repeal it.
We put wage protection programs in place in this province that weren't there before. We've initiated the Ontario investment and employee ownership program. We're dealing with pay equity, we are dealing with employment equity and we're dealing with the minimum wage. We're doing what previous governments in this province ignored, and those are the issues that affect working men and women in this province and they were ignored by those people during their terms of office.
I have to tell you that I do indeed have great faith in the collective bargaining process. I've spent quite some time in my life dealing in that process, and I take offence at someone who would suggest that they know what I would feel like as a trade unionist, because they wouldn't; they're not. I simply have more faith in the system than they do.
This bill will allow negotiations if people wish to negotiate, and I believe that there are responsible people in this province who will come to the table and negotiate. I am not nearly as sceptical or cynical as the members across the way. When I want to get advice about negotiations, I'll ask someone else. In my view, the opposition parties could not negotiate a trip to the washroom.
The Speaker: Is there further debate?
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I'd like to pick up where the previous member left off by indicating that few people could negotiate as the current government has negotiated. I think he's correct in that. I think the record will show that no provincial government in the modern period has ever been forced to introduce a bill of this kind. I think you'd probably have to go back to the latter years of the late, great Mitchell Hepburn to find something akin to Bill 48.
I've been listening to the debate for the last couple of days, I've been watching this striptease over the course of the last number of weeks and I'm going to try to take a somewhat different tack than a number of the previous speakers, because I have to believe that for people watching this debate out there it must become very tiresome to hear a kind of round-robin blame society. To listen to the New Democrats complain about the federal Tories, to listen to the Tories blame the provincial Liberals, to hear the Liberals complain about themselves perhaps, I don't really think advances the cause, at least for my constituents.
I will say that I had an interesting experience the other night. I called a town hall meeting in the city of Pembroke on Thursday night for purposes of a discussion of the social contract. I had 150 people come out to essentially berate me for some of the things that I said in support of the difficult situation in which we now find ourselves and for which, in a sense, we're all responsible. I want to be very clear about that: Each of us in our own way, I think, has some measure of blame for the current situation.
I think it is not unreasonable to say that the incumbent government, charged with the responsibilities of office for some almost 32 months now, has some particular responsibility, because it has been the superintendent of public finances in this province during the course of the last three years when there has been a very significant, measurable decline in economic activity and revenues to the provincial treasury. One did not need to be a rocket scientist to see how $45 billion worth of revenue became $43 billion worth of revenue, which became $41 billion worth of revenue.
I think the experience of the Rae government appears now to parallel the Mitterrand government which, in the early 1980s, took office in another place, faced something of the same kind of economic situation and decided for the first two and a half years of its mandate to spend its way out of the recession. It was not able to do so and then embarked upon a very different course which in some ways -- in others it doesn't, but in some ways -- parallels the action of the Ontario New Democratic government.
I say to my friends on behalf of my constituents, who said to me the other night that they're really tired of all the blame, they're tired of panaceas, they're now all from Missouri, they're very, very sceptical, they don't believe very much of what any of us has to say, that we've all managed, in our own way, to debase the political currency to quite a spectacular level, and the Clinton administration, among others, seems to be continuing that pattern. I sit and I listen and, boy, I'll tell you, I'm impressed by the fact that some very thoughtful people in this place continue to offer things that are manifestly impossible. I would really invite people to think twice about doing that, because we all have some very, very difficult choices to face, we've got some very painful medicine to administer and the patient is showing signs of restlessness and worse that give me some very real pause.
2320
I shouldn't just characterize my meeting the other night as a meeting where I was condemned by everyone, although I was showing my friend from Bruce the headlines in the Pembroke paper of Friday, June 18, "Conway Blasted on Social Contract." It goes on for several paragraphs to highlight some of the testimony that was offered by largely public sector union leadership at that meeting, which felt very, very deeply aggrieved by what the Rae government had done and is doing with this policy and especially with Bill 48.
There were obviously a goodly number of people at my meeting who did not speak in the public session but indicated to me afterwards, as public servants or as citizens working outside of the public sector, a willingness to rethink the way in which we do business in the province and understanding that we've reached a point where we are going to have to, as the member for Sarnia indicated, do some things differently. I think that there is a very broad base of support in the community for some of what the government wants to do.
