Hansard Transcript 1993-Jul-28 vol. a | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr John C. Cleary (Cornwall): I want to again speak to the House about the smuggling problem along the St Lawrence River and Lake St Francis. To give members an example of the daily smuggling operation, a few weeks ago customs officials seized 165 cases of tobacco products valued at approximately $164,000.

Boat thefts are also reported to be on the rise. Personal safety is constantly in jeopardy.

The effects of smuggling permeate the whole community. Recently, a misbehaving student who works as a cigarette runner in a smuggling cartel told his teacher, "I don't need your education," since, he boasted, he earns more money in six months as a smuggler than the teacher earns in a year.

Residents in my area and neighbouring Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry are worried about their safety. Turf wars among smugglers result in nightly gunfire. Smuggling cartels have been bragging among themselves about carrying 50-calibre machine-guns, the kind of anti-aircraft weapons used by the army in the Second World War.

At last week's united county council, a resolution was passed calling for the army to come into the area to enforce the law.

I invited the Solicitor General to visit the Cornwall area to see for himself what the residents face every night. He refused. I ask the Solicitor General again to come to my riding and he will be taken on a tour he won't soon forget. The law must be enforced and this criminal activity stopped.

LEGISLATIVE SCHEDULE

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): My statement is for the Minister of Municipal Affairs and concerns the NDP government's incompetence and its failure to assign enough importance to legislation that will have a dramatic impact on the future of Simcoe county.

My colleague the member for Simcoe West and I have been told by local municipal politicians that members of your government are wrongly accusing the opposition parties of stalling second reading of Bill 51, the County of Simcoe Act, 1993.

Minister, we find it absolutely astounding that your government, which has complete control over the legislative agenda, would stoop to the level of blaming opposition parties for your own failure to give Bill 51 a priority. You're not fooling anyone with your legislative foot-dragging. Your government's slack is bringing in problems for the people of Simcoe county.

In a letter dated July 7, 1993, the mayor of Midland told the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay that he is left with the clear understanding that the government does not place a significantly high priority on this legislation. Your government appears willing to work only if it does not interfere with its own agenda.

In a letter dated July 20, 1993, the warden of the county of Simcoe urged you to ensure that second reading is introduced to the House prior to recess in order to reaffirm the government's commitment to this legislation and to the people of Simcoe county.

Bill 51 does not appear in your government's list of legislative priorities. I suspect you're more interested in pointing fingers and looking for scapegoats rather than being straight with the people of Simcoe county about your priorities. You will this fall bring in closure with no public hearings or debate.

FRINGE NORD FESTIVAL

Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): As you know, I've proudly stood here a number of times talking about different things that happen in my riding of Sudbury.

On August 5 through August 8, we're having Fringe Nord Festival. There'll be 28 performing groups. It's a street festival. Each group will be paid according to the revenues their play or their act generates, and the revenues in their entirety will then be given to the players. The charge for the public will range anywhere from $1 to $8. A number of different community small businesses and restaurants are participating in this event. There will be an additional 19 street performers who will be passing the hat after each of their performances.

Sudbury itself is presenting eight different groups: There's the Berkely Court Players, and their story is Extremities, about sexual misconduct by a judge; Shirley Cheechoo, the founder of the D'Bajmajig Theatre in Sudbury will also be putting on a presentation; Northern Lights Theatre Festival Players; the N'Swakamok Friendship Centre is putting on one called Dream Catcher; Grizzled Veterans Association; and the Foothill Players will also be presenting. As well, we're going to have Sound Investment, which is a barbershop quartet, coming out from Wanapitei.

The players are coming from as far away as Massachusetts.

We're inviting everybody from the province to come up to Sudbury August 5 to 8.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): I rise to bring to the attention of the House some of the negative impacts of the government's 1993 expenditure control plan, which often just defers costs and attacks the vulnerable, those who have fallen on tough times unexpectedly and, hopefully, temporarily.

Today I want to highlight a measure that demands that persons become really destitute before they can obtain assistance.

I specifically note the circumstances of a responsible young father who until very recently was able to support a wife and two young children with his retail job that paid an annual salary of $24,000. This husband and father set aside monthly a portion of his modest salary for a life insurance policy whose cash value at this moment is but $3,000.

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While this gentleman awaits the unemployment insurance benefits to which he's entitled, he has applied for social assistance in York region and has been told that he will not qualify unless he's prepared to cash in the insurance policy he is purchasing to protect his young family.

This family is being asked to survive on a $100 food allowance. How can this NDP government, which advocates so loudly on behalf of the working poor day after day in Ontario, possibly justify the hardship it has caused to this responsible husband and father and many, many others in similar circumstances struggling through the summer of 1993?

HOME CARE

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): I would like to bring to the attention of the Legislative Assembly the continuing problems faced by my constituents in caring for their daughter at home. Diana and Guy St Amour's daughter, Monique, who is seven years old, has a rare condition called Hunter syndrome. As a result, Monique suffers from respiratory and developmental problems and requires life-support equipment, advanced drugs and constant attention. Like an estimated 123 other families in the Metro area, the St Amours chose not to institutionalize their daughter but to raise her at home.

The cost of hospitalization for children with Hunter syndrome can exceed $29,000 per month, compared with a total cost of $10,000 per month for them to remain at home. Yet every month the St Amours are faced with a shortfall in their ability to pay for their daughter's care, despite the fact that they are saving the government up to $20,000 per month.

Economics dictate that the province should step in and fill the void in the cost of caring for Monique St Amour at home.

My constituents were forced to hold a garage sale last weekend, and will do so again this weekend, in order to meet the expenses incurred in caring for their daughter.

In the last year and a half, I have acted to help the St Amours obtain nighttime nursing, social assistance and information on drug benefits. It is in the best interests of this family that Monique remain at home. Methods must be identified to improve and coordinate services to ensure that this will happen.

Finally, I would like to announce that a trust fund has been set up to aid the St Amours in their care for Monique. Those wishing to make a donation can do so at any Canada Trust branch.

OPPOSITION PARTIES

Mr Derek Fletcher (Guelph): As we come to an end of a session, I'd like to acknowledge some of the accomplishments of this session, especially the accomplishments of the two opposition parties.

Let me begin with the official opposition, the Liberals, and acknowledge what their accomplishments were this session.

I guess that's enough.

Let me go to the Conservatives. As far as what the Conservatives have said in this session is concerned, it's been, "Well, we want you to slash here, we want you to spend here, but we want you to cut the deficit here." We're not quite sure where their actions are and where they're going with all this.

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): I bet you got that from a leaflet.

Mr Fletcher: I got this nice leaflet from Team Harris, "My role as the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario is to be" a mad dog -- excuse me -- "a watchdog for misguided government policies."

What he suggests doing is to allow the private sector to be the engine of growth and to cut the public service; in other words, what we're doing is a cakewalk; what they do is a machete job, as far as the public service is concerned.

One of the questions on their brochure asks, "Taxes must be frozen and we must enact legislation requiring governments to table a balanced budget."

What happens if a government doesn't table a balanced budget? Do you fire them? Are they taken to court? Come up with some real solutions to the real problems.

LABOUR UNIONS

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): As the member for Quinte and I were just discussing, the labour movement --

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): You're back.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Hey, welcome back.

Mr Mahoney: Yes, I am. Thanks very much.

The labour movement has sent a new and interesting message to all NDP backbenchers, who are starting to chirp already, and I've only risen for a short time. There is an important deadline coming up August 1. There's another day that's rather important in our future: September 6. I see the Premier is here; he might know that that day happens to be Labour Day.

On Labour Day in this province there are parades where the labour movement celebrates its heritage and its current circumstances and its future. Not so this year. In fact, I have a memo from the Ontario division of CUPE, signed by Sid Ryan and Terry O'Connor, which is out to all CUPE locals, being asked to lobby their district labour councils not to permit those NDP members who voted in favour of Bill 48 to participate in their Labour Day parades.

They make an exception. They say that they will not stop MPPs Karen Haslam, Peter Kormos or Mark Morrow, who had the courage to stand by their convictions. Maybe they will ask that illustrious triumvirate to lead the Labour Day parade. But, Mr Premier, they don't want you there, they don't want your Labour minister there, they don't want your cabinet there, they don't want your backbenchers there. It's a sad day for the labour movement in the province of Ontario.

REMUNERATION OF ELECTED OFFICIALS

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): In spite of the 29 amendments our caucus made to the social contract, in spite of the many flaws that exist within the province right now in government waste and in spite of the hurt that is causing so much harm to people in the public service and the many flaws of this legislation, I want to make a suggestion for all elected politicians across Ontario: that every councillor and reeve, mayor, chairman, school trustee, public utilities commissioner, each one, regardless of how much they're making -- if it's $5,000, $10,000, whatever amount -- make a gesture of goodwill and take the same pay cut that MPPs did, take a 5.5% pay reduction effective June 14 and a pay freeze for three years.

This will show several things: (1) It will show that every politician in Ontario is personally trying to help solve Ontario's economic crisis. (2) By taking this cut and freeze, there will be a demonstration of team commitment to all our employees that we're in it together with them. (3) By being together in the pain, we can all be more efficient in helping develop solutions with our own bargaining units.

The fact is that every elected person, regardless of their remuneration, must take part personally in a pay cut and a salary freeze to demonstrate that we want to be part of the solution to make Ontario strong again.

TENANT ACTIVITIES

Mr Gary Malkowski (York East): Today I would like to tell my fellow members of the Legislature about the tenants of 280 Sammon Avenue in East York. In mid-April, due to the rapidly deteriorating condition of their building, some of the residents of the building decided to form a tenants' association. They were given organizational assistance by the Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations.

My office became involved when three active women came in and dropped off a videotape of their building. After viewing the tape, I asked to see the building for myself. It was in terrible condition. Fortunately, the tenants' association has been well advised and organized. They've been to the East York property standards department and attended council and committee meetings. On June 13, they held a demonstration in front of the building to draw attention to their plight. They were most successful, and I'm sure many of you read about them in the newspapers or saw them on TV.

So far the property inspector for the borough of East York has issued the landlord orders to comply for 21 of the building's 34 units. Thanks to the efforts of these tireless people, the tenants of 280 Sammon can be assured that their building will be repaired in the near future.

Today I take my hat off to the tenants' association of 280 Sammon Avenue and I know all of the members here today congratulate them for their hard work.

CASINO GAMBLING

Mr Dennis Drainville (Victoria-Haliburton): Today I'm going to be putting in 2,000 more petitions against casino gambling, many of them from the city of Windsor. That will bring to over 15,000 the signatures I've brought to this House on this issue.

I'd also like to address remarks to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. She scuttled the earlier bidding process on the temporary casino location in Windsor. That decision alone is going to cost taxpayers untold moneys. Her deputy minister has said that it will never happen again, even though everyone knows that it should never have happened to begin with.

Industry sources have come and spoken to me and said that they believe the fix is already in and that the operator of the permanent casino has already been determined, and I concur. The minister needs to be reminded that despite her naïveté she is dealing with an industry that is inherently corrupt and that pursues its own goals in its own questionable way. How can the minister's assurances be taken seriously when the industry already believes that she is in someone's back pocket?

If they are to have any credibility on this issue, they should start to deal fairly with the industry and fairly with the citizens of Ontario, who don't believe anything they've got to say on this particular issue.

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ORAL QUESTIONS

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): My question is to the Premier and it concerns his social contract. For weeks now, your negotiators at the health sectoral table, negotiators with the names of Pesce, McArthur, LeBlanc and Farrant, have consistently told charitable organizations like the Red Cross, the Alzheimer Society and the Victorian Order of Nurses, among others, that they would be expected and will be compelled to give up in the name of your social contract a portion of their charitable donations. Mr Premier, will you stand in your place today and reverse that position?

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I'm not going to reverse any position, but I am going to tell the member opposite categorically and extremely clearly, as clearly as I possibly can, that the Minister of Finance and I --

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): And the government as a whole.

Hon Mr Rae: -- and the government as a whole have taken this position with great consistency, and that is to say very directly to you, from day one. I will not comment on any rhetorical flights that the member opposite has been capable of, but I'll say to you very, very directly that it is not the intention or plan of the government and never has been to extract any charitable donations to the government. That, in our view, has never been at issue.

I would say clearly and categorically to the member opposite that it is not the intention of the government to make the agencies which rely on charitable donations as well as on transfers from the government to transfer any charitable dollars to the government of Ontario. I don't know how either one of us could be any clearer than that, except to say very clearly that it is not our intention and it is not the intention of any government of the province --

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): And never has been.

Hon Mr Rae: -- and never has been the intention of the government to extract charitable contributions to the government as part of any social contract discussion.

Mr Conway: My supplementary is in this connection: Twenty-four hours ago in this place, your colleague the Minister of Finance said to me that my point in this connection was correct. To quote the Treasurer directly, he said: "The point that has been raised by the member is correct. That is one of the items under discussion and under negotiation at the social contract table." That's the Hansard of yesterday.

The Red Cross of Ontario has told us, and it has been supported by people like the Alzheimer Society and the Victorian Order of Nurses, among others, that your negotiators, with the names that I have mentioned earlier, have consistently put the position which I put. Your negotiators said that they had political direction to tell these charities working in the health field that they would be compelled to give up a portion of their charitable donations. That's what the Red Cross has said and that's what the Alzheimer Society has confirmed.

Mr Premier, are you telling us today that the Red Cross and other charities have not been hearing what they have been telling us that they have been told by your negotiators for several days at this table?

Hon Mr Rae: I will say directly to the honourable member that, as Premier, I'm happy to hear directly from the Red Cross, I'm happy to hear directly from the Alzheimer Society. I do not have to rely on the distorted rhetoric of the member for Renfrew North, who I believe has obviously got every day a rhetorical point to make, but it happens to be about a million miles from the facts of the case or from the truth in this regard.

I would say to the honourable member that I'm quite happy to deal with the United Way or the Red Cross or anyone else very directly in a very straightforward fashion. But for him to come into this House and to continue to repeat the canard that even as of yesterday my colleague from Nickel Belt was saying anything different from what I'm saying today -- and that is, it is not our intention to take charitable dollars away from anyone; it never has been, it isn't now and it will not be. That is absolutely crystal clear, and I wish the member would at least respect that fact.

Mr Conway: I want to say if there's a distorter and a dissembler on this subject, it is not the member from north Renfrew.

I have in my hand a letter written two weeks ago by the United Way of Greater Toronto to the Rae government, which says in part:

"We are deeply concerned that your government is proposing to cut agencies in the health sector on the basis of funding they receive from the United Way, private charitable foundations and their own fund-raising efforts."

It couldn't be clearer. The United Way, the Alzheimer Society, the Red Cross, they've all heard the same thing because your negotiators have consistently told these people that they would be required to give up a portion of their charitable donations. As of 1:15 this afternoon, organizations like the Red Cross had heard nothing to change that position.

Hon Mr Laughren: A complete distortion.

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

Mr Conway: Will the Premier today commit to this House and these charitable organizations that he will give a personal direction to his negotiators at the social contract talks that not one penny of their charitable donations will be clawed back in the name of his social contract?

Hon Mr Rae: I would say directly to the honourable member and would say to anyone else that I would argue and I would challenge him -- I would say to him that you are distorting even the United Way letter which you're reading into the record. I would say that directly to you. It is a misrepresentation of what that letter is saying. It is not the intention of this government to extract or claw back --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would the Premier take his seat, please, and the member for Renfrew North. Notwithstanding the difficult and serious issue which is before the House, it is not helpful to have intemperate language on either side of the chamber. I would ask both the Premier and the member for Renfrew North to keep that in mind as we proceed.

Mr Conway: Mr Speaker, I accept your direction, but on a point of privilege: I want to be very clear. I have in my hand a letter written to the Minister of Finance in this government.

Hon Mr Laughren: That is not a point of privilege.

Mr Conway: It is a point of privilege because the member for York South, the leader of the government, is saying that I am distorting a position of the United Way of Greater Toronto. I beg your indulgence for 10 seconds to read again one sentence from that letter, and I'm happy to circulate the letter to all honourable members.

"We are deeply concerned" --

The Speaker: No, the member for Renfrew North. No, just a minute.

Mr Conway: -- "that your government is proposing to cut agencies in the health sector" --

The Speaker: No, would the member for Renfrew North please take his seat.

Mr Conway: -- "on the basis of funding they receive" --

The Speaker: Will the member please take his seat.

Mr Conway: -- "from the United Way, private charitable foundations" --

The Speaker: Will the member for Renfrew North please be seated.

Mr Conway: It couldn't be clearer, Mr Speaker. It is clear that Bob Rae's social contract --

The Speaker: I must warn the member that he is out of order.

Mr Conway: -- and the charitable organizations --

The Speaker: If the member continues to show disrespect for the Chair, he will be named.

Interjections.

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The Speaker: First, to the member for Renfrew North on his alleged point of privilege, there was not a point of privilege; there is clearly a difference of opinion.

Second, to a number of members on both sides of the chamber, certain vocabulary simply contributes to disorder in the chamber. I would ask members, both those who are asking questions and those who are responding, to try to remain aware of trying to establish a proper atmosphere in which we can ask questions and respond, and not to create disorder.

Hon Mr Laughren: Distortions don't help.

The Speaker: The member for Nickel Belt, especially he being a distinguished member of this chamber, I would ask for his assistance in helping to provide the necessary atmosphere in which we can conduct public business.

POLITICAL STAFF

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): I have a question to the Chairman of Management Board. As you know, the May budget brought by the Minister of Finance increased taxes to the province of Ontario by a whopping $2 billion. The budget also created a so-called social contract which has, as we have discovered this last week or so, jeopardized children's safety and has been in fact used to try to gouge the charities in the province of Ontario.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mr Elston: Can the minister tell us, given the damage that the latest New Democratic Party budget has caused the people of Ontario, how he can justify the dramatic increases in the number of political staff who now occupy the halls of the members of the executive council of this province?

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet): The direct and simple answer to the member's question is that as a result of the cabinet shuffle last February, the number of political staff in total who are assigned to the cabinet ministers in this government have been significantly reduced.

Mr Elston: That's not the information we have.

Hon Frances Lankin (Minister of Economic Development and Trade): You've got wrong information.

Mr Elston: It could be that the member will have to go back and check his records. I will certainly go over the records that we can have access to.

People in the political staff category are those people who drive the ministers' cars, carry their baggage and open doors and generally worry about how the Premier's humour is, which is not very good. I think they should hire somebody else probably.

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): Nobody carries my bags.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Elston: Did you guys wake up for the first time this session? Did you know we voted on a social contract bill over there?

The Speaker: Order. The member for Bruce, it would be very helpful if you'd simply direct your question to the Chair, and on the other side if you would resist the temptation.

Mr Elston: Mr Speaker, I will accept your direction. It's hard to direct them to you when I can hardly hear myself speaking to you because we have people yipping. The member for Nickel Belt is wanting to answer questions I'm sure.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Will the member for Bruce please place his question.

Mr Elston: Generally, as we know, the political staff do the various things that I've enumerated, among other things. I wonder if the minister who is in charge of Management Board can explain to us why there are 23 political assistants in the Ministry of Health when under our regime there were 11. Can he explain why it is that there are currently 21 political assistants in the Ministry of Education when the former government had only 12? Those are two examples of the change in numbers of political staff. Can he explain those to us?

Hon Mr Charlton: The member will know and know full well that both in this administration prior to last February and in the Liberal administration prior to the last election, the ministry which is now the Ministry of Education to which he refers was three ministries with three ministers and three sets of political staff.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Mr Charlton: The political staff allocations which were based on three ministries have now been consolidated into one with a net reduction in staff. I don't have the precise numbers with me, but in every case that he cited, there's been a net reduction in staff as a result of the amalgamation.

Mr Elston: I will advise you of the numbers that we have come up with. I will go back and check them, but the total number of political staff who have been identified to us through various sources is 355. Under the Liberal administration, before the NDP reorganization that created more ministers in the cabinet, there were 305 people who were political staff for the Liberals.

I would like to know, if the member from Management Board will go back and check these things for us, if maybe he would explain to the people of the province why they have bulked up their political staff. Would he care to advise us that they are preparing to pay these people to work on a federal election this fall, and that the real reason these people are now in the employ of the ministries they now occupy is because collective agreements, the ones we can currently find because the New Democratic caucus has not complied with the Labour Act to file current agreements --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Elston: -- that the political staff will be paid in accordance with the New Democratic Party people who receive taxpayers' dollars to attend political functions, that they are paid likewise to participate in elections in this province on behalf of the political parties they work for --

The Speaker: Could the member for Bruce complete his question, please.

Mr Elston: Will he advise us that in fact they are bulking up to help fight a federal election against the Tories, as Mr Rae has said he would do?

Hon Mr Charlton: This question was raised earlier in the session. There were figures provided at that time. I don't happen to have them with me this afternoon, but we are perfectly happy to provide a complete staff breakdown, including the staff reductions which occurred last February and the budget dollars saved, and lastly, the allegation that the member across the way has just made is totally false.

The Speaker: New question, third party and the member for Leeds-Grenville.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

INVESTIGATION INTO RELEASE OF DOCUMENTS

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I have a question for the Premier. John Piper was a close, trusted friend of yours, a friend for over 20 years, an individual with whom you played music in a variety of circumstances, someone you brought into your office in a very senior role. Mr Piper made a serious mistake. He did the right thing in terms of resignation. He admitted he had done wrong, and in an effort to minimize the damage to you, especially, and to your government, he quickly resigned without severance and took the fall.

Is there any reason to believe on your part that your former close and trusted friend for over 20 years is capable of lying, in fact would lie to the Ontario Provincial Police?

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I don't see how I could reasonably be expected to answer that question.

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Mr Runciman: I think personally that if I had someone who was a close friend for over 20 years, perhaps one of my closest friends, I would have no hesitation whatsoever in indicating that I wouldn't believe he would be a liar.

As a second question, I've been advised, and I believe the information I've received, that Mr Piper has signed a statement with the Ontario Provincial Police, as part of 11 hours of his time spent with the Ontario Provincial Police in respect to the investigation, which indicated that a meeting occurred on November 20, 1992, which Mr Piper chaired, which was called to deal with questions related to the Ontario economy. Present at that meeting were Mr David Agnew and Mr Ross McClellan.

At the start of the meeting, Mr Agnew threw the Toronto Sun on the table and said, "What's this all about, John? Is it true?" related to the fact that Mr Agnew was attempting to leak damaging information about Judi Harris to the media. Mr Agnew admitted that it was indeed accurate. Mr Agnew at that point asked who else was involved in this and Mr Piper indicated just he and Will Ferguson, that Will Ferguson had provided the information. At that point Piper said, after a brief discussion, "I guess I'll be looking for another job." There was silence and the meeting adjourned.

Premier, were you aware of this signed statement by Mr Piper? If yes, what have you done about it? If no, what will you do about it?

Hon Mr Rae: First of all, the member is asking me to comment on a police inquiry and on a signed statement made in the course of it. I have answered every question put to me in this House with respect to the meeting that took place on the date in question.

This is, if I may say so, a resurrection of a very old story. There's nothing new in what the member is putting forward, and I would say to him clearly and categorically that I have made every effort in the House to answer every question directly with respect to this matter, but I'm not going to comment, nor do I think I should be asked to comment and I don't even think it's proper for me to comment, on a statement that has allegedly been made to the police in the course of an inquiry. I'm satisfied that any statement that I've made in this House or that others have made in this House has been very clear and very categorical with respect to a police investigation.

Mr Runciman: The reality is that the Premier has made very effort to bury this subject. He's stonewalled, he's thrown obstacles in the path of members of the Legislature and the media in respect of this. He has not been open in the least bit.

I believe my source, and what he's saying in respect to the signed statement sends out a dreadful message about your government. It's rotten from the top down if indeed this is the fact. Your senior cabinet officer, your former principal secretary, your former cabinet campaign manager: two people closest to the Premier caught in a lie.

Mr Premier, the reality is that you've refused a judicial inquiry. You've refused a legislative inquiry. You had a staff member called Gordon Cressy try to deter Mr Piper from having a press conference.

Mr Stephen Owens (Scarborough Centre): Say it outside the House.

Mr Runciman: I'm being challenged to say it outside the House. I'm saying right now that Agnew and McClellan have lied. I will say it outside this House. Let's have a civil suit and we'll have the air cleared finally, because, Premier, you are not prepared to do it. If you're prepared to do it, call a legislative inquiry today. Let's clear the air.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Would the member place a question, please. New question. Is there a second question?

Mr Runciman: Obviously, the Premier again continues to stonewall on this very important subject, which strikes right at his office, the Premier of this province.

The Speaker: Does the member have a second question?

Mr Runciman: It's not going to work. It's not going to play.

Interjections.

Mr Runciman: My second question --

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Is there an affidavit, Floyd? You know there's an affidavit.

Mr Runciman: A signed affidavit with the police. What reason does Piper have to lie? None whatsoever. Coverup at the highest level, the highest level. We're not going to let this die, because you've done everything you can to cover this up.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Leeds-Grenville is interrupting himself. Second question.

GUN CONTROL

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): My second question is for the Solicitor General. Can you tell us why diagnosed schizophrenics are allowed to own guns in this province?

Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General): I'm sorry; I didn't hear the full question. Would you repeat it?

Mr Runciman: My question was, why are diagnosed schizophrenics in Ontario allowed to own guns?

Hon Mr Christopherson: Let me say that there are procedures in place right now that determine eligibility for FACs, firearms acquisition certificates, and it's the responsibility of the provincial firearms officer out of our ministry to enforce that. As the member well knows, this issue is being reviewed at the federal and provincial ministers' table. We have asked that there be ongoing discussions around this whole issue, and I am seeking indeed to strengthen in many places certain requirements with regard to the ownership of firearms.

Mr Runciman: We hear all sorts of excuses from the minister. He's prone to do that.

This spring a Windsor man accused of murdering his neighbour was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The trial showed the man was able to obtain and later keep his guns even though he had a documented history of paranoid schizophrenia. Ontario's Highway Traffic Act forces doctors to warn the Ministry of Transportation if the patient has disabilities, including psychological disabilities that could make them dangerous behind the wheel. So we have the strange situation where if you have a psychological disorder you may not be allowed to drive a car, but you can still own a gun. Why is it that you've allowed this inconsistency to remain within your jurisdiction?

Hon Mr Christopherson: I couldn't at this point, without having done a little bit of homework, say to the honourable member exactly when the regulations that are currently in place were put there, but I suspect there wasn't an awful lot done in the term of the member whose party was in power for many decades.

Let me just say, on behalf of this government, that on issues of civilian gun control that have come before us as an active issue we have taken the strongest possible position to ensure that the citizens of Ontario have the safest streets possible. Let me also say that if the federal government, which is of the same political persuasion as the honourable member, took as seriously this issue as we did, we would have a lot stronger regulations in this nation. We wouldn't have the possibility of patchwork legislation which now exists as a result of the federal legislation.

But let me also say that I'm committed to following up on this issue and other matters, not only within our jurisdiction but, along with my colleague the Attorney General, raising these with our counterparts in the federal government, who indeed have a lot of say and a lot of control over these issues.

Mr Runciman: It's interesting. When I raised the Piper issue in November 1992, it's old news as far as the government members are concerned, but this minister can go back to the Conservative years of government.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): That's current events.

Mr Runciman: Yes, now that's current.

We freely acknowledge that gun legislation remains in the federal domain. Nevertheless, the province does have some leeway to enhance federal gun rules. Your ministry recently decided not to exempt Ontario handgun clubs from federal rules prohibiting large-capacity gun magazines. The neighbour of the Windsor man might still be alive today had doctors who knew the man was a paranoid schizophrenic reported his condition to gun authorities.

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Will you consider working with the Health minister so that doctors would be required to report to your ministry when they believe a patient's medical disorder would make him a bad candidate to own a gun?

Hon Mr Christopherson: I would say to the honourable member across the way that that is indeed a reasonable request and is consistent with an entire review of the civilian gun control as it is part of our domain and as it is part of our development of an agenda we wish to take to our colleagues, other provincial governments and our federal counterparts.

Yes, to answer the question directly, I'm prepared to work with not only my colleague the Health minister but anyone else who is concerned about the issue of firearms in our society and wants to do things to ensure that society is safe and protected from firearms that don't need to be in our society.

JOBS ONTARIO COMMUNITY ACTION

Mr Joseph Cordiano (Lawrence): I have a question I think the Premier should answer. It's my understanding that your Minister of Economic Development and Trade is about to announce through the Jobs Ontario Community Action fund a grant of $47,900 in my riding for the establishment of a not-for-profit convenience store.

Daily we see an ever-increasing number of business bankruptcies. In the face of this misery and devastation, your minister comes along and announces the establishment of a not-for-profit convenience store. Are you not aware that hundreds of convenience store operators are hanging on by a thin thread for their very survival? How can you justify the expenditure of taxpayers' dollars to create a not-for-profit convenience store when the for-profit convenience store operators are struggling for their very survival? I can't understand that.

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I'd refer that to the minister in charge.

Hon Frances Lankin (Minister of Economic Development and Trade): I would be pleased to follow up and provide more information to the member for Lawrence, although we have in fact been involved --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker: When order has been restored to the House, then I will entertain a point of order.

Mr Eves: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Is question period over at 2:20?

The Speaker: The question period has 27 minutes and 46 seconds remaining.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order in respect to question period and the fact that I had posed a question to the Premier regarding serious allegations about the operation of his office and senior people within the Premier's office. I have a question related to that. The Premier refused to answer my final supplementary. Now he's skipping out of the House. He's stonewalled us, he's thrown obstacles in the path of the opposition, and now he's running out of the place, the second-last day --

The Speaker: The member knows he does not have a point of order. Under the standing rules, the minister may choose to respond if he or she wishes. There's nothing out of order.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Where does it say he's got to leave early? Does the heat get high and he leaves?

The Speaker: Order. Please come to order.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): On the point, Mr Speaker, there were discussions with both of the opposition parties this morning about the Premier's schedule. They knew he was not supposed to be here until 2:30 today. The Premier went out of his way to rearrange his schedule when he learned that the Treasurer was going to be late this afternoon, and now they're behaving in this fashion. This was all part of a discussion to resolve this issue.

Mr Eves: On that point, Mr Speaker, I might just say to the government House leader that making this stuff up as you go along won't wash. The fact is that the Premier's publicly published schedule said he would be in the House for question period today. Then the government said he wasn't going to be here today. Then the opposition complained. Then he shows up and leaves at 20 after 2. Those are the facts.

Interjections.

The Speaker: There was a question, and the minister is patiently waiting to provide a reply.

Hon Ms Lankin: May I say to the member for Lawrence that I do believe he was contacted by officials within the community action interministerial team with respect to input on this particular project. I think he's characterizing it a bit unfairly. I would like to get the full details for him.

The approvals that I have looked at are with respect to money for planning, for a community group in terms of capacity planning for its community, trying to set its own priorities. This is in fact exactly what community economic development is all about.

There are many non-profit organizations and businesses that exist within the province: worker cooperatives, for example; community cooperatives around groceries and other things.

I think the member should be careful in terms of how he is characterizing this. But at this point in time it is planning money that is being given to a community organization within his riding to work on developing its plans for a community economic development initiative that is truly community-based.

Mr Cordiano: Let's be very clear. I have a release that was given to me this morning. This release states very clearly that the money is going for the establishment and the creation of a not-for-profit convenience store. That's the simple truth of it; there are no other complications regarding this announcement.

You are going to establish a not-for-profit convenience store. It's a milk store where people buy small items. Let's be very clear about it. Let's try not to misinterpret this. It's very clear what you intend to do.

I've got to say to the minister, if this is your idea of creating new jobs in the emerging economy for the future and this is the only hope you offer the young people in the province of Ontario, to establish four part-time position as clerks in a convenience store, then my God, God help us, God help the future of the young people of this province, because there isn't going to be one, according to this government. You have no hope, no plans for those people; very few jobs in the works. There is simply nothing on the books for young people --

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

Mr Cordiano: -- in the Jobs Ontario program, and quite frankly, it's a very cynical approach to creating jobs for the future for the young people of this province, and we're all very deeply disappointed.

Hon Ms Lankin: That leaves it wide open -- there was no interrogative there -- so let me say very directly to the member that that is the clearest statement of what Liberal priorities are with respect to economic development: a set of priorities that has never listened to the community, was never involved in the community, has never been ground-up, has always been what that political party thought of as economic development, has always been dealing with only large corporate interests and only large corporate investments.

This government has an agenda with respect to economic development that is much more diverse than anything we've seen in this province before. Let's take a look at Jobs Ontario Capital and the investment that has been made there and the number of jobs that have been created and have been maintained there, and the improvement in the infrastructure in this province that will lead to an atmosphere and a climate for economic investment for the future.

Let's look at Jobs Ontario Training and the number of people who are being brought off social assistance and long-term unemployment who are being retrained for employment. Jobs Ontario Housing --

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

Hon Ms Lankin: -- strategic investment. This one program, Jobs Ontario Community Action --

Mr Stockwell: Non-profit convenience stores; get a grip.

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Ms Lankin: -- is a very small part of the overall comprehensive program. It is one that --

The Speaker: Will the minister please conclude her response.

Hon Ms Lankin: You should be involved in planning the economic priorities for your community and testing them --

The Speaker: Would the minister please take her seat.

Mr Cordiano: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I would like to congratulate this minister for turning Ontario into the not-for-profit centre of North America.

The Speaker: That is not a point of order. Will the member for Lawrence please take his seat.

Interjections.

The Speaker: He does not have a point of order. Please take your seat.

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CONTAMINATED SOIL

Mr David Johnson (Don Mills): My question is to the Minister of Environment and Energy, and it's about the cleanup of radioactive soil from McClure Crescent. Specifically, the question is about the site chosen to store and to treat the soil, a site located on Tapscott Road, a site that will cost the taxpayers of this province about $1.3 million.

In this area there are about 950 industries. They employ about 12,000 people. They have formed a coalition that's called CART. It stands for Coalition Against Radioactive Tapscott. They're concerned that they have not been part of the process up to this point in determining the location for this soil. They've had no opportunity to understand the issue and no opportunity to speak to it. The people of McClure Crescent deserve a speedy solution, but the businesses and the workers on Tapscott Road also deserve to be treated fairly and have their concerns voiced.

This government has said that a storage site should be found as far away as possible from where families live and where children play. The Tapscott business people say, does that mean that a 14-foot-high mountain of radioactive waste should be placed next to where food is being processed?

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

Mr David Johnson: My question is, will the minister outline today the process that this government intends to pursue so that the companies and their 12,000 employees can participate, can have their questions answered and can have their concerns voiced?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy): Since the Chair of Management Board has responsibility for carrying this out for the government, I will refer the question to him.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet): I guess first of all, in terms of the member's question, it has to be dealt with rather directly. He referred in his question to a "mountain of radioactive waste." That's precisely the kind of exaggeration that helps cause the problem that exists on Tapscott. There will be no mountain of radioactive waste. The process, which was announced very publicly --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Don Mills placed a question. Perhaps his own colleagues would allow him the opportunity to hear the response.

Hon Mr Charlton: The process, which was announced publicly, was a very clear process. All of the businesses in question, including the council and the mayor who claim not to have been consulted, have been extensively consulted, and we have letters to that effect. More importantly, the consultation process will continue with all of the businesses and all of the local residents.

Lastly, back to the point about the radioactive waste, the process which was publicly announced is that the soil will be removed from McClure Crescent, the radioactive contamination will be removed from that soil and shipped for permanent storage in Chalk River and the soil will be stored on the site. That soil will be at background or just slightly above the norm anywhere in the province.

Mr David Johnson: The whole world is wrong and the minister is right. What I'm hearing is that the businesses were notified only in late spring that this was even a problem. They found out only on June 30 -- they had no opportunity for input -- that this specific site was to be selected. There is radioactive matter in the soil, any way you look at it.

The companies want consultation. They have fears. Let me tell you what those fears are. Those fears are about the real and the perceived health risks to the 12,000 people who will work in this area. Those fears are about the ability to retain employees working in this area. Those fears are about plummeting land values. Those fears are about adverse publicity from this whole issue which will affect their very livelihoods. There must be an element of fairness here.

The mayor of Scarborough has said, "This government should sit down with the federal government, talk to the issues and find a resolution." My question is --

The Speaker: And now the interrogative part.

Mr David Johnson: -- will the minister sit down with the federal government, with the businesses in this area, and find a solution? Will he provide to this House the economic studies, the environmental studies, the health studies that have caused his government to select this site?

Hon Mr Charlton: Firstly, we're certainly prepared to release all of the studies associated with this project.

Secondly, in terms of the consultations which have occurred, they started in May 1992. There was a public information office set up at the Malvern Town Centre. That office has operated ever since and continues to operate. There was set up a public liaison committee made up of citizens, including some of the business people. There were 17,000 newsletters sent out to both households and businesses in the area.

There were public meetings called and held discussing this project on a number of occasions in September 1992 and February 1993. There were self-addressed, pre-stamped questionnaires seeking public opinions on storage and site criteria sent out in the January 1993 newsletter to all of the same people. There was a workshop in February to refine the criteria around site storage.

We're prepared to work with the people in the community to resolve this, but those who are now saying they haven't been consulted are those who have chosen not to have been consulted.

CLEANUP OF INDUSTRIAL SITE

Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): My question is to the Minister of Environment and Energy. There's a huge pool of PCB-laced oil lurking below the town of Smithville which leaked from a storage site. It is estimated to be the size of a football field. The Ministry of Environment and Energy has already ensured the destruction of the above-ground contamination at this defunct PCB transfer station and the ministry has promised to go after below-ground PCBs as soon as possible. Can the minister advise the House and my constituency if this ministry is going to proceed with its plan to rid Smithville of the below-ground PCBs?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy): It is indeed a good question. I appreciate the member's interest in this matter and raising it on behalf of his constituents. I am happy to assure him that I've signed an agreement with the township of West Lincoln. The agreement sets forward the objectives and the implementation of phase 4 of the PCB remedial project. This phase of the project will involve ways and means to deal with the remaining PCB materials in the bedrock. I want to assure the member that my ministry is committed to work with the township and the local community every step of the way to ensure that the PCB contamination is cleaned up.

Mr Hansen: I heard the answer there, but can the minister advise the House and my constituency when this project, known as phase 4, will get under way and if it will employ Canadian technology? I think that's important.

Hon Mr Wildman: I'm happy to report to the member that phase 4 is already under way. On July 21, my staff from the Hamilton and Welland offices met with the township of West Lincoln and members of the public liaison committee to discuss the organization of the project management team.

At further meetings on July 27, and an additional meeting is planned for August 4 when the details of the progress will be discussed, we've indicated that the next phase of remediation will commence as soon as possible. So we're already working out the process and we're working with the community.

In regard to his last question about Canadian technologies, obviously we will give every consideration to the use of Canadian technologies and use the best technology available to rid this PCB material from the bedrock.

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COURT REPORTERS

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): My question is for the Attorney General, who is also the minister responsible for women. Minister, you will be aware that today in the Star -- and actually I'd had conversations with you perhaps a month ago about the question of replacing reporters with what will be in fact a giant machine, I guess, in the bowels of the courthouse. I understand that this is being done in response to the Minister of Finance's attempts to try to bring expenditures under control. We all agree with that.

However, I have to reflect on it. In this report, which was done by a non-profit institute in Philadelphia, they have come to the conclusion that the proposal that's being put forward will not in fact save money. It will cost $200,000 more per courtroom to establish this program.

On the other side of the coin, in your responsibility as minister responsible for women, this will affect some 700 to 800 women. These people in the main are women. They are single parents supporting their families, and in fact the institution of this may very well result in their jobs being taken away.

Would you undertake to the House that you will not proceed any further with this project until all parties, all of the people -- judges, court reporters, lawyers and all the other people who are involved -- have an opportunity to air their views, to determine whether this is economically feasible or whether it will be a safety valve for justice and whether in fact it's a wise move?

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General and Minister Responsible for Women's Issues): First of all, I'm the minister responsible for women's issues, not responsible for women. Women are quite able to be responsible for themselves.

Number two, this report, as the Star itself indicated, was in fact commissioned by the professional groups that represent the court reporters and it was commissioned in order to give their view and their appreciation of the importance of retaining personal court reporters in each courtroom.

The report itself is a reproduction, frankly, of a report that was prepared by that American organization for the National Court Reporters Association in the United States in 1992. It is not current in terms of the kind of technology that we are looking at. It makes assumptions, very seriously wrong assumptions, about the way in which our staffing could go if we were to proceed with this.

I have made the commitment in this place, and the deputy has made the commitment to all the players in the group, who are currently engaged in an advisory committee, an implementation committee that involves all the players in the field, that in fact we would be testing this out in two or three locations and we would be monitoring it very closely.

Our commitment is to the excellence of the quality of transcripts. We know that's extremely important to our justice system, and if in fact the dire predictions in this report were to be true, we would not proceed further, and we have made that commitment very clearly.

However, we dispute this report quite clearly, both on its costing --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Would the minister complete her response, please.

Hon Mrs Boyd: -- and on its assessment of the availability of modern technology.

Mr Callahan: I appreciate the minister advising me that she's the minister for women's issues, not women. But I have to tell you, Minister, that the women I've spoken to who earn their livelihood, who support their children, through this issue are very much concerned, and if you are not responsible for women's issues, these people will lose their jobs.

Dealing with the question of pilot projects, I had suggested to you that perhaps a pilot project was the way to go. You had in fact informed me that there was a pilot project under way in Ottawa. I have checked with the lawyers in Ottawa. I have checked with everyone else in Ottawa. They indicate to me there is no pilot project in existence in this province.

What you're doing is you're taking a system from Quebec that was a failure in Quebec. The British Columbia Legislature tried it. They're now wanting to go back to the old system. You are putting in jeopardy the very serious issue of justice. Do you not realize that the lack of a transcript or one that's inaudible can very much result in the possibility of a Court of Appeal throwing out a case that may be a very heinous crime? In fact, that's exactly what happened in the state of New Jersey, where a murder conviction was thrown out because there was not an adequate transcript.

The Speaker: And the member's question?

Mr Callahan: I suggest to you, let's not pinch pennies. Let's ensure that women continue to maintain their jobs and at the same time ensure that justice is fair, just and capable in this province. I suggest to you that you undertake to pay, first of all, for the cost of that report. I can't see why the court reporters have to pay for it.

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

Mr Callahan: Will you give us a firm assurance that you will not proceed any further with these plans until you have had full input, you've examined the BC problem, the Jersey problem and any other problem throughout the United States where this system has not worked?

Hon Mrs Boyd: We have done our homework. We have gone and visited other sites. We have looked at the problems that have happened with other organizations. It is true that the 20-year-old technology that's being used in Quebec is not very adequate. We don't dispute that. However, if you talk to many of those who are using that system, it is not as inadequate as is portrayed by those who believe that only personal court reporting is the way to go.

The BC example is a spurious example. BC, under its previous government, privatized this situation and did not rely on court reporters who were government employees. It is true that there will be some job loss among those people, and that is of concern to us, but I would remind the member that it is this government that brought those itinerate and unprotected court reporters into the civil service, where they get the protection of their union and the union agreement, and that the kind of redeployment, the kind of retraining that will be available to them would not have been available had they remained as itinerate workers. So we are concerned about the workers. We will do everything we can to make that happen.

The Speaker: Could the minister please conclude her reply.

Hon Mrs Boyd: I remind the member again that this is a very gradual process. We will not proceed unless we can be sure that the integrity of transcripts is protected.

The Speaker: New question, the member for Willowdale.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): My question is to the Attorney General as well. On July 14, I asked you about court reporters, what you planned to do. At that time, you were telling me that the system of court reporting in Montreal is what you're modelling your system after. Now you're telling us that system is antiquated and no good.

You leave me in a quandary. You couldn't guarantee that there would be no failure of the system you're going to implement. You couldn't guarantee that there would be jobs for the 700 court reporters who might be out of work, most of whom are women, and you're responsible for women's issues, I understand, although you may deny it.

Now we have a cost-benefit analysis, and the cost-benefit analysis says that your proposed system is going to be more expensive than what we now have. It also says that it produces frequently unreliable tapes which lead directly to substandard transcripts. You have no analysis of your own. You can't give the guarantees that we need to ensure that transcripts will be proper.

The Speaker: Could the member place a question.

Mr Harnick: Will you right now stand on your feet and say that you're going to scrap this, or at the very least do your own cost-benefit analysis before you criticize the only one that exists?

Hon Mrs Boyd: This is not the only cost-benefit analysis that exists. We have done a cost-benefit analysis and our figures do not agree with the figures here, and these figures were not produced based on the model we are going to use. I would just say to the member that we of course have done our homework.

No, I said to the member that I couldn't guarantee the integrity of court reporting even by personal court reporters, and he knows as well as I do that there are many occasions on which there are gaps that are very serious in transcripts now. What I did say to him was that we have looked at the Montreal model and we believe that with updated technology, with some changes in that system, we want to try it. We have made it very clear that what we are planning to do is going to be particularly tailored to our needs in Ontario, that we are going to move slowly and carefully to ensure that any move we have --

Mr Harnick: You're going on and on. You're not saying anything.

Hon Mrs Boyd: No, I won't sit down. I'm going to finish what I said to you. You asked a question and I'm answering it.

The Speaker: Could the minister conclude her reply.

Hon Mrs Boyd: What we are going to do is pilot this and make sure that we can guarantee the integrity of court transcripts before we move further.

1450

Mr Harnick: I'm delighted to hear that the government has prepared a cost-benefit analysis. I have no doubt, knowing this minister, that she will make that document public so that it can be studied by the court reporters and by the organization that had the guts to prepare a cost-benefit analysis and make it public. That's the first thing.

The second thing I want to see and I want to ask the minister is whether in her cost-benefit analysis she can tell us how much it's going to cost to provide this high technology to courtrooms in Haileybury and Kenora, which will all have to be rewired and modern technology accommodated in them. I will bet you right now, as I stand here, that this minister can't tell me that her cost-benefit analysis provides what that system will cost across this province, but will you make that public so we can study it?

Hon Mrs Boyd: Our estimates are based on a number of different assumptions. The range of costs, depending on which set of assumptions one adopts, is between $5.5 million and $7.6 million for the preliminary implementation. That includes equipment purchase, installation, wiring facilities, acoustical modifications, in 500 to 600 courtrooms at a cost of $4 million to $6 million. Yes, we certainly have those figures and we can show him that.

As I said in my personal conversation with this member, I made it very clear to him that initially we did not anticipate that acoustically this would work in every courtroom in the province and that those are some of the considerations that the implementation committee has to keep in mind in terms of determining how gradually we phase this system in.

The Speaker: The time for oral questions has expired. On a point of order, the member for Bruce.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Actually, this is a point of privilege more than a point of order. We were advised earlier in the sitting by way of explanation on another point of order that the Premier had advised everybody that he would not be here for question period today until 2:30.

I wish to provide for you a copy of his itinerary, at least it says it's an itinerary for Premier Bob Rae, July 26 to August 8. I provide for you, Mr Speaker, a sample of why we believe this was the true state of affairs, because it does say that as of Monday, July 26, 10:35 am, he was speaking at the United Food and Commercial Workers' third international conference. We know that took place. We know he avoided Audrey McLaughlin, his federal leader, when he was at that event. We therefore concluded that he would be here at 1:30 of the clock today.

The Speaker: To the member for Bruce, I always appreciate receiving pieces of paper from every member in the assembly. However, he does not have a point of privilege. Members are not compelled to be here at any particular time or indeed at all.

MOTIONS

CONSIDERATION OF BILL

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): I move that Bill 17, An Act to provide for the Capital Investment Plan of the Government of Ontario and for certain other matters related to financial administration be transferred from the standing committee on finance and economic affairs to the standing committee on general government.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

PETITIONS

HEALTH CARE

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I'm very pleased to present and support a petition from several hundreds of people in the electoral district of north Renfrew, which petition reads:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas it is important that the people of Ontario maintain a strong public health care system; and

"Whereas it is important that in these times of restraint, our public health care facilities receive appropriate and adequate funding;

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

"(1) That all diagnostic imaging and laboratory services, including specimen collection, be covered by a licence; and

"(2) That licences for all diagnostic imaging and laboratory services be issued only to not-for-profit operators."

I'm pleased to present and support this petition.

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

"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 the rational reform of Ontario's health care system through its obligations under the 1991 Ontario Medical Association-government framework and economic agreement."

PUBLIC SERVICES

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): I'd like to present a petition on behalf of the member for Port Arthur, Shelley Wark-Martyn. The petition is:

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

"We, the following undersigned citizens of Thunder Bay, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"We, the undersigned, call on the Ontario government to maintain and improve our public services. Public services are vital to our community and our way of life, and we can't afford to lose them."

This petition is signed by 2,882 people.

HEALTH CARE

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): 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:

"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."

This petition has been signed by many hundreds of people, specifically in the Malton area of my community, and I sign my name to this petition.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): I have a petition with several hundreds of signatures on it from my community in Halton:

"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 repealed."

It has my signature of support as well.

CASINO GAMBLING

Mr Dennis Drainville (Victoria-Haliburton): I rise to present approximately 2,000 signatures in this petition against casino gambling:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm very glad to affix my signature to this petition.

Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): I have some more petitions from the good people of Niagara Falls, raising the number of signatures on this issue of casinos to 3,368 people, all from the city of Niagara Falls. What they say is:

"We, the undersigned citizens of Niagara Falls, appeal to our provincial government and its elected representatives, including you, to designate Niagara Falls for a casino operation.

"We believe that the government considered legalized gambling in Ontario to revitalize our recession-battered tourism industry and to provide employment. Each year, over 12 million people regularly visit the city of Niagara Falls. Of these 12 million tourists, it is estimated that over 70% of our visitors stay for only one day. We feel that one government-regulated casino would be an excellent attraction to retain our tourists for longer periods. Increasing the percentage of overnight tourists would have a significant positive effect on our economy in Niagara Falls and the region, which would also contribute to the provincial government's increased revenue requirements.

"In summary, we believe that one regulated casino would provide much-needed employment, increased tourism for our existing hospitality industry, provide an immediate and lasting improvement for our local economy and provide much-needed revenue for the provincial government.

"We therefore strongly urge you to support the establishment of one government casino in Niagara Falls."

That was 3,368 people from Niagara Falls.

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HEALTH CARE

Mr Hugh O'Neil (Quinte): I would like to present a petition today and it's addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas these proposals will enable government to unilaterally and arbitrarily restrict payments for psychotherapy; and

"Whereas these proposals will result in a severe reduction in the provision of quality mental 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 the proposal to restrict payments for physiotherapy and withdraw the proposal to allow the cabinet to make decisions with respect to the number of times patients may receive particular insured services and set maximums with respect thereto. The government of Ontario must reaffirm its commitment to the process of joint management and rational reform of the delivery of medical services in the province as specified under the Ontario Medical Association/government framework agreement."

I have affixed my signature to this petition.

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): I have petition addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas these proposals will enable government to unilaterally and arbitrarily restrict payments for psychotherapy; and

"Whereas these proposals will result in a severe reduction in the provision of quality mental 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 the proposal to restrict payments for psychotherapy and withdraw the proposal to allow the cabinet to make decisions with respect to the number of times patients may receive particular insured services and set maximums with respect thereto. The government of Ontario must reaffirm its commitment to the process of joint management and rational reform of the delivery of medical services in the province as specified under the Ontario Medical Association/government framework agreement."

I've affixed my name to this petition.

HEALTH CARE

Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): I have a petition, signed by many hundreds of my constituents, addressed 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:

LANDFILL

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I have a petition from the members of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam regarding an alternative solution to landfill:

"We, the members of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam, wish to record our strong displeasure with the province's continued refusal to consider alternatives to another megadump in the region of York;

"We, the members of this Muslim community, whose national headquarters is located at Baitul Islam mosque, 10610 Jane Street in Maple, are deeply offended by even a consideration by the province to dump garbage next to our place of worship.

"We strongly urge the province to divert this garbage from these proposed sites, that are inappropriate for a landfill."

I sign my name to this petition.

POLICE SAFETY

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

"Whereas the NDP government attends to anti-police activists and special interest groups and ignores the rights and safety of our police officers; and

"Whereas the NDP government has placed and is planning to place increasing restrictions on police officers;

"We, the undersigned, spouses, children, parents, friends and neighbours of police officers, protest these increasing and unnecessary restrictions and ask that the Premier instead direct his attention to the safety of our officers and citizens and to ensuring tougher sentences for criminals."

I have affixed my signature in support of this.

PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I'm pleased to present a petition signed by several hundreds of people in my part of eastern Ontario, which petition says in part that "the Ontario government must immediately reset its course to build an Ontario society which is fair and just, protecting those who are most vulnerable within it, and not scapegoat public sector workers in times of economic difficulty."

ONTARIO DRUG BENEFIT PROGRAM

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly from Hamilton, Guelph, Kitchener, Brantford, various parts of the province, Etobicoke.

"Whereas the government proposes to delete up to 25% of the drugs eligible for payment under the drug benefit plan in addition to the numerous useful drugs it has already delisted from the plan; and

"Whereas there are already substantial therapeutic categories where no drug is listed as a benefit; and

"Whereas the government makes these proposed deletions based upon the claim that it cannot afford its present level of expenditure; and

"Whereas the government proposes to force senior citizens to make payments towards all prescription drugs purchased up to the maximum of $450 per year; and

"Whereas the government has stated its intention, despite its lack of funds and its imposed hardship on seniors by these measures, to extend the provisions of the drug benefit plan to anyone earning less than $40,000 per annum;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly as follows," and this is the operative part:

"That the government of Ontario move immediately to withdraw these proposed measures and reaffirm its commitment to the drug care of seniors without these extra costs."

CASINO GAMBLING

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I have another petition signed by scores of people in my part of eastern Ontario, and I'm sure my friend from Haliburton will be pleased to know that these petitioners are concerned and upset about the change of attitude and policy in the world of the new democracy, and their petition concludes:

"That we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario that the government cease all moves to establish gambling casinos."

POLICE SAFETY

Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I have a petition to the government of Ontario.

"We, the undersigned citizens of Ontario, support the health and safety concerns of members of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association and other police officers across the province;

"We therefore join with the spouses of Ontario police officers in petitioning Premier Bob Rae to invite representatives of front-line police officers to a meeting to discuss their legitimate concerns.

"Surely this government, which in the past made health and safety one of its primary concerns, will exhibit the same concern about the lives of the men and women who police our communities as it does about people who work in factories, offices and elsewhere."

I have affixed my signature in support.

GAMBLING

Mr Dennis Drainville (Victoria-Haliburton): I submit this petition on behalf of the residents of my part of the country.

"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 am very glad to give my signature to this good petition.

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INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

ASSOCIATION OF HEARING INSTRUMENT PRACTITIONERS OF ONTARIO ACT, 1993

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

Bill Pr49, An Act respecting the Association of Hearing Instrument Practitioners of Ontario.

VICTIMS' MEMORIAL DAY ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LA JOURNÉE À LA MÉMOIRE DES VICTIMES

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

Bill 86, An Act to establish Victims' Memorial Day / Loi portant création de la Journée à la mémoire des victimes.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Would the honourable member have some brief remarks?

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): The people of Ontario recognize that there is a need to increase public awareness of and sensitivity to the rights of victims of violent crime and their families.

The establishment of an annual day to commemorate publicly the victims of crime would serve to encourage reflection on the question of whether victims have achieved their proper place within our justice system. It would also promote the dissemination of information relating to victims' rights and the services available to them. It would make clear to governments and to police authorities the need for constant effort and vigilance to ensure that victims are appropriately recognized under the law and that their rights are respected and their needs met to the fullest extent under the law.

June 15 is the anniversary date on which the Mahaffy family of Burlington first learned of the disappearance of Leslie Mahaffy. June 15 would be a fitting day of commemoration in that it would signify the experience of prolonged victimization suffered by all crime victims and their families in Ontario.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SOCIAL CONTRACT

Mr Laughren moved government notice of motion number 9:

That, for the purposes of paragraph 1 of section 53 of the Social Contract Act, 1993, and in order to carry out the intent and purpose of that act, the indemnities and allowances payable under the Legislative Assembly Act to members of the assembly during the period beginning on June 14, 1993, and ending with March 31, 1996, are reduced as follows:

1. The amount of every indemnity or allowance payable in respect of the period under section 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 70 or 71 of the Legislative Assembly Act, and the amount of the per diem allowance payable in the period under section 68 of that act, is reduced by 5.5%, and only the reduced amount is payable in respect of the period.

2. After making the reduction required by paragraph 1, the annual indemnity payable in the period under subsection 61(1) of the Legislative Assembly Act to members of the assembly who are appointed to the executive council or are appointed parliamentary assistants under the Executive Council Act shall be further reduced by the amounts indicated in the following subparagraphs:

i. ministers with portfolio, other than the Premier and president of the executive council -- $1,392 for that part of the period prior to April 1, 1994; $1,746 for each 12 months in the part of the period following March 31, 1994.

ii. the Premier and president of the executive council -- $1,983 for that part of the period prior to April 1, 1994; $2,488 for each 12 months in the part of the period following March 31, 1994.

iii. ministers without portfolio -- $698 for that part of the period prior to April 1, 1994; $876 for each 12 months in the part of the period following March 31, 1994.

iv. parliamentary assistants -- $429 for that part of the period prior to April 1, 1994; $539 for each 12 months in the part of the period following March 31, 1994.

3. The amount of an indemnity or allowance received by a member of the assembly for a part of the period prior to the day when this resolution passes that exceeds the reduced amount payable after the application of paragraphs 1 and 2 shall be repaid by the member to the Legislative Assembly fund by deduction from any indemnity or allowance referred to in paragraph 1 in such manner as the Board of Internal Economy determines on or after the day when this motion is carried.

4. For that part of the period ending with March 31, 1994, only the portion of allowances and indemnities payable on March 31, 1994, under the Legislative Assembly Act that is equal to the portion that the number of days in the period June 14, 1993, to and including March 31, 1994, is of 365 is subject to the reduction required by paragraph 1.

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): I am pleased to open debate on this motion to reduce by 5.5% the indemnities and allowances payable under the Legislative Assembly Act to all members of this House. The reduction will apply retroactively to June 14 of this year and will remain in effect until the end of the period covered by the Social Contract Act; that is, until March 31, 1996.

By agreeing to this reduction, all members, including members of our own party, the opposition party and the third party, are helping to solve Ontario's fiscal problems. I realize that members have already been doing their part to a large extent by living for the last three years under a wage freeze, which has also applied to senior managers in the public service.

Just to be perfectly clear about that, this will mean a six-year freeze on MPP's salaries and indemnities and the same goes for members of cabinet as well. I believe it's an extra year even for members of cabinet, so it would be a seven-year freeze and a six-year freeze for all members of this assembly. I believe that's a major contribution by members of the assembly.

In moving this reduction in compensation, we are underlining what we've stressed from the start of our social contract discussions. Our approach to controlling Ontario's growing debt calls for a special contribution from everyone in Ontario. That's why our fair and balanced solution consists of three initiatives: We are cutting government spending in ways that are as humane as possible, negotiating a social contract to preserve jobs and services and raising tax and other revenues, and we are doing these things not just for the sake of saving money but in order to put Ontario on a responsible fiscal track and to save our most vital programs.

We in this House have been chosen to represent the interests of the people of Ontario. It is only right that we are willing to prove through this measure our commitment to the good of all. I know that my colleagues on all sides of the House recognize the fairness of the contribution we are asking them to make.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I look forward to the debate that will follow.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Questions and/or comments on the Minister of Finance's opening remarks?

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): Inasmuch as this move is being taken at the Legislative Assembly level, you weren't in the House earlier today when I made a private member's statement suggesting that, as a statement of goodwill, all elected people across the province of Ontario might well consider doing a similar type of move, regardless of how much they're making, if they're making a $5,000 honorarium, $10,000. It's more a statement that they're participating in a solution to what the problem is in the province of Ontario, not necessarily agreeing with the social contract.

I mean, we presented 29 amendments to the bill, none of which were approved. I know the bill is flawed, but none the less we're into it, and there's a time in which, by virtue of this kind of bill that we have before the Legislature where all members will participate in a very real way -- I'm wondering just what comment you have on people across the province making some kind of commitment in much the same way. I'm saying trustees, public utilities commissioners, councillors, and regardless of how much they're presently earning.

The intent here I can understand and am prepared to participate in as an MPP. The problem we have is that Bill 48 doesn't cover elected people necessarily. They may not feel that they're part of that, and if in fact they're under the $30,000 limit, they'd have all the more reason not to be part of it.

Just a few more comments on that. I think it would go a tremendously long way to create a better statement of goodwill between the elected people in the province and people at every other level, union or non-union, and the sectors will see this as something where the politicians are very genuine in their commitment. It will also help solve the problem Ontario has. Your comments on that would be appreciated.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): It tends to be a little non-partisan, the reduction in wages, and I think it probably works that way, because people understand the economic crisis that we're in. But I want to get on the record an issue that I find difficult.

As a member sitting in the third party, I myself have seen that we need to reduce our salaries. I think that's fair comment and I think it's something that the public would expect during these economic times, considering this social contract. Whether or not you think it's a debacle, there are people who are going to take reductions in the public sector, and we should in fact follow that lead.

I have some grave concerns, though, with respect to how the situation sits here in the Legislative Assembly. I look across the floor and I know full well that of the members in the government, some 70 of them, every single member but one, I believe, collects extra money over and above their salary. Whether it be a parliamentary assistant or a chairmanship or a junior minister or something, every single member but one, who I believe is Mr Kormos, and I could stand corrected --

Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): And Karen Haslam.

Mr Stockwell: -- and Karen Haslam, pardon me -- all collect extra money over and above the MPP salary. Over a period of five years, that could add up to as much as $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000 over and above the standard MPP salary.

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I'm very prepared to accept my 5.5%, but it seems passing strange that there is a job open for every single member of that government but two to up their salary over and above the standard MPP wage. It seems to me rather coincidental that they can find gainful work outside of the MPP range for every member of this government that pays every single member but two more money.

I think if that could be addressed somehow, that there could be a reasonable amount of people who collect extra stipend, I could agree, but I think it's rather inconsistent to suggest that every single member of the government is going to make more than I am, upwards of $50,000, $60,000, $75,000 a year, and claim that's a reasonable and fair comment.

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): I'm going to keep cool, calm and collected. The member for Renfrew North has advised me. But this is a serious matter, and I think we would be very remiss if, as we sit here, we can somehow not be part of the social contract.

I've taken it in the neck about the salary I receive, but I'd like to say, speaking on behalf of the government members here, we are indeed full-time members; we all spend a lot of time. I notice that other members in the opposition have other businesses and do other things, but every day of the week I am here when I'm supposed to be, along with my colleagues. I notice other people are long gone two and three weeks at a time.

We're all part of this problem in Ontario and in Canada, and I take great exception when the press lambastes the MPPs for their extras, their perks and everything when the real culprits in the dire straits that we find ourselves in Canada are a succession of federal Conservative and Liberal governments that got us into this one devil of a mess with the deficit. Yet I don't see any of those people -- I believe that federally there's a 2% freeze. The federal members earn $20,042 more than I do, and I'd like to know the difference between what they do and what I do.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): What a lot of crap.

Mr Mills: You say it's a lot of crap. That's unparliamentary. It's true they earn $20,042 more. Have they come forward and taken a pay cut? Have they offered any resolvement to this deficit? Of course not. They sit in Ottawa and they garner every penny they can, and we MPPs in Ontario take the brunt of the press and the bad press as though we're some sort of -- okay.

The Acting Speaker: We can accommodate one final participant. The honourable member for Nepean.

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): Frankly, this is a matter that I don't want to be partisan about at all. However, I want to make a comment to support what the Treasurer said. I thought it was most appropriate when he said that the members of this House have in fact contributed to the financial stability of this province for a long time. If I am correct, the last time I did receive a raise was in 1988. I don't mind at all contributing my share to the public good, and I think that's fair and that's reasonable.

I think we're all here to serve the people of Ontario, and we are trying to do that without consideration of financial reward. At the same time, I think we as members can expect of the media and of the public to at least recognize that we have made an effort at restraint for a considerably longer time than we have expected of the public.

I would have expected, frankly, that the press, as they reported it on the front page in practically every paper this week in terms of the reduction of the MPPs' salaries, would have reported -- as I think the Globe and Mail did, in fairness, but none of the other papers did -- that this three-year additional reduction in fact comes on the basis of a salary freeze that we have had since 1988. In fairness, to inform the public properly, I think that should be stated and that should be brought forward, and I was glad that the Treasurer mentioned it.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable Minister of Finance has two minutes in response.

Hon Mr Laughren: To start with the last speaker, I agree with him that this is a six-year freeze, and that needs to be recognized by the public. I am certainly not one who undervalues the work of MPPs, whether in opposition or in government. I believe that we are not overpaid. I believe that every member I know on either side of the House works extremely long hours on behalf of their constituents, and I don't know anyone who shirks their duty. If they do, they're a one-tripper, as we say in the business, and they sure don't stay around here very long.

I did want to deal with the comments of the member for Markham who talked about municipal officials, and it's section 53, paragraph 3, of the bill which allows municipal politicians to pass motions at the municipal level to do basically what we're doing here in the assembly. I would be surprised if employees at the municipal level, not to mention ratepayers at the municipal level, would be very tolerant of municipal councils that didn't do something along the lines of what we're doing. We don't run the municipalities to that degree, but I would certainly encourage municipal councils to do that and I'm sure the ratepayers will do the same.

A word of caution to the member for Etobicoke West about who gets a special allowance. It's true that members of the government, regardless of the political party, do act as cabinet ministers and as parliamentary assistants. But I would remind him that leaders of the opposition and the third party; deputy chairs, some of whom are opposition; committee chairs, some of whom are opposition; opposition whips of both parties; the committees members' per diem allowances -- all of those are paid extra emoluments as well.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I rise to support the Minister of Finance in this policy. It is an appropriate policy, and quite frankly, given the nature of the budgetary pressures that the province of Ontario is facing, the government and we in the Legislature have no other course and we have no choice.

I want to say at the outset and as clearly as I can that I personally and strongly support the Treasurer and the government in this connection. It is absolutely clear to me that we in this Legislature must, in this delicate subject, lead by example. We simply cannot expect people who are going to find their public sector wages, salaries and programs reduced or frozen to accept that sacrifice on the one hand, and on the other hand not to do our part as people who are paid by the public purse, and, more importantly, as people who are elected to set policy and to show leadership in this regard.

This debate for me is one that is fertile with opportunity. I could, if I were in a less than generous mood, indulge myself with a fair range of -- what shall I call it? -- polemic. I think of my friends in the government, I think of my friends in the New Democratic Party, who would go ballistic at the thought of an NDP government introducing a resolution of this kind. I'd like to be there when Floyd Laughren next meets Elie Martel.

I haven't checked the record, but I think I'm correct that one has to go back to the Depression era of Mitch Hepburn to find a similar measure, though I think, and the member for Carleton can correct me, that there was a time, perhaps 15 or 18 years ago, in the mid-1970s, when William Davis reduced the cabinet portion of certain members' salaries. I think I'm right on that. I'd want to check the record, but I think one has to go back 60 years to find the time when the government chose to roll back the indemnities paid to honourable members of the Legislature.

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I want to say some things as well on this subject because it is very important and necessary that we support the Treasurer in this business, and show the leadership and the good example that the public expects us to show. Let me restate that one more time. I think it's important as well that we take a moment today to think about and to prepare ourselves for some of the attendant issues.

I don't know whether the Treasurer or whether anyone else had the opportunity I had yesterday morning when I was driving from a meeting into the Queen's Park parking lot at about 9:10. I was honoured to hear my friend and neighbour the member for Carleton, a leading member of the Davis cabinet, Mr Norman Sterling, spend 10 or 15 minutes with someone on CFRB --

Mr Sterling: Tayler Parnaby.

Mr Conway: -- Tayler Parnaby. I want to say to the Treasurer, you ought to get that tape, because you haven't heard anything quite like that in a long time.

Now I have to say that the member for Carleton is a very thoughtful, balanced fellow. He is, in case you don't know, both a lawyer and an engineer who came to this place 16 years ago, who told that audience yesterday that his 16 years in this place has represented for him an opportunity cost of about a million dollars. I must say the people of North Renfrew got me at a much, much lower price.

Mrs Karen Haslam (Perth): And you're worth every penny.

Mr Conway: Whether the value is there, as the member for Perth opines, is entirely another question and certainly not one for me to answer. But I tell you that Norman Sterling was never more stimulating than he was with Tayler Parnaby yesterday morning, and I'm sure he'll entertain us with some of that today.

I just simply want to say that this is a very delicate subject. I can say some things, and I do have a conflict of interest; I want to be upfront about that. I've been here a long time. I'm a single person. I can give up 5%, 10% of my salary, and I'm going to tell you, it's not going to make a great deal of difference to me. But I have a lot of sympathy for people who are here with spouses and other family responsibilities.

I grew up in a very political family. My grandfather was here for many years. A couple of my relatives were here for a long time.

Mr Paul Klopp (Huron): Family compact.

Mr Conway: A family compact, someone says. I can say, both from personal experience and from looking at a lot of the literature over the period, that most people, when they come to politics, do make a financial sacrifice. In my view that is as it should be, because quite frankly, there is, I believe -- and it may be an old-fashioned Tory notion but it happens to be one I hold and I think it's one that's shared by most members on all sides in this House -- there is, there always has been and I hope there always will be a real measure of public service associated with serving on a local hospital board, a local school board, a local council or in the legislatures, local or national.

I, for one, don't argue the case that the remuneration here should be an entirely arithmetic calculation, as it would be in many other places, because I do think that we are paid, yes, to keep the wolf from the door, so to speak, but it's also a recognition on our part that there is a duty. In the early days of the British parliamentary system, serving in Parliament was like jury duty. You were not really given a great deal of choice. Now we've happily moved on from that day, although I sometimes wonder if we may soon return.

I think it has to be said that all of us have work to do with a very sceptical electorate which looks at members of local councils and the local and national legislatures. The public is increasingly concerned by what it sees as special status, and I think we are going to have to look at that. I can tell you that we have not looked at it because people like myself have been terrified that we would get crucified in the public debate, because I don't know of an issue that invites cheaper politics and cheaper journalism, and I say that advisedly.

Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): Nothing is ever going to change that.

Mr Conway: Well, I think we have to work at trying to create a better understanding and I think we have to start with our own treatment of ourselves.

In my grandfather's time, which was 1929 to 1945, members were indemnified for part-time work. He came in late January. Until, quite frankly, about 25 years ago, you were often indemnified for two to three or four months' work and no more than that.

I was reading a wonderful essay about R.B. Bennett the other day, and it's hard to believe but there was a time when one could be the dean of the law school at Dalhousie University and member of Parliament for I forget which of the New Brunswick constituencies.

We had a Premier, a Liberal Premier, George Ross, who at one and the same time as he was Premier was also president of one of the life insurance companies; I can't remember which one.

Not that many years ago, if you can imagine this, the federal member for South Renfrew was at one and the same time the minister responsible for national revenue and actively involved in one of the trust companies. That's not that many years ago.

John Robarts, when he was a cabinet minister, I believe, practised some law.

Mr Sterling: Fred Cass, when he was Attorney General.

Mr Conway: Fred Cass, as well, when he was Attorney General.

Interjections.

Mr Conway: No, but I think that if we looked, if we went back into the Saskatchewan CCF, we'd probably find some of the same. That's the way life was.

My point is that as we have evolved, we have picked up some ways of paying ourselves that I think now offend people. The non-taxed expense allowances are clearly irksome to a lot of people who find that they're taxed on virtually all of their earnings. To find that the people who write the tax law somehow, for whatever good reason, are spared the full measure of that tax on their own indemnities, salaries, call them what you will, grates today in a way that I don't remember it grating 18 years ago when I was first elected.

I think we're going to have to look at that and I think we're probably going to have to make a three-party agreement to do a grossed-up salary, announce it before an election campaign and say: "My friends, here it is. You've got to believe us" -- maybe not us but a good group of accountants who will say -- I'll use myself as a good example: If I wanted to leave here today and take a job that would effectively pay me what I'm now earning, the salary I would seek is about between $65,000 and $70,000 as a private member.

Now, that will vary depending on how people apply their non-taxed expense allowance. Some people are much more frugal on that account than some of the rest in this House. My calculation is that, all things considered, as a private member of this Legislature receiving no other emoluments -- I am not a whip; I am not a deputy anything; I am the member for Renfrew North -- I receive a salary of whatever it is, $44,500, about to be discounted -- understandably and properly -- an untaxed expense allowance of $14,000 whatever and probably, on average, about $1,500 to $2,000 annually in per diems from various committee activities in which I am engaged.

Interestingly, and I'll be quite honest, one of the most significant perks for me is my car allowance. I live in my car. I probably drive more than anyone else in this place, outside of the cabinet, and I probably drive almost as much. I'm not bragging. It's the reality of living 400 kilometres east of here and representing a constituency of over 2,000 square miles or whatever it is. It is very large, not as large as our friend the Speaker's and the Minister of Agriculture and Food's, whose ridings make mine look like an urban borough. But none the less, in my compensation, the mileage allowance is a real benefit.

All things considered, I would, to be truthful, have to be compensated in the range of $65,000 to $75,000 if I left this place and wanted equal treatment in so far as another job was concerned. I have not disguised that with anybody. When people, including my own family, try to figure out what I earn, it comes as a bit of a surprise to hear me say that.

I think the day is coming when we are all going to have to make some decisions. I applaud the Premier. He has taken the first steps, both on the pay question, as we are obligated in the name of the social contract to do, and also on the pension side. Again, and I say this recognizing that mine is a very special set of circumstances and that one cannot make policy in so far as pay is concerned, and particularly on pensions, looking at the exceptions.

I spoke the other day, and I'm not going to rethrash that straw, but if I left here today under the old pension arrangement, the arrangement that is now operative, at age 42, having served for 18 years with five and a half of those years in cabinet, I would be entitled to a pension benefit payable immediately and for life at the rate of $54,000 a year. Now, there isn't a person I represent in the wonderful county of Renfrew who thinks that is right or just, and I completely agree with them.

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Mr Sterling: A director of education might.

Mr Conway: My friend says the director of education would earn that, and I suppose we would have to talk about the director of education. I don't think there's a director of education who would be in a position to receive a pension benefit of that amount at age 42. But you see, my point there is that I recognize that I'm one of a very few people who qualify for that too-rich entitlement, and because there are so few of us and because it is so offensive to the taxpayers to read that, let's change it.

Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Well, of course, the media pick on you. I can't understand why.

Mr Conway: Well, of course, and one of the reasons I'm sensitive, I say to my friend from Sudbury, is that if I see myself one more time on the front page of the Windsor Star or the London Free Press or the Pembroke Observer or the Ottawa Citizen saying, "Conway, 42, 54,000 Bucks" -- I've got to tell you, in Renfrew county, where $54,000 a year is a king's ransom to most people, it is just indefensible and I am not going to defend it.

Having said all that, the summary of that is that there is a problem out there that we have to deal with, the sense that we get special status around non-taxed allowances, the sense that for some people the pension benefit is too rich, and it is, and the third issue that -- I could pick an example from all three parties that good old Harry or Mildred, having served for X number of years in Parliament, locally or nationally, has earned a good pension -- nobody quarrels with that -- and then immediately upon retirement, in fact before retirement or at the same time, walks directly into a full-time public sector job with a salary of 80,000 or 90,000 bucks or more.

People say, "That is just not fair," because the whole notion of the good pension is that there should be some protection against the vicissitudes and uncertainties of public life, and that's a very powerful argument that we ought to listen to, but that argument is completely removed if Conway is to leave the Legislature and go as agent general to London or go to chair the Workers' Compensation Board, neither of which job I would take if my life depended on it. But if I were to accept one of the full-time positions -- I'm not, quite frankly, worried about part-time positions or per diems. I think that's incidental. I'm talking about the tier 1 jobs, the fulltime-equivalent salaries of 60,000 and 70,000 and 80,000 bucks.

Mr Sterling: And another pension.

Mr Conway: And another pension.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): If you get to be a judge.

Mr Conway: The member for Willowdale says, "If you get to be a judge." I can think of some of those federal Liberals I knew. Bob Daudlin, a long-time member from Kent, took his parliamentary pension and went directly to the bench.

You see, when Allan MacEachen left the lower House of Parliament and went to the Senate, he was obligated to leave his pension behind, ostensibly because he'd not left Parliament; he'd just gone to the other place. I'm simply saying that I know it's difficult --

Mr Sterling: Did he know that?

Mr Conway: Yes, I'm sure he knew that.

Mr Sterling: He didn't act that way.

Mr Conway: Well, he didn't act that way, perhaps.

My friend from Oriole is here, and she would want me to say, "Be careful around the double-dipping issue, because it's a lot more easily said than done." I understand that. I'm simply saying that on this subject of paying members, the questions of pay, perks, pensions, I think we have to take stock of where the irritations are. There are not that many, but there are two or three places where the public has rightly focused its attention, and I think we have an obligation, as a political class in a democratic society, to reasonably and sensibly respond to that irritation and that concern, particularly now as so many people are feeling the pain of unemployment, job insecurity, rising taxes and all the other things that each honourable member knows in his own household, in her own household or in his/her workplace.

I would really make a strong pitch today to all members to try to find a way in the coming months to deal with some of these issues so that we are ready in another election, 18 months from now, to hopefully put some proposals before the electorate. I would quite frankly hope we could do it on some kind of tripartite basis. We may not be able to do so, and that I would understand as well.

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): No, because you guys might play politics with it.

Mr Conway: My friend from wherever says someone might play politics with it. Yes, somebody might. There will be candidates out there --

Mr Perruzza: You had five chances to change the system, and you didn't do it.

Mr Conway: I've got to tell you, I was a failure as a House leader, because I from time to time made very modest steps to do some of this, and I'll tell you, I was beaten back so quickly and so vehemently by some people whom I will not mention. But that's why for me to stand here today and support this resolution standing in the name of the honourable member for Nickel Belt, pillar of the new democracy in Ontario in 1993, is an opportunity pregnant with much history. I won't embarrass anybody with some of that recitation, but I'll tell you, today is an example of that old adage that it is truly a long road that has no turns, because this day represents a very dramatic turn in this road.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Times are different.

Mr Conway: My friend opposite says that times are different, and of course she's right.

I want to say on the other side of this that it would be useful, I think, for members of the Legislature and opinion-makers in the community to take a few hours -- I'm going to recommend a bit of reading. I do this too often, but there's a fellow named Ned Franks, C.E.S. Franks, and he wrote a book five years ago called The Parliament of Canada. It's got kind of a dry title, and you think, "Who the hell wants to read that?" I intended to bring it in here today, and I just didn't get to the library.

Mr Perruzza: Unless of course you've got to read it for some school course you're taking.

Mr Conway: I am not now in the business of taking courses, though some day soon I might be.

I make the point, though, that it is a very useful thing to read. I think it's a useful thing to read Franks's look at the political and parliamentary culture in this country, with fairly recent data. There are just a couple of chapters that I think people should look at. There's a chapter called "Honourable Members," and it takes a look at who serves in Parliament and how long they're here. Most people, I think, would think I'm typical of people here.

Hon Allan Pilkey (Minister without Portfolio in Municipal Affairs): Never.

Mr Conway: Well, typical in this sense, that I'm here 18 years, and aren't they all? Isn't the average length of stay 10 or 12?

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. I want to remind the honourable member to address his remarks to the Speaker.

Hon Bob Mackenzie (Minister of Labour): It's six or seven years.

Mr Conway: I know. My point is that the Franks essay makes plain a fact that is lost on most people. The average length of stay in the Parliament of Canada, as late as the late 1980s, is about six and a half years. The average length of stay in the Ontario Legislature is now about four and a half years.

One of the reasons we should change the pension plan is that, even as it's currently constituted, it is irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of people who are here.

Hon Ms Gigantes: It's true of most pension plans.

Mr Conway: Well, it may be true of most pension plans, but I'm telling you that we are getting a lot of heat around a couple of exceptions in the plan. I simply want to say that as a matter of good strategy, as well as a matter of good policy and politics, let's change it. Let's remove those few irritations that rightly inflame people and reconstruct the plan in the light of the new reality. And the new reality -- pardon me?

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): Jim might get a little mad at you.

Mr Conway: Of course people are going to be angry. Listen, I've said before and I'll repeat it: I ultimately am anxious to participate in a three-party scheme. But if there's not consensus, I've got my own policy, and I intend to apply it to myself without any intention of embarrassing anybody. But I have a feeling that if, as and when I need to, I do what I intend to in the absence of change, it will cause some interest for some honourable members.

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My point again is that the reality, according to Professor Franks, is that parliaments in this country, particularly Ontario and Canada, that is, the national Parliament, are increasingly populated by what Professor Franks calls "short-term amateurs," quite a different pattern of parliamentary representation than he found when he looked at Westminster, Great Britain and the United States.

I think it comes as a big surprise to a lot of people, particularly a lot of people who speak in the public domain about this subject and who write about it, to find out that the reality is very different from the perception.

One of the things that surprised me about the data in Franks's The Parliament of Canada was the very high number of people who leave the Parliament of Canada because they're just fed up: They feel there's no contribution to be made, they're frustrated and they go off to other things; a much higher level of turnover on that account than I would have imagined.

When I look to our own place, we've had three successive electoral decapitations, each one more significant than the one before it, in 1985, 1987 and 1990. I have suggested, perhaps partisanly -- I don't mean it as such, but I would submit that in 1995, we will see the greatest turnover that this assembly has seen in the post-Confederation period. I might be wrong, but I'm prepared to make a slight wager.

We're getting dramatic changes in terms of length of stay. We're getting, happily, a new mix of people. I'm delighted, for example, to see people like Gordy Mills getting elected at his age, if I can say that.

Ms Murdock: He's getting his old age pension.

Mr Conway: And well he should. I think we're a better place for having people like Gord Mills and Leo Jordan, who have completed full work careers elsewhere and are prepared in their 60s to come to this place. I think we are probably going to see a bit more of that.

Mr Paul R. Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): What about young people like us?

Mr Conway: Young people like the member for Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings are going to, I think, be increasingly rare.

Ms Murdock: They can't afford it.

Mr Conway: Well, the question has to do with the security of tenure. Politics, it has to be said, and happily so, is a fundamentally unstable occupation, and it should be, in a democratic society.

I want to make the point that we have some changes occurring in our political culture in Ontario. Twenty years ago, this was an environment where if you were elected, if you were a New Democrat from Hamilton, if you were a Tory from just about anywhere, if you were a Liberal from a place like Bruce and maybe Kenora --

Mr Paul Johnson: Renfrew North.

Mr Conway: No. Renfrew was a great bastion of blue until I accidently happened in 1975.

Mr Sterling: We think the blue is still there.

Mr Conway: Well, I'm like Bradley on occasion. I'm a small-c Liberal. Where was I?

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): I think you were dealing with phonics.

Mr Conway: My point was that 20 years ago when I came here, there was a tradition of people like Norm Davison and Fred Burr of the NDP, and Donald MacDonald; people like Bob Nixon and a Jim Breithaupt or a Pat Reid in the Liberals; and, as I say, Tories running the gamut from Ellis Morningstar in Welland to Clarke Rollins in Hastings, Paul Yakabuski in Renfrew; long-long-term members. That's changed; that culture has gone from this place.

The other thing we have to think about as we look at the pay question -- and I'm surprised at the number of people who haven't figured this one out -- is the impact of the new reality of conflict of interest. That is a very significant reality.

It has to be understood that if the payment of members is at a point that is deemed inadequate by some of the successful bidders for the parliamentary place, those men and women are going to do what you'd expect them to do and what's always been done here.

One of the most colourful members in this assembly for years was Albert Roy, the Liberal member for Ottawa East. He was a Tuesday and Thursday man, and he never made any bones about it. He simply said: "I have a wife and children. I can't afford to keep my family in the kind of lifestyle to which I think they are accustomed or should be expecting on the salary of a member of the Legislature."

Mr Paul Johnson: Was he in government?

Mr Conway: He was never in government.

My friend from Etobicoke West is gone, and I want to take some issue with him. I've been a private member; I've been a cabinet minister. In my view, the cabinet life is a very stimulating life that is not as well remunerated as I believe it should be. There's no doubt in my mind that I am better off, psychologically, physically and financially, as a private member than I was in cabinet.

Interjection.

Mr Conway: I don't know, I was never a private member in government. I was a minister of the crown for five and a half years. Stanley Baldwin, who on three different occasions served as Prime Minister of Great Britain and served in Westminster for over 25 or 30 years, said he was never happier than when he was surrendering the seals of office. There are days when I really do appreciate what Stanley Baldwin meant when he said that.

I want to disagree to that extent with the member for Etobicoke West. I believe that cabinet ministers of my acquaintance, in the main, have certainly earned the money that they have been paid. I would make the comment that might appear to be a bit peculiar, but I make it only on my own personal experience: I am personally better off as a private member than I ever felt in cabinet. For the amount of work that was required and the constraints of conflict of interest as they applied, and properly so, to cabinet, I've got to tell you, in many ways September 1990 was my emancipation day.

I do share, however, the comment that the member for Etobicoke West made in respect of all of the additional positions that are made available to the government benches, and I don't mean this as a criticism of the New Democrats, because they are doing nothing that the Liberals and the Tories didn't do before them. I'll tell you, the New Democrats and the Liberals -- my friend Sterling from Carleton will remember this -- used to excoriate the Davis and Robarts Tories for all of these special positions that were doled out to virtually every member of the government caucus save and except those bad boys and girls who managed to get themselves into the proverbial doghouse or woodshed. Remember that, Mr Speaker? Remember those people who would get to the woodshed? We all had them.

Some woodsheds were bigger than others and some doghouses were less comforting than others. It used to be, when I was first elected -- and the Speaker might remember this -- the way you got yourself into a cabinet was you got aggressively bad and then they put you in the cabinet just to shut you up. Larry Grossman found that was the fast route to the treasury bench, and he embraced it happily.

I simply want to make the point that we have to, as we look at the question of the payment of members, understand that there are some new realities. The length of stay has dropped dramatically, and there's no indication that that's going to change. I think that is a happy thing for our democracy. It means that it is more vibrant, it is more fluid and more possibilities could conceivably obtain, but with the increased volatility meaning a much, much shorter length of stay and the attendant issues around conflict of interest.

I have felt that the Rae government's position on conflict of interest, while it had a kind of high-minded philosophical appeal, was in many respects completely unfair and impractical to the rural and small-town Ontario that I know. I've got to tell you that some of the ingredients of the current government's position on conflict of interest make it impossible for a number of people who I think should consider coming to Parliament ever likely doing so, because they would be expected to divest themselves of family businesses and other such enterprises that I certainly wouldn't divest myself of, not for the uncertain business of politics.

I accept that we've got to have and we do have a different standard around conflict of interest today than we had in those years when, not that many decades ago, an Attorney General could at one and the same time represent Her Majesty in the courts of the province and perhaps represent young Elston in some civil action that might be ongoing with his neighbour Conway who was doing terrible things to the fence line or whatever.

But the conflict-of-interest issue is real and we better understand it. We better understand that as we tighten that screw in a political and parliamentary culture where length of stay is becoming shorter and shorter, we're going to get some results, intended or otherwise.

I want to make a couple of final comments before I just take my seat. One of them is not a very polite one. I hope my friends the members for Parry Sound and Carleton -- you need to be around here a while but, boy, there's nothing that gets my blood boiling more these days than the authority that the media are going to for an objective analysis of members' pay and pensions: Robert Fleming.

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Norm Sterling, do you remember Robert Fleming? Robert Fleming used to serve in this place as the director of the Office of the Assembly. Now, I won't say the things I want to say about Robert Fleming, because they're not very polite and they're probably actionable, but I've got to tell you that it makes my stomach turn to be lectured to by Robert Fleming on the subject of a proper and delicate relationship between the citizen and the public purse.

I will leave it there. I am quite prepared to be lectured to by a lot of people about the excesses of the political class, because, from time to time, we clearly need that lecture. But I'm telling you that Bob Fleming, late of the Office of the Assembly, is not a person, in my view and on the basis of my considerable experience in this place, who ought to be giving one scintilla of advice and guidance on that subject.

Now, a final point is that as we look to the next few months and the next few years, clearly we're going to want to make some change. I think it is important, as I said earlier, to make change on the basis of reality, on the basis of the good advice that will be provided, not just from inside the assembly but from outside, and to make change that is clearly going to respond to those two or three areas where there is now a public consensus. The change must be made, because the status quo is inappropriate, if not indefensible.

But I would ask that we not throw the baby out with the bathwater, that we try to recognize that the broad public, particularly in this province, is a moderate, sensible, generous public. I think if we make a reasonable case on good data, we will get a good hearing, because it is my view and it is my experience that my neighbours understand the burdens and the difficulties of public life and they don't want to return to a time when, in this province or in other provinces -- I live on the Quebec border. People in my community of Pembroke well remember the political culture of the late Maurice Duplessis. We all know, and I certainly know from the point of view of reading the literature.

I think of Mike Pearson. There's a wonderful new biography of Pearson. Interesting it was, and not at all surprising, that when Pearson came to the Parliament of Canada as member for Algoma and minister of foreign affairs, one of the things that he had to have done for him was a fund created to supplement his income, because in his family circumstances he had no personal wealth.

He had been a public servant of some distinction and rising rank through the 1930s and 1940s with the Department of External Affairs, but when he was asked to join the political ranks, he looked at the uncertainty and the pay scales and said, "I'm going to have to get some help." A fund with a wonderful name -- I think it was called the Algoma Fish and Game Club -- was created in which private moneys were put and on which Mr Pearson could draw annually and apparently did draw the entire 20 years of his very distinguished parliamentary life.

I know, quite frankly, that similar arrangements have been made for just about every party leader in the federal place and, I dare say, in this place as well. I know what the obligations are upon a first minister and on other party leaders and I know what the literature suggests.

I remember the case of Claude Wagner, a prominent lawyer-judge from Quebec. It was revealed that when he came to the Parliament of Canada a special support fund had to be provided for him. The fund that supported William Lyon Mackenzie King was very considerable and he drew on it shamelessly.

I also know the private experience of a lot of people in public life who, when they weren't paid an adequate salary, made other arrangements. The scandals of Parliament: I think of the great Beauharnois scandal of the 1930s, how wonderful people in Parliament got soiled because they were looking for money, money that they probably needed to sustain themselves in their public lives.

When one looks at the potlatch that is now the Congress of the United States, one does not want to see, hopefully, that kind of activity here, and I think we've got to have a policy that is realistic, that is defensible, that recognizes that this is in the main now either a full-time job or a job that is sufficiently full-time that one cannot maintain another life easily within the bounds of conflict of interest now to sustain an individual.

We've got some very delicate questions to address. The individual circumstances of members are going to vary, from the pension bliss of my friends from Durham East and Lanark-Renfrew to a situation, and I'll pick on my friend from Bruce, who is about my age and who has five little children and a wife who I believe is at home looking after those children. I'm sure there are people on the other side who have exactly that situation.

I am very, very careful in any comments I make to ensure that people understand that Conway is, in this respect, as in perhaps too many others, a bit of an exception. I accept that and I am very, very careful not to parade out as any kind of an average situation. I don't want to do that.

However, I'm not going to take the fall for at least one part of our pension benefit entitlement, which in my case is just inexplicable and indefensible to my constituents. I fully intend, when my time comes, either at retirement or an electoral boot, to go and work in some other place for as much income as will be required to get me through the Canadian winter.

I say in conclusion I support the government initiative in this respect. We must as honourable members see our pay cut, as painful as that may be for some people, because we must lead by example. I would hope, as has been indicated by the member for Markham, that elected members across the province are going to show a similar example to their communities, because I think if they do not do so in some reasonable fashion, they can expect a whirlwind of public reaction they are not going to find helpful or positive.

As we move forward in the coming months and years, but hopefully to conclude before the next election, I would hope that as a Parliament, as a group of members of three political parties, and now three independents, we can sensibly arrive at a new consensus around the very delicate, always thorny question of parliamentary pay, pensions and related perks to construct a new regime that is fair and sensible to both honourable members elected here and the taxpayers outside who pay the freight for all of us.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and/or comments?

Mr Elston: Not to take up much time and perhaps to substitute a couple of minutes of speaking time for another intervention on this, I have to say, as always, it's enjoyable to listen to some thought-provoking pieces of information from the member from Renfrew and, from the perspective of a person who is already serving here, obviously some good advice as to looking after the future of those who will succeed us. It's not a question of people will. There will be people here in this chamber doing this work, and those of us who are doing it now understand very well what prices are exacted in relation to all of our lives.

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I think it's important to note that while there's a great deal of support, sometimes hesitatingly given, on this issue, it has to be noted for the record -- and I was unable to listen to the remarks at the beginning of the honourable member's speech -- about the issue of actually doing something with the savings of the social contract. This is part of the 5.5% of wage and salary expenditure savings. This is supposed to rein in or at least be an assistance to reining in the deficit. It is supposed to make our fiscal situation far better.

I guess for all of us, we would feel somewhat more content if we really expected this pay cut to actually be used wisely and in any fashion in a way which would actually make a contribution. I'd just note that the shaking head on the shoulders of the Minister of Finance would indicate that he does not agree with me, but Spot-On Floyd has been so far unable to manage the deficit of this province, and in fact has done some things economically which have really turned the economy on its head and have precluded any real recovery from occurring.

I make those comments only in assistance to the member from Renfrew in his considerations.

Mr Daigeler: Indeed, as is his wont, the member for Renfrew North --

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. The member for Nepean has the floor and a very short time to participate.

Mr Daigeler: Could I get my two minutes again, Mr Speaker?

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Daigeler: I presume I will get my full two minutes here.

As is his wont, the member for Renfrew North has spoken very eloquently on a number of issues on the broad question of the remuneration for members. I want to restrict my response simply to one item that he mentioned, that basically we're all here because we want to contribute a service to the public.

As I indicated in my remarks earlier, I think all of us were prepared from the beginning, from day one, when it was first announced that there was going to be a restriction on remuneration in the province, this so-called social contract, that we were going to be affected by it as everyone else.

Frankly, I was very astonished when I seemed to get the impression from the press reports this week that either the press or the public seemed to be surprised that we were cutting back our salary as well. I should tell you and I should tell anyone who would like to listen that as soon as this was first announced several months ago, I did tell both my wife -- because she's affected by this as well -- and my staff that obviously if the public sector is going to be affected, we are members of the public sector and we would be in the same way touched by these restrictions as everyone else. Again, my point is simply to say that I was surprised there was any question or any doubt in anybody's mind that we would be in the same way affected as the general public.

Mr Stockwell: I listened with interest to the member from Renfrew's discussions on this issue. I thought they were reasoned, very non-partisan. They came, obviously, from his opinion of what he's gathered in his 17 years, if my calculations are correct.

Mr Conway: Eighteen.

Mr Stockwell: Eighteen years? Sorry. I didn't listen well enough.

One thing I'd like to discuss is the pension issue. I understand from the government and the Premier himself that we're going to debate the pension issue for all members come the fall, and I think that's something that needs to be done. There's no doubt. The comments from the general public about our pension, although sometimes uninformed -- they're outraged. There's no doubt that they're outraged.

I'd also like to carry that debate one step further. I would love to see the government, during this debate on pensions, examine all pensions for all public sector employees. I'll tell you why. There's a group of people I have talked to in the past who are becoming offended by the fact that 50 cents of every buck in the pension plan comes from their tax dollars.

They're private sector people, they work for their money and they don't have pension funds where they work. When they want to save up for their retirement, they do so with the money that they're paid after tax, RRSPs or so on and so forth, or they put money aside for their own pension.

Hon Mr Laughren: There's a tax advantage to that.

Mr Stockwell: There is a tax advantage, granted, but the tax advantage is nowhere near the advantage you have by having the taxpayer contribute every buck for the buck that you contribute to your pension plan. There's great discussion about our pension plan, but I think there should be some discussion about civil servants, teachers etc, their pension plans, because believe it or not, there are a significant number of people out there who have no pension. They work very hard and very long and nobody contributes to their pension plans but them. I think those people have a right to know how come, if you work for the government, 50 cents of every buck that they pay into the system in a pension plan is contributed by them, and not a nickel comes back when their pension plan is being discussed for their own personal use.

The Acting Speaker: We can accommodate one final participant.

Mr Mills: I know that since I've had the privilege of serving the people of Durham East in this Legislature I've always enjoyed the speeches from the member for Renfrew North, because I always look forward --

Mr Elston: Not always.

Mr Mills: Always, honestly. I always look forward to some touch and glimpse back in history, and I know that today he edged towards some historical comment and I thought that he was going to get into it but he really didn't. Nevertheless, I think some of his comments are very apropos and I'd like to see us moving along to get some independent body to come to grips with not only our pay, but our pensions, the whole issue of remuneration for MPPs. Then once that has been placed before the government, it should vote forthwith on that and not step back.

I can remember some time ago, as a former alderman on the city of Barrie council, we had some evaluation done for all the city employees. A lot of people didn't want it done, but I thought that it should be done and supported that. I must say that it was very important for the public, the taxpayers of the city of Barrie, to understand what their staff did and that they got the correct remuneration.

I'd like to see that here, because we can keep on like this, going around the mulberry bush, but we need an independent evaluation of this job, an independent evaluation of what we should be getting and an independent evaluation of the pension scheme. Then once we have that, it should be put into place, and the quicker the better, and put all this nonsense and discussion vying one person against the other to bed for ever, and I thank you for the few minutes I've had.

The Acting Speaker: The honourable member for Renfrew North has two minutes in response.

Mr Conway: Quickly, to respond to two or three of the comments publicly, and one private comment: I think the member from Orono is right. I think we have to take some good outside advice, but I want to be clear that at the end of the day we have to make some tough political decisions ourselves. We can't imagine transferring this down to some outside body. Yes, to a certain point for certain information and technical detail, we need that, but we've got to be prepared as a political class to take some tough decisions, to tell the truth and the whole truth, the painful truth as well as the easy truth, about the reality of a public life in the 1990s and the kind of remuneration, all dollars in, that is sensibly required.

As I say, my real salary now is somewhere between $65,000 and $70,000 and I'm ready to tell people that. It would make me happy just to have that paid to me as an upfront salary, have it taxed at a full rate, and some adjustments on pension made accordingly. But I think we have to make those political decisions and we have to make them as a group and be prepared to stand behind them.

I want to say, in support of something the member for Etobicoke West said, that, boy, I'll tell you, gone are the days when I'm prepared to stand here and be part of some exercise in self-flagellation about my parliamentary pay, and stand by and in the name of Her Majesty allow a whole bunch of things to be done in my name by Her Majesty's loyal public servants that, at the middle and senior levels in some respects, are absolutely outrageous. Like the member for Bruce, I had to sit in cabinet and approve some separations and some two-for-one deals and three-for-one deals that, boy, make what we do look like nothing.

Finally, I think it was Bill Kilbourn, the Toronto historian, who observed that politics is at one and the same time the noblest of the arts and the most soiled of professions. I think there is a tremendous nobility in the business that we do and I think of people like Ian Scott, to take a friend of mine, who came in here and was prepared to serve for seven or eight years, had a cut in pay that must have been fantastic. I think that's real nobility.

But there is some soiled linen in these subjects of paid pensions and perks that we must, in Her Majesty's name, deal with.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate, the honourable member for Carleton.

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Mr Sterling: I guess some of the members did hear my talk on CFRB and the response to questions that were placed, and I answered them in the most honest and forthright fashion that I could. Quite frankly, that's been my practice during my political career, and it's paid off with five re-elections, so I guess it has worked in the past. When we're discussing this today, perhaps it hasn't paid off.

I want to talk a little bit about the issue of what this negative 5.5% decrease in our pay is about and what it will mean in the public realm and those kinds of things, because I think that's important.

The member for Durham East talked briefly about the federal government. He should know that Mr Mulroney's cabinet cut back their cabinet salaries by 10% two or three years ago. The amount of public support and the amount of news media is reflected in your remarks; you did not know about it, nor do the public know about that. I suspect that the 5.5% pay cut we will take today will not attract near the attention that the Senate increase of $6,000 towards their expenses did. So let us not kid ourselves in terms of the amount of credit which will be achieved here today.

In fact, when I went back to my constituents this past weekend to talk to them about the 5.5% decrease, none were aware that members of this Legislature had not received an increase in their salaries over the past three years. If one wanted to take the 5.5% decrease in salary that we are voting ourselves today -- and no one is going to vote against that, because it's imprudent at this time to do so, and in spite of what has gone on in past history, we have to deal with what is there today, and we must show by example in terms of taking this decrease -- and one subtracts the 5.5% from what we were receiving in 1990 and takes it back to where in fact we will be after this decrease, we will be back to the wages which MPPs were receiving in 1987, and those wages will be frozen until 1996.

I ask you, Mr Speaker, if any elected representative, if any public official, if any civil servant has frozen their wages over a nine-year period. That's effectively what we're doing today. In fact, what we have said is that an MPP is going to be paid in 1996 what he or she was paid in 1987. I just throw that out because there's going to be an election in between that period of time. In 1995, all three parties are going to be going out and asking for candidates to come forward to put their names on the ballots, to leave their occupations in order to run to be members of the Ontario Legislature.

If we want to have people in this place who are experienced, who are able, in the private market, to command a salary in excess of what they earn in this place, which is approximately $70,000 for the ordinary MPP when you gross up the tax-free allowance, I say it's going to be extremely hard in some cases to encourage people to come forward who are able in the private sector to earn salaries which in this place are much less.

This will not be the first decrease, because in 1976, when I was a lawyer, the last year that I practised law, I earned $82,000 in my private practice. If you can imagine what $82,000 in 1976 is worth today, it's probably worth about $150,000. I went from $82,000 to about $40,000 as an MPP. I think there are some people who are willing to make that kind of commitment to become members of the Legislature in order to do what they want to do here. I have not been sorry I made that particular sacrifice myself. I consider this job as being one of the best in world, or one of the best that you can have, because I really believe that you have the opportunity in this place to help a number of people, you have the opportunity to influence the future and you have the opportunity to do a lot for your community.

I think I've done some of that. I think I've been successful in doing some of that. I don't want anybody who is watching or listening or would read these comments to say, "Well, that's sour grapes; he's saying now that he could've had this, but he hasn't got that," and all the rest of it. That's not the case. I'm not sorry that I didn't take the other option.

I also want to talk about the gap. I want to talk about the gap between what some members receive as cabinet ministers and what the other members of this Legislative Assembly receive. The gap now is somewhere around, I believe, $30,000 or $35,000 a year. The member for Renfrew North believes that a cabinet minister earns that extra money. I think that possibly that's true. I don't know whether the remuneration of a member or a cabinet minister is really set on the basis of what you do, how hard you work.

I dare say that the Treasurer of this province works doubly as hard as the minister of corrections works because his responsibilities are far greater. I think that as you would look through the cabinet, you would find a gradation in terms of responsibility and effort and pressure upon each of those cabinet ministers, so that you would take them all of the way up and down the grade.

One of the things I've perhaps noticed in my parliamentary career of 16 years, and what I have read about my predecessors, is that there have been so few cabinet ministers who have left the cabinet -- lots have left the cabinet involuntarily, but there's only one, and that former minister is sitting with us today, and I congratulate Karen Haslam, the member for Perth -- on a matter of principle. Now, Karen Haslam had to consider the loss of I believe something like $15,000 or $16,000 or $17,000 when she made that decision, and I think it was a brave and courageous decision that she made on leaving cabinet on the basis of principle.

If a member is in a tight financial situation, is a member of cabinet, is earning $32,000, has loyal staff working around him or her, it's a very difficult decision to come to when he or she is pushed over that particular hump as to whether or not he or she should retire from cabinet, give up that financial security in order to push a point of principle, because we all know that we can rationalize principle. The British parliamentary system is bereft with compromise, because we have to compromise. Each week as we go into caucus, we have to say, "For the good of the whole, we are going to compromise our individual position in order to do it."

What I am saying is that as I have sat here over the 16 years, the difference between what an indemnity for an ordinary member has become and that of a cabinet minister has grown wider and wider apart, because each time there has been an increase in terms of what the ordinary member has got, the cabinet minister has received that much more.

Therefore, I think that in a lot of ways our system has become compromised and that people will remain members of cabinet because they will factor into their decisions not only the principle upon which they are arguing, but they will have to bring into effect the financial security of their family, the financial security of the people who work for them etc.

I think that's borne out by history and the fact that we have had, over the past 16 to 25 years, in my recollection, only one cabinet minister who has left on a matter of principle.

Interjections.

Mr Conway: I think he was more animated in the parking lot the other night on this subject.

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Mr Sterling: I can always count on the support of my colleagues.

Hon Ms Gigantes: Some do deserve more than others.

Mr Sterling: Yes, you're right.

I think another thing that has become evident in this brief debate we have had is that when you're talking about indemnities for members, and indeed pensions, you are talking from extremely different circumstances for each and every member in this place. What happens on a general election day is that a person who might have held a very responsible job, may have been accustomed to a very high style of living, becomes an equal with someone who was unemployed, who hadn't had any security in his life before. You mix people of all different income backgrounds, you mix people from all different age groups, all into the same mix and you try to put out a formula which will be fair to all the people who have been elected in this great mix and try to explain that to the public as being fair to everyone.

The member for Durham East rose to debate my friend from Etobicoke West when he talked about the number of extra stipends which are available to various members around this Legislature. As the member for Renfrew North said, it's not only the New Democratic Party which has practised this; his government had more stipends, because there were more members on the government side. I counted them up. There were 88 during the Liberal reign who received stipends, on the back benches and on the side benches. There are 69 now on the government side. I don't know what it was during the Conservative reign, but I dare say virtually everyone had an extra stipend. And within this Legislative Assembly, out of the 130 members, there are about 100 members who receive extra stipends. I think there are 11 or 12 in our party and there are 13 or 14 in the official opposition.

So the very nature of our system is dishonest in terms of what we tell the public we are receiving in compensation, and I think that is wrong. I think we should be upfront. I think we should deal with the non-taxable portion of our pay and gross that up so that in fact we tell the public that we are earning, well, it's about $70,000 in real dollars when you count in the advantage of the tax-free allowance of $14,000.

We have another phenomenon that's taking place in this province. We now have a situation in Metropolitan Toronto where school board trustees are earning more than members of this Legislature.

Mrs Haslam: Boards of education directors.

Mr Sterling: I'm not talking about hired people; I'm talking about elected people. We have councillors in Metropolitan Toronto who are earning as much or more than members of this Legislature. I thought they were junior governments vis-à-vis the provincial Legislature. We're going to have a newly created, according to this government, directly elected regional council in OttawaCarleton. We seem to be going down the path to creating almost mini-provincial parliaments across this province.

I truly wonder whether or not all of these politicians, us included, are going to have enough to talk about, enough issues to deal with, if we are starting to create more and more positions, more devolution of power down to regional municipalities. We are, I think, muddying the water and creating too many politicians to do the job.

I think it's perhaps time to deal with the overall ability of not only this Legislature to pay what it should pay, but also what junior governments -- and I know they will not be appreciative of my description as junior governments. But I think we should restrict how much those junior governments can pay their people, because I think it's gotten out of hand, it really has gotten out of hand. Effectively, what we have done is create full-time politicians in many institutions where it's unnecessary to have full-time politicians.

If you create full-time politicians at the lower levels of government, at the municipal level, at the regional level, municipal politicians, as all politicians, will find enough issues to fill their day. What is happening, in my view, is that junior governments are entering into policy areas at the provincial level. They're involving themselves in social welfare issues when perhaps those issues should be dealt with at the senior level of government in this province, at the provincial level, if that's what we are to do here.

Either that or we close this place down for nine months of the year and make this a part-time occupation and come here for two or three months every year, or perhaps every two years, as they do in some of the large states in the United States. In some states in the United States, they don't sit every year. They sit for 60 or 90 days every second year and deal with all of the legislation over that period of time.

Mr Conway: Didn't the FBI just indict half of the South Carolina Legislature?

Mr Sterling: They might have indicted half of them. In some of the states in the United States, there are no conflict-of-interest rules, and some of the people act as lobbyists while they sit as members of the Legislature. As the member for Renfrew North says, I don't think we are about to turn that particular way.

We are in a difficult situation in terms of the indemnities for this Legislative Assembly. But I've heard the member for Durham East, and I've also heard the member for Ottawa West, talk about setting up an independent commission to deal with the salaries and the pensions and everything else. That's been tried for about 15 years. What happens is that each year the commission comes in and makes a recommendation, and what happens? It goes to the Legislative Assembly committee.

I'll never forget, as a member of the Legislative Assembly committee during the Liberal term in power, about 1988 or 1989, that this independent commission came in with a recommendation. The Legislative Assembly committee said: "That's too much. We think it should be this." The media took the report of the Legislative Assembly committee down to the Premier of the day, Mr Peterson, and Mr Peterson said, "No way those members are going to get that much," and that was the end of it.

That's what happens around this place. The fact of the matter is that this hasn't got anything to do with members. Salaries of members, salaries of cabinet ministers, have to do with the leaders of the parties. It has nothing to do with consultation; it has to do primarily with the Premier of the day. If they think they can withstand the heat, they may give members of this Legislature a raise. If they want to take advantage of the political situation by giving us a pay freeze, as was the case with Mr Rae three years ago, although he didn't get any credit for it --

Mr Elston: Yes he did; a one-day headline.

Mr Sterling: A one-day headline or whatever. He will get some credit for a 5.5% deduction at this time. Mark me: He will get the credit for it. The Premier always gets the credit for it, and he will take the hit if he ever increases the salaries.

The consultation with regard to this whole matter was in the form of a letter to my leader a week ago as to what was going to happen here. The consultation took place a week ago Tuesday in our caucus, when we were told what was going to happen to us. That's the kind of consultation that takes place with regard to payment of MPPs' salaries. It is strictly a leaders' issue.

Quite frankly, members of this Legislature, if they ever feel strong enough to deal with this, will have to deal with their leader, whether it be the Premier, the Leader of the Opposition or the leader of the third party. In my view, again, there is some benefit to the present system of having MPPs paid at very different levels and the leaders of the party having all of those various and nefarious different strings to pull if they should need to pull them in order to pull the members into line.

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I think that's my experience over the past number of years, and the fact of the matter is, I don't know whether we'll ever be able to deal with this issue in a reasonable fashion. I do think it's important, to be fair to members who would be elected after the next election, that the Premier and the leaders of the parties, as they are now, should put forward a very clear vision as to what they are going to put forward as the pay for members in the 1995-2000 Legislature, as to what they're going to put forward as a possible pension for those people, so that people can approach the running for this place with an open mind and they will know what in fact their compensation will or will not be.

The last comment I would make is that when we brought in, I believe, wage controls back in 1983 -- I was a member of cabinet -- those wage controls were applied differently to people who received different amounts of salary. Those who were at the low end received a 1% or 2% cut; those at the high end, I believe, received 3% or 4%. I can't be as accurate on the amounts, whether it was one or two or three or four, but what I want to say is, there was a scale.

I thought this Premier, if he wanted to show the kind of leadership that he's trying to exhibit in terms of his government, might have said to his cabinet and his cabinet colleagues: "We are earning $30,000 more than the ordinary member. Perhaps it is incumbent on me as Premier, as Brian Mulroney and the federal cabinet did, to take 10%, twice as much as we're asking the public sector to take, and the ordinary MPPs, who are earning less, might take 5% or 5.5%." So you'd have a gradation in terms of people who could presumably afford to take the cut or who couldn't take the cut.

I only put that as sort of an innocent suggestion, that perhaps when we're dealing with things in terms of cuts, they should be spread to those who most likely can afford to take those cuts, and I would assume that those earning more could take the larger cut.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I thank the honourable member for Carleton for his contribution to the debate and invite questions and/or comments.

Mr Mills: Just briefly, I would like to thank the member for Carleton for his speech and his update on everything. I'd just like to make a correction to something he said, in that I was aware that the federal cabinet, the Conservatives, had taken that pay cut. But when I gave my two-minute rebuttal, what I was trying to point out was that the MPP -- in my riding, I'm taking considerable flak as some sort of well-heeled fat cat living off the fat of the land, but the --

Interjection.

Mr Mills: Well, that may be as it is. But the federal MP whose riding is identical almost to mine, except for the town of Uxbridge, who has an office with less staff in it than I do, which would indicate to me that I have a bigger workload because my staff is twice as big --

Mr Stockwell: Give me a break.

Mr Mills: This is a fact, and a provincial MPP is impacted by all the things in Ontario. You're impacted by the decisions of the MOT etc.

But my point in rebuttal to the member for Carleton is that, notwithstanding the fact that the cabinet took 10%, the federal MP in my riding is receiving, apart from allowances and all that, in actual cash, $20,042 more than I am, and the press is not taking any notice of that. They're on Gord Mills's back, because I'm the fat cat, while he escapes. I just bring that up for some discussion here.

Mr Conway: I want to congratulate my friend from Carleton for a very thoughtful and balanced discussion of an issue that he has followed with perhaps a keener interest in the last 15 years than some others. He's quite right in pointing out that he's been very actively involved with the Legislative Assembly committee through some of its deliberations.

He made a couple of comments that reminded me of something I wanted to raise as well, and that is that we must, I think, in this process ensure that we continue to make it possible and realistic for a wide range of people to come to this place. I am concerned, quite frankly, because I have been out over the years on the recruitment trail. I have been told by railway conductors and teachers and journalists and a variety of other regular people that they could not and would not come to this job because they would not take the pay cut.

I'm not talking about plutocrats, I'm not talking about independently wealthy individuals. I'm telling you, on the basis of a lot of experience, a lot of middle-income people, when asked to consider standing for nomination and election, have told me that they would not, given the pay level and the insecurity, stand for nomination and an election. I worry that we are going to drive ourselves to a situation where, for example, small business people are not going to want to come here because of all the factors: the levels of pay, the conflict-of-interest rules.

I was just saying to my friend from Etobicoke West, we've got, thanks to Bob Rae, conflict-of-interest rules now that I believe make it virtually impossible for any small business person to be in government. My friend from Elgin is here and probably would want to agree with me.

A second point has to do with what's done in other places, like Britain, where the levels of pay are historically low. What happens there is that you get, on the Tory side, very well-to-do Conservatives standing and being re-elected in very safe seats and, on the Labour side, a commitment from organized labour to subsidize to a substantial extent parliamentary salaries. I don't know that we'd want to go that way either, though I think we have begun to do some of that on the latter account.

Mrs Haslam: I'd like to thank the member for Carleton for his comments also, and the reason I'm standing is because you mentioned me in some of your comments. Maybe it would help people out there who do watch the station to understand that yes, I am one of the very few backbenchers on the government side and I make, as a base salary, $43,000. That means, take-home pay, I get maybe $31,000. In my riding, there are many who make more than that.

On top of that, we get a tax-free $14,000 for expenses. We don't write off the lunches and dinners that we pay for when we have people come to visit us here in Toronto. We don't write off any expenses in our riding when we have people whom we take out or when we go for things. We don't write off a clothing allowance, we don't write off our dry-cleaning, we don't write off the car, we don't write off the taxis that I have to take in Toronto if I have a function to attend that's outside the jurisdiction here. I can't even write off my subway tokens. I write off nothing. That's what your $14,000 in expenses is to cover and, believe me, that is what you spend. You probably spend more than that in expenses.

It's time people did realize that when the member from Renfrew says that people say, "I don't want to run, I wouldn't take that job because of the pay cut," that is accurate. Teachers take a pay cut. Principals make more than a minister in the government. Business people take a pay cut. Lawyers take a pay cut. I don't want to see only those who can afford to be here on a volunteer basis or only those who have another business to take care of their families be the only ones to run for this spot here. I think it's important that we get good people in this Legislature.

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Mr Perruzza: Very briefly, in responding to some of the comments, I've listened to some of the debate, and my friend from Carleton essentially talked about the same kinds of things that everybody else has talked about.

We all understand how difficult it is to make the decisions on your own pay. It would be really easy for us to be able to have an independent office which said, "The job of an MPP is worth the same price as that of a school teacher or that of a construction worker or a social worker or a lawyer or a doctor," or what have you; said it and it's done.

It becomes very difficult when we engage in that kind of debate in here, because I know what I do as an MPP. Quite frankly, I can't make the same assessment for every other MPP in this place on what it is that they do and how they spend their time representing their people, but in no way, shape or form would I presume or try to undermine the worth or the value of any member in the Legislature.

I can tell you that when I was first elected, I was elected a trustee and I was making $14,000 a year. I thought that was great. I lived off it. I was essentially a full-time trustee and I did the work. Then I was elected a municipal councillor and I was making $44,000 or $45,000 a year. You make the adjustment. There's more money, but that's not something I ever looked forward to. That's not why I got into public office in the first place, because of the remuneration.

Then I ran provincially and of course the pay again went up, but that's not the reason why I've ever done this work. I love the job. I love to be able to represent the people in my community and I love to be able to contribute. I just wish that we could have an independent body assess the value of what a member in this Legislature does, and that would be the end of it, so we could stop the sanctimony.

The Speaker: The member for Carleton has up to two minutes for his reply.

Mr Sterling: I thank the members. I want to respond to the last speaker, the member for Downsview. We have had independent commissioners in the past, we've had independent people tell us that we're worth more. What traditionally has happened over the last 10 years in all these reports is that they come in and they say basically that we're worth $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000 more than we're being paid.

The problem is that there's never been the political will of the Premier of the day, be it Premier Davis, Premier Peterson or Premier Rae. None of them has been able to say, "We will accept what an independent body has determined as to what the value is." Therefore, consequently, we go on with the same kind of process as we're going through today and react to what happens day by day.

At the federal level, one should know that the salary is fixed for each MP. That salary goes up by the rate of inflation each year and that's the end of it. The MPs decide whether or not they're going to take that increase and that's the end of the process.

We are today debating a 5.5% decrease in our salaries. Notwithstanding the fact that, as many members would argue, because of the nature of the job, our heads are on the line each three or four years, we have to show this example that we are willing to take this decrease, because many people out there are suffering to a very much greater degree than we are. Therefore, we have of course no option but to support this, and we will do so wholeheartedly.

The Speaker: Is there further debate on the motion?

Mr Stockwell: This issue is truly a mug's game in my opinion.

Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): You must feel right at home.

Mr Stockwell: I do. We'll run around this issue now for the next few months. We all know why this issue is before us. It's before us because the social contract is before us. No one in this assembly would feel comfortable asking bureaucrats and staff to take a 5% rollback unless they were prepared to so themselves.

If the economy were good and if the money were flowing in like it was during maybe the Liberal regime, we wouldn't be having this debate. We wouldn't be debating whether or not to roll back our salaries. We might be debating whether to hold the line or give ourselves a 4% or 5% increase.

To put this in context, this was brought on by the government's need to get a social contract with the public sector employees. The rationale why everyone's voting for it is because it would be political suicide to stand up and start debating against this bill. You'd probably get a lot of heat in your own local riding, as well as from every single bureaucrat or broader public sector employee in your own neighbourhood. They'd be coming to you and saying, "How come I have to take a 5% rollback and you voted against it?" Really, you'd have a very difficult time explaining that one away.

It's ironic that it comes from this particular government, although I don't say that across the board, broad-brush. I don't know if any government would be prepared to do this during good times. But clearly, from my representation in the past with members of the NDP, when it came to salary hikes, at least at local levels, and my cursory review of Hansard with respect to salaries around this place, they were never too fond of talking about anything but an increase. I understand that as well.

I can honestly say that when I ran for this job I had no idea how much it paid, none whatsoever. The day after you won, I inquired as to the pay of an MPP. I was truly shocked to find out I would be making less as an MPP than I was as a Metropolitan Toronto councillor. It's a pretty substantial amount of money, actually.

Mr Conway: In real terms, what was it?

Mr Stockwell: In real terms, I think it was about $3,000 or $4,000 per year. I've often talked to my friends at Metro council, and they're making now in the mid-60s.

Interjection: One third tax-free.

Mr Stockwell: And of course they get the third tax-free as well.

Mr Conway: So what is that grossed up?

Mr Stockwell: Gross it up? You do the math. I'd probably say in the neighbourhood of $75,000 to $80,000 a year.

I talked to some people at the Toronto Board of Education who think that they should make the equivalent of a Metro councillor, so they make about the same. I talked to the members of the city of Toronto council who think that they're equally as important as the members of Metropolitan Toronto council, so they make the same as them.

I look around Metropolitan Toronto council. I see the board of education, I see city of Toronto council, I see Metropolitan Toronto council, all making in the mid-60s. Do you want to know the irony of this debate or why I'm entering into this? The irony of this whole situation was that when we struck Metropolitan Toronto council, directly elected under the Liberals -- I think it was the minister, Mr Grandmaître, who made the move.

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): Mr Grand Marnier.

Mr Stockwell: Grand Marnier. When they made the move, do you know what we based our salary on when we struck Metro council, directly elected? Members put a motion forward, and I think it was June Rowlands -- I could be corrected but I think I'm right -- who's now the mayor of the city of Toronto, who said a Metro councillor should be paid just as much as an MPP.

They thought that was a reasonable thing. I didn't think it was that reasonable, frankly, because I was in the city of Etobicoke. I was working in the city of Etobicoke and I was a member of Metropolitan Toronto council. So I had two councils and was a member of the board of control in Etobicoke. That was a fairly full-time job: 300,000 people in the city of Etobicoke, executive council member, member of Metropolitan Toronto council, a metropolitan area of 2.2 million. I was making $44,000 a year.

Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): Double-dipping?

Mr Stockwell: No, no such thing. The only thing was, we were double-dipping when it came to work, but we weren't double-dipping when it came to pay. We didn't get that right. I had to come here and learn the double-dipping tune.

I went to Metro Toronto council and I said: "I don't think that's reasonable. I think MPPs are more important than we are." Of course, they looked at me like I had two heads. "Are you nuts? We're running a city of 2.2 million people. They're looking after places like Timmins and Kapuskasing and these out-of-Toronto areas." We were truly Toronto people. We thought the world revolved around us. So we paid ourselves $57,000 a year.

Subsequently, we haven't got a raise in -- is it seven years? But those guys did. They continue to get increases. They're now in the mid-60s, with a third tax-free. They have a bank of half a dozen to eight cars at their call when they want to go out anywhere. They have an executive assistant and a secretary, and they meet once every other week at council in the new Taj Mahal they built. They get more money.

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Mr Perruzza: And a per diem when they sit on the conservation authority.

Mr Stockwell: They get more money. Let's not talk about that. I'll get to that.

But what we have here is that we've got this whole situation all ass-backward, for the lack of a better term. Why? Because, what are we? We're humans, and when humans want to set their own salary, as long as the taxpayers aren't looking, they'll set a pretty good salary.

So now we have places in Metropolitan Toronto like the board of education in Scarborough, that just recently said: "You know what we need? We need about a 64% raise."

Hon Ms Gigantes: Fourteen thousand bucks.

Mr Stockwell: I'm not going argue the amount. I don't want to argue the amount but, "We need a 64% raise." As the member for Downsview said, he got elected, he had $14,000, he lived on that, and he thought he was doing well. Those members of the Scarborough board of education thought they were doing well and they gave themselves a 60% or 70% or whatever percentage increase it was, because they didn't think the people were looking.

And you know what? During those salad days of the 1980s -- and I say this with all respect to the Liberals -- nobody was looking, and this took place. So we end up with this kind of crazy system where a creature of the province -- as they used to like to say to us when I was at Metro council, "You're merely a creature of the province" -- is making more money than an MPP.

Mr Mills: Than the dinosaurs.

Mr Stockwell: Than the dinosaurs. So we stand here today, and I look down the street at city hall, and they're not taking a cutback, because the people aren't looking, and we are now looking at a 5.5% reduction.

Mr Perruzza: In all fairness, I think they rolled back a little bit.

Mr Stockwell: Did they? I haven't heard. Maybe they have.

But now, what do we make? What do we make? This is the big question that always comes around this room. If you listen to the member for Perth, who just spoke, she is convinced in her mind that she makes about $30,000 a year after taxes. She'll go out and tell people that she makes about $30,000 a year, and I think probably in her own mind she believes that.

Mr Mills: She's got the cheque stubs.

Mr Stockwell: She's got the cheque stubs, as the member from Durham would say.

Now we've got Mr Conway from Renfrew who's going around telling people, "Well, if you gross it out, I make about $70,000 a year." If you had a conversation between these two within minutes of each other, you'd swear they were from different planets, let alone the same Legislature. We've got one making $31,000 and one making $70,000 and both doing the same job.

We have to define how much we make. Well, we can't define that, because some people want to count the one third and others don't. Then we want to count what a whip makes, and others don't make that. Then we want to count what a parliamentary assistant makes, and some don't make that. But when we add up the whole mess, 100 of us make more than $57,000 a year. I think we got agreement on that. A hundred of us make significantly more than $57,000 a year.

Mr Mahoney: How much do we earn?

Mr Stockwell: The member from Mississauga suggests, how much do we earn? That's a question you have to ask yourself. Let me say, no one will measure what you earn other than your constituents. They're the only people who can tell you whether you're worth your money. I can't tell the member from Mississauga and the member for Downsview can't tell me.

In 1995, we'll all find out what our constituents think. And you know what? That's the only important message anyway.

Mr Joseph Cordiano (Lawrence): Let every member set their own pay.

Mr Stockwell: Let every member set their own pay? Well, I'll tell you, I'd be a one-term member.

Hon Mr Pilkey: Finally, a true statement from the member for Etobicoke.

Mr Stockwell: These are all very, very true statements. I know the mayor of Oshawa would love to get into this debate if you were allowed, because I know you've got some points you want to put on the record. I read some of your comments when you were mayor of Oshawa, and they were interesting comments. They wouldn't go along with the 5.5% reduction today, but they were fairly interesting comments, when you were mayor, about what a member of Oshawa council and a mayor would be worth.

But you know what? When it comes down to it, we're in politics and the politics of this issue is, everybody sucks it up, grits their teeth, smiles sweetly and said, "God bless us, I think we deserve a 5.5% reduction," and nobody believes it. We know nobody believes it, so it's an exercise in public relations.

We haven't had an increase in three years, and we're going to get a 5.5% rollback. I accept that fact, and I think it's a reasonable thing to do during these tough economic times.

Interjections: Grit your teeth.

Mr Stockwell: I'm doing it. Now that I'm on the record and I've swallowed hard and said all the right things, as everyone else in this room will say all the right things, I wish for once we would do two things out of this exercise: that we finally establish a firm and concrete figure of what an MPP is worth. Is it $70,000? Is it $75,000? Is it $65,000? Is it $60,000? We can decide that.

Mr Perruzza: Try $40,000.

Mr Stockwell: If it's $40,000, it's $40,000. If it's $35,000, it's $35,000, but that we're all singing from the same songbook.

If you want to be a parliamentary assistant, do it as magnanimously as you should, out of the heart you know you have, and be a parliamentary assistant for free. If you want to chair a committee, do so because you're interested. If you don't want to go to committee, don't go to committee, but pay us all the same. If we're all worth $65,000, just pay it, because I can't keep explaining to my constituents how Karen Haslam makes $31,000 and Sean Conway makes $70,000. It's too hard to explain, and it's too hard for me to explain to them how somehow I make $57,000.

As I said to the member for Downsview, don't strike any more committees of outside consultants. I don't want to hear from outside consultants, because they'll interview 130 members and they'll be convinced they got 130 different interpretations of what they do and how much should be made, so you'd never get a resolution there.

You strike a committee of all-party members and determine once and for all what your pay is, take your 5.5% reduction, suck it up and say you've lived with the social contract for three years. We'll all go back on the campaign trail next time and stand before our constituents and say: "This is what the job is worth. This is how much I think I'm worth. If you don't think I am, then you're just going to have to vote against me." Finally, we'll get a resolution to this argument, and we'll stop the fist fights and debates and arguments in the caucus meetings, which drive me nuts compared to the fights in this assembly.

Mrs Irene Mathyssen (Middlesex): Oh, an admission of what it is like in Tory caucus, eh?

Mr Stockwell: Yes, member for Middlesex, there are fights in our caucus as well. We each have about 20 members left going to our caucus meetings, so they're about the same length of time too.

I say take your 5.5%, ask the Premier to strike a committee, decide how much we're going to get paid, abolish the pension plan because it's crazy -- you'll never defend it and you'll get booted out if you try and defend it -- determine how much this job is worth, minus the pension plan. If you think that doing away with your pension plan is worth x amount of money, say so, and put it into the base pay of an MPP and decide that's the way we're going to go. But in the end, if we don't make some kind of decision, you know full well that with the next government, we're going to be in exactly the same debate we're in today.

If we can get an all-party committee, nobody can get an upper hand during the campaign. It would become a non-issue, and the electorate would understand exactly how much each individual member is being paid.

Finally, in closing, do you think this is going to work? Nope, not a chance. I'll tell you why it's not going to work: because we're in the business of politics, and in politics, it's going to roll around to election time and we're going to try and outdo one another to gain support of the public so we can get to sit on that side of the House and introduce 5.5% rollback bills that we would have rather have swallowed our tongue than voted for in opposition.

Maybe it's an exercise in futility, maybe that's why we're here, but at least I got a chance to get it off my chest, and at least I had a chance to publicly say to those people of Metropolitan Toronto council and the city of Toronto school board and the city of Toronto council, I can't believe you people still make the money you're making because the taxpayers aren't looking.

The Speaker: I thank the member for his contribution and invite questions and/or comments.

Mrs Haslam: We always find the member for Etobicoke West so entertaining when he joins us in the House to debate. Perhaps, if he doesn't think an all-party committee will be effective in dealing with this problem, maybe we could all decide together to make that member a one-person committee: We could make that member responsible, and he could make the decision about what he's worth and what we're worth and what the job's worth, and that might be a solution. But don't forget to tell people -- I'm going to use up my time -- that you live in a fish-bowl, your family lives in a glass house, you work from 6 in the morning till 11 at night, you don't see your family during the week if you're more than two and a half hours away -- which a lot of us are; can't get home during the week if you don't drive -- and if you're on the weekend, you work Friday, you work Saturday and you sometimes work on Sunday too. The only reason I have a period of time for my church is because I've adamantly said, "Don't book me from 9 in the morning until noon on Sunday, because I'm in church."

1710

Maybe we should take some of those things into consideration and educate the public on what it's like to be in here, to be responsible. Yes, we're all here because we like it and yes, we're here for various reasons. We wanted to make a difference. We wanted to make changes. We wanted to be where the rules and regulations were.

Mr Hugh O'Neil (Quinte): Karen, I wonder if the press will print all this.

Mrs Haslam: I know. It's very interesting when you get here and find out who makes the rules, who runs things and who gets the input into the decisions. But that's why we're here. We like this job. We didn't run for the money. We're here because we want to be here. But after we get here we start to think: "Is this really worth $43,000? I could be teaching. I could be a principal making $80,000." It makes you second-guess.

Mr Hope: It could be an auto worker.

Mrs Haslam: It could be an auto worker. I think we should make Mr Stockwell the one-person committee to settle this argument.

Mr Conway: I want to just congratulate the member from Etobicoke. He has to be one of the most candid and interesting people I've ever listened to in this place, and I think he said some very telling things.

Two things in response: One, I just don't want to believe that the taxpayers of Metropolitan Toronto are not looking at what I think has been some scandalous misconduct at the local level. I mean, he has taken us through the list of and the litany of salaries paid to the Toronto Board of Education and what happened in Scarborough. I think those salaries have been out of line for years and I'm hoping and praying that taxpayers in the regional municipality of Metropolitan Toronto are going to haul those people to some kind of accountability.

I'm not suggesting that you should serve on a school board in Toronto for nothing, but I'm going to tell you that I've never accepted the argument that those are full-time positions. I sure as hell don't accept the argument that trustees at the city of Toronto should be paid, effectively, $65,000 or $70,000. I think that's completely out of line and I hope the taxpayers are looking and are going to cause some change. I know they will in Scarborough. Boy, will there be a day of reckoning in November 1994.

The final point has to do with the conclusion of the member that this is all going to be for naught. I hope he's wrong, because we've got to make change and there are some things happening outside the fence, as it were, and if we don't make some change, one of these days people are going to start looking outside the fence and there are going to be some stories written and some things found that are really going to be of some interest. I know that on a quiet day I could probably go and write a few of those stories myself.

It's not as though this is a static situation. There are some very interesting things occurring and we'd better start taking some action to make sure that we clean up this situation, and the sooner the better.

Mr Cousens: I want to commend the member for Etobicoke West for his remarks. The fact is that when you look at this subject it's one that people really have not dealt with honestly. Politicians around the province are today having to face up to the very serious matter that when you're elected to office, you're suddenly into the trough in a way that should not be done by people who are elected to that office.

It should be something done before you're elected to office, so that before you go into it there is a clear understanding of what the remuneration is going to be and that while those other people are in office they would then have to live with that and then, before they're elected again, another body, so that there is a fresh way of looking at it.

As it stands now, there hasn't been a Premier or a Legislature truly deal with this issue. Today, now, rightly so, we face up to the need to participate in this social contract in a very real way so that our own remuneration is affected.

I thank the member for his integrity and his honesty. I think you should know when you hear Mr Stockwell speak in the Legislature that he is just as vocal and just as outspoken in our caucus. If you really want to know who starts some of the fights, I think it's him. But he's also quite prepared to listen to others make their view, and I think today when he spoke he put his finger right on the button and honestly stated the situation as it really is.

Now, that's something the government hasn't done and it's something the previous government hasn't done and it's something the government before that didn't do.

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): You've covered everybody.

Mr Cousens: I've covered us all. There isn't a politician in this place who hasn't come clean on what it is they're being paid, and I challenge all members of elected office in this country to begin to do it in a way that allows them to have some real integrity while they're there. It isn't there now at this point.

Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): Very quickly, I think I need to just get on record in saying a couple of things.

I think the member for Etobicoke West has raised some really interesting points and I would tend to agree with most of what he's saying. When he talks about different levels of government and perhaps the cuts that they should be making to their own salaries and how they should be looking at what's happening across the province, I would tend to agree with him.

I would also tend to agree with him if he were also getting at the fact that there were perhaps, and there still are, quite a bit of trustees and perhaps councillors who not only hold positions as councillors and trustees and make substantial amounts of money in doing so but hold other jobs as well.

I can tell you that in my particular riding there is an individual who holds a particular position as trustee and is a teacher at the same time. This is something that is not only irritating a number of my constituents but has also brought some --

Mr Conway: Happens all the time.

Mr Mammoliti: The member for Renfrew North says it happens all the time. Well, I agree with him. It does happen all the time, and I think we need to take a look at this and we need to take a look at how long this should happen and make sure it doesn't happen for a longer period of time. This is something I wanted to get on the record with. I think it's important and I appreciate the time.

The Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West has up to two minutes for his reply.

Mr Stockwell: I thank the members for Perth, Renfrew North, Markham and Yorkview for their comments. They were fair. The only one point I will make is I don't want to be a one-man committee -- I guess that's sexist -- a one-person committee to review the income, because I'll tell you quite frankly, I would come back with something that I'm certain nobody would like, and there may be reasons for that.

There was some heckling from the member for Lawrence during my discussion about the fact that I have another business. It's probably been forwarded often, and there are some who suggest I can't honestly debate this issue fairly because I have another income, and do you know what? That's fair comment. There is a degree of fair comment there suggesting that I have another income, and that's the way it goes.

Let me just say this: I do earn my money.

Mr Mahoney: You work for it, don't you?

Mr Stockwell: I earn my money, and I have a payroll to meet and I pay taxes and I do a lot of things in my business.

Mr Mahoney: Take a risk.

Mr Stockwell: I have a very big risk there, and some days I wonder if the risk is worth it. It's a lot of money.

Mr Gary Wilson (Kingston and The Islands): Get the violins out.

Mr Stockwell: I'm not looking for a lot of sympathy, but what I'm trying to point out to you, Mr Speaker, is this: I'm not going to suggest to you people for a moment that this job, for some people, could be done in less time. That's a decision you'll have to make. I don't think I'm ripping my constituents off. I don't think the comment or the heckle is fair. When I ran for this job, I said to my constituents that I have a business and I'm continuing to run it.

I say to the government, if there's one mistake that you made that I fundamentally disagree with, you've excluded every small business person in this province out of your cabinet. You've done so because you've made it a conflict of interest to own a business besides being in the cabinet, and that is excluding a whole section of this province. Just like you wouldn't want to exclude school teachers or construction workers, you shouldn't exclude small business people. Small business people couldn't be in your cabinet if in fact you lived with those conflict rules, and that's wrong.

Mr Cordiano: On a point of personal privilege, Mr Speaker, if I may: I did not mean to suggest that the member for Etobicoke West was by any means not legitimately here in Parliament or that the fact that he was earning another income should preclude him from being here. I was simply making the point and emphasizing the point that that should be the case in fact and that we should consider the fact that people who do other things like run small businesses should not be precluded --

The Speaker: The member for Lawrence, I misunderstood. I thought he was entering the debate. He does not have a point of privilege.

Is there further debate on the motion? Seeing no further debate, Mr Laughren has moved government notice of motion number 9, which stands in his name. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Hon Mr Cooke: I believe there is consent to sit past 6 o'clock with the following order of business. I believe that's been agreed to. I've been told it's been agreed to.

As I understand the order for the balance of the day, the next order would be the sixth order, which is committee of the whole to consider Bills 32 and 34. Then there would be consent to do third reading of the two bills. Then we would go to the 31st order, which is unanimous consent to call Bill 84 for second reading. Then we would move a motion to discharge Bill 124 from third reading to move it into committee of the whole, with unanimous consent to move from committee of the whole to third reading when that was completed. Then third reading of Bill 124, followed by the 18th order, which is the second reading of Bill 50.

I believe that's the order for the balance of the day. With that, I would ask for unanimous consent for the House to sit past 6 o'clock.

The Speaker: Do we have unanimous consent to sit beyond 6 o'clock for the matters which have been listed by the honourable member?

Mr Elston: Just a minute, Mr Speaker. I think, in terms of the consent to sit past, it is constrained at least by the time of adjournment for the House, which I had assumed would be at 8:30 of the clock. There was really consent to sit from 6 till 8:30, from what I'd understood previously. I didn't hear that said. I may have not been listening correctly.

Hon Mr Cooke: The House leader is now here for our party, and that's my understanding as well.

The Speaker: The honourable member for Windsor-Riverside has indicated we will sit beyond 6. Is there a termination point?

Hon Mr Cooke: At 8:30.

The Speaker: Agreed? Agreed.

Report continues in volume B

July 28, 1993

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

TOBACCO SMUGGLING

LEGISLATIVE SCHEDULE

FRINGE NORD FESTIVAL

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

HOME CARE

OPPOSITION PARTIES

LABOUR UNIONS

REMUNERATION OF ELECTED OFFICIALS

TENANT ACTIVITIES

CASINO GAMBLING

ORAL QUESTIONS

SOCIAL CONTRACT

POLITICAL STAFF

INVESTIGATION INTO RELEASE OF DOCUMENTS

GUN CONTROL

JOBS ONTