Hansard Transcript 1993-Jul-07 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): With the concentration of attention on so-called social contract negotiations and legislation and fighting deficits, members of the Ontario Legislature should not forget about the plight of thousands of General Motors employees in St Catharines who face the tragic loss of their jobs and the disruption of their personal lives.

The announced closing of the General Motors St Catharines foundry and the discontinuation of one of the lines at the engine plant, together with the indefinite layoff of 750 men and women last year, will result in about 3,000 people joining the ranks of the unemployed in the Niagara region. The sale by GM of the axle plant could eliminate another 800 positions and mean that almost half of the jobs in the St Catharines General Motors operation could disappear.

I remind the Premier and the government of Ontario of the human tragedy for those directly affected and the economic devastation for St Catharines and the Niagara region of the approximately $175-million loss of wages and salaries on a yearly basis.

Help us to find a buyer and operator for the excellent axle plant and seek out the very top officials of GM to encourage them to place massive new investments in St Catharines that will save the jobs and restore the community to the economic health it enjoyed for so many years. St Catharines, the Niagara region and those directly affected who may lose their jobs count on the Ontario government to help and to be of assistance.

GOVERNMENT LEGISLATION

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): Last night a group of very concerned citizens, led by Dr John Wright, met in Owen Sound to discuss the implications of two very dangerous and destructive pieces of legislation: Bill 48, the Social Contract Act, and Bill 50, the Expenditure Control Plan Statute Law Amendment Act.

As it is written, Bill 48 will tear apart the collective bargaining process, which has been a fundamental right in this province for years. It clearly tells the broader public sector -- our municipalities, universities, school boards, hospitals and conservation authorities -- that they can no longer trust the provincial government and that all the deals they made in good faith with it are off. The people in my riding still cannot believe that any government, and certainly not a socialist government, would want to set such a far-reaching precedent.

Bill 50 is just as bad. It will completely destroy the health care system in Ontario, it will force doctors who do not wish to leave to move outside the province and it tells new doctors who have trained here and whose roots are here they are not wanted. It will deprive patients of their right to choose the doctor they want and could easily deny vital medical services to those who need them most.

The people of Grey are angry and they are confused. They thought the NDP government would be a compassionate government, and now they see it picking their pockets while it tramples on their rights. They see that they are not consulted and their voices are not heard. They have finally learned the meaning of the word "undemocratic."

One of my constituents gave me something to give to the Premier. It is a hat which reads: "Hold your tongue. Democracy is dead in Ontario." In my view, it says it all, and I will deliver it to the Premier when he gets here.

CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP

Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): Our country has just celebrated its birthday, and I'd like to rise today to acknowledge a birthday of sorts for some of my constituents who, in their eyes, are only seven days old, seven days into their lives as Canadian citizens.

Last Wednesday I had the privilege of attending a citizenship ceremony in Oshawa, where I witnessed 52 men, women and children who pledged their allegiance to our country. They vowed to be loyal, responsible citizens in their adopted country. They have not turned their backs on their homeland. They still have families and past lives there. Instead they're reaching out to their new country to grasp its language, customs, rights and responsibilities. They eagerly took Canada to heart, with all of its imperfections, and don't understand why other Canadians don't recognize how lucky we are here.

The enthusiasm in that courtyard was electrifying, the people from all over the globe speaking many different languages, all excited at the prospect of becoming Canadians.

I chatted with several of these proud new citizens. It was an auspicious occasion in their lives. They spoke of the hardship of their native countries and the courage it took to leave behind the only way of life they knew. They came to a new country, learned our languages, our ways and our system of government. Now they speak of the majesty of our land, the safety and security of our cities and the unshakeable belief that they were right in coming to Canada and then becoming Canadian citizens.

More than that, their patriotism shows in their expressions and humbles those of us who were born in this country and so often take it for granted.

PARAMEDIC SERVICES

Mr Dalton McGuinty (Ottawa South): The Minister of Health should be aware that the people of Ottawa-Carleton, unlike the people of Toronto, Hamilton, Oshawa and 50 other Canadian cities, do not have a paramedic emergency service.

In Ottawa-Carleton, our ambulance attendants have not been trained to give advanced life support. Consequently, they cannot start an IV, they cannot administer medication and they cannot intubate to help a victim breathe. All they can do in the case of a heart attack is defibrillate their patient. This is one of the important reasons why, in Ottawa-Carleton, we have one of North America's lowest survival rates for heart attack victims. In fact our survival rate is under 3% when it could be much closer to 30%.

The district health council has now endorsed a proposal to upgrade the training given to our ambulance attendants to make them full paramedics. This proposal has also received the unanimous support of all seven of our emergency department directors and the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians.

Through no fault of their own, our ambulance attendants in Ottawa-Carleton are, in the overwhelming majority of heart attack cases, simply delivering dead bodies to one of our emergency wards. This could easily be changed for the better if our ambulance officers were given paramedic skills.

Madam Minister, we're not asking for more ambulances, more attendants or even more equipment. We're simply asking for more training -- training that will result in a huge payoff for heart attack victims in Ottawa-Carleton, as well as their families and friends.

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LONG-TERM CARE

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): The NDP marked Seniors' Month in June this year by serving notice on the frail and elderly residents of nursing homes and homes for the aged that they would be hit by increases in their cost of living.

Seniors, many of whom are on fixed incomes, were devastated to learn that they will now have to pay extra amounts of up to $12 per day or $372 per month. The NDP has also inflicted additional stress on seniors in extended care homes and their families by creating anxiety over who will or won't be affected by the announced increases.

This year rent control increases of 4.9% were allowed by legislation for the general public. In a nursing home or home for the aged, increases of up to 32% are being imposed. When it comes to rent control, the NDP has all kinds of booklets that specify how it works and what the responsibilities of landlords are. That is, unless your landlord happens to be the NDP. In that case, and as seniors have found, the landlord forgoes responsibility.

As the PC advocate for seniors, I opposed and voted against Bill 101, the NDP long-term care legislation, because it delists extended care from OHIP and gives the green light for unilateral actions, such as this latest one, that further erode seniors' savings and rights.

Instead of living up to its funding promises with respect to long-term care for and in consultation with Ontario seniors, the NDP has become a sniper in the war it is waging on seniors' services. I call on the government to reconsider its actions and declare a ceasefire with respect to seniors living in nursing homes and homes for the aged. Otherwise, seniors will help ensure that the next provincial election will become the government's last battle.

TUG OF WAR CHAMPIONS

Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): It is my pleasure today to bring to the House's attention the 100th anniversary of a great achievement by a handful of hardy men from Zorra township in my riding of Oxford.

Five farmers from Zorra -- Alex Clark, Robert McLeod, Ira Hummason, William Munro and Bob McIntosh -- travelled to the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 to take on the globe's best in a tug of war contest. Known far and wide as the Mighty Men of Zorra, they battled all comers on July 4 and came away as the world champions.

In the late 1800s, tug of war was a serious sport and was included in the early Olympic games. A tug of war team consisted of five pulling members and a non-pulling captain, whose function was to provide the strategy, while the rest of the team provided the raw power.

At the World's Fair, teams from around the world had been eliminated, setting the stage for a final showdown between the Zorras and an American team. In a best two out of three pulls, the Mighty Men of Zorra, captained by Ebenezer Sutherland -- no relation -- were victorious.

Two of my constituents, Eleanor and Ken Ovington, designed a set of commemorative coins. The Zorra Caledonian Society ordered more than 1,000 of these coins and offered them for sale to the public at the 56th annual Highland Games held in Embro on Canada Day.

On the front the coins show an 1890s tug of war competitor pulling a rope with an enlarged world tug of war championship cup in the background, with the names of the five champions.

The Mighty Men of Zorra were not only sporting champions but epitomized the very virtues that have made Ontario great: that ability to pull together to achieve a common goal.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): At 5:45 pm today, the final vote on Bill 48 will take place. As you know, Mr Speaker, I've been concerned about what the Conservative caucus was going to do throughout the social contract process.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): They are on side now.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mrs Caplan: First it was Mike Harris saying, "Bang, bang, bang." Then they supported it on second reading and Chris Stockwell said, "Bill 48 is Conservative philosophy."

Interjections.

Mrs Caplan: Then the Tories began to flip-flop, changing their position by the minute. But as late as last night I was worried, because the Tories voted in favour of so many sections of this bill --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mrs Caplan: -- I was really concerned that they'd vote for it again on third reading.

I'm feeling better today. There is a rumour going around that the Conservative caucus will be voting against the social contract legislation. Lots of rumours go around this place --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would you stop the clock, please? You can't? All right, I'll make sure there's enough time. There'll be enough time.

I ask the members to come to order. The member for Oriole has the floor. She has a right to make a statement and I ask the members to give her the appropriate respect.

Mrs Caplan: Shall I start again, Mr Speaker?

The Speaker: We have a technical difficulty with the clock. There was approximately 41 seconds. I will keep an eye on the clock, and the member for Oriole has the floor.

Mrs Caplan: As I said, there are a lot of rumours going around this place, but I hope this one is true. It sure took a lot to convince the Tories just what Bill 48 will do. The unions told them the bill was bad, bad, bad. The Metro board of trade told the Tories Bill 48 was bad, bad, bad. Many columnists and reporters told them Bill 48 was bad, bad, bad.

Perhaps it was my daily statements which have influenced them. I've been told by my constituents that they think these statements have been good, good, good.

However, most of all I believe --

Interjection.

The Speaker: Order. The member for York Mills, come to order.

Mrs Caplan: -- Mrs McLeod has done the most to convince them that the social contract legislation, Bill 48, is seriously flawed and has been from the beginning. It will not accomplish the government's goals.

In all seriousness, I hope the rumour is true and that the Tories will vote with us and against Bill 48 tonight. This legislation will have a detrimental effect on life in Ontario.

The interests of all Ontarians are in the defeat of this bill, and I hope that not only the Tories but members of the NDP will join us in defeating this disastrous piece of legislation.

HEALTH CARE

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): This government's notion that cabinet ministers and bureaucrats are equipped to make medical decisions is offensive and puts at risk the quality and accessibility of health care in Ontario.

The PC Party supports logical, responsible restraint initiatives but cannot support the NDP draconian legislation which will result in lower standards of health care in this province.

The social contract and expenditure control legislation, Bills 48 and 50, override almost all the OMA's agreements with government and impose massive cuts on medical services and patient care.

The legislation empowers the minister and the bureaucrats to make arbitrary decisions about how medical services will be delivered. The expanding power base of governments and bureaucrats fostered through this legislation is of grave concern. You are cutting physicians' incomes by 25%. Why not the 5% you're demanding from the others affected by this legislation?

Instead of dictating what services patients can receive and breaking agreements made in good faith, the government should be working with doctors to implement the OMA's concrete suggestions about how to reduce the costs of OHIP. Eliminating health card fraud should be the government's top priority.

A PC government will work with doctors to better manage medical services. The people of this province deserve no less.

To the doctors in York Mills who have expressed their concerns, I will work with you on solutions and continue to fight for excellence in our health care system.

GOOD NEIGHBOURS

Mr Gary Malkowski (York East): On Monday, June 21, East York council endorsed the Good Neighbours initiative and I'm pleased to announce that East York is now Metro's first Good Neighbours community.

Good Neighbours is a public awareness campaign of the Ministry of Citizenship, and it's aimed at encouraging people to reach out and help one another, especially those in need, those people who are frail or vulnerable or isolated. A Good Neighbour is anyone who is concerned about making the community a friendlier, safer place.

Participants in the East York Good Neighbours community include community associations, seniors' groups, the business community, health units, the police and other municipal and provincial government offices. In these difficult economic times, it's nice to know that the Good Neighbours concept makes use of existing resources and community goodwill.

I urge all members to go back to your own communities and to support the Good Neighbours initiative and to assist in establishing a good neighbours council. I also urge all residents to take the time to reach out to one another as good neighbours.

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STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

JUDICIAL REFORM

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General): It will give me great pleasure later today to introduce the Courts of Justice Statute Law Amendment Act, 1993.

This bill proposes to reform the Ontario Judicial Council, to enshrine in legislation the Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee, to provide for the gradual extension of the Unified Family Court, to provide a framework by which the salaries of Ontario judges will be set and to make a number of technical changes to the act.

The bill also makes consequential changes to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Justices of the Peace Act.

This bill proposes major changes to the composition, powers and procedures of the Ontario Judicial Council. This is the body responsible for investigating complaints against provincial judges. The changes are designed to create a more open, accessible, accountable and effective process for addressing complaints against provincial judges while respecting judicial independence.

Public representation on the council will be increased to improve the public's confidence in our judicial institutions while protecting judicial independence by maintaining peer review. As well, the proportion of provincial judges on the council will be increased.

The legislation introduces a fairer and more open process for considering complaints and gives the council a range of discipline powers so that it can respond more effectively and more appropriately where misconduct has occurred.

The council will publish information about its role in the justice system, provide assistance in filing complaints and complete an annual report setting out its activities over the year.

The legislation will also enable the chief judge to establish standards for judicial conduct and a program for judicial performance evaluations, and it will require the chief judge to establish a plan for judicial education. These reforms will give the Ontario judiciary additional tools to continue their professional development and to maintain their high professional standards. This will help to ensure that Ontario's justice system remains one of the finest in the world.

This bill also enshrines in legislation the Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee begun under the previous government. This committee, which began five years ago, has met with great success. Composed in most part of non-lawyers, the Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee allows members of the public, lawyers and judges to use their collective expertise to recommend the finest candidates for the provincial judiciary.

The bill requires the Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee to develop criteria for judicial appointments that include considerations of professional excellence, community awareness, personal qualities and representativeness of the people of Ontario. The committee will be mandated to present a short list of candidates to the Attorney General, who will be permitted to recommend for appointment as judges only those persons who have been recommended by the committee.

In addition, the legislation provides for the gradual expansion of the Unified Family Court, which now exists only in Hamilton-Wentworth, to other locations within the province. This will provide full family law service in one court, providing better access and easier enforcement of support orders for the benefit of women, children and families generally. I would like to express my appreciation for the support of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, the Honourable Pierre Blais, and his officials for working in partnership with us to make the Unified Family Court possible.

The Unified Family Court will be established as a new, superior court called the Ontario Court (Family Division), equal in all respects to the Ontario Court (General Division). It will consist of full-time specialist judges with complete family law jurisdiction, supplemented by judges rotating in from the General Division. In the first year, we expect that the new Family Division will begin operation in two or three centres, in addition to Hamilton-Wentworth.

The new Ontario Court (Family Division) will pave the way for a more efficient and more economical family court system in Ontario, committed to the maintenance of local service in existing family court centres.

The bill also contains the framework by which the salaries of provincial judges will be set, commencing in 1995. However, I will note here that the provincial judiciary have offered and have signed an agreement with the government that provides for a compensation freeze for three years and for up to 3,000 additional sitting days during that period. This is based on approximately 12 sitting days per judge per year.

The bill also makes a number of other technical amendments to the Courts of Justice Act which are designed to improve the management and the operation of the courts of Ontario.

Each of these initiatives reflects the government's commitment to making the justice system more accessible, more responsive and more equitable.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Responses? The official opposition, the member for Ottawa West.

Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): I'm not sure the minister to date has grasped the extent of reform needed for the justice system in Ontario. The legal profession, the judiciary, and indeed the broad public are crying out for fundamental reform and broad-based reform.

Minister, your top priority is to create a strongly independent judiciary, delivering speedy and affordable access to justice. While some improvements have been made on the criminal side in the recent past, speedy and affordable access to justice on the civil side is not at an acceptable level.

The initiative on the uniform family court is welcome. This legislation was enacted by Ian Scott in 1989 in anticipation of some speedy implementation. Communities from across the province have been urging and lobbying you to implement a uniform family court in their various communities, including the community of Ottawa-Carleton. As you know, the Ottawa-Carleton area, as well as others, has lobbied strongly to have a uniform family court.It will in fact enhance access to justice, in many cases for women, and it will make justice more affordable and more speedy.

What is very depressing about your announcement today is that you're merely indicating it's going to be gradual. This is a significant issue that needs to be fast-tracked immediately. You know that every part of the province has urged you to do that. You know that you have the means to do it by readjusting your own budgets internally. I urge you to consider fast-tracking the uniform family court in every section of the province.

Your other announcements today, Minister, do not touch the basic needs of reforming the justice system. Indeed, your reforms of the Ontario Judicial Council are improvements but do not fundamentally affect large numbers of the public who need better access to justice.

We have now a very competent, professional judiciary. There are not a lot of complaints that are filed. I agree with you that improvements in the complaints system are in order, and I compliment you to the extent that you have done that today. But a major initiative in the area of alternative dispute resolution on the civil side is long overdue and would have been welcomed by this critic, the legal profession and the public.

I wish, Minister, you would brush off the committee report of the standing committee on administration of justice which was tabled in this House in 1990 dealing with alternative dispute resolution. The best legal minds in the country came to this building and recommended how to implement alternative dispute resolution, and this government has done precious little in that area, one of the basic areas crying out for reform. I urge you to dust off that report, read it and try to fast-track some of the alternative dispute resolution techniques that are much needed.

The announcement with respect to the Judicial Appointments Advisory Committee simply confirms an existing process, initiated again by Attorney General Ian Scott; indeed, a process abused by your government when the former Attorney General appointed a nominated NDP federal candidate to chair what's supposed to be a non-partisan, non-political body to help appoint judges.

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With respect to the memorandum signed with the chief judge of the Ontario court which you announced previously today, this is a far cry from the reform initiatives recommended by the Joint Committee on Court Reform. I urge the minister to seriously look at the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Court Reform, which would create a true partnership between the judiciary and the Ministry of the Attorney General, something that is long overdue and which has been tried successfully in many other jurisdictions.

I want to leave one thought with the minister. Several months ago, I surveyed some 55 questions to 2,500 lawyers across the province. Overwhelmingly, the response was as a high priority that these practising lawyers felt they could not effect justice on behalf of their clients.

This is bringing the justice system into disrepute. You must look at fundamental reform of the judicial system, the administration of justice in the province of Ontario, because the judiciary, the legal practitioners and the public are not happy with what's happening now.

And while you're looking at administration, giving more power to the judges, perhaps you might consider giving them responsibility for the family support plan, because your ministry is so botching that area and the complaints are so widespread that somebody has to take charge and improve the system.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): I've read with interest the statement that the Attorney General has just made. I have to say it's interesting, I applaud the efforts, but it's not new. We've been hearing about these initiatives for a long time. Many of them have been informally in place for a long time.

The Ontario Judicial Council recommendations are the same recommendations, almost entirely, as the Canadian Bar Association -- Ontario recommended a long time ago. The judicial appointments and the passing of scrutiny have been going on at the federal level for a long time. They've been going on in Ontario for five years. They were initiated by the former Liberal Attorney General, Mr Scott. Now what is happening is that these will be judicially recognized. I applaud that. It's not new, but it's the right thing to do.

The Unified Family Court project started 16 years ago in the province of Ontario. I believe it began in 1977 as a pilot project. For the last eight years, between the NDP and the Liberals, we kept hearing that this was a good pilot project and that it was going to be become a fully recognized court in Ontario. Well, it's finally going to happen, and I applaud the Attorney General for that. It's not new. It's taken a long time. It shouldn't have taken this long.

But the interesting thing about this statement is what it doesn't have in it. The most important thing that I saw from the briefing that the Attorney General was kind enough to provide us with is a memorandum of understanding between the Attorney General and the chief judge of the Ontario Court (Provincial Division). To me, that is the most significant aspect of this particular announcement, because it's finally recognizing that there is too much power in the hands of the Attorney General and that the power has to be given back to the people who use the courts. It can't be in the hands of the biggest litigator, who is the Attorney General; the process has got to be run by the judges and by the system that they will operate and that they will own. That is why what isn't in this statement -- and I'm surprised, because this is where the Attorney General could really have taken a bow today. This is something that has been recommended in the Joint Committee on Court Reform and it's been with the Attorney General for a year now.

I hope the Attorney General will take this report and expand what she's now done to the federal level of courts in terms of the budgetary aspects that she controls.

I hope also that the Attorney General will take her name off the front door of every courthouse in this province, because the Attorney General is a litigant in those courthouses; the Attorney General does not run the judicial process. Please, take your name off the courthouse door of every court in this province.

The other thing I say to the Attorney General is that while I applaud the memorandum of understanding, there was a very interesting article in the Globe and Mail on June 9 which quotes Mr Justice David Marshall. Justice Marshall is very concerned that the chief judges will ultimately wield inordinate power and that that can be, in terms of the bench, a loss of independence for the other judges on the bench. It's a very important concept, and what he says is: "The attribution of more and more power to chief judges may well have the effect of making the judicial ideology of the chief judge the only truly independent ideology on the court."

I say to the Attorney General, read this article and take a look at the recommendations that are made. One of those recommendations is that the chief judge should only be appointed for a limited period of time so that his power does not become so inordinate that it affects the judicial independence of other members of the bench.

I think the most important thing the Attorney General has done today is the thing she didn't want to talk about. I don't know why. I wish she would have, because that's where I think she really has done something extremely significant. I hope she extends it as per the report of the Joint Committee on Court Reform dated June 30, 1992.

ORAL QUESTIONS

SOCIAL CONTRACT

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): It is now time for oral questions; the honourable member for Bruce.

Applause.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Well, thank you very much.

Today the social contract, in the guise of Bill 48, hangs like a shroud over the province of Ontario and people all across the province wait with bated breath to see what next will happen with this so-called initiative by this government.

I have a question for the Finance minister. How we used to like him when he was just the plain, ordinary, everyday Treasurer, but now the Finance minister has taken on the guise of the Michael Wilson of Toronto. He is the one who is examining ways of taking apart the sacred trust that all of the people of this province have come to love and enjoy.

It has for the last several weeks been our duties to follow with interest the developments under Bill 48. Yesterday, on the very moment when committee of the whole was about to finish its deliberations on Bill 48, another batch of amendments were dropped on the table. One of those extended the deadline for entering into contractual relations, in sectors and otherwise, until March 1, 1994.

Can I ask the Treasurer, the Finance minister now, why they have extended the time period from, once, in May till June, till August, till August 10 and now back into March 1994? Is it because you know that your Bill 48 is so fundamentally flawed that it has no hope at all of working?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance): Mr Speaker, the member used some unparliamentary language in his preamble, but I will ignore that.

Mr Elston: What?

Hon Mr Laughren: "Michael Wilson."

The member for Bruce is obviously misinterpreting the amendments that were introduced yesterday and debated yesterday afternoon and then passed, some of them unanimously, I might add. What the member should understand is that what we did was say that the fail-safe is still August 1 for agreements for the 1993-94 fiscal year. If after August 1 there are still some sectors and local arrangements that have not come to a voluntary agreement by the deadline of August 1, then they are under the fail-safe provisions for this fiscal year.

If between now and next spring they are able to reach a sectoral agreement for the next two years, why wouldn't we make that allowance if we can come up with a voluntary agreement along with our social partners out there that perhaps would end up being a better arrangement for everyone concerned: the public, the workers themselves, the government, the social agencies? Why wouldn't we extend that? Because they are not exempt from the provisions of the fail-safe mechanism contained in Bill 48 for the fiscal year 1993-94, and the targets still must be met.

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Mr Elston: When you examine Bill 48 and all of the amendments -- some 29 amendments have been introduced by the government to this bill affecting some 90 parts of the act -- it seems to me that he has already admitted that Bill 48 is fundamentally flawed and cannot work. He is telling us that none of his deadlines are going to be effective.

How can the Minister of Finance tell us that his legislation, Bill 48, supported initially by the Tories, was going to work and save him the money when basically all it is doing is sweeping the problem under the rug for three years, when it will all again resurface? Will the Finance minister tell us why he is sweeping all our fiscal problems under the rug until 1996?

Hon Mr Laughren: I'm somewhat puzzled by the new Liberal position, which appears to be that the fail-safe mechanism contained in the bill must be in place for the full three years and that there should be no negotiations on any new sectoral arrangements for the two subsequent years. I would remind the member that nothing has changed on the savings targets that must be achieved; nothing has changed whatsoever. For 1993-94, the savings must be realized. For 1994-95 and 1995-96, the savings must be realized. All we've done was introduce an element --

Mr Elston: You pushed it back.

Hon Mr Laughren: We're not pushing anything back. We simply introduced an element of flexibility that says that if no agreement was reached by August 1, then 1993-94 savings are locked in as contained in Bill 48. If, on the other hand, after August 1 they wish to come to an arrangement, having lived under the fail-safe mechanism for a number of months, if they wish to take advantage of the lower targets, for example, for those subsequent two years, then I think they should have a right to do that.

There is nothing in this bill that pushes any savings off into the future whatsoever, nothing in the amendments that we introduced yesterday -- nothing.

Mr Elston: The Finance minister talks about how well his legislation is working. We understand that OPSEU has risen from the table, not to return to enter negotiations again; there's something the Finance minister should have been making a statement on. Anyway, OPSEU has walked from the table. They don't want to deal with this government, they don't want to deal with what is not a fail-safe mechanism but a fail-fail mechanism. This whole piece of legislation is so fundamentally flawed that it has no chance of success, because you've really never, as Fred Upshaw said, negotiated in good faith with anybody. You have gone through a whole series of public posturings for political purposes, and that's it.

If these people had followed the advice of our leader, Lyn McLeod, and had actually set their targets and let the local people, both employer and employee, negotiate to those targets, this thing could have succeeded and it could have been a success. What they have done is politically charged this whole discussion so that it was bound to fail.

Can this Finance minister do something right and be spot on and withdraw Bill 48?

Hon Mr Laughren: First of all, there is absolutely nothing to prevent agreements being reached at the local level; absolutely nothing. For the member for Bruce to say that it's not bargaining in good faith to bargain for four months is beyond my comprehension. There's absolutely nothing to prevent it from working.

The member is correct when he says that OPSEU walked away from the table this morning. That's true. I regret that, because by walking away from the table they've walked away from a lower target consisting of about $31 million difference. That represents about 600 jobs; the lower target, if a sectoral agreement were reached, would have preserved about 600 jobs that now will not be preserved if OPSEU does not come back to the table. I very much hope they will. We're open to negotiate right through until the end of July.

I would say to the member for Bruce that, for the benefit of the public sector employees in this province, the sooner they come back to the table in order to protect those 600 jobs that could be realized through the lower target that the Ontario public service must meet, the better we'll all be.

DRUG BENEFITS

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): I know the Minister of Health is here and that the House leader has gone to get her, but in her absence, at least temporarily, I'll address my question to the Deputy Premier. Mr Deputy Premier and Finance minister, your Health minister released a consultation paper on the Ontario drug benefit program just a short time ago. Thankfully, she's here, because we'll now get an answer.

When the consultation paper on the Ontario drug benefit plan was released, it was released with a fanfare that indicated there would be consultation till September 30 of this year and that she would be expecting to get some good advice, but it was preceded by Bill 29 by about a month, in which the minister herself took unto herself unilateral power to cut back the ODB, to prescribe, almost, what could be taken and not taken by seniors in this province and other users of the Ontario drug benefit plan, and to tell us in fact whether or not they were going to be paying user fees.

I want the minister to tell us today what amount of user fees she has determined the seniors will be paying and how many benefits are going to be removed from the ODB that have to this point been able to protect seniors against disease.

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): I'm sure the member for Bruce is aware that in the budget of this spring the Minister of Finance indicated that there would be cost-sharing with respect to the Ontario drug benefit plan. Bill 29, which is the omnibus piece of legislation introduced in order to enable the government to reach its expenditure reduction targets, in fact provides the power to do that.

As the member has said, we have released a consultation paper making it very clear that what we would like to do is extend eligibility for ODB, but that in order to do that and at the same time to contain the costs of the program, we will be looking at some way of cost-sharing. In response to his specific question, no determination has been made as to the amount or to the limits or to the mechanism by which that would be effected.

Mr Elston: Well, this is the Drug Benefit Formulary. This is the book in which all of the medications which are paid for under the ODB are contained. Not long ago, some 230 of those drugs that previously existed in the ODB were removed by the Ministry of Health, and the minister of the day didn't have the extensive powers that are contained in Bill 29 with respect to the ODB.

Can the Minister of Health tell us, now that they've started tearing apart the Drug Benefit Formulary, what amount the user fees are going to be, from what amount to what other amount, if you want to give us a range, so that the seniors can anticipate how much money they are going to pay to participate in the Ontario Drug Benefit Formulary?

Hon Mrs Grier: I'm sure the member for Bruce has had by now an opportunity to review the consultation paper that I released a couple of weeks ago, a consultation paper which talks broadly about the policies of the government, the Ministry of Health and the Ontario drug benefit plan, which speaks to the fact that over the last number of years, the increase in the cost of that program has been going up by 16%, and which also speaks to the very real concern that not only seniors but everyone in this province has had over time about inappropriate prescribing of drugs, about the fact that we cannot assure anyone --

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): Come on, Ruth. Tell us the number. You know what the number is. Tell us the number.

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

Mrs Caplan: There's nothing about quality, Ruth.

The Speaker: Would the member for Oriole please come to order.

Hon Mrs Grier: -- that in fact the best quality of prescribing and prescription and sale of pharmaceuticals is what we have under that plan. The discussion paper talks about all of those issues.

With respect to the element of cost-sharing, let me say again to the member that there have been no conclusions reached as to how it would work and how much it would require. We think that if we are to expand the program as well as contain the costs, it will be necessary for pharmacists, manufacturers --

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

Hon Mrs Grier: -- and beneficiaries to share in the costs of the program, but we want to consult with all of the people affected before we come to a final conclusion.

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Mr Elston: The minister confirmed in her first answer that this is part of a budgetary plan. They know what the amount of money is that they are after. They know what the amount of drug costs is. They know how many seniors are enrolled in the plan. They know so many details, it is beyond belief that she doesn't have a clue as to the range of the user fee prices they are considering.

This is her plan, this is her government's plan. Whatever you want to call them, sharing costs, partnership fees or user fees, which of course is what Finance Minister Michael Wilson in Ottawa used to call them, it's what other Tories call them, why don't you come clean and tell us? How much money are you looking for from the senior citizens of this province to share the cost of the Ontario drug benefit plan? What is the price of your user fee for the province of Ontario?

Hon Mrs Grier: We have a plan. We have the only drug benefit plan in the country where in fact none of the beneficiaries share in the cost of that program.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mrs Grier: I'm surprised that the members find the fact that we have the Ontario drug benefit plan so amusing. It's a plan that's been in place for a very long time. It's a plan that has served the people of this province well, but it is a plan that has only served a limited segment of the population of this province. It's universal if you're over 65 or if you're on social assistance, but I would ask the member to listen to the questions that a member of his caucus has raised with me about the fact that there are many people in this province who don't benefit from our drug benefit plan. There are two million people who have no coverage for their drug benefits and there are people suffering from catastrophic diseases who have no assistance from our drug benefit plan in order to meet their needs.

The consultation paper we have released speaks to those issues, speaks to the recommendations of the Lowy commission about looking at better prescribing guidelines, about managing the plan better and about everyone who benefits from the plan, manufacturers, pharmacists and consumers, in sharing more fairly in the cost of the plan. That's what our consultation is about, and I hope the member opposite, who is very familiar with both the benefits and the limitations of the Ontario drug benefit plan, will take a more constructive attitude to the consultation as a result of reading the consultation paper.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): My question is to the Deputy Premier. From day one, unlike the Liberal Party, our caucus supported the principle of restraint. We made it clear from the outset that Bill 48 needed some serious changes to ensure fair and permanent restructuring of government in the province of Ontario. That is why we put forward 29 significant amendments last evening, but the government used its majority, with the Liberals following along behind, as they did in 1985, to vote down every single one of those amendments.

It is clear that despite all the rhetoric, you had no intention of considering the merits of the amendments at all. You had absolutely no intent of doing that whatsoever. Instead of playing the old-style politics and developing a fair and workable piece of legislation, if this was your intention all along, why did you go through the charade of last evening in committee of the whole on the bill?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance): I don't believe in playing the old-style politics. It's obvious it didn't work for the Liberals so I wouldn't want to do that. But I would remind the House leader for the Conservative caucus that if anybody played the old-style politics, it was his caucus when it pretended, by voting for the bill on second reading, that it was going to support it on third reading. They never had any intention of doing that. That's the oldest political trick in the world. Nobody believed that you were going to vote for it on third reading, not from day one.

Mr Eves: The Deputy Premier has been a member of this Legislature longer than I believe anybody else in here and he, above anybody, should know what second reading of a bill is, that is a vote in principle, and what third reading of a bill is. Many of the amendments that we introduced yesterday and the day before were not just supported by our caucus. They were drafted on the advice of many of the transfer partners. They were put forward on behalf of the men and women who will have to make the legislation work in the province of Ontario.

Now I can understand why you would vote together with the Liberal Party to defeat the amendments; that's partisan politics. But why would you play partisan politics at the expense of hospitals, school boards and municipalities by voting against their amendments to this legislation?

Hon Mr Laughren: I am pleased to know that the Conservative caucus sat down with Mr Ryan as it developed its set of amendments. But I find that a bit hard to believe because I'll give you an example of why we rejected the amendments brought forth by the Conservative caucus. There was one amendment that would remove the words "fair and equitable" from the bill.

Now, I ask you, how could we in good conscience accept that kind of amendment? Secondly --

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): We want a definition of these words.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order. The member for Simcoe West, come to order.

Mr Jim Wilson: I want to know what he meant by it.

The Speaker: The member for Simcoe West is to come to order.

Interjection.

The Speaker: I will caution the member for Simcoe West. He is to come to order. Minister.

Hon Mr Laughren: I think I owe an apology to the Conservative caucus. I didn't realize they didn't know what the words "fair and equitable" meant. I appreciate the fact that's an error in judgement on my part, but if I had realized that at the time the amendment was brought before us, I perhaps would have given an explanation of what "fair and equitable" meant in the way we intend to treat our employees in this province, namely, in a fair and equitable manner.

I'll just give you another example of why we rejected their amendments: They would not take into consideration the low-income cutoff of $30,000. I think that's an example of the way in which we are being fair and equitable as opposed to the way the Tories would treat the employees in this province.

Mr Eves: The minister knows that calling something fair and equitable doesn't make it fair and equitable. Calling a chipmunk an elephant doesn't make a chipmunk an elephant either.

The Ontario Medical Association, the Ontario Hospital Association, the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto, many boards of education, police services boards and municipalities were instrumental in drafting many of our amendments that we put forward. The fact that you dismissed them out of hand is an insult to those transfer partners; not to us, to them.

The amendments introduced on their behalf would have made the legislation more fair and more workable. Now we're left with a bill that is not only difficult for transfer partners to implement right now, but may well lead to some very serious ramifications in three years' time. Why have you left your transfer partners holding the bag?

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Hon Mr Laughren: I would deny that accusation, but I must say I was struck by the fact that of the organizations the member for Parry Sound listed that he consulted, the only union in the group he consulted was the Ontario Medical Association. I think that if we're going to have amendments that are fair and equitable, you have to do more than that. That's what we've done. Our amendments made the legislation more fair, more equitable than the original draft was.

I conclude by saying that we did look at every one of the Conservative caucus amendments very, very carefully, because I really was attempting to reach out and find an amendment or two, or three or four, that wouldn't either contradict the principle of the bill or do something, what I think would be irresponsible, like take words "fair and equitable" out of the bill or remove the low-income cutoff. I think that's not the purpose of this bill. The purpose of this bill is to achieve compensation savings in the public sector in a fair and equitable manner in a way that protects jobs and services all across the province.

CASINO GAMBLING

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Surprise, surprise.

On Monday, the Premier confirmed that the Ontario government has a ban on the purchase of supplies, equipment and services from South Africa. Why did your casino project team, then, meet with Sun International of South Africa on two separate occasions?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): Yes, indeed, the Premier did confirm our ban and our abhorrence of the policies in South Africa, but that policy was not by any means broken. No business was conducted, no contracts signed. The casino team met briefly with this company --

Interjections.

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

Hon Ms Churley: In fact, it's my understanding that when they first met, on the request from a local Toronto consultant, the casino team was unaware even that this company had holdings in South Africa. They were told in no uncertain terms in the meetings of Ontario's policy. In fact, they have not placed a bid on the casino and we will not be conducting any business with them.

Mr Eves: Your team met with them, not once but on two separate occasions. You were quoted as saying that officials ended discussions once the South African link was discovered. According to officials from both your casino project team and Sun International Ltd, the company did not pursue the casino project team because it decided it was no longer interested for business reasons. In fact, Sun officials told us by telephone this morning that they were not even aware of your government's policy on South Africa until this morning, when we told them about it.

Why did you say the casino project team cut off negotiations once it found out about the South African connection when that simply is not true?

Hon Ms Churley: I have spoken to the members of my project team who met with this group, and they have told me very clearly that in a meeting they expressed, and told them quite clearly of Ontario's policies around South Africa. That was made extremely clear to them in a meeting. Whether they decided to pursue it or not on the basis of that, I don't know, but I can clearly tell you that had they put in a bid, for obvious reasons because of our policy we would not be accepting that bid. It's as simple as that.

Mr Eves: Somebody is not telling the truth here. Bill Gillies, the director of communications and consultations for the casino project team -- he works for the minister -- told our researchers that Sun International simply decided to no longer pursue this. You didn't obviously inform him of this policy before he sat down to talk to them. You didn't inform the Premier, who was totally unaware that these negotiations took place when he answered the question on Monday. You did not break off discussions with Sun International. They in fact broke off negotiations with you. You did not tell that company about your South African policy. They didn't know about it until this morning, and you didn't tell the media the truth. Why?

Hon Ms Churley: The member is, I think, misrepresenting the facts, and he should be very careful. He should listen carefully now, because there were no negotiations --

Mr Eves: I think you have, and that is the problem. You'd better phone the CEO of Sun International.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Ms Churley: I would prefer that the member listen to the answer to this question, because it's important. There were no negotiations conducted with this company. There was no business deal made with this company. The casino team, at the very beginning of the process --

Mr Eves: No discussions? What were they talking about? They weren't talking about submitting a proposal on your casino project in Windsor?

Interjections.

Hon Ms Churley: You're not listening to me.

The casino team, at the beginning of the process, met with --

Interjections.

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): I recommend a two-day recess, sir.

The Speaker: We'll blame it on the warm weather. Has the minister completed her response?

Hon Ms Churley: No, I haven't concluded my remarks. Just to finish up, no policy of the Ontario government was broken in any way.

The casino team, early on in the process, met with a number of groups from all over the world who were interested in our project. That was one of the groups that was recommended by a local consultant. There were no negotiations conducted. There was no business conducted. They have not put in a bid, so no policy has been broken.

AIR QUALITY

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I have a question to the Minister of Environment and Energy. My question concerns your government's complete lack of action in the area of air pollution in this province. I don't believe there is any one of us today who could not have noticed the incredible cloud of smog that hung over the city. We are reminded on days like today, very directly, of the volumes of atmospheric pollutants that are present in the air we breathe, and we are also aware of the very serious health effects that this represents.

Indeed, according to the air quality index numbers, communities within and around Metropolitan Toronto are suffering through unacceptably high pollution levels. Cities like Mississauga and York and North York are enduring air pollution levels substantially higher than any acceptable level as prescribed by your ministry. My question is, what is your ministry doing, what are you doing, to combat this very serious problem of air pollution?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy): As the member knows, in response to earlier questions in the House, I assured him that the ministry is carrying out work on the development of regulations that will control and limit ground level ozone, and we anticipate that we will be introducing those regulations later this year.

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Mr Offer: Well, that is a very interesting and incomplete response.

Let me tell you, Mr Speaker, of that ministry's six-point plan. Firstly, the budget of the air resources branch of your ministry has been slashed by over $4 million. Secondly, your government has killed the clean air program, which was designed to fundamentally revamp the outdated air pollution laws of Ontario. Thirdly, you have not developed a vehicle emission testing program for the province. Fourthly, you have ignored the problem of vapour emissions from gasoline. Fifthly, the number of inspectors who work at the vehicle emissions test centre of your ministry, a unit, Minister, which you have seemingly forgotten, has been reduced to the grand number of one. Finally, sixthly, let me remind you that in that outdated, fictional book, An Agenda for People, you stated that you would overhaul the air pollution laws of Ontario.

Minister, you and your government have done nothing. How can you claim to be committed to improving air quality in the province of Ontario when all of these actions indicate that you are doing absolutely nothing at a time when the people of this province need and deserve action?

Hon Mr Wildman: I guess I can only assure the member that the matters he has raised are matters of active consideration by the ministry. The question of the vehicle emission controls is being actively worked on, both by my ministry and the Ministry of Transportation, and we will be bringing forward regulations as soon as we can. We expect that will be later this year.

INTERPROVINCIAL TRADE

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): I have a question for the Minister of Economic Development and Trade. At this very moment, officials from the province of Quebec and officials from the province of New Brunswick, including the deputy ministers, are meeting to resolve the problems related to the construction industry in both of those provinces. Madam Minister, that has resulted from the fact that the province of New Brunswick took some action to precipitate these negotiations. Don't you think it's time Ontario took the same action?

Hon Frances Lankin (Minister of Economic Development and Trade): I think steps were required to be taken to precipitate negotiations, so steps have been taken. Negotiations will be commencing shortly. I indicated to the member yesterday that meetings at an officials' level would be happening in the very near future. In fact, that meeting will be taking place next week at the assistant deputy minister level, and the deputy and minister level meeting will be following that very shortly. As the agenda is worked out for the specific issues, there will be more than the construction, but that will be the main issue that will be under discussion when we meet.

Mr Sterling: Summer is the construction season for most of the construction workers in eastern Ontario. The fact of the matter is that last week officials from these two provinces were meeting. This week, officials from those two provinces are meeting, including the deputy ministers of the appropriate departments. Next week, they're going to meet to resolve this problem before the construction season has run out.

Meanwhile, the Ontario government sits back and waits for things to happen. What's going to happen is that the construction workers and the contractors from New Brunswick are going to benefit because their government took action, whereas the construction workers of Ontario and the contractors of Ontario are not going to benefit this summer because this government hasn't taken action.

Madam Minister, will you insist that any agreement struck between the province of New Brunswick and the province of Quebec vis-à-vis the cross-border contracting situation that we have described in this Legislature, which is patently unfair to contractors in Ontario, patently unfair to contracting workers in Ontario, will be duplicated in this province or you will immediately slap down restrictions which equal the Quebec restrictions and not wait for negotiations to take place but demand that our workers get treated as fairly as New Brunswick workers get treated?

Hon Ms Lankin: I think the member's position is a fair position to put forward. But I would say to him, first of all, that he must remember that the discussions I'm talking about that are going to be taking place next week and in the two weeks following that are not the first discussions with the province of Quebec. In fact, we have already been in discussions with them. I attended a meeting myself in March.

Secondly, with respect to what, if any agreements are arrived at between the province of New Brunswick and the province of Quebec, I will be pleased to look very directly at the result of that. I should indicate to him that there may be tradeoff issues there that would be inappropriate for Ontario. But the sentiment and the intent behind your question and your direction are ones that I think are reasonable. I will give every consideration to it at the time.

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY

Mr Noel Duignan (Halton North): My question is directed to the Minister of Citizenship. Over the last number of months, many constituents have contacted my office in regard to employment equity. Indeed, my constituents have been hearing and reading confusing reports about employment equity through the media and by numerous groups that are indeed opposed to employment equity.

A good example of this is a recent article in the Toronto Star, on Monday, entitled "Employment Equity Another Reason For Companies To Avoid Ontario." This article states, "The employer may have to hire another, less qualified candidate to meet employment equity goals" and thus "compromise on the merit principle." It also states the government has simply "replaced the word 'quota' with the words 'goals and timetables."'

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): Who on the ministry staff wrote this? This is a setup.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order. The member for York Centre, please come to order.

Mr Duignan: Can the minister address some of the claims made in the article about the government's employment equity legislation, especially now that she's released the draft regulations on Bill 79? In particular, can the minister clarify the difference between "goals" and "timetables and quotas," and how the government will decide whether these goals and timetables are being reasonably met?

Hon Elaine Ziemba (Minister of Citizenship): I appreciate the question because it was a very well-put-together question and certainly is one of the many myths that has been floating around in Ontario for many years about employment equity.

First of all, to clarify for the member and for the other members in the House, when we talk about employment equity and the difference between a quota and goals and timetables --

Mr Sorbara: This is an infomercial, not a question. This is a ripoff.

The Speaker: Order. The member for York Centre is asked to come to order.

Mr Sorbara: Well, that's what she's doing.

The Speaker: I must caution the member for York Centre. Under our standing orders, by rotation, all three parties have an opportunity to ask questions and for a response. I ask the member for York Centre to respect that.

Hon Ms Ziemba: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. As this is an extremely important question, I'm going to try to be very succinct.

Mr Sorbara: It's stupid. We've got important issues here.

The Speaker: If the member for York Centre refuses to come to order, he will be named.

Hon Ms Ziemba: Again, the difference between "quotas" and "goals and timetables" is extremely important as we discuss employment equity. They often get confused and interrelated. Quotas are when a government or an outside jurisdiction imposes a number on an employer about how many designated people it must hire within a specified time. What we are asking employers to do is to sit down and look at their opportunities for change, whether it's hiring or whether it's promotion.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Ms Ziemba: Mr Speaker, this is very important.

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

Hon Ms Ziemba: The opportunities for change will take into account how many designated group members are already in the workplace and how many designated group members are available within the community that they represent.

Mr Duignan: It's quite certain that the member for York Centre doesn't care about employment equity and that people have been discriminated against under his government and that government.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Would the member for Halton North please take his seat.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Regardless of the member's strong feelings on the issue, it is not helpful. Would the member direct his question through the Chair.

Mr Duignan: One of the other concerns expressed by my constituents over the last couple of months is the fact that this legislation is nothing more than reverse discrimination. I wonder, could you explain to the members of the House that this is not the case.

Hon Ms Ziemba: Reverse discrimination indicates or would imply that we now have a level playing field, that people are given an equal opportunity to enter the workforce and the workplace and are given an equal opportunity to be promoted within that workplace. Of course, as we know, the statistics have proved and shown to us that the four designated groups are not on a level playing field, that they are not given equal opportunity for promotion. They're not given an equal opportunity to even apply for a position.

What we are doing is making sure that we level the playing field so that everybody is given an equal opportunity based on their qualifications and their merit, and the best qualified person will be hired in the workplace and will be promoted.

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JOB CREATION

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): My question is to the Minister of Finance and has to do with the question of jobs and the outlook for jobs. I'm sure you are aware that today the help wanted index, which is kind of a preliminary indication of the unemployment numbers, came out, and it showed that the national situation is bad and the Ontario situation is particularly bad.

I hope the unemployment numbers coming out Friday will not be as bad as these numbers indicate, and I think all of us hope the unemployment rate will be lower. But we now know that in terms of the 20% of the jobs that are covered under the broader public sector, I think it's fair to say there will be fewer jobs there, not more jobs. In your budget, you called for a growth of about 106,000 jobs this year and the unemployment rate dropping by about half a percentage point.

This is what I'm trying to get at: 106,000 jobs growing in the remaining 80% of the labour market. My question is this: There's a variety of sectors where those jobs could come from. Where does the ministry believe the 106,000 jobs will be created? In what sectors will we see those jobs growing?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): The member for Scarborough-Agincourt was at the standing committee on finance and economic affairs when I made a presentation a couple of weeks ago; I can't recall the exact date. During that presentation, I laid out to the committee the specific sectors where it appeared that there was going to be growth in productivity and employment in the next number of years.

Some of those sectors, for example, were sectors such as manufacturing; the auto sector itself; generally speaking, the high-tech areas of the economy. It's still our hope that we'll see job growth in those crucial sectors of the economy.

Having said that, I am aware that the unemployment rate is going to be remaining unacceptably high during the next three or four years. We're doing what we can through our capital investment of almost $4 billion this year to keep jobs up. We can only do so much, but I think that almost $4 billion is a major commitment on behalf of the people of this province to do what we can to stimulate jobs and growth in the critical areas of the economy.

Mr Phillips: The reason I'm pursuing this is that, for us in the Liberal Party, at least, this is the number one issue in the province is jobs. I realize that tackling the deficit is perhaps your number one issue right now. For us, it's an important issue, but jobs are more important.

As we look at the record of your government, each year you have failed to hit your targets on job growth and on the employment numbers. We see that all of the job growth year-to-date, the end of May, is in the service sector. Half of the service sector, as you know, is health and education, so we see the jobs that have been created year-to-date at risk, and we would like you to be perhaps a little more specific to the opposition, but I think to all the public out there who are looking for some sense of hope about a future.

As I say, I'd like you to be a little clearer on where you see those 106,000 jobs being created. You've indicated in general terms the auto sector, but actually we see the manufacturing sector struggling, and that's where the auto sector is. I'd like to know more clearly, where will we see those net 106,000 jobs created? It's your budget. We're now literally halfway through the year. We're now three years into the NDP government. We are hoping you can be a little more helpful to the unemployed at home right now in where those 106,000 jobs are going to be created.

Hon Mr Laughren: To put something in perspective, we said in our budget that there were three priorities, not one, not just the deficit. We said that the three priorities were jobs, keeping the deficit under control and maintaining the essential services in this province.

Mr Phillips: That was last year's budget.

Hon Mr Laughren: This year's budget too. Those are our priorities, and that hasn't changed.

Our belief is that as we strategically invest in Ontario's economy -- I know the member would agree that we as a province can only do so much direct investment ourselves. We simply don't have the money to do more than we're doing now, but I think the $4 billion is important.

In terms of the private sector, which is where most of the job creation is going to have to come, I believe they're going to be in those key sectors I already mentioned: the auto sector, telecommunications, trade and services. Those are the sectors that we believe -- and not just us; private forecasters and economists and think tank groups will tell you the same thing, that those are the key sectors as we work our way through the 1990s.

But there's no question that there's a massive restructuring going on out there in the province and elsewhere, and what we can do is whatever we can in terms of strategic provincial investments to aid and abet that process of restructuring that's going on out there. But we ourselves, I believe, cannot do more than spending the $4 billion we are on capital this year.

TAX INCREASES

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): My question's for the Minister of Finance. It has to do with the budget that your government recently brought down.

There's no doubt that your $2-billion tax grab knows no limits. You've increased the taxes on personal income, tax on insurance and on automobiles, tax on houses, tax on health insurance, tax on home insurance, tax on employee benefits, and then you found out, only because my staff informed the ministry, that you've taxed deposit insurance paid by banks, trust companies and credit unions. This tax will net the government an additional $20 million, most of it coming in the form of higher service charges paid by consumers.

As if this wasn't enough, your government has also found a way of taxing the dream of home ownership. The 8% sales tax now hits CMHC-insured mortgages. This means that the first-time home buyer who can barely make the down payment, who is taking advantage of the new 5% down payment, is the hardest hit. This is also the most fragile market --

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

Mr Cousens: -- there has been in the real estate industry for some time. These taxes are unjust and unnecessary, but the part which is most frightening --

The Speaker: Does the member have a question?

Mr Cousens: I'm coming right up to it. The part that's most frightening is the question, and it is that you didn't even know that these taxes were within your budget. How many of these surprises are there going to be in that total budget you brought out?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): The ones I don't know of, I don't know.

Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): That wasn't done by Tory research.

Hon Mr Laughren: That's right. I'll try and give a serious response, though, to the question, and it was asked of me yesterday as well.

The tax on the insurance part of the mortgage on a $200,000 home, which is the example I used yesterday, comes to around $300, as I recall, $360, something like that. I would remind the member for Markham as well that it was this government, and this Premier in particular, who led the charge to have RRSP money that could be withdrawn and put into mortgages, so we have done a lot for first-time home buyers in this province. A relatively small percentage, I think it's one fifth of 1% of the mortgage, would be reflected in the insurance on a $200,000 home. I think it's not an onerous burden, although I appreciate the fact that no one likes to pay more taxes.

Mr Cousens: This Treasurer just loves socialism, and when people say, "How do you like socialism so far?" there's no doubt that this government is in love with the socialist philosophy that's changing Ontario for ever. They brought out a budget that is netting the government increased revenues they didn't even know were going to be there: a $20-million windfall from the insurance on deposit insurance, and another windfall from people scratching out an income to buy a home, and you're going to take some of that kind of money.

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What we really want to see you as a government do, who are so wrapped up in your socialist philosophy and grabbing the money from the people, is to come back, revisit your budget and come out with some fresh figures so that we can really have a sense of how much money you're going to be taking out of the economy. Are you prepared to go back and look at your budget again and detail all the undeclared revenues that you're bringing in to us from this big tax grab?

Hon Mr Laughren: This government has never had a tax revenue windfall in our two and a half years in office.

Mr Cousens: Twenty million bucks.

Hon Mr Laughren: We have not had.

I would just remind the member for Markham that when you look at the entire tax regime in this province and compare us with other provinces -- I want to be very specific here -- on the retail sales tax we're the third lowest in Canada, on the corporate income tax rate for manufacturing we're the fourth lowest in Canada, on payroll and capital taxes we're the lowest in Canada, on incomes less than $29,590 we're the third lowest in Canada and for over $30,000 we're right in the middle of all the other provinces in Canada.

I can tell the member for Markham that we do not have an onerous tax burden and, in conclusion, I can tell the member for Markham that the amount of tax revenues as a percentage of the gross domestic product in this province in 1993 is lower now than it was in 1989 before this government came to office.

CONTAMINATED SOIL

Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): A question to the Chair of Management Board: Minister, last week you announced that our government had been able to resolve the long-standing problem of radioactive soil on McClure Crescent in Scarborough by moving soil to a storage site near Tapscott Road. Now I hear that industries near Tapscott Road are organizing in opposition to your plan. Why were these industries not aware of your proposals?

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet): Let me start out by thanking the member for his question and say that, first of all, anybody in any of the properties affected who wasn't aware of the proposals chose not to be aware of the proposals.

Mr Speaker, you'll recall after my statement last week both the member for Scarborough North and the third party critic in their responses complimented the government on the consultation that had gone on with the community around that removal of the soil from McClure Crescent and the consultation that had gone on with the people in the affected potential storage area. That consultation has been extensive. They should have known.

In any kind of a difficult situation like this, in any event there are always going to be some who object, and I think that has been taken into account in weighing the pros and cons of where we're going to temporarily store the soil, over and against getting it out of the yards of those people who are directly affected by it where they live.

Mr Frankford: Minister, do you expect to receive any support from the federal government in resolving this issue?

Hon Mr Charlton: Well, there's a yes and a no to that answer. Yes, the federal government is working with us in terms of its responsibility for the handling of low-level radioactive waste. Eventually the federal government will be putting in place a permanent storage site for this waste. That's why we're presently having to do an interim relocation of that soil.

In the meantime, the proposal that we have will take the soil out of McClure Crescent, take it to the temporary storage site and separate out the contaminated particles of plastic that are contained in that soil. That contaminated plastic will be removed totally from the site in containers and taken to Chalk River, where the federal government already has some storage facilities. Then the rest of the soil, which will be contained on the site, will eventually be moved to a permanent federal site.

DAY CARE

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): To the Minister of Community and Social Services: Tomorrow, Minister, the region of Peel council will be meeting to make a decision on eliminating 932 day care spaces provided currently in homes in that community. They're doing that because they have to find $600,000 to complete the target that was given to them by the Treasurer for them to find the savings under the expenditure control program.

Your contribution, Minister, is $3.8 million, as you know. They've offered you a deal that you have rejected that would see most of those day care spaces retained in the community, but you have rejected it.

If the region is forced to decide to cut those day care spaces, on behalf of the users and the providers, Minister, will you commit today to provide the full $3.8 million of provincial funding regardless of Peel regional council's decision tomorrow?

Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Community and Social Services): I made it clear to the chair of the regional council of Peel when I spoke to him by telephone a couple of days ago that our interest was very much in continuing the programs, that we wanted the regional municipality to do its utmost to be able to continue the programs and that if the council took, in our view, the unfortunate decision to cut the program, then I would be looking for ways in which we could maintain our funding in the program and maintain the programs that are there now.

Mr Mahoney: The region has done an analysis that shows that if you were to indeed commit to provide the provincial funds, through attrition they would really not lose any spaces for the kids who require those spaces. You recognize that, if this program goes, the providers will wind up out of work and they will simply wind up on one form or another of social assistance. The women who require these day care spaces will also find that they have to stay home to take care of their kids and they'll be out of work and wind up on some form of social assistance.

We need a clear decision for the people who depend on this service. If Peel regional council makes a decision to fund the $600,000 that will top up to $4.2 million, the target given to it by your government, if it uses that $600,000, will you commit to the users and providers of day care in Peel region that you will fund $3.8 million to the region of Peel to allow it to continue to provide those day care spaces? Yes or no, Minister?

Hon Mr Silipo: The grants that are paid out to the municipality are conditional grants. As the member well knows, they are conditional on the municipality topping up the 80% of the funds that we provide, adding the 20% and providing the program at full capacity. If the municipality decides to shut down the program, then we are going to be doing whatever we can to maintain our level of funding in the program and to maintain the program to that level of funding that we can maintain.

We believe and we hope that the municipality can find other areas in which it can make reductions. But obviously that's a decision for them to make. If they decide that this is an area that they are going to cut, then we will obviously look at what we can do to at least continue the amount of funding that we provide in the program and the extent of service that can be provided through the 80% funding we now provide.

ADJOURNMENT DEBATES

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Last week I filed a notice of dissatisfaction with the answer given by the Minister of Education and Training with response to a question on Jobs Ontario. I was notified it was to have been dealt with yesterday. Unfortunately, due to an oversight which I think had to do with exhaustion after several hours of voting on the social contract legislation, the matter was not called. I would ask for unanimous consent that it be dealt with tomorrow at the end of proceedings.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I appreciate the member's point of order and indeed ask if there's unanimous consent for the late show to occur. Agreed? No? I heard at least one no.

I would put before the House again the request by the member. There was an oversight. I realize that this House spent a considerable amount of time in a voting procedure and, as a result of that, was unable to have what's commonly known as the late show. I think the honourable member for Eglinton has made a reasonable request for the House and I will put the question again. Is there unanimous consent for the late show to occur? Agreed.

Hon Mike Farnan (Minister without Portfolio in Education and Training): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I would request that the member leave it over till Monday. There is a greater possibility that we can have attendance by the minister at that time.

The Speaker: If I understand, there had been some arrangement and agreement between the member and the minister involved for tomorrow, for Thursday, at 6 of the clock.

Mr Dennis Drainville (Victoria-Haliburton): Point of personal privilege.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): Point of privilege, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker: One at a time, please. The member for Eglinton.

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Ms Poole: I approached the Clerk's office about the fact that it had not been called yesterday. I asked if it could be dealt with today. They had talked to the minister and he asked if it could be dealt with tomorrow instead of today. I had agreed to that, so I don't think it's a problem with the minister.

The Speaker: I take it it's agreed, and it will be Thursday at 6 of the clock. I recognize the honourable member for York Mills with his point of order.

Mr Turnbull: Yes, Mr Speaker, on a related matter: I too had called for the late show for the Minister of Education and Training, and in discussions with him last week, he said he would not be able to attend and asked that it be deferred. We deferred it to yesterday evening. You know what happened. In recognition of what the government member has suggested, I would be happy to put it over to next Tuesday at 6 o'clock.

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): Why not tomorrow?

Mr Turnbull: I will not be in the House tomorrow, much in the same way as the Minister of Education was not in the House for the two preceding times that were arranged. I understood from the Minister of Education yesterday evening that he would support such a putting over and I understood that in fact there would be unanimous consent from their side.

The Speaker: These requests place the Chair in a very awkward position in that the Chair is not privy to conversations between members and ministers.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): In the case of the first incident that was raised with us, it was raised with us before it was raised here, and I was able to confirm with the minister that tomorrow night was not a problem.

If the member would be prepared to raise this question again tomorrow, I will have had an opportunity to confirm that it's acceptable to the minister so that we don't end up with any further delays in that respect, if that would help.

Mr Turnbull: I think I just mentioned that in fact I will not be in the House tomorrow, so that will not be possible.

The Speaker: What I might suggest to the member is that perhaps he could contact the minister and, if at all possible, reach some accommodation before 5 of the clock today and so inform the House, and we can make the necessary arrangements with or without the individual member being present.

PETITIONS

PRODUCE-YOUR-OWN BEER AND WINE

Mr Hugh O'Neil (Quinte): I have a petition that I've been asked to present to the government. It was submitted by Mr Fergus Whelan, the president of Bubbles 'N' Brew in the city of Trenton and it reads:

"We, the undersigned, believe that the new tax on brew-on-premises home brew is unfair, unwanted and unreasonable.

"We are concerned that it will eliminate jobs without increasing government revenue.

"This new tax is inspired by big, multinational brewing corporations whose only desire is to keep us from enjoying home brew. Scrap the tax before it begins."

HEALTH CARE

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): I have a petition that was sent to me from the Onaping Falls medical centre in Levack, Ontario, and it reads:

"Respecting the government proposal to shut out new doctors in Ontario:

"The Ontario government proposal to shut out new family doctors, paediatricians and psychiatrists from practising in most areas of Ontario is unacceptable.

"It will prevent these doctors from serving those patients who need care the most. Here are some examples:

"Women and children who need more access to female psychiatrists, paediatricians and family physicians.

"Young female doctors form a much larger percentage of graduating doctors than the existing doctor population.

"Cancer patients who will be denied care by doctors trained in palliative care and paediatric cancer.

"Parents who have difficulty in finding obstetricians to deliver their babies and who therefore rely on young family physicians.

"Psychiatric patients, including children, who already wait for an assessment, depending on where they live.

"It's also a waste of millions of dollars of taxpayers money already spent in training these doctors, doctors the people of Ontario will never get a chance to use.

"I oppose the Ontario government's proposal to shut out new doctors from practising."

That's signed by several hundred people from that area of the province, and I too affix my name to this petition.

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Mr Peter North (Elgin): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas we have grave concerns over the Ministry of Health's proposal to downsize and eliminate the mental health services at St Thomas Psychiatric Hospital;

"Whereas we condemn the inhumane approach to fiscal management;

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

"We demand that the Minister of Health immediately cease and desist the abandonment of the high quality of care that has always been provided by the St Thomas Psychiatric Hospital."

That's signed by some 550 people in the Elgin and surrounding areas, and I will affix my signature to that particular petition.

CONTRAT SOCIAL

M. Jean Poirier (Prescott et Russell) : J'ai une pétition justement, je crois, de 20 enseignants et enseignantes de l'école secondaire l'Escale de Rockland qui pétitionnent l'Assemblée législative de l'Ontario justement pour protester contre le contrat social du premier ministre Bob Rae. J'y ai apposé ma signature et je les appuie à 100 %.

GAMBLING

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I support this petition and I'm happy to loan my signature to it.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Mr Dennis Drainville (Victoria-Haliburton): I'm going to present this petition:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"We are upset and angry regarding the impact of Bill 48 on the public sector employees. Not only will this bill affect our pensions and salaries, but it will destroy our basic democratic right to bargain collectively.

"We do not agree with your attempt to destroy our unions. We are prepared to oppose the passage of this bill with every resource at our disposal. You must kill Bill 48."

It is signed by the staff from Glen Dhu Community School in Whitby, and I'm glad to affix my signature to this very fine and important petition.

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): I have a petition here which is signed by a number of people throughout Kent county. It's addressed to the honourable Lieutenant Governor of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and it says:

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"That free and open collective bargaining for public service employees be restored and be returned to its honourable position in Ontario;

"That the social contract in its present form be destroyed and that the valuable programs and services in the public sector be maintained for the betterment of all Ontarians;

"That the government withdraw Bill 48 and, in place of this bill, the government work cooperatively with the public sector unions to find an equitable solution rather than eliminating valuable public sector unions."

In keeping with accordance of the procedures in introducing petitions, I hereby introduce these petitions on behalf of the constituents in my riding.

HEALTH CARE

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario which reads:

"Whereas proposals made under the government's expenditure control plan and social contract initiatives regarding health care in the province of Ontario will have a devastating impact on access to and the delivery of health care; and

"Whereas these proposals will result in a severe reduction in the provision of quality health care services across the province;

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

"The government of Ontario move immediately to withdraw these proposed measures and reaffirm its commitment to rational reform of Ontario's health care system through its obligations under the 1991 Ontario Medical Association-government framework and economic agreement."

I too have put my name to that petition.

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AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): I have a petition signed by approximately 200 constituents on Bill 164.

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

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

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

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

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

"That Bill 164 be withdrawn."

So signed, and I have affixed my signature to this. Regretfully, it was not submitted to the House prior to the passage of Bill 164, but the fact of the matter is that people are genuinely upset and concerned that the government is not prepared to do anything in response to the complaints that people have. It is a serious problem that's going on within society today. The government continues to do what it wants and the public has no choice but to put petitions in, and they are having no effect on it at all.

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): I have a petition here from the secondary school teachers of my riding.

"We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"That free and open collective bargaining for public service employees be restored and be returned to its honourable position in Ontario;

"That the social contract in its present form be destroyed and that the valuable programs and services in the public sector be maintained for the betterment of all Ontarians;

"That the government withdraw Bill 48 and, in place of this bill, that the government work cooperatively with the public service unions to find an equitable solution rather than eliminating valuable public services."

I am submitting this on behalf of my constituents.

GO BUS SERVICE

Mr Charles Beer (York North): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly.

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

"We oppose the provincial government's cancellation of GO bus route 6565, Newmarket-King-Maple-Yorkdale. To many of us, this is the only means of transportation; to the elderly, possibly the only means."

I have signed this petition in support.

PASSENGER RAIL SERVICE

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I have a petition signed by 356 residents of Wellington county in the city of Guelph in support of retaining GO train service in Guelph, and I wish to present it to the Ontario Legislature at this time for the consideration of the provincial government.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): I have a petition to the provincial Parliament.

"I, the undersigned, hereby register my opposition to wide-open Sunday business.

"I believe in the need of keeping Sunday as a holiday for family time, quality of life and religious freedom. The elimination of such a day will be detrimental to the fabric of society in Ontario and cause increased hardship on retailers, retail employees and their families.

"The proposed amendment of the Retail Business Holidays Act, Bill 38, dated June 3, 1992, to delete all Sundays except Easter (51 per year) from the definition of 'legal holiday' and reclassify them as working days should be defeated."

I have over 700 signatures from constituents in my riding. I will affix my signature to this petition and I support it.

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

"We, the undersigned, hereby request you to vote against the passing of Bill 38.

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

"The observance of Sunday as a non-working day was not invented by man but dates from God's creation, and is an absolute necessity for the wellbeing of all people, both physically and spiritually.

"We beg you to defeat the passing of Bill 38."

It's signed by 28 constituents and I affix my signature.

HEALTH CARE

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas these proposals will result in a severe reduction in the provision of quality health care services across the province;

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

"That the government of Ontario move immediately to withdraw these proposed measures and reaffirm its commitment to rational reform of Ontario's health care system through its obligations under the 1991 Ontario Medical Association-government framework and economic agreement."

I have signed this petition.

RETAIL STORE HOURS

Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): I have a petition here from many, many residents in my riding, some several hundred, including the Dancys on Park Road, Arlene Jarvis and Dr Charles E. McIlveen, a former member of this assembly from the city of Oshawa.

They are petitioning our Legislature, registering their opposition in the strongest possible terms to Bill 38, which will eliminate Sunday from the definition of "legal holiday" in the Retail Business Holidays Act. They "believe in the need of keeping Sunday as a holiday for family time, quality of life and religious freedom. The elimination of such a day will be detrimental to the fabric of society in Ontario and cause increased hardship on many families."

The amendment included in "Bill 38, dated June 3, 1992, to delete all Sundays except Easter (51 per year) from the definition of 'legal holiday' and reclassify them as working days should be defeated.

GAMBLING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have signed the petition.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): The member for Mississauga South, I believe you have a committee report to submit?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance): Get with it, Margaret.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): Have I said anything mean to you today, Mr Treasurer? Are you going to be nice to me, Mr Treasurer?

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

Mrs Marland from the standing committee on government agencies presented the committee's sixth report.

The Deputy Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 106(g)(11), the report is deemed to be adopted by the House.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

COURTS OF JUSTICE STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE LES TRIBUNAUX JUDICIAIRES

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

Bill 68, An Act to amend the Courts of Justice Act and to make related amendments to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Justices of the Peace Act / Loi modifiant la Loi sur les tribunaux judiciaires et apportant des modifications corrélatives à la Loi sur l'accès à l'information et la protection de la vie privée et à la Loi sur les juges de paix.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Minister, do you wish to make any statement?

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General): No, Mr Speaker. I did make a statement in ministers' time and look forward to discussing the bill in debate.

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COMMERCIAL CONCENTRATION TAX AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA / LOI DE L'IMPÔT SUR LES CONCENTRATIONS COMMERCIALES

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

Bill 71, An Act to amend the Commercial Concentration Tax Act / Loi modifiant la Loi de l'impôt sur les concentrations commerciales.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Do you wish to make a brief statement?

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): When I tabled the bill, I noted the surprise on the Finance minister's face, and in fact he should be surprised. It is quite unusual for an opposition member to table government legislation, and that is what my bill is today. It is exactly the same as the first sections of Bill 29 that deal with the commercial concentration tax repeal.

It's my hope that the government will accept this bill and move it forward. We can then, if they wish, through the proper process of this House, deal with all of those other sections of Bill 29 which have nothing whatever to do with the commercial concentration tax repeal.

I'm concerned that Bill 29, as it now stands, is not only confusing; it is devious and it has been described as sneaky. My legislation today will clarify that situation. I have the word of our opposition House leader that if the Treasurer will accept this bill, we will support it as government legislation, bang, bang, bang; first, second and third reading, without delay.

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): I beg leave to introduce a bill called An Act to amend the Legislative Assembly Retirement Allowances Act and that the bill be read for the first time.

The Deputy Speaker: This is the wrong copy. I wonder if you could give me the right one. There is another form that could be used.

Mrs Sullivan: I don't have the other form, Mr Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker: Perhaps you could reintroduce it tomorrow.

Mrs Sullivan: Yes, I'll do that.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SOCIAL CONTRACT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE CONTRAT SOCIAL

Mr Laughren moved third 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 Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Would you wish, Minister, to make a statement?

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): Mr Speaker, just before the minister proceeds, I believe there's been an agreement between the three House leaders that the Finance minister will make his comments, then they will split the time between then and 5:30, and then at 5:30 the Premier will do a wrapup.

The Deputy Speaker: Is that agreed? Agreed.

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): I am pleased to lead off debate on Bill 48, the Social Contract Act. As members will understand, I believe, the Social Contract Act and what flows from it is designed to effect $2 billion in public sector compensation savings in this fiscal year and each of the two subsequent years.

We feel very strongly that the combination of the expenditure reductions which are taking place through the expenditure control plan and the almost $2 billion in tax increases that were contained in the budget present a fair and balanced approach to getting Ontario's financial house back in shape, and it is out of shape now.

We believe that if we had said, "No, we don't need the $2 billion in savings from the public sector, we'll take it out of expenditure reductions instead," that would have meant very, very significant layoffs in the public sector all across the province. It's hard to pinpoint precisely the number, but I would think somewhere between 20,000 to 30,000 job losses in the public sector.

We had, of course, another alternative: to raise taxes even more than we did. I think we pushed the envelope as far as we could on tax increases this year.

The third option, of course, was to allow the deficit to rise by a further $2 billion. I believe that would have been unacceptable, that as we come out of the recession we simply have got to get the deficit going down.

Even with these moves, even with the moves of $4 billion under the expenditure control plan and the significant tax increases and the social contract $2 billion in savings, we are still this year going to have a deficit of over $9 billion.

I can tell you that when we formed the government, the cumulative debt of this province was in the neighbourhood of $40 billion. Right now it's over $68 billion and it's ticking away at the rate of, in this year's case, another $9 billion. We were heading for a situation in which, very quickly, in the next year or two, the amount of money we spent on servicing the debt would be the largest single expenditure of this province, more than we spend on hospitals, more than we spend on education, more than we spend on social services. I believe that would have been irresponsible, and we simply had to take some action.

I believe as well that regardless of what government was sitting in these positions over here, it would have done something. I'm not sure they would have done exactly what we're doing. I'm not sure there would have been a social contract.

But I can tell you that if what other governments have done across this land is any indication, what would have been done by another party in government would have been a lot more draconian, a lot meaner, a lot less fair than what this government is attempting to do through the social contract. Don't take my word for it; look at what's happened in other provinces, and look as well at the severity of our fiscal problems compared to other provinces'.

The intent of this act is to encourage workers, employers and the government to negotiate settlements that will be in everyone's best interests and will achieve expenditure savings of $2 billion this year and each of the next two years.

The process is working, somewhat. There have been two agreements signed, one with the community services sector -- that was achieved yesterday -- and today, very recently, the police sector signed an agreement, including the police and the police services boards and the government. There are eight sectors in total.

This morning the Ontario public service sector negotiations ended when the Ontario Public Service Employees Union walked away from the process. I regret that very much, for a number of reasons.

One, I believe it's in everyone's best interests to achieve a voluntary agreement rather than be subjected to the fail-safe mechanism contained in Bill 48.

The reason I think it's in everyone's best interests is that if a sectoral agreement is reached, there are lower savings targets that must be realized.

In the case of the Ontario public service, the difference is about a $31-million lower target if a sectoral agreement is achieved. That $31 million, using a very rough rule of thumb, represents about 600 jobs that will no longer be protected in the Ontario public service, because the savings target is now $31 million higher because no sectoral agreement has been voluntarily reached up to this point.

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The government had put on the public service table a number of inducements to achieve a voluntary agreement. First, we had assured the parties at the table that the job security fund would be available to provide 95% of employees' incomes for up to a year if they, as a result of this exercise or, quite frankly, as a result of the expenditure control exercise as well, were subjected to temporary layoffs.

Secondly, if the agreements could be reached, there would be no need for any permanent layoffs; some temporary layoffs quite likely, yes, but we believe that the combination of the job security fund that I mentioned plus recall rights plus the other inducements such as early retirement, voluntary exit, combined with the attrition in the public sector, which has admittedly dropped in the last couple of years, would not have necessitated any permanent layoffs whatsoever.

So I believe there are still adequate incentives there for our own employees to come back to the Ontario public service table. That is their decision, of course, not ours. We welcome them back at any time because I really, really believe it's in everyone's best interests, in particular in the best interests of their own membership, to come back to the table and negotiate in order to protect those 600 jobs and in order to realize the other savings through the job security fund and through early retirement options and so forth. I regret very much that they have chosen to walk.

Our provisions for workers who reach agreements underline our respect for those who work in the public sector and serve their communities so well. I very much hope that we will see a large number of agreements. Out of the eight sectors, it would be very nice to have them all agree.

I understand the argument that this is an intrusion into the sanctity of collective bargaining, but I would put to you that that's not the only sanctity there is in this province. There's also the sanctity of protecting vulnerable people and protecting jobs in the public service. I know it's a tough tradeoff -- very difficult for this government in particular, if I could say it; very difficult for us to proceed with this bill -- but we believe that the principle of protecting the vulnerable through the provision of services in all the communities across the province and the principle of protecting jobs in the public sector, the people who deliver those services, are important principles, and we believe that in this case the tradeoff simply must be there. We don't take great satisfaction in that, but I believe that's the case, because it really does preserve jobs and services.

Bargaining agents can choose not to be subjected to Bill 48, not to be subjected to the fail-safe mechanism, as we call it, by arriving at a voluntary agreement before August 1. Not only that: Through amendments that were put yesterday, we have amended the bill so that even if a sector doesn't reach an agreement or if there is no local agreement by August 1 and the fail-safe mechanism clicks in and applies to that sector, such as the Ontario public service sector that walked away this morning, after August 1, if that sector, having lived under the fail-safe mechanism for a number of months in this fiscal year we're in now, decides it would prefer to negotiate a sectoral agreement for the next two years, that is quite appropriate, and we would be prepared to engage in those negotiations to make that happen.

I know there was some criticism of that amendment in the House by the third party today. But I would say to the third party, why would we so fiercely lock into the fail-safe mechanism, Bill 48, for the full three years if, after August 1, a sector comes to the agreement or comes to the conclusion that it would like the lower targets for the next two years and that it would like the benefits that are offered through the voluntary agreements under the social contract? Why wouldn't we entertain that? I believe that in some cases they will come up with more creative and better solutions than are contained in Bill 48, so why would we reject that?

I understand it's a very difficult decision for the trade unions in this province to accept this bill. I appreciate that fact, but I really believe it's in the best interests of their members to avoid this bill by arriving at and coming to a voluntary agreement.

We have made some amendments in the bill. For example, we've changed the original requirements of the bill on low-income people and we have exempted totally people who earn under $30,000. The bill as originally drafted said it was for people earning under $30,000 on an annualized basis. We've removed that from the bill because most people who earn under $30,000, particularly those people who work part-time -- if you annualized their salary, they would end up earning over $30,000 -- are not working part-time because they choose to. Very often, it's because that's the only job available to them.

Why would we do that? I know it puts pressure on the remaining employees in that particular sector who must achieve the targets, but I think that in the interest of fairness it was better to remove the annualized aspect of the low-income cutoff aspect of the bill so that, if you earn under $30,000, you are exempt from the reduction in compensation aspects of the bill.

I realize there will be some distortions and I believe it was the third party again that raised the question of people who may perhaps work at a very high hourly rate, weekly rate or per diem rate and if you annualized their income it would be more than $30,000 a year -- someone who earns $500 a day doing some specialized work. But I believe the number of examples that you could come up with in that regard are not as important as the very large number of people who work part-time and earn under $30,000, the vast majority of whom are women. I think it was an appropriate tradeoff.

We clarified in the act, through our amendments as well, that nothing in the act overrides the Human Rights Code. What was already contained in the act was that nothing would affect the Pay Equity Act and the provisions therein, but we've added the Human Rights Code to that as well. We've clarified some of the ambiguous wording that was in the bill and we spelled out some administrative arrangements as well.

The successful negotiations that have occurred so far, two out of the eight sectors, show at least that unions, government, employers can work together to achieve voluntary agreements. It's my hope that that will continue to happen and that we will achieve voluntary agreements. My dream would be to achieve it in all eight sectors -- whether that happens or not, I don't know -- in which case the fail-safe mechanism will drop into place.

But it must be very clear to people that we must achieve these savings. There was some scepticism when we announced our intention to proceed with the social contract that we would ever achieve these savings. There was scepticism from the financial markets and, quite frankly, from some people in this Legislature. But I think it should be clear that we are determined to get our financial house back in order in this province, because the spending of the 1980s cannot be sustained, given the revenues of the 1990s. It was fine in the 1980s but it's not fine in the 1990s, and we've simply got to achieve that.

If we didn't, we would continue to transfer an increasing amount of Ontario taxpayers' money to wealthy bond holders somewhere else in the world, not even in Ontario, because over two thirds of all our new borrowing is not done in this province, not even done in this country, and that's because of necessity. The private capital markets cannot provide us with the amount of money that we're borrowing, which is running along at over $1 billion a month, and that simply means that we have to borrow elsewhere in the world.

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I've always thought that it's truly a perverse redistribution of income to take working people's taxes in this province and transfer those taxes to wealthy bond holders somewhere else in the world. That, to me, is not my vision of redistribution of income. Also, that means that the money that's going to pay the interest is not being used to provide jobs in the public sector, to provide services in the public sector, to provide a better educational system. For me, that's more important, and it's more important that we get that under control.

It's not simply to save money for the saving of money's sake, it's to preserve jobs and services that we are proceeding with Bill 48 and to protect the very vulnerable people who depend on those services, because, make no mistake about it, if we had taken the $2 billion in some other way, through the reduction of transfers, either the educational system would have suffered or the public services sector would have suffered, and in many cases we really are talking about the most vulnerable people and we're not prepared to do that. That is why we have determined to proceed with this legislation.

I do recognize that it represents an enormous compromise for many people to accept the social contract, I appreciate that, and it's a profound compromise. But I really believe that it's necessary for the common good to do this. I think it's not appropriate to have simply allowed the public sector to have continued on without these actions, because I feel very strongly that while the public sector is not the cause of the financial problems in this province -- it didn't cause them -- at the same time it has to be part of the solution.

Other people are part of the solution too. That's what the tax increases are all about. That's what the expenditure reductions are all about. So we're not simply selecting public sector employees and saying, "You've got to pay the entire price." That's simply not the case. But at the same time the public sector must be part of the solution.

I know that it's not easy. Difficult problems never are easy to solve. But I would conclude by simply saying that the alternative to what we're doing would be more unpalatable and especially more unpalatable to the very people who are most upset about us proceeding with this legislation. That's assuming, of course, you accept the premise that something had to be done about that $2 billion. I believe that only by acting together, by working with the public sector and its employees, can we make this province a better place in which to live and work.

The Deputy Speaker: Are there any other members who wish to participate in this debate?

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): Any questions and answers, Mr Speaker?

The Deputy Speaker: No, there are no questions and answers for the simple reason I believe there isn't enough time. You're dividing your time among yourselves.

Mrs Marland: That's fine. I just wanted to understand where we were.

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): My understanding is that we will divide the time between now and 5:30, which, I gather, will leave each party around 50 minutes or so. Is that correct?

The Deputy Speaker: The clock -- it's being done.

Mr Phillips: Yes, just the two opposition parties.

I'm pleased to begin the third reading debate, I guess by first acknowledging that this, without any doubt, is the most important bill that we will deal with here in the life of this government. Just to set the stage, I don't think there's any doubt that there's agreement we must tackle the deficit problem and there's no doubt that a major part of tackling it has to be working with the roughly million people who work in the public service and the broader public service.

Our strongly held view is that this bill is indeed fundamentally flawed and, secondly, that there was a better way. The government has chosen a way that we think was very wrong. The problem is only time will tell, and it gives no one, certainly in our party, much comfort to be able to say six months or a year from now that we were right and you were wrong. That's why we've fought, literally from the day this bill was introduced, to try and persuade the government that it was fundamentally flawed and there was an alternative.

I hope in the time allocated to us that I'll have a chance to point out the areas. I'll just try and enumerate them.

One is that we don't think this will achieve your financial savings. We think there are several elements in here that merely delay expenditures, particularly in the leave provision where an awful lot of it will be banked and will be paid off in three years. That not only delays the expenditures, but it has a major element of unfairness. Some employees will be able to bank those days; others won't.

As the Minister of Finance said, this is an unprecedented intrusion into collective bargaining, and maybe not all of the public care about that. But I will just say there are 9,000 agreements between employers and employees in this province and this will prove to have been an enormous intrusion in that. The government is going to step into every one of those collective agreements and impose certain conditions on them.

As the Minister of Finance said, it overrides an enormous number of acts that this Legislature has passed: the Employment Standards Act, the Labour Relations Act, the Police Services Act. Many, many acts are deliberately overridden by this legislation, an enormous intrusion.

It establishes a precedent for a minister to have incredible powers. The NDP may say, "That's fine because we're in power and we're fair." I will say to them that you establish this precedent now and you establish it for future governments, and I don't think the NDP would have stood still for a moment to allow any other government to introduce legislation that gives a minister the power to approve, and the sole power to approve, these sectoral agreements.

The fail-safe mechanisms: The minister says it's an incentive. I say that if this were a private sector agreement and you said, "If you don't come to an agreement in four weeks, we're going to cut our offer by 20%. You have to agree in four weeks or we'll cut our offer by 20%," I don't think you would find any private sector company that would be allowed to do that.

I think perhaps the best indication of why the bill is flawed is that the bill has now had, from the government, 29 amendments, and for those in the public who may not be familiar with the process, yesterday we began final debate, around 4 o'clock, on what we call clause-by-clause discussion. At five minutes to 4, we got, I think, eight more amendments to the bill.

We're talking about a bill that impacts one out of five workers in the province, that impacts over $40 billion worth of salary and remuneration, and five minutes before we begin final debate for the last two hours, we got very substantial amendments that employers and employees out there are only now being given copies of. Yet the bill will become law this afternoon at 6 o'clock and we will have had not even 24 hours to look at major amendments.

I will say also that one of the saddest parts of all the fallout of this is that this exercise has begun to pit many of our public servants against the broader public, particularly the leadership of the unions.

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Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): You should have been here 1982. If only that line had been used by the Liberals in 1982.

Mr Phillips: That I believe is most unfortunate, because I think it's only just begun, unfortunately, particularly with the time frames. As we move into the debate, I'll be talking in more detail about our concerns with the bill.

Hon Mr Cooke: You had none of those concerns in 1982.

Mr Phillips: The Minister of Education and Training is once again trying to interrupt, when many of the people who are concerned about this bill are in the educational sector. Many of them will be dramatically impacted by this, but the Minister of Education wants to holler from his seat. I don't think they will appreciate that.

Hon Mr Cooke: Gerry, well, because I can't participate in the debate. You wouldn't allow us to have any of the time.

Mr Phillips: The member says he can't participate in the debate. We would have been happy to have a very prolonged debate on this.

How did we get here? Because the Minister of Finance raised a point that's bothered me in this debate, and that is that he's essentially said, "Somebody else is to blame for our financial mess, the federal Conservatives with free trade," or, "The Liberals left us a mess." I will say that there's been only one balanced budget --

Applause.

Mr Phillips: Thank you -- in 20 years in the province and that was five months before the government came in. I appreciate the applause. Only one balanced budget in 20 years and that was five months before the NDP came in.

Then what happened? I think history will show that the first budget of Floyd Laughren and Premier Rae was a huge mistake. You may remember that the Premier said he would spend his way out of the recession. That was the fundamental mistake. We are paying for that now. The reason I'm raising this is that throughout this entire debate the Premier has never acknowledged that perhaps he was wrong, that perhaps you couldn't spend your way out of the recession, that perhaps running three straight deficits of $10 billion was wrong.

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I basically have sat here since the election of September 6 --

The Acting Speaker (Mr Dennis Drainville): What's your point of order, please?

Mr Perruzza: -- and I've never heard -- well, my point is that he's quoted the Premier. I'd like to know --

The Acting Speaker: That's not a point of order.

Mr Perruzza: -- which page and chapter in Hansard he's quoting from --

The Acting Speaker: That's not a point of order. The honourable member will please sit down.

Mr Perruzza: -- because I never heard those words --

The Acting Speaker: That's not a point of order.

Mr Perruzza: -- from the Premier of the province. I've heard similar kinds of things --

The Acting Speaker: That's not a point of order. The honourable member for Downsview will please sit down. The honourable member for Scarborough-Agincourt has the floor.

Mr Phillips: Mr Speaker, I think if you go back to the budget, you will find very clearly that Premier Rae said: "We had a choice. We could have fought the deficit or the recession. We're fighting the recession. We are going to run a $10-billion deficit." The reason I raise this is because all of the million people who are directly impacted by this legislation should appreciate this: You can't blame Premier Rae for all of it, but that first budget was a fundamental mistake that we are now paying for, paying for dramatically.

Getting on now to the bill, the reason I'm raising the financial problem is because Premier Rae has said this is the only way, the only bill that can solve our problems. I think the bill is fundamentally flawed. I think there are other bills that could have been introduced.

My leader, it was probably 10 weeks ago, made the recommendation that what should have happened -- Premier Rae wouldn't listen to it but it proved to be right -- was that the government should have said to all the partners in the province: "Here are your financial parameters. Here are the financial parameters that have to be lived within. We will give you the tools -- the employers and the employees -- to reach the agreements necessary to find those solutions."

The third thing is that the government should have sat down with its own employees long ago, should have sat down with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union long ago and reached an agreement. But they didn't and now we find that OPSEU has been put in a very tough spot. If the government had sat down six months ago with OPSEU, I think we could have had a model agreement.

I guess I should spend a little bit of time on the bill itself. The first thing we're concerned about is that this bill does not represent real restraint. The challenge in this, if you read the bill carefully, is that many of the employees, I think, will say, "What we want to do is to be deemed critical." If you're deemed critical, you do not have to take unpaid leave days. You can bank those days. In my judgement, I think most employees will say, "Listen, I'd like to be deemed critical, because if I can be deemed critical, I can bank the days."

We cannot, by the way, get an answer out of the government about what the definition of "critical" will be. Our opinion is that this is going to represent a substantial delay of payments. We're going to see many employees -- I've heard as many as half the employees in the province could say: "I'm critical. I'm deemed critical, so I am going to bank my leave days." That could represent a deferred payment of up to $3 billion. That payment will come due at the end of this contract.

Hon Mr Cooke: Nonsense, absolute nonsense.

Mr Phillips: The Minister of Education says "nonsense," but we've asked for a definition of "critical." What we hear is that we will not have a definition of "critical" until well after the bill is passed.

The second thing, as I said earlier, that is of concern to us is the unprecedented intrusion into collective bargaining. What's happened here, and only time will tell, as I think many of the backbench members of the NDP know, is that this bill steps right into the middle of collective bargaining, and particularly on the sectoral agreements.

What we're going to find is that there is only one person who can deem whether a sectoral agreement has been reached or not. There doesn't have to be any indication of whether half the employees may agree to that or half the employers may agree to that. Only one person can determine when a sectoral agreement has been reached. I believe there will be several sectoral agreements reached where there is not majority support within that sector for it. Only the Minister of Finance is able to finally agree on that sectoral agreement.

Again, it may be that people say, "Well, these are tough times and that's a price worth paying." It's worth paying only if there wasn't a better alternative, which I've outlined earlier. What you're going to find is that this is unprecedented intrusion, where the Minister of Finance will determine there is a sectoral agreement reached even when there may not be support within that sector. That sectoral agreement, believe me, will have enormous impact on local agreements. You may say, "That's fine; too bad," but that's going to be the case.

The ministerial authority: I'm quite surprised the NDP backbench members would not have raised their voices about this, where they are going to allow a minister to determine when a collective agreement has been reached. It won't be as a result of votes within the sector and it won't be a result of any taking it back to the membership; it will be the minister. The minister has already, I gather, unilaterally determined that there is a sectoral agreement in one sector.

The third concern is the time lines. I would say that Premier Rae has particularly put the union leadership under enormous pressure. We are now less than four weeks away from when the agreements have to be reached. The gun is very much to the parties' heads. Many of you have been in collective bargaining. I've been involved in collective bargaining. When you are trying to reach a collective agreement with a gun to your head and working on those kinds of time lines, I don't think sensible collective bargaining is going to go on.

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The next point I wanted to talk a little bit about is the drafting of the bill and the way the bill's worded. Here we are and we're dealing with the most important piece of legislation, I think we all agree, that we will see here in the Legislature in this session, or in the lives of all of us in this government. Yet the bill, it's clear to anyone, has been drafted hastily. I hope the government backbenchers realize that it was just late yesterday afternoon that we saw some very substantial amendments introduced five minutes before we began the final debate, less than two hours before the debate was finished on clause-by-clause. I think that's an indication, I hope it's an indication, to the government members of the problems of this bill, and I think we've only just begun to see the problems of the bill. I don't think anything could be clearer than the number of amendments that we've seen from the government, of the problems of it.

I also think that we've yet to see the fallout from the provision of the bill that calls for certain employers to pay money to the government, employers that get nothing from the government. We're going to see, for example -- I think Hydro is required to provide $100 million. There's only one way Hydro can get the $100 million: You've got to do it through rates. There is no other solution.

It isn't a question of the government giving less to certain groups; it is the government's going to be asking certain groups to provide money to it. There will be an interesting debate in Metropolitan Toronto. The bill calls for the Metropolitan Toronto School Board to provide probably between $90 and $100 million to the province, and the Metro school board gets nothing in grants. So the bill provides for the government to say, "Listen, you've got to give us that $100 million."

I think there will be an interesting debate because I'm not sure the public yet are aware of that. There will be many cases where it isn't a question of the province cutting back on the money that it's giving to jurisdictions; it will be a case where the province will be requesting money from the government that has been raised through, for example, property taxes.

I want to comment briefly as well on the challenges that we face as a result of the Conservative Party's position on this. I realize their position was quite different than ours. At what we call second reading here, as you know, Mr Speaker, they determined that they were going to support the bill and hope that amendments could be made to fix the bill. I understand the reasons for doing that. I think it was unfortunate, because what I ran into was that it added credibility to the bill and many people -- I said, "Listen, we've got real problems with the bill" -- would say to me, "I don't understand why you've got real problems with the bill, because the Conservative Party is supporting the bill." I guess we felt all along the bill was fatally flawed.

I think the Conservative Party now appreciates that the government had no intention of listening to amendments. The Conservative Party presented, I think, 29 amendments. The government adopted none of them. They were dismissed. I feel it was, as I said earlier, unfortunate that the Conservative Party chose that approach because it added credibility to the bill.

If we're right, and only time will tell -- the reason we keep Hansards around here is because it allows all of us to remind each other of what we've said. It probably will be six months to a year before the true impact of this bill is felt. I'm looking forward to that discussion. If it works as the government says it will -- and of course we don't think it will; we think it is fatally flawed -- I appreciate that the government will say, "Well, we were right and you were wrong," but for all the reasons I've talked about, I think it will delay payments.

For example, the government is delaying payments into pensions of $500 million a year for three years. They say, "As a result of this bill, we don't need to make payments into the pensions of $500 million a year." The teachers' pension fund, as I think most people know, has a substantial unfunded liability. We've asked for confirmation -- in fact, the Premier indicated that he was going to provide that confirmation -- that the teachers' pension board has looked at the calculations and agrees with the government.

Hon Mr Cooke: That's why they're meeting.

Mr Phillips: The Minister of Education says that's why they're meeting. The problem is that we're dealing with the bill, and we'll vote on it in less than two hours, and we've yet to have confirmation of that. If by any chance the savings aren't there in the pensions, we will have spent $500 million for the next three years, each and every year, of money that should have gone to the pension. We will have taken that money out of the pension fund.

Hon Mr Cooke: You're absolutely wrong.

Mr Phillips: The Minister of Education says I'm wrong. All you've got to do is do what the Premier promised. The Premier promised we would have from the pension plan confirmation that those funds aren't needed.

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): Are you not delaying the contributions?

Hon Mr Cooke: No.

Mr Phillips: The minister says they're not delaying the contributions. For example, just last year in the budget they delayed a payment into the teachers' pension fund of $500 million for three months. They called that a rescheduling of cash payments. That cost the taxpayers of Ontario $50,000 a day, every single day, in an interest penalty; $50,000 a day completely wasted. It was money that should never have been spent. And you wonder why we ask these questions. You wonder why we might like from the Premier what was promised.

Hon Mr Cooke: Because you're comparing apples and oranges, and you know it.

Mr Phillips: The minister cannot deny it: The payments were delayed for three months, and it cost the taxpayers a $50,000-a-day penalty, wasted money, every day for three months.

So the minister may ask why we're raising these questions; it's for those specific reasons. We are going to be voting in less than two hours on a bill that promises to remove planned payments of $500 million a year for each of the next three years into the pension fund, and we've had no confirmation that that's actuarially sound. I hope it is, but I would have thought the government would have had the courtesy to tell the opposition parties and to share with us the numbers, and you haven't done that. The Premier promised he would do that.

Hon Mr Cooke: Because we actually have to use the legislation that's in place, and you know it. There has to be a pension partners meeting, and the pension partners go through the process.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. Order.

Mr Phillips: All we're asking for is confirmation. We have a belief that the bill will in many respects delay payments and not reduce them.

I think there's a fairness issue in this as well. If it's true that a large number of employees in the province will be deemed critical and will be allowed simply to bank their days while others will be required to take a 5% reduction in their remuneration, I think we're opening up an enormous fairness issue. But there it is, and it's clear in the bill.

We've asked for a definition of "critical," and we've been told, "Sorry, that will come; you'll get that when you see the regulations." Of course, the regulations will come well after we've been asked to vote on the bill.

The fail-safe amendments: I guess I understand why they're there. There has to be, I gather, some conclusion to all of this process. But here we are on July 7, and the 9,000 collective agreements have to be reached within a month. I guess they've got until August 10 to agree to that. That's a time frame that is -- "difficult" is probably too soft a word. I'm afraid it's going to be impossible for groups to reach sensible, negotiated agreements within that time frame, and what we'll have then are either agreements that were reached in haste that don't make sense, or we'll have the two parties at loggerheads because there simply isn't the time to reach the agreement. And then the hammer comes down, because there is a $400-million penalty: If you don't have your agreement by essentially August 1, the government will take $400 million out of the fund.

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So here's where we are now. We have a bill that, in our opinion, is flawed. The government will obviously argue that it's going to work. We don't think it will work, for all the reasons I've outlined.

The government has said that if you are in favour of restraint, you're in favour of the social contract. Frankly, that's one of the challenges we've had, because there is no doubt there is broad, broad support for restraint; there is no doubt that the mood of the public is one of restraint. People are feeling very threatened. There's no doubt about that, and I think every political party in the country understands that and is supportive of that. So the social contract has become a metaphor, and it's actually an interesting exercise for me to watch how a goal of restraint, which we all support, can be used to get through a bill that I think is very flawed.

I'm surprised at particularly the NDP backbenchers that they are not substantially more concerned about this bill. I understand that you've been told that the social contract is the only way for restraint. I say to you that there's a better way. I think you're going to find that as people become more aware of the content of the bill -- and I've been pleased to see that others are joining the issue. I think many of the union leadership have pointed out some of the problems, but the Toronto board of trade has had an opportunity to really get into the bill and raise some very key issues. It isn't just the union leadership; some of our senior business people in the province now are looking at the bill and finding the flaws in it.

As I say, the problem has been that to date, this bill has been seen as what I call a metaphor for restraint, but I predict that in the next three to four months, as people become more aware of what the bill really does, people are going to really wonder how the Legislature ever passed a bill like this.

This may get the government hooting and hollering, but I think the leadership of the union movement has been put into a tough spot.

Hon Mr Cooke: That's been a major concern of yours all your political life.

Mr Phillips: The minister once again is heckling, but I would say that the union leadership has been put into a very tough spot here. I still remember this: The Minister of Finance came to our finance committee meeting in late February and said, "Things are on track, as we said they would be." That was in late February, and members from the committee will remember that. The minister said, "Things are as we said they would be." It was five weeks later that I found out that Premier Rae said: "No, it's all different. It's far worse than we thought. The deficit is now $17 billion, and we are going to have a social contract and we're going to have it right away."

Now, for any of you who are involved in collective bargaining, you'll know how challenging it is to make those kinds of reductions with your membership in that time frame.

I know the government is in a tough position with the finances. I know this bill is the result of a set of processes that have led us here. I think the bill essentially takes the collective bargaining that was going on, which was finally terminated when several of the parties left, and tries to incorporate it in the legislation.

But I will say to them that the fallout of this, whether you like it or not, is that you have damaged the credibility of the union leadership. There's no doubt about that. The problem with the NDP is that it doesn't appreciate, I don't think, that members on all sides of the House have had many experiences, and I understand the challenges the union leadership faces.

To begin to conclude my remarks, this bill is fundamentally flawed, and the Minister of Education and Training in the end will pay for it. It's he, I gather, who's pushing it. It's he who's heckling someone who's trying to raise legitimate issues. It's he who likes to holler and hoot in here. Rather than debate the merits of the bill, he'd rather heckle.

I will say that our party from the outset, from the time we saw this bill and examined it, believed it was fundamentally flawed. Time will prove we were right. The NDP back bench, for whatever reason, has been, I gather, brought into line, but as you live with your conscience on this bill, you will have real questions with yourselves.

We will obviously be voting against it. We will take advantage of the opportunities to debate it with someone like the Minister of Education, who is proudly moving forward with this bill, who likes to heckle but will have to live with the consequences of this.

We look forward to the vote this afternoon. We do not look forward to the consequences of this bill, which we think will not do what it was planned to do and will actually do the opposite. And we look forward to an opportunity, I hope, to find ways in which we can correct the damage that will be done by the bill.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): The opening comments by the Minister of Finance reflected on the seriousness of the present fiscal crisis this province finds itself in, and I will say from the outset that our party, the PC Party, has no doubt about the seriousness of this fiscal crisis. It is well known to the international banking community; indeed, one of the problems this government is having is placing its bonds, and it will have continued difficulty in rolling over debt.

I've listened very attentively to both the Minister of Finance and to the Liberal Finance critic. Unfortunately, the Liberal Finance critic ignored the most important aspect: What would you do?

We know the Liberals brought us into a very serious situation. Let us reflect back on the fact that this is the government that, when it was in power, told us going into the election that it was going to have a surplus. In fact, we know there was a significant deficit when it left office. They had hidden that from the electorate and there was a great deal of anger at the fact that this government, their government, would have done this.

Now let's turn to the present fiscal crisis. There can be no doubt that we must make serious reductions in government expenditures. I don't care which party is in power; these reductions must be made. We must live within our means. Successive governments of all political stripes have spent more than they have taken in; unfortunately, it has come home to roost now and our children and our grandchildren will be paying for this.

The PC Party supported the principle of Bill 48, that being the question of cost reduction of government and deficit reduction. Yes, we supported the principle and we still support that principle and in fact we have offered concrete alternatives. The sign of those concrete alternatives is that we offered 29 substantive amendments, and the government in its wisdom decided it was going to vote against all of those amendments. Some of those amendments flowed directly from those parties who will be affected by these cuts by the government. They were an effort to get the government to accept that there is a responsibility not just to the taxpayer but also to those people who are affected by this legislation. The PC Party put aside all partisan politics and offered those solutions, and those amendments were absolutely voted down by the government.

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Our concern is that Bill 48 in its present form does not achieve the government spending reductions they talk about. In fact this government, if you read carefully the budget this year and take into account the little tiny asterisks beside some numbers, is spending more money than it spent last year, and last year was the record amount that it spent in history.

This government does not have a problem with revenue, it has a problem with its expenditures. We were told by the Minister of Finance that they were spot on in their financial projections only a few months ago, only to find that they were not spot on, they were drastically off.

No government can afford the kind of level of spending that this government is involved in. They are spending in excess of $10 billion more than they're taking in in revenues this year. They would have you believe that they're spending less, but it simply is not true, because you must add in the amount of money which is taken off book.

We know that many of the problems the present government has were inherited from the previous Liberal government. This was the government which increased expenditures in all fields and increased the civil service by 9,000 people, yet we hear no solutions from the Liberals as to how they would address that. Not one single amendment.

It is unfair, I would suggest to you, to suggest that the reductions should be even across the field. Those people who have been subject to expenditure restraint for many years should not be hit with the same amount of reduction. I will take, for example, the fact that the doctors, after many years of restraint, are facing essentially a 25% reduction. Why should they be facing that when the rest of the public sector is facing a 5% reduction? Why is the government turning its back on negotiations with the Ontario Medical Association?

It seems reasonable that we should be looking, for example, at hospitals that have already achieved efficiency and are a lean operating machine. They should not be hit with the same amount of reductions as those hospitals which are in fact operating inefficiently. This government, I would suggest, already has the numbers on a per-procedure basis as to how efficient each hospital is.

I will turn now to the question of hospital closures and layoffs which will flow directly from this government's legislation. If they were to sit down with the OMA and all of the other affected parties, the nurses and the unions, I am confident that we would be able to find significant cost reductions, for example, by cutting the medical card fraud out.

The suggestion that $30,000 a year should be the cutoff point at which anybody will receive a reduction is wrong. We should move the burden all across the board. Those people who are earning $500 a day but are working less than 60 days per year will get no reduction.

Let me turn now to the question of Metro property taxpayers. Any reduction achieved through the social contract of the cost to Metro schools, the government is suggesting that amount of money should be sent back to the government. This is unconscionable. That money belongs to the property taxpayers of Toronto.

The government set up the Fair Tax Commission, and the Fair Tax Commission has come forward with a suggestion that it is unfair to raise education taxes through property taxes, yet this government, which has spent $2.3 million on the Fair Tax Commission, is now ignoring the Fair Tax Commission's recommendations. This is unfair to the property taxpayers of Toronto. Those savings should be remitted back to the property taxpayers.

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): I think I want to begin my short remarks with respect to the government's social contract legislation by indicating to everyone in this House and those watching on TV that these are not easy times, of course, in the province of Ontario. They're not easy times to be in government or to be in opposition. But I think what we've seen over the last few weeks with respect to this legislation, Bill 48, is a difference between the three parties at Queen's Park.

The government says it wanted to consult, that it was willing to entertain some amendments to Bill 48, and we in the Ontario PC party took up that challenge, unlike the Liberal Party, which decided to offer no alternatives whatsoever, unlike the Liberal Party, which decided several weeks ago that it didn't want in any way to be part of the social contract process, that it would not be constructive and that it simply would not go to the bother and the time and energy required to come up with its own amendments to help make this legislation more workable and more fair.

I and my colleagues in the Ontario PC party voted in favour of Bill 48 on second reading, and it hasn't been easy. I've lost a couple of friends. I resent when the Liberal Party gets up and says that we've been playing games with respect to this legislation, because, I'll tell you, we haven't been playing games. We've taken some very tough political hits from teachers and nurses and doctors and pharmacists and a whole pile of other people in the greater public sector. It's been tough on us personally. It has required a great deal of time and energy on our part to try and make the government's social contract legislation more fair and workable.

It's unfortunate that at the end of the day the government refused, along with its Liberal cohorts, to accept any of our amendments. I, as the Ontario PC Health critic, along with my colleague Mr Cousens, the member for Markham, introduced a number of amendments yesterday during committee of the whole House on behalf of a number of very special and important groups in the greater public sector with respect to health care.

We introduced amendments on behalf of the Ontario Medical Association, and those amendments were rejected by the NDP and the Liberals. We introduced amendments on behalf of the Ontario Nurses' Association, and those amendments were rejected by the Liberals and the NDP. We introduced amendments on behalf of the Ontario Pharmacists' Association, and those amendments unfortunately were rejected by both the government and the official opposition. We introduced amendments on behalf of the Ontario Hospital Association, and those amendments were rejected by both the government and the Liberal opposition party.

The Liberal opposition party yesterday -- I found it very interesting -- in trying to flip around and deal with this issue, we had the member for Oriole standing up and in her spot trying to make up amendments, after several weeks of saying that they would have nothing to do with this process, that they would not be in any way constructive.

I think the Liberals have played the politics of the past. If there's one clear message I've got from my constituents, the people of Simcoe West, and people throughout the province, it is that they're tired of the politics of the past. They want opposition parties to put forward alternatives, to put forward constructive amendments to government legislation.

We take that job seriously here in the Ontario PC party. We're disappointed that the Liberals continue to play the politics of the past and we are disappointed sincerely that the government didn't accept any of our 29 amendments. I thought, and I guess it was naïve in hindsight, that the government would at least accept some of our amendments to make Bill 48 more humane: more humane for teachers, more humane for physicians, more humane for many other professionals and good people in the greater public sector. The government talks a great line about consultation, it talks a great line about wanting to entertain our amendments, but at the end of the day yesterday we saw that the government and the Liberals rejected all of our amendments.

As I said, it wasn't easy to support this legislation on second reading, because we knew that the politically expedient thing to do would probably be to do what the Liberals opted to do, and that would be to simply say, "We want nothing to do with this legislation." But we took the hits, we took the time to introduce amendments and we did the very best we could to try to bring fairness to this legislation.

We are disappointed. I hope that those in my riding who indicated they were no longer going to support me because of the stand we took on second reading, which is the reading of the bill in which you stand up for principles and be counted or you simply play the politics of the past, will now understand that we in earnest tried to bring the government around to a commonsense approach to this legislation, and we were not successful at the end of the day. But I'm proud to say, and I think my colleagues share in that pride, that we weren't afraid to bring forward amendments on behalf of groups in the medical professions, as example.

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I want to end my comments by reading what the social contract means to the Ontario Medical Association. I'm going to quote from the June 1993 edition of the Medical Times because I think it's very important that these remarks be put on the record:

"'The government is using its current fiscal situation as an opportunity to pass insidious legislation that would give it unprecedented powers to ration virtually any insured, medically necessary service as it sees fit,' said OMA president Dr Tom Dickson at a news conference held on June 15. 'Under this legislation, there are no limits on what services can be restricted by government -- it applies to everyone and everything.

"'Clearly, government was hoping the public wouldn't notice,' said Dickson. 'If this legislation is passed, it will have a significant impact on patients and the public generally.'

"He pointed out that implementation of the social contract and the expenditure control plan legislation would destroy the constructive relationship developed between government and doctors over the last several years.

"'The master agreement we signed with the NDP government in 1991, touted by Premier Bob Rae and former Health minister Frances Lankin as ground-breaking, has saved hundreds of millions of dollars and greatly improved the management and delivery of health care services,' said Dickson. 'Now, two years later, the government is reneging on its part of the deal and overriding every single part of an agreement that they themselves bargained.'

"Dickson said the credibility and integrity of the Premier are directly at issue. Two years ago, before he was elected, Bob Rae told the OMA board of directors:

"'There is no fairness in a system that allows the government to dictate unilaterally your level of pay. A monolithic system, in which one insurer has all the political cards, can't work without checks and balances. Professions free to speak out on the quality of care; a partnership in which planning decisions about the system emerge from a genuine dialogue, and not from the cabinet room alone; above all a sense of fairness and pluralism when it comes to the management of the system; these are all essential if the health care system is to maintain the confidence of everyone working in it, as well as the public it serves. Fair arbitration between the professions and the government is critical in creating a more open health care system. You have a right to it, under international law, and under every standard of natural justice."'

The Premier said that to the OMA just a couple of years ago, and of course the social contract does the exact opposite.

Finally, I want to say to all those who were questioning the principles we stood up for in supporting this legislation on second reading that we continue to stand by those principles, that we have to reduce the cost and size of government, and we need permanent reductions in the cost and size of government.

Government must get its fiscal house in order. It's a message we have begged the government to listen to. When they told us over the past two and a half years you could somehow spend yourself rich, spend yourself out of a recession, we very clearly said to the government: "You cannot do that. Please come around to our way of thinking and our way of commonsense management."

On second reading, we had an opportunity to stand up for those principles. We did that. We then, during committee hearings, had the opportunity to improve the legislation, to make sure that it actually adhered to those principles. At the end of the day, the government didn't listen, and we have legislation that's badly flawed. We are not, then, able to support it on third reading.

But I want to say to teachers and those people in whom I found over the last few weeks that there seemed to be a lack of believability that the government would actually go ahead with the social contract legislation, we felt it necessary to introduce commonsense amendments because we believe the government is going and will go ahead with this legislation and enact it, if necessary. Tonight at 5:45, we will see the government use its majority to do exactly that.

I also had to point out to people that the Premier and the Treasurer very clearly said that they're not going to let the deficit rip above the $10-billion deficit projected this year, that the government has already built in its $2 billion in savings and that the social contract will go at the end of the day. We tried to be constructive and I'm sorry that it had to end this way.

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): I think we find ourselves in history in the province of this country in a place where we've never been before and I hope we'll never have to go in the future. But I certainly know that this government has opened the door for future governments to take full control over collective bargaining in any sector in the province of Ontario. This is a labour government that has set the precedent that allows governments to reopen collective agreements and to undermine the whole collective bargaining process in the province of Ontario, and I think anybody who knows that and understands the process is totally shocked.

There were other ways for all of us to work together in this province to meet the goals of not only this government, but, I believe, all the members of this Legislative Assembly as we take a look at the debts and deficits across this country and throughout the provinces and understand that we have to find ways to manage in a more effective way. At a time when this province was looking for leadership, was looking for a government to stand up and say, "Enough is enough," and to work with the groups so that we could come to some conclusion around how we were going to meet the demands -- and that was to cut spending in the province of Ontario -- this government has failed significantly.

They actually think they're showing leadership, and what they're really doing is coming up with a social contract that is so complicated and so difficult to implement, so difficult to deal with for all the municipalities, school boards, hospital boards, police services boards, local authorities, that they'll never ever recover, I think, from the actions they're taking today.

Number one, they've given the opposition parties absolutely no opportunity to present amendments that could be significantly and seriously considered. They showed that yesterday when the Treasurer of the province said, "What does this mean?" with regard to one of our amendments that talked about looking at the completion date of any collective agreement whereby some change would be implemented. That is something we could have discussed and it's something we were willing to do. We gave it our best shot, given the amount of time we've got.

I think this government knows that its socialist agenda has failed. They came in and tried to spend their way out of a recession. They hired all kinds of political staff. They've contributed to the difficult situation. Now they understand that their socialist agenda with regard to spending their way out of a recession did not work. They have never stood up and said, "We failed and we need your help." Instead, they've come up with this contract, unprecedented in the province, and they have left the real work up to the municipalities, the school boards, the hospitals, the colleges, the police boards and on and on and on. They are the ones that are going to have to work with the result of this piece of legislation.

I want to take one minute to talk about one section of this particular bill that has to do with school boards. It's section 33.1. Just so they know how the interest groups feel about this, the Ontario Public School Boards' Association has said: "Unless school boards are free to negotiate with unions when collective agreements expire during the social contract term, they will be faced with two undesirable options: to cut student programs and services or to hike local property taxes. Both scenarios are unacceptable."

Hon Mr Cooke: That section was amended, Dianne.

Mrs Cunningham: The minister's telling me they fixed it up. I'll tell him how to fix it up. I know we can work together, Mr Minister.

Hon Mr Cooke: It's already been amended. It was amended yesterday.

Mrs Cunningham: I know you amended it yesterday. We're leaving it to the regulations. I'm hoping you will support me in my recommendations today. I hope we can talk about it in the future. It's extremely important that we do.

Somebody said to me earlier today, "Do you trust this government to come up with regulations behind closed doors that will meet the needs of the young people across this province?" I have to say that there are a lot of people who just simply don't. But the Minister of Education and Training is sitting and listening. We've had a good working relationship and I'm going to put a couple of suggestions on the agenda today.

Here's one of them: If in fact we have to live with section 33.1 -- through you, Mr Speaker, to the minister -- then could we at the very same time say that in those regulations, you will exclude staffing levels? Because without excluding staffing levels the school boards have nowhere to go. There just isn't the opportunity, especially with the small boards, to find the dollars they need.

Hon Mr Cooke: Read the amendment.

Mrs Cunningham: The minister is saying, "Read the amendment." I have to tell you that I did read the amendments, but between 6 and 6:30 last night, and I will read them again. If I'm wrong, I stand to be corrected, but what I'm saying is that in the regulations -- he has said he's telling me that he will exclude staffing levels. If that's what he's saying --

Hon Mr Cooke: I said read the amendment. The amendment's very clear.

Mrs Cunningham: The amendment's very clear: to exclude staffing levels. We're having this conversation across the floor, but that's fine, Mr Minister; we do that frequently, and it's usually in good faith.

The second one is this: We must have consultation. None of us understands this process. The process we have gone through as this bill has evolved has been backwards. Normally, in legislation that is well-thought-out, you would have the legislation, you would look at the regulations, you would have consultation. We've not done it.

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Mr Speaker, we've done it all backwards, and you know and so does the minister know that we had a few minutes yesterday to consider these amendments, just a few minutes on this important piece of legislation. If the minister is listening to me today, and I know he is, the school boards, the hospitals, the colleges, the universities, everyone, must have consultation around the regulations that will go with this particular piece of legislation.

In conclusion, because I know that time is most valuable, I have to say that with regard to the municipalities, this government has not met with the mayors of the larger municipalities, has not met with the regional chairpersons. They are working on Tuesday night next week to take a look at this legislation and give advice on the regulations. All I can say is that they had better very carefully listen to the people who will have to implement this bill with regard to managing what they're responsible for in the municipalities, school boards etc.

This government has simply passed the buck. They want the citizens of Ontario to truly believe that they have shown restraint. What they have really done is to pass that responsibility on to all of the other elected agencies and boards and commissions across this province, some of them appointed, and say: "Here it is. Here are the rules. You live with them." They're going to have a very difficult time.

It's a very disappointing time in this province, to take a look at a labour government that has interfered with the collective bargaining process unlike any other government in the past and has passed that precedent on to future governments. It's with significant disappointment that I speak this afternoon, when in fact they did have a solution. We did our best to provide them with the solution, and we were interested in working with this government. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity.

Mr David Johnson (Don Mills): I would like to reiterate that I and the Progressive Conservative Party are in favour of any initiatives that will reduce government spending; initiatives that are permanent, not temporary in nature; initiatives that are fair and workable.

I would like to make a few comments in the time left with regard to the impact of the social contract on the municipalities, because this bill is unworkable as it pertains to municipalities. It does not give municipalities the tool to deal with the cuts that the government is imposing on the municipalities.

The government has proposed that a freeze on wages be imposed on the municipal sector. I can tell you, almost all the municipalities are already a step ahead of this government: They have already imposed freezes on their staff; there will be no savings in that regard because they have already done that.

This legislation suggests a pause day. In that regard, had the pause day been implemented on April 1, it might have been effective to some degree in addressing the shortfall in funding that is going to accrue to the municipalities. But with the delay that's taken place, it will be simply impossible for the municipalities to save the amount of money they're going to have reduced upon them through pause days.

In addition, those under $30,000 are excluded. In addition, critical functions probably -- although we don't know for sure, but probably -- such as police, fire, ambulance drivers, perhaps homes for the aged employees, day care workers, will also be excluded. Their time will be banked and there will be a day of reckoning at some point after the social contract expires to pay for them.

Simply put, these initiatives will not work. We recommended a 5% rollback. The GTA mayors, I might say, agreed with the Progressive Conservatives. The GTA mayors indicated that there should be an across-the-board reduction of wages of politicians, employees and workers of municipalities. That would have addressed the problem. The initiatives that the government has put forward won't.

What will happen, regardless of what is stated in this bill, is that municipalities will have to compensate. The way they'll compensate will be through a number of factors, such as a few pause days but also including layoffs, including raiding of reserves, including postponing capital funding and including privatization of various functions. It is interesting that this government, a social government, has brought in steps that will result in the privatization of certain functions in the municipal sector.

That is one of the reasons I'm not supporting this bill.

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): With some regret, I rise to speak on third reading of Bill 48 today, the government's social contract legislation. Not 24 hours ago, my caucus and I sat in this Legislature and we watched the government use its majority, with the help of the Liberals, to defeat 29 constructive amendments that would have made this legislation more fair, would have made this legislation workable.

Had those amendments passed, I would be giving a very different speech today, and we could have been voting in favour of this legislation today as well. I realize that's not particularly relevant to the government because it has the majority to jam through whatever it is that it wants.

From day one, though, my caucus has clearly and consistently pushed this government on the issue of restraint. We believe that government is too big. We believe it's too broad. We believe it costs too much. For five years of Liberal government and for two and a half, close to three years of NDP government, we have been trying to point this out.

Taxpayers, quite frankly -- it's obvious now to most, except the Liberals perhaps -- can no longer afford to foot the bill, and future generations of taxpayers cannot afford the bill for unacceptably high deficits and debt. That is clearly the stage we're at today.

That's why we voted in favour of Bill 48 on second reading. We indeed encouraged the government to bring forward legislation so that it could have meaningful negotiations. We didn't think the unions thought this government was serious, and it turns out that they didn't think the government was serious. I guess they'll find out today that it is, and we think it's important that they understand that.

We supported the principle of restraint, and of course we still do. We knew the bill was not perfect, so we set about to amend it. We served notice that we supported the principle and we would propose amendments, hopefully to get passed, to make it better.

We consulted with unions. We consulted with those who will feel the effects of the legislation, our social contract partners, management and employers and employees, hospitals, school boards, universities, colleges, municipalities -- all the transfer partners that get money from this government -- and of course with OPSEU members themselves.

The result of our efforts were 29 constructive amendments that would have addressed some of the fundamental principles that we believe restraint legislation should recognize, and I'll get into that in a minute.

I want to say that I'm proud of the efforts of my caucus in attempting to constructively amend Bill 48. I'm proud of the efforts put forward by the member for Markham in carrying this bill for us in the Legislature, as I am of all the members of our caucus in dealing with the various critic areas and with the various interest groups: the member for London North with colleges and universities and with teachers; certainly the member for Simcoe West, who played a leadership role with those in the medical field, the doctors, the pharmacists and those concerned hospitals; indeed, all the members of our caucus.

I want to tell you, I'm proud of them. I'm proud of the effort they put forward to make this a workable bill with the amendments. I congratulate them for that. I believe very much, as my caucus has believed, that it is much better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.

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When I took over the leadership of my party, I promised a new kind of leadership. The public was calling for a new kind of leadership, a new kind of politics. I pledged to be a constructive opposition, not just an opposition that criticizes or opposes for the sake of opposing but one that would offer alternatives, one that would support when a government deserves support, one that would criticize, yes, when it needed criticizing, but then would propose alternatives with those criticisms.

I believe the public expects that from its politicians, and I therefore expected nothing less from my caucus. I want to tell you, I got nothing less than that. They did not disappoint me and I don't think they have disappointed their constituents or the people of this province.

I am disappointed by the fact that others in this Legislature have continued to play the politics of the past. Had the government been receptive to our amendments -- not one out of 29, after saying, "Oh, we welcome input, we welcome advice" -- many of those amendments our own, many of them put forward with the support of both management and unions of the various transfer partners. Had you been receptive to those, we could have voted for this bill this afternoon.

We will continue to fight for the principles of restraint. We'll continue to fight in a commonsense way and we will support any measure that achieves that end in a fair and workable way. In the case of Bill 48, we would have said yes to genuine restraint. We would have said yes to the permanent structural downsizing of an unsustainably large public sector, particularly if that downsizing had been in a planned, phased-in program over three years, as our amendments proposed, and particularly in conjunction with a planned program of upsizing the private sector, which we've also proposed, something that this government has totally ignored.

We would have said yes to a serious bid to reduce Ontario's deficit, which, quite frankly, now threatens the foundations of our very way of life in this province of Ontario. We would have said yes today to a workable, manageable program that led to carefully planned, long-term reform of our public institutions. We would have said yes today to any measure that accomplished these goals fairly and equitably.

Unfortunately, in its final form, Bill 48 does not do this. There is no guarantee of permanence in downsizing in the cost and the size of government. There is no assurance of reform in the way that government services are going to be delivered. There is far too much power given to the government, far too much unlimited power, both by the regulation and in the bill, to the Minister of Finance.

I hope that power is never used and I hope the minister, when he persuaded his colleagues in caucus by saying, "Don't worry, we won't do all the things the bill says we can do, that all the critics are saying; don't worry, we won't do that" -- I hope that's true. If it is, I don't know why he wouldn't accept our amendments to limit the power.

But when you're dealing in trying to find fairness, when you're dealing with people's lives and their livelihoods and their families and their futures, I believe that power is abusive, far too excessive for any piece of legislation, and that's why we proposed amendments to limit that.

The tragedy is, Bill 48 could have been a very workable bill; there is no question about that. That's why we moved no fewer than 29 amendments to the legislation, each of which is now a matter of record.

The amendments were a product of a number of things. The first was goodwill. Unlike both the government and the other opposition party, we brought goodwill to bear in this debate in the very sincere belief that members of this House were prepared to work together towards a common goal.

We were mistaken. In the area of goodwill, we were alone. The government chose not to work with us: not one phone call, not one meeting, not anything in response to our phone calls to the Premier and the sharing of draft amendments, no discussions either inside the House or outside the House and limited debate in the House. The Liberals chose not to work at all. I say, so much for goodwill in this place from the other two parties. Both of them ought to be ashamed.

The second key ingredient in our effort to make Bill 48 workable and effective and fair through our amendments was imagination. Why lay off current employees when you could instead stop hiring new ones? We proposed this numerous times over the last four months. Why strip contracts when you could sustain them? Why penalize inefficiency when you could instead reward efficiency? Why punish whistle-blowers when you could protect them? Why ransack government programs when you could reinvent them and redeliver them more effectively?

We offered imaginative amendments that could have done these things throughout this debate. Each and every one of those amendments was rejected out of hand. So I say, so much for imagination and courage in this place from the other two parties.

The third element we brought in the battle to salvage Bill 48 was conviction. Unlike the New Democrats, we didn't learn the language or meaning of restraint overnight. We Progressive Conservatives have consistently spoken this language and we have understood its meaning for a long time.

You know, Mr Speaker, one of the things we are dealing with is what has happened in the last eight years. I hold now before me in my hand the government of Ontario phone book that lists all the employees of the government of Ontario. It is this big, it is this thick and it has about 600 pages. When we left office, this is the number of employees who were in the government. After seven years of restraint, of downsizing, of learning how to do things more efficiently using technology, computer-age, new management techniques, as the private sector was doing, we had downsized government by 7,000 employees.

We don't come to this debate overnight. We brought a lot of experience to bear, experience that the Liberals and New Democrats needed, because you have no experience in doing anything other than hiring, spending, taxing, upsizing, making government bigger.

We brought our experience and our expertise in managing effectively, in how you do things more efficiently, in how you provide better quality services with fewer dollars because we lived that walk. We walked it and we did it for a number of years. We are prepared to do it again. We are prepared to share our expertise with this Legislature.

What happened? Look at the government phone book after the Liberals left office. Look at how much bigger it is. Look at the thickness of the pages, another 200 pages added. Now with the New Democrats, we look at the size of it there. Look at the size of the books now. All they knew how to do was to hire, to promise new things, new programs, tax more, spend more, borrow more.

We brought our expertise to them -- we offered to share it -- on how to downsize at the same time as protecting programs; how to deliver programs more efficiently; how, from 1976 to 1985, before we turned over power to the Liberals, with 7,000 fewer employees we added programs, we delivered programs more efficiently. They did not want our expertise.

The New Democrats, at least today -- I admit this -- talk the talk; something I admit, I acknowledge, I encourage and my caucus has supported. At least they talk the talk. We supported that talk. We supported the principle of what this bill said it was going to do. We still do support that principle. The principle we supported was to fairly and in a workable way cut the size and cost of government by 5% over three years.

Our amendments allowed us in a fair way and in an equitable way to do that in a permanent way, at the same time learning how to deliver programs more efficiently and restructure the way government does business. Our amendments that made the bill workable and fair were rejected out of hand.

Unfortunately, the NDP, who have learned to talk the talk, who have recognized that restraint must be brought to bear, that their first two years were headed 180 degrees in the wrong direction -- as we told them they were, that same direction the Liberals were for the five years before -- recognized it but they rejected our advice, they rejected our offer and they brought in and rejected 29 very positive and workable amendments.

The Liberals, by contrast, can't even form the word "restraint." The only word they've mastered in this Legislature since being in opposition is no -- no to any principle of restraint, no to their own chance to make it work, no to the efforts to make it work, no to all the transfer partners, to all the amendments they put forward, no to the 29 amendments we put forward to make this bill workable and to make it fair. So much for conviction from the other two parties in this place.

The fourth and final element we brought to bear in this episode was the most important one of all. It was the answer to a basic question: What do Ontarians really want? Briefly, I believe Ontarians want to see a little common sense brought to the management of their affairs in this place -- not miracles, not perfection. Listen, we all know, for 42 years of very good government, sound government, restraint government, government that provided hope and opportunity, there were a few mistakes made. We're not asking for perfect government, we're not asking for government without some mistakes, we're not asking for miracles, but we're asking for some sound management and some common sense and we offered that to you in the form of our amendments.

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Management means planning in place of panic. It requires first that political leaders anticipate change and prepare for it, not fritter away 42 years of prosperity in five years of the biggest taxing-spending spree this province has ever seen.

The fiscal crisis facing Ontario today was visible on the horizon years ago. The Liberals created it, and then they've chosen to ignore it to this very day, and that is something they will not only have to answer to the people for -- we know that -- but I tell you that they've got to go home tonight, look at themselves in the mirror and they've got to answer to themselves for the mess they've created and their lack of opportunity of coming forward in a commonsense way and trying, with the new politics the public is asking for, to bring real restraint to bear in this Legislature. You'll have to answer for that as well.

But the New Democrats only worsened the situation in the last two years before realizing what they'd done. It's likewise something that others will one day have the chance to judge. In both cases, where was the planning? That's what Ontarians want: planning, management, common sense. In its final form, Bill 48 gives them none of these things. It could have. It could have given them these things but it does not.

Finally, I want to talk a little bit about the future. We will continue, in spite of our disappointments over Bill 48 and the rejection of our amendments and the rejection of both of the other two parties to work cooperatively and make this place work and make the legislation better. I want to talk about the future, because we will continue, as a caucus, to share our advice with the government, advice it desperately needs on how to be more efficient and how to downsize and how to be fair and how to manage better.

We will continue to share our advice with the government. We'll continue to make positive contributions and alternatives to the government and we will continue to oppose if we think it's going in the wrong direction, but we will continue to provide whatever expertise, however limited it is, we will continue to provide that to the government as best and honestly and as openly as we possibly can.

I hope very much that the Minister of Finance never uses the awesome power this bill gives him, the awesome power to override, to be unfair, to make unilateral decisions affecting people's lives. Had they accepted our amendments, that power would not be in there. He told his caucus he wouldn't use it. I hope today he'll tell us that he won't use it. I don't know why it's still in the bill, but we could not support legislation that gives that kind of power to a minister. We cannot, so I hope that happens.

I hope as well that this bill, which provides the opportunity for short-term solutions that this bill talks about -- I hope they never use those short-term solutions. I hope the groups will come together and negotiate or, if using the legislation, work for long-term, permanent solutions. Had you accepted our amendments, you would have had to do that. You did not and we therefore cannot support this legislation.

However, it is our hope that you have learned from this debate and from the lessons of what we've been telling you and that you will not use the short-term provisions, that you'll seek permanent, long-term downsizing in the size and cost of government. We will continue to support you over the three years when you move in that direction. We will oppose you, of course, when you do not move in that direction.

Because the legislation without our amendments allows these things, we can't support third reading of the bill. We continue, of course, to support the principle. We continue to support the principle of restraint. I offer you, my caucus, all of us to a person: We will continue to help you. We will continue to offer suggestions on how you can cut the size and cost of government permanently, at the same time as delivering quality programs more efficiently, more effectively and with more quality to the citizens of Ontario.

Finally, as disappointed as we are with the final result, if you like, of Bill 48, we give a commitment as well to the people of Ontario, as we give to this Legislature and to the Liberals, if they ever want to be positive and constructive in the future. We give you this commitment: We'll continue to work for fair, effective proposals that will help bring restraint to this province, that will help deal with our deficit, that will help get our runaway tax situation under control, and we'll help with the spending problem that eight years of mismanagement has brought to this province.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Leader of the Opposition): When I first heard, some three months ago, talk about this idea of bringing people together to draft a new kind of social contract, I said, "I don't think you can sit down with some 150 people around a table, 150 people representing 950,000 other people across a whole variety of different sectors, and expect to seriously carry out meaningful negotiations."

I was told, "Well, Bob Rae is going to bring in legislation to back up the process to make sure the process will work." My response was to say, "I can't even conceive of a piece of legislation which, with one broad brush, would be able to intervene with 9,000 individual collective agreements in any way that could be conceived of as fair and equitable. To that extent, I believe I was right in that initial response to Bob Rae's proposal.

But I had no idea at that time that more than three months later, after the process had indeed broken down, we would be faced with legislation that was this bad. This legislation is legislation which almost no one really supports, and I do not exclude from that statement many of the members opposite, however they may vote today.

It has taken a while for some to understand just how fundamentally flawed this legislation is, how truly bad it is, but it is now universally condemned and it is seen as disastrous by everyone from business leaders to union leaders.

This legislation should have been withdrawn and we would not have faced this vote today. But this government has decided that this is the point on which it is going to stand its ground. This government is prepared to go to the wall to push through legislation which will achieve absolutely none of its goals, which will create more and more chaos -- let no one be deceived that this will put an end to the chaos that we have seen for the last three months -- and it is legislation which will seriously threaten the financial future of this province.

This is not what political strength is all about. This was supposed to be the government's major effort to restrain government spending, and in fact, ironically, sadly, this legislation is anti-restraint.

We have repeatedly said that this legislation is going to push significant costs -- we believe as much as $3 billion in costs -- to some time in the future to make it some other government's responsibility to manage, and we consider that to be absolutely intolerable. The commitment to make those future expenditures could be enshrined in law if this legislation passes the House this afternoon.

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This legislation may jeopardize the future funding of pensions. It will certainly strangle the ability of future governments, both local and provincial, to manage, and that is without even considering what will happen when workers across this province seek the wage catch-up which they may well expect.

But more ironically still, this legislation is not even going to achieve the goals of restraint in this budget year. The legislation has given us a process which is completely unwieldy, which everybody involved in it has said is unworkable and continues to be unworkable.

It is a process which claims to stand in the name of local bargaining but in fact thwarts the ability of people to resolve their issues at a local level in every way. There is little meaningful negotiation taking place now and we are already six months into the contract year.

In fact, we have said, and we continue to believe, that this government can no longer expect to achieve its budget goals through this process in the last six months of the year, and that it needs to go back to the drawing board and look at its own operations to make up the difference for the next six months.

We believe there was a better way. We have said from the very beginning that what this government should do, what this government had a responsibility to do, was to bring in its budget, to set financial targets, which all of us know were going to be difficult financial targets, that it should then negotiate with its own employees to achieve the targets, and it should give other public sector employers and employees the tools they needed to do the same thing.

When it has been suggested in the course of debate over the last weeks that we have not offered an alternative, I could only say that it's because our alternative has been so clear, so straightforward and so consistent from day one. How much clearer could we be?

Let me say that this is not an issue simply for debate and a question of opposition in this place; this is an issue that is affecting some 950,000 people in communities across this province. Let me tell you also, in addition to those 950,000 individuals, there are all of their employers.

Everywhere I go and everywhere that my colleagues have been in the last weeks, they have heard the same thing. They have heard people say, "There is still a better way." In the dying minutes of this debate, I still plead with this government to understand that there is a better way, that employers and employees together are saying: "We understand that these are difficult times. We understand that we are going to have to make reductions in our expenditures. We understand that the financial targets of this government are going to have to be met, as difficult as they are. We understand that we have to be prepared to do our part." But they are saying: "Give us the chance to have a voice in how we will reach those targets. Let us have some say in how we can make these expenditure reductions work for us."

There is no doubt in my mind, as I talk to people who are affected by the social contract discussions and by this legislation, that people truly believe that there was a better way to achieve the government's goals and to still make people feel as though they had some say in the decisions that have such serious impact on their lives.

I hear people feeling frustrated, confused, angry, but most of all what I hear from people is that they feel completely shut out. I believe we could all have had some good faith that people will act responsibly if we are just prepared to give them that chance, and I believe that had the government been willing to give people the opportunity to find their own ways to meet those financial targets, they would have done so with much less chaos than has already been created and with much less future cost.

As I hear the leader of the third party talking about goodwill, I would ask, who has acted with goodwill in this place? To me, real goodwill is having faith that if you put the right process in place, if you give people the chance, they can find good solutions, and that is the kind of goodwill we were looking for. I say that real goodwill and real commitment is understanding what the problems were with this legislation from the very beginning. Real commitment means working for three months, as we in this party have done, to urge this government to do what could be done realistically and practically to put in place a process which would work, to provide leadership that would work. We have not seen that happen, nor have we seen that kind of leadership from the third party. Having said they would support legislation no matter what the legislation looked like, bang, bang, bang, they have struggled since then to try to determine what they could do when they found out that the legislation was indeed bad, bad, bad.

The third party tried, first of all, to put forward what I believe was called the Harris fourth option. This was the first series of proposed alternatives. Of course, they wouldn't have worked. They found that they couldn't work; in fact, the numbers themselves didn't add up. So at the very last minute they substituted a totally new option, a totally new approach, and suddenly the party that said all of this could be solved with a wage freeze and attrition was putting forward an amendment that called for a 5% roll-back in wages. This was an amendment which was literally being written as it was being presented, in what I believe to have been a rather desperate attempt to put a better face on the fact that they had supported a very bad piece of legislation.

We didn't want to talk the talk the leader of the third party has been discussing today. We wanted action that would work to achieve the goals, because we believe the goals of restraint that the government put forward in this budget indeed had to be met and still must be met, but we needed a process that would make it possible for that goal to be achieved.

This legislation was simply too flawed to ever be amended. The third party did not present a series of amendments; it presented a whole new bill. In fact, this bill needed to be withdrawn. This legislation is unworkable. This legislation is indeed anti-restraint.

I want to congratulate my colleagues on having understood this from the very moment this legislation was presented. I congratulate my colleagues for having firmly and steadily fought to defeat this bill if we were unable to persuade the government to withdraw it.

This legislation is a ticking time bomb of debt. I will be deeply, deeply concerned if this legislation passes today. In the name of restraint, for the sake of the future of this province, this legislation surely must be defeated. We will be unanimous in our opposition to this bill today.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I thank the honourable Leader of the Opposition for her contribution to this debate. Is there further debate?

Mr Gregory S. Sorbara (York Centre): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Standing order 77(b) reads as follows: "When a bill has been amended in any committee it shall be reprinted as the Clerk of the House directs, amendments being indicated, and shall not be further proceeded with until it has been reprinted and marked 'Reprinted' on the Orders and Notices paper."

Yesterday the committee of the whole amended Bill 48 significantly, and I assume that at some point or other that bill will be reprinted. I look at the Orders and Notices paper today --

The Speaker: I can assist the member. The bill has been reprinted and has been made available to all members. The member does not have a point of order.

Mr Sorbara: If you look at the Orders and Notices today, sir, the bill is not marked "Reprinted."

The Speaker: I appreciate the member's interest in the matter. He will be pleased to know that the bill in fact has been reprinted and has been distributed to all members.

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Mr Sorbara: Mr Speaker, I think the rule clearly indicates that it must be marked "Reprinted" in the Orders and Notices before the House can proceed with the next stage. It proceeded with the next stage today, that is, third reading, yet I can just show you here, if I can ask the Clerk Assistant to take it, it is not marked "Reprinted" in the Orders and Notices as required by the standing order.

There was nothing in the time allocation motion that overruled or overrode section 77(b). Therefore, I submit to you, sir, that standing order 77(b) not having been complied with, notwithstanding that the bill may have been reprinted, it has not been marked "Reprinted" in the Orders and Notices. Therefore, rule 77(b) has not been complied with. Therefore, the House does not have the capacity to proceed with third reading of this bill today. Therefore, the vote we are proposing to take at this point is without force and effect.

I refer again, sir, to the fact that the bill is not marked "Reprinted" in the Orders and Notices today, and I think the Clerk will confirm that to you.

The Speaker: As I had suspected, it has been our practice for a considerable length of time that the first item will be to reprint the bill and to provide that to the members. In fact that has been complied with. Therefore, there is no point of order. The member has received the bill. It has been reprinted with all of the amendments. Therefore, it's certainly in order.

Mr Sorbara: If I might just --

The Speaker: I trust the member is not challenging the ruling.

Mr Sorbara: No, I'm not challenging the ruling of the Chair, I'm just saying that I agree with you that the first part of the standing order has been complied with. There's no doubt about that. It's the second part of the standing order, the part that requires that the word "Reprinted" appear in the Orders and Notices, that has not been complied with. That's just evident on the face of the record. I've looked in the Orders and Notices for today. The bill is not marked "Reprinted." Therefore, the standing order hasn't been complied with; therefore, the House is not permitted to proceed with third reading. I just submit that to you for your consideration.

The Speaker: I trust the member will appreciate the fact that the most important thing is to have the bill reprinted with the appropriate amendments. That, of course, has been complied with. It has been our practice to follow that, so indeed there is nothing out of order.

Is there further debate on this bill? The member for York South, the Premier.

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): In closing off the debate on third reading on this measure, I want to start by expressing my appreciation to my colleague the member for Nickel Belt.

Politics is a profession and a way of life and I think we can all perhaps understand what I'm saying when I say that there are moments when it brings out perhaps not the best in all of us and there are also moments when it does bring out the best in all of us. I want to say that one of the true joys that I have found in my public life in the last two and a half years has been my association with the Deputy Premier of this government, a person of great common sense, of great good humour, of great perspective and, if I may say so, someone whose judgement and whose common sense I think is something which more and more citizens of this province are coming to understand and to appreciate. This bill stands in his name, and it is a bill which reflects the work of the entire government.

I want to say very clearly to the people of the province, those who are watching and listening to this discussion and to this debate, that the challenges which we face as a province I think have to be seen in the kind of perspective which was presented in the last budget of the government.

That perspective is simply this. We face as a province a tremendous challenge. We are going through a period of enormous change. Partisanship aside -- and I can fully understand that it would be the intention of those on the other side to say that every cent of the money that has been borrowed since September 6, 1990, is the direct fault of the 70-plus members who were elected on this side of the House and that in fact every single nickel that's there in the deficit is the personal responsibility of this Premier and of this Deputy Premier and of all the members on this side. I can understand the political partisanship and the level of rhetoric that would lead to that kind of conclusion.

But I also want to say that we have inherited a difficult situation to which we have tried to respond to the best of our ability, keeping in mind a couple of principles which to us are quite fundamental: first of all, the need for us to invest in people, the need for us to maintain our capacity to invest in the future of this province and to help, in cooperation with other governments in other jurisdictions and with all the help we can get from the private sector and from others, to succeed in investing in the future of this province.

That is the first objective that we have set out as a government, to try, in the face of a recession, in the face of an unparalleled economic change in the life of this province to be able to maintain a capital budget and a level of investment in this province which will keep employment up in the face of the tremendous recessionary forces that have been at work in our economy over the last two and a half years.

I'm proud to say, in cooperation with the Minister of Finance, our caucus and our government have over the last two and a half years produced budgets which have consistently emphasized the importance of jobs, of investment and of looking to the future, investing in the future, investing in training and investing in people.

That remains a fundamental objective, even of this program, even of this policy, even of what we are now putting in place. One has to keep one's eye on the target, that the target is not simply to cut the deficit for its own sake, the target is in order to create the space that will allow us to invest in jobs and invest in the future of this province, invest in people, invest in programs that will produce jobs for people. That's the first principle.

The second principle is equally clear, and it's a principle that I want to address very clearly. In listening to the comments that have been made by the Liberal Party and the comments that have been made by the Conservatives, I will not respond to them in any detail. But I want to speak particularly to those who are listening who come from a tradition, a tradition in which I place myself and for which I feel, as leader of our party, a very strong and personal attachment, and that is the principle of solidarity. Faced with the enormous difficulty that we have --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

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Hon Mr Rae: When the Leader of the Opposition was speaking, I don't recall our members making it difficult for people to speak, but I will reflect upon it.

I will say this. Faced with a budgetary situation which this province has been facing not just for one or two years but for several years, faced with the prospect of even more significant deficits in the future and the impact this would have on our province, on our capacity to create jobs, on our capacity to save programs and on the future of our province, this government has had to take some very difficult and tough decisions. We have had to take some very difficult decisions, for which we take full responsibility and which we feel are the responsible and sensible thing for us to do, faced with the difficulties that we are.

The first thing we have done is to look at the programs in government and to say that they have to be stopped and that they have to be reduced.

Interjections.

The Speaker: The member for Brampton South and the member for Essex-Kent, come to order.

Hon Mr Rae: The second thing is to say to our fellow citizens that we expect them to pay their share as well, and so it's not with any great joy -- no government does it with any great joy -- we have done it. We have set up tax increases in the province which are generating revenues as we speak, which are in fact reducing the level of the public debt and which are in fact going to pay for essential programs and going to deal with the needs of our fellow citizens.

The taxes that we raise are going to build new schools. Over $200 million we're investing in new schools this year. They're going to build new child care spaces. They're going to build new roads. They're going to build new subway systems. They're going to produce better social programs. They're going to maintain a million people who are now in receipt of social assistance benefits in the province of Ontario, not a number in which any of us can share any great joy or pride but a reality that we face with this difficulty.

The third element in our task, in our responsibility and in our obligation to deal with the size of the public sector deficit and the public sector debt was in fact to initiate a set of discussions with our colleagues in the public sector, in the broader public sector, nearly a million people working in the broader public sector, and to say that we were going to have to ask them to make their contribution to the life of the province over and above the contributions they were already making. We were asking them to make a sacrifice, and we recognize we're asking them to do something.

I believe that spirit of being prepared to do something is still alive and well in the province. We tried for over two and half months at a set of negotiating tables to get people to negotiate what would be a framework agreement that would produce a positive result. We tried that. They walked away, to my regret. To my personal regret, they tore it up and walked away and said, "No, we want nothing to do with this process."

We were then left with a choice. We could either do, as has been suggested by the Leader of the Opposition -- though not in these blunt terms because there's no nice way to do this, though she tried to sugar-coat it in her description of it. You can simply cut off the money and say to people: "Go sort yourselves out. You deal with the problem and we'll see you later." I don't think that would be responsible. I don't think that would be the sensible thing to do.

The second option we could take up would have been to simply walk away. Another option would have been to do bang, bang, bang, to simply cut and slash right across the board. We denied and we didn't do that.

What we have done instead is Bill 48, which still allows and encourages people to bargain, in which we still say to people: "We are prepared to bargain. We want to see you at the table." We are prepared to reduce the expenditure levels if there's a willingness to bargain, to buy in. Job security is on the table. Job training is on the table. Redeployment is on the table. Openness is on the table. Financial accountability is on the table. A better deal for public servants is on the table. We're asking them to make some sacrifices -- we understand that -- but we're offering something in return.

That's the bill the Tory party was prepared to support for a brief period of time. They now have gone back to the traditional position of opposition and said no. The Liberals have said no. We admit it's difficult. We're not doing this with any great sense of joy, but we do it with a sense of commitment. We're doing it because it's the fairest way to proceed, because it's the best way for us to express our solidarity with one another and because it's the way in which we're most likely to produce the strongest possible results for the people of the province.

This question of fairness has got to be uppermost in our minds. We cannot ignore the interests of those making less than $30,000 a year, and we have not. We cannot ignore the interests of the public in receiving services, and we have not. We have had to address those issues. It's all very well for the opposition to say, "Just cut off the money and let people sort themselves out." It's not as easy as that.

Let me say this: When the Liberal Party was in government, they knew that as well. When the Tory party was in government, they knew that as well. Here we are. We continue to offer a social contract to the people of Ontario, and that's the way in which we are going to proceed.

Interjections.

The Speaker: I ask the House to come to order. By order of this House, third reading debate on Bill 48 terminates at 5:45. There will be a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1746 to 1751.

The Speaker: I ask all members to please take their seats.

Mr Laughren has moved third reading of Bill 48.

All those in favour of Mr Laughren's motion will please rise, one by one.

Ayes

Abel, Allen, Bisson, Boyd, Buchanan, Carter, Charlton, Christopherson, Churley, Cooke, Cooper, Coppen, Dadamo, Duignan, Farnan, Fletcher, Frankford, Gigantes, Grier, Haeck, Hampton, Hansen, Harrington, Hayes, Hope, Huget, Jamison, Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings), Klopp, Lankin, Laughren, Lessard, Mackenzie, MacKinnon, Malkowski, Mammoliti, Marchese, Martel;

Martin, Mathyssen, Mills, Murdock (Sudbury), North, O'Connor, Owens, Perruzza, Philip (Etobicoke-Rexdale), Pilkey, Pouliot, Rae, Rizzo, Silipo, Sutherland, Swarbrick, Ward, Wark-Martyn, Waters, Wessenger, White, Wildman, Wilson (Frontenac-Addington), Wilson (Kingston and The Islands), Winninger, Wiseman, Wood, Ziemba.

The Speaker: All those opposed to Mr Laughren's motion will please rise, one by one.

Nays

Arnott, Beer, Bradley, Brown, Callahan, Caplan, Carr, Chiarelli, Cleary, Conway, Cordiano, Cousens, Cunningham, Curling, Daigeler, Drainville, Eddy, Elston, Eves, Fawcett, Grandmaître, Harnick, Haslam, Harris, Henderson, Jackson, Johnson (Don Mills), Jordan, Kormos, Kwinter, Mahoney, Marland;

McClelland, McGuinty, McLean, McLeod, Miclash, Morin, Morrow, Murdoch (Grey), Murphy, O'Neil (Quinte), O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau), Offer, Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt), Poirier, Poole, Ramsay, Runciman, Ruprecht, Sorbara, Sterling, Stockwell, Sullivan, Tilson, Turnbull, Villeneuve, Wilson (Simcoe West), Witmer.

The Speaker: The ayes being 66 and the nays 59, I declare the motion carried.

Resolved that the bill do now pass and be entitled as in the motion.

It being almost 6 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 10 of the clock tomorrow morning.

The House adjourned at 1757.

July 7, 1993

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

UNEMPLOYMENT IN ST CATHARINES

GOVERNMENT LEGISLATION

CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP

PARAMEDIC SERVICES

LONG-TERM CARE

TUG OF WAR CHAMPIONS

SOCIAL CONTRACT

HEALTH CARE

GOOD NEIGHBOURS

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

JUDICIAL REFORM

ORAL QUESTIONS

SOCIAL CONTRACT

DRUG BENEFITS

SOCIAL CONTRACT

CASINO GAMBLING

AIR QUALITY

INTERPROVINCIAL TRADE

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY

JOB CREATION

TAX INCREASES

CONTAMINATED SOIL

DAY CARE

ADJOURNMENT DEBATES

PETITIONS

PRODUCE-YOUR-OWN BEER AND WINE

HEALTH CARE

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

CONTRAT SOCIAL

GAMBLING

SOCIAL CONTRACT

HEALTH CARE

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

SOCIAL CONTRACT

GO BUS SERVICE

PASSENGER RAIL SERVICE

RETAIL STORE HOURS

HEALTH CARE

RETAIL STORE HOURS

GAMBLING

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

COURTS OF JUSTICE STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE LES TRIBUNAUX JUDICIAIRES

COMMERCIAL CONCENTRATION TAX AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT LA / LOI DE L'IMPÔT SUR LES CONCENTRATIONS COMMERCIALES

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SOCIAL CONTRACT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE CONTRAT SOCIAL