To be sure, I probably could entertain the House better than most people about how Bill 48 is a transparent prostitution by any social democratic government in this province. When I think that Bob Rae has authored this -- I've heard Bradley and I've heard others, but who needs it? I wouldn't for a moment visit the kind of, to quote Irving Layton, "nauseous crapperoo" that characterized Bob Rae for so many years as he excoriated governments of a Liberal or a Tory stripe for their manifest deficiencies.
Those of us who have been here a while and remember the speeches of the NDP back in 1976, when the Davis government had opted into the Trudeau anti-inflation legislation -- was anybody around? There probably isn't anybody here who remembers, though. It was something to hear Stephen Lewis and Jim Renwick and all of those people. Bud Wildman was here; as I recall, he was very busily attending to his electoral fences back in Algoma since the Tories were determined, in the election that was expected any day then, to get him out of here. But I'll tell you, I remember the speeches that were offered at that time about just how incredibly unjust this was from that great democrat Pierre Trudeau, and now of course, 17 or however many years later, we have Bill 48 authored by, as my friend from Etobicoke West likes to say, Robert K. Rae QC.
But as I say, blaming people at this point doesn't satisfy me and, more importantly, doesn't do my constituents any good whatsoever. I think it is fair to say that we really have turned a page, and I think our political culture's changed more dramatically in the last few months and perhaps the last year than it's changed in my almost 20 years here now. I'm detecting things in my community and in my own family that were unthinkable two or three years ago. The level of pain, the level of anguish, the level of uncertainty caused by the current restructuring, depression, economic upset -- call it what you will -- is unprecedented in my adult life. There are people in all walks of life, in all communities in this province and country and in much of the developed world today who are apparently prepared to throw overboard some of the verities of the last 50 years.
I see in Japan there are some revolutionary things happening to the governing political élite there. The Italians have decided the time has come to throw overboard a lot of their political conventions. We have a Tory party in this country that has just chosen a sharp-tongued female from Vancouver as its leader and Prime Minister. That indicates to me that times have changed in ways that might not have been imagined just 5 or 10 years ago.
I look at Bill 48 and ask myself, how did we get here? Well, we got here through a variety of ways and means. It was, and I've said this before -- I was interested to hear my friend the member for Mississauga South opine earlier tonight about the particular virtues of her ideological offerings. I would only say to her that in 1975, when I came here, on an expenditure plan of I think it was $12 billion, the sainted Darcy McKeough had a deficit of $2 billion. Mr Speaker, you might remember that. Can you imagine a $2-billion deficit on a $12-billion expenditure plan in the salad years of the mid-1970s? That happened. It happened here. I often think to myself today, how did the sainted Duke of Kent, W. Darcy McKeough, ever get that budget through a Tory cabinet? I know how he got it through a Tory cabinet. They were on the eve of an election they were expecting to lose, rather like -- do you remember Frank Miller's June 4, 1985, offering to this assembly? I remember it well.
Mrs Marland: I remember it, because I was in the government then.
Mr Conway: Indeed. I would say to my friend from Mississauga, if that June 4 speech from the throne is something you really believed in --
Mrs Marland: I moved it.
Mr Conway: You moved it. Well, then, I can only say this: I think it was Oscar Wilde who once observed that all saints have a past and all sinners have a future, because that June 4, 1985, document was quite a special piece, and for people to stand here today and say, "We're without sin in these matters," is I think a bit precious. To be ecumenical about this, there is no doubt that the Peterson government, of which I was a part, cranked up spending to a level that could not be sustained in anything but extremely expansionary times.
Having said that, I looked around my meeting the other night at a number of the people who were there and condemning the Rae government and who then said, "You people" -- meaning Peterson, Conway et al who were in government 1985-90 -- "spent money like drunken sailors." I looked at some of these people and I thought, and I said, "Well, I remember a couple of efforts, not particularly heroic ones, by myself and my ministerial colleagues in the late 1980s to turn down spending." I looked at this room, and I saw some very people there in that room Thursday night who were determined not to let those expenditure controls take effect, and the teacher leadership and others won the day, game, set and match. At the risk of being a little bit confessional, to see Bob Rae in Bill 48 dip into the teachers' pension fund to provide for the discounts on expenditure control --
Hon Ms Gigantes: It doesn't do that.
Mr Conway: Oh, it doesn't. I mean, I just have to say, who would have thought that possible? I see my friend the member from north Hastings here, and he will remember those passionate debates of the late 1980s in the staff rooms in Bancroft and Madoc and elsewhere and that rotten Nixon, that corrupt Peterson, that obsequious Conway, who sought to "steal from our pensions." Remember those debates? And I give the teacher leadership credit: game, set and match.
Well, four years later, we face now some intrusions into those worlds that were, by the standards of the late 1980s, unthinkable. Sometimes victories are pyrrhic. Sometimes victories are painful and pyrrhic, and I think back to some of the victories of five years ago in which honourable members opposite participated gleefully. And they helped. They certainly helped to bring us to this point.
Having indicated that, however, I think we do have to recognize as a community that for the time being at least the salad days are over. We have reached the limits of growth. I don't know whether people read these budget documents very carefully, but it is interesting to see --
Mr Stockwell: Gerry does.
Mr Conway: My friend is right. The member for Scarborough-Agincourt reads them very carefully. But it is very interesting to me to look at the budgetary figures for the last three years to see something unprecedented in the last 50 years, and that is three years in which government revenues have declined significantly and steadily. That is a very un-Ontario kind of fiscal reality, and I don't think a lot of people inside this place and a lot of people outside of this place have yet understood that reality. Sure there are speeches given about, "We've reached the limits of growth." Well, we have. Oh, we have in a big way reached the limits of growth, and it is now going to mean something very, very significant to all of us.
We developed in this jurisdiction in the last 20 years a number of entitlement programs. My favourite is the Ontario drug benefit program. I say for the benefit of my friend from Bruce, who would have thought possible just a couple of years ago that the day would arise when almost by executive fiat the Minister of Health would stand up and say, "I'm going to take 15% of the funding out of that entitlement program in one year"?
2330
I remember when Bill Davis tried that about 10 years ago, and he tried much, much less than that, and I'll tell you, he was chased back into the tent so fast that he never opened his mouth on the subject ever again in the course of his premiership.
Now we have the very heroic member for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, and she is going to strip $195 million this year out of that entitlement program. Bonne chance, I say to my friend the minister, bonne chance. She'll need that and a lot of prayers. But it's a good example of an entitlement program designed 20 years ago -- I shouldn't say "designed" -- fundamentally flawed in its design at conception 20 years ago. The current government is going to face the wrath of every senior citizen in this province before the winter snows fall on the green grass of Ontario in 1993 in this particular respect.
Somebody said it in the course of this debate and I agree: The real dynamite is not in Bill 48; it's in Bill 50 and in some ways, Tories and Liberals will be able to, for a long time to come, point to this year as a watershed in the Ontario political history of this province because the Rae government is going to visit some of the most unthinkable medicine upon the Ontario electorate, and it will make the opportunities for a new government in 1995 or 1997 or 1999, I think, considerably more wide than they might otherwise have been.
But I simply say that we have recognized that we can't go on as we have. I accept my responsibility in this regard, though I have tried, sometimes unsuccessfully, to indicate that certain of our spending plans were not sustainable. I spent some time after the meeting on Thursday night with people in other parts of my constituency and the level of hurt, the level of despair, is really now starting to have an effect on me.
I have never in 18 years felt, as I have in the last few months, the sense that there's just something wrong and something profoundly out of whack, the number of people out there who feel that their job, their kid's job, their entire economic prospect is about to wash away. When they look to the legislative debate, when they look to the panoply of government, in many ways they've yet to see a recognition that people inside that protected shell, and it is still a relatively protected shell, understand the pain and the pressure outside.
I simply want to make the point that in talking to people in my area, farmers, loggers, small business people, none of whom are making any money, they're all just hanging on by their fingertips. Now I see tonight on the national news that very good economic indicators out of Statistics Canada are suggesting that the recovery is gathering steam.
Mr Carr: Boy, that Kim Campbell works quickly.
Mr Conway: The member for Oakville South says, "Boy, that Kim Campbell works quickly." My constituents hope that she turns her attention from the demons of the papacy to the demonic elements of the international economic disorder.
Mr Carr: Till Audrey takes over?
Interjection: You guys don't believe that.
Mr Stockwell: And that's as long as you keep your official party status.
Mr Conway: I will only make this point, that some one of us will be fortunate enough to win the responsibility of government in a few years. It's going to be a joy, it's going to be just the lottery prize to beat all lottery prizes. I look at Bill 48 and boy, what a Trojan Horse. The very quiet and measured Minister of Housing makes her parenthetical observations about what's in it and what's not in it. I just have to tell you that at my meeting on Thursday night, there were people who were at the social contract talks. Boy, I haven't heard in this assembly anybody as critical and as damning of those talks as that woman from the allied health group who was at the Pembroke meeting the other night, and she said she was at the talks.
I look at section 26 of this bill and, boy, that's a Trojan Horse if ever I saw one. Let me be frank: I think what the government has tried to do here is quite interesting. The whole notion of trying to bring the partners together in this kind of a dialogue is something that -- I guess it was the minister of highways who said it was not done in Quebec, it was not done in Newfoundland, it was not done in Alberta. I guess it hasn't been done in too many places, so I give the government full credit for trying.
All I say is that the process began on April 23, a month into the fiscal year. The bill is introduced on June 14. The talks are going to be allowed to continue, really, to August 10. We've got municipalities and school boards that are half or more through their year. I say to my friends, get a life. If you've ever had to manage any of these accounts, you know the sheer impossibility of what this process supposes and demands for year one. I can't support this bill because I think that particularly in terms of year one, it is totally unworkable. My guess is that you will be extremely lucky to achieve about 35% to 40% of the "savings."
Now, the Minister of Agriculture and Food shakes his head disapprovingly. He may be right, but I talked to my municipal clerks the other day. They just got the list from Municipal Affairs and they are all absolutely stupefied, trying to figure out, "Where did this stuff come from?" Now they're trying to take those numbers and fit them into the provincial criteria: Thou shalt do this, this, this and this and achieve these kinds of savings. One would have to be a magician of the kind I think found only at Gananoque last weekend to effect that kind of result.
But I simply want to say that I, on behalf of my constituents, feel that I have a mandate here to support government in a restraint position today and well into the remaining years of this decade, because it's not clear that we have very much of an alternative.
It's interesting to me when I look at the budgetary charts. Looking at the expenditure line in the 1993-94 budget, it's astonishing to realize that debt servicing costs annually in 1991 for the province of Ontario were $4.2 billion, and this year, two years later, they're going to be $7.2 billion. So that means that in just two years, I think, we've got about a $3-billion increase annually in debt servicing.
I see the Minister of Community and Social Services. Somebody told me the other day that the provincial share of social welfare had risen in three years from about $3 billion to about $6 billion.
Hon Richard Allen (Minister without Portfolio in Economic Development and Trade): That's 2.6 to 6.2.
Mr Conway: That was the number I heard. I just want everybody to think about this: In a revenue pie that is shrinking significantly, two items, debt servicing and the provincial share of social assistance, have added over $6.4 billion annually to the cost of doing business. Well, my friends, we'd just better understand that there are a lot of things that are no longer possible. Because I am a Liberal, I believe that we have got to provide a reasonable social safety net to people who are being disadvantaged and dislocated, but listening to this debate between members on all sides about the social housing policies, my impression -- it's not a big deal in Renfrew, but my impression is that, yes, the train has come off the track.
I've only got anecdotal evidence. I repeat that we've got to provide a good level of social security, but if the anecdotal evidence I'm hearing in the small towns of my constituency is at all creditable, I've got a problem as a small-l liberal and large-l Liberal, because those are programs I want to defend, but I can only defend them if they are seen by individuals in the community as being credible.
I accept that there's always going to be a measure of abuse. My friend Mr McGuinty put out a release the other day just reminding everybody that according to Revenue Canada, 25% of all Canadians cheat on their income tax filings. That's an interesting statistic, if true.
2340
Hon Mr Pouliot: That's nothing new.
Mr Conway: It's nothing new, of course, but I'm just making the point that the public finances of this province are in extremis, and the tax hit hasn't even arrived. Wait; wait for three weeks. I'm going to hide at my cottage for the last half of July because I don't want to meet the people who are going to be paying the additional $2.3-billion tax and fee increase. They are going to be unhappy.
I'll tell you, some of the people who are going to get hit hardest are the ones at my meeting the other night blasting me about the social contract. The nurse-high school teacher combination in places like Bancroft and Barry's Bay and Pembroke, oh, they are going to know Conway's and Buchanan's phone number by August 1, because making the rich pay is going to make those people pay. They're going to know that Elmer and I have been down here doing good works for the common wealth, you betcha. I tell you, I don't expect to be invited to too many garden parties this summer.
Hon Mr Pouliot: You can come to Manitouwadge. You are welcome.
Mr Conway: I have no desire to go to Manitouwadge this summer. I intend to stay at home, because, I'll tell you, we are not, any of us, I think going to be very popular. We're not going to be very popular, any of us.
I simply make the observation that an old order has passed. Much of our old political culture has passed, in my view. I personally believe that we are going to be fundamentally re-examining a number of commitments. Bill 48 already does it for me. This is ground-breaking legislation. I understand why the government has had to do it. I don't like it. I'm sure the government doesn't like it. But I don't see that we've got very much choice.
The criticism that I would level against the government is that, with the best of intentions, they waited too long before they moved. They waited about 18 months too long. I think I can understand why they might have temporized, but temporize they did, and the price will now be paid.
But let there be no confusion: The way in which we have engaged in political debate and made policy in this province, whether you are a true Progressive Conservative, a traditional Liberal or a social democrat, the sun has set on most of that. It may be that the centre left is going to be so discredited that the only alternative that is going to appeal to people is some kind of a Preston Manning, right-wing alternative. Watching the Ralph Klein victory the other night, and I watched it all, I thought to myself that's not impossible.
I would simply say, though, that as we look at public expenditures in the coming months and years, we are going to have to be as good as some of our rhetoric, because I continue to see in my own constituency an active interventionist government raining programs and raining money on my constituents' heads in a way that is not going to be very well received and not very helpful. Because, you see, there is a very real dissonance; people read the Saturday Pembroke Observer or the Saturday Ottawa Citizen and see the big ad, and I might be a bit heretical in saying this, but they sort of say, "Yeah, Bob, I think you're right." Then they pick up another paper and Bud Wildman or Marilyn Churley or Tony Silipo announces the following, and some of it looks like harebrained nonsense.
Interjection: That's all of them.
Mr Conway: I'm sure in individual packages it's all wonderful stuff, but there is a very real dissonance between the main message and the individual pieces. It's a criticism not just of the government, because it's certainly a criticism of any of us who now keep going back to a well and saying -- Mike Harris has a great line. He once said to me, "Well, I know it's kind of wasteful, but Nipissing deserves its share of the government's waste." I think I quote him almost precisely.
I hope that's just a bit of rhetoric and not any kind of serious offering, because I never thought I'd see the day that Bill 48 would be introduced by a social democratic government in this province. I will support the underlying ambitions of the policy, because we have no choice. I will not support the legislation because, as my leader has pointed out, it is a nightmare, it's unworkable, it's not going to achieve the ambitions the government has set for it. I will await as the coming days and weeks present even more unbelievable presentations from this government on these and related matters.
Mr Harnick: It's always very interesting to hear the member for Renfrew debate a bill, particularly a bill as important as this bill is. It was particularly interesting tonight, because I thought I would hear where the Liberal Party was going in terms of the alternatives it was offering to solve a very difficult problem. When we got to the very end of the member's speech he said something to the effect that he supports the fundamental principle of what the government is trying to do but doesn't support this piece of legislation. Unfortunately, at that stage his half-hour ended. I don't know whether he did that deliberately to leave us guessing or whether he had intended to do that and reached the climax, and it was all over, the half-hour had elapsed.
I am no wiser in attempting to debate with my friends in the Liberal Party because I still don't know what they would do in the circumstances. I've heard one of the most respected members and probably the best debater in this House say that in principle he supports what the government is doing, that he recognizes the problem and supports the effort, I believe, to try and solve or make better the problem we have. But then in what appears to be a contradiction, he says, "But I don't support this legislation."
I am more confused now about where the Liberal Party stands and what alternatives it's offering than I was before. Quite frankly, I thought that when the member from Renfrew was finished I would be enlightened. I enjoyed his speech but I am none the wiser as to where this party really stands on this very significant problem.
Hon Mr Wildman: I must say that I listened attentively to my friend from Renfrew North and I disagree somewhat with the sentiments of my colleague from Willowdale.
I don't believe the last comment of the member from Renfrew North was the climax of his speech; rather, to me, it was the denouement. The climax, I guess, was the philosophy of what the member sees, in a thoughtful way, as the future of politics in this province, if not in Canada and North America. I think he was referring to it as a sort of watershed and the change in the way all parties, whether they be right-wing, centrist or left-wing, will have to deal with questions of economic and fiscal policy in the future.
I do understand, I think, the position taken by the member for Renfrew North with regard to his philosophical support for the principle. That might lead to the member for Willowdale's conclusion that, on second reading, the member for Renfrew North should in fact be supporting the legislation and then, if he believes there are significant changes that should be made, should be prepared to introduce amendments at the committee stage.
But I think the most important part of the speech, and one which is worth marking, is the very fact that the member for Renfrew North believes there are major changes taking place in the restructuring of our economy which will require new economic and political answers for the future, and for that reason I found the speech quite interesting and thought-provoking.
2350
Mr Elston: As is normally the case, the member for Renfrew North has touched on several subjects which have not been touched on by other members. But he brings to mind some other points which are interesting and that he did not have time to get into, one of them being section 26 of the act which, he mentioned in passing, is the designation of "critical" jobs in the public and broader public sectors.
It's going to be an interesting test of this particular legislation to describe or delineate the terms which are used in this new bill, because if you look at it, the language is like a strategic plan for an opening or reopening of negotiations, which of course is what it purports to be. But we haven't really got a piece of legislation anywhere that describes "critical." We have terms like "essential services" and other descriptive terms which prescribe the workings of certain of the public sector employees, but never before have we had this word "critical," and it's going to have to be redefined for the people.
The bargains are going to have to be struck between now and August 1 or August 10, depending on which date really is the active one. There are some people in the public sector and broader public sector who will not be represented by any negotiating team whatsoever and will have their terms of contract prescribed by the ministers. That is very unfair, because if you can't convince the minister that you ought to have a negotiating unit developed for you or to represent your interests as a member of a non-bargaining unit group, then you are out of luck and you fall to the "fail-safe" mechanism.
There are provisions in this clause that will become very devastating for people trying to reach an agreement. At the same time, transfers are limited or start to be cut back on July 1.
Hon Mr Pouliot: One more time and it can border on the repetitious, but certainly it is more than worthy of mention: the eloquence, and the admiration that has been voiced by colleagues from all sides of the House. There are some debates where the member from Renfrew comes as close as possible to rising above partisan lines. This was yet another example, and we're pleased on this side of the House that the philosophy, the intent, the spirit, the compendium of Bill 48 is being recognized by the member.
In fact, quoting him verbatim, he mentioned that perhaps 18 months ago would have been better timing in hindsight. Hindsight is a quality that never leaves the member, for he uses massive, consequential data of what has happened in the past to help him with the present and, hopefully, propel him in the future.
Hence the challenge. He talks about the mechanics and questions the ability of the government to reconcile within six months with the transfer agencies. I'm talking here in terms of the fiscal year. Yet in our own provincial fiscal year, starting on April 1, we're into it by the better part of three months.
He also questions the ability of the government to reconcile the bottom line: "Will you be able, under the present conditions, to achieve it?" It's a challenge, three months, six months down the line, with the collective efforts of all involved, of all the partners, if it were true, all this, and this is what we're all about: to face and meet the challenge. We don't shoot to kill; we involve people in the collective. It wasn't done in eastern Canada and it wasn't done in western Canada. For the first time since Confederation, people are sitting down, a population of 10.2 million people, and the future, short-term and long-term, will give us reason. But we'll only prove the government of Ontario right if people give it a chance, and that includes both official opposition parties.
The Speaker: The honourable member for Renfrew North has up to two minutes for his reply.
Mr Conway: I appreciate the comments of all members. I have a great regard for my friend from Willowdale and I appreciate his criticism. I want to deal very quickly with it, because I didn't plan to take time to address all the issues he pointed to in his criticism.
I would simply say this to my friend from Willowdale: As a Liberal, I would like to think that if we were in government in the very different circumstances of the 1990s, we would have pursued a very different fiscal policy in the period 1991 through 1994 than the current government, which difference I understand. Beyond that, I would say that a Liberal government, if it were to take office in 1995, on my recommendation would be a very different kind of government from the one we saw in the 1980s, simply because the times are so different. I would be recommending to my colleagues a very, very narrow, sharply focused agenda, highlighting two or three areas: certainly education and training, an investment climate and probably one other, in the area of ongoing health care reform.
There's a criticism that I think one could make of Liberals, and I think it's also true of social democrats and the old Progressive Conservatives; if you're a Manning Tory, it's not a problem because you're operating in a much, much more narrow band. But it's the notion that the government can solve everybody's problem, that we've got a program and spending for everything, from the dairy improvement herd to whatever else. I would be saying that in a new government I would be much more interested, because of a very different kind of fiscal environment, that we're going to have to be much more focused. We are going to have to create a business and investment climate that will, hopefully, produce and create more activity, more employment, more wealth. We're going to have to look, as a provincial responsibility, at significant changes in the areas of education, training and health care, and back away from all kinds of expensive and, in the end, distracting and counterproductive intrusions elsewhere.
Mr Harnick: It's always interesting to follow the member for Renfrew North. In the very few moments we have left, to take up on his last comments, I found them very interesting as well as finding his speech interesting. I find it somewhat refreshing that, all of a sudden, everyone in this House believes that the government is too big, does too many things, tries to be too much for all concerned.
The member from Ottawa is shaking her head. I know she would like to do everything for everyone and still believes she can promise everything to everyone and deliver. She might think that, but that has not been the record of her government. She treads on very thin ice when she makes those comments.
When I first came to this place and members of my party talked about smaller, less intrusive government, people scoffed. I remember that because that's one of my initial reactions of coming here. Now I see those who scoffed the loudest talking in the loudest and most strident terms of the need to downsize, of the need to watch spending, of the need to scale down. I remember when I came here that people laughed when you said: "Boy, we spend too much money. We don't have the money that we're spending. You can't tax people any more." All of those were principles that everyone laughed at because everybody thought we were dealing with a bottomless pit, a pit full of money, that you could just do whatever you wanted to do. We found out, obviously the hard way, that you can't operate that way.
I find it very refreshing when the member for Renfrew North -- and I wish he had more time to expound on it -- believes that the focus of government has to be much more narrow. I tend to agree with him. I think that is the way one has to view this particular piece of legislation. I think the way we got to it and the fact that it's as drastic as it is -- and there's a lot about this legislation that I find particularly very dangerous, but the fact is that we had to come to this. I think this piece of legislation probably is beyond the needs --
Mr Speaker, I see you're motioning to me. I look at the clock and I see that it's almost 12 of the clock, so I would move that we adjourn the debate.
The Speaker: I don't like to interrupt wisdom, of course. The honourable government House leader.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): Just very briefly, flowing out of my statement of last Thursday night on business of this week, which was for today and to be announced thereafter, I'd like to comment on tomorrow's business.
Tomorrow, we will be resuming the adjourned debate on second reading of Bills 48 -- which we've been debating this evening -- 79, 32 and 34, resuming the adjourned debate on third reading of Bill 102 and commencing to conduct second reading debates on Bills 25 and 29 and third reading debates on Bills 61 and 169, as well as hoping to move to conducting debate on government notices of motion numbers 5 and 7.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): It being 12 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow afternoon.
The House adjourned at 2400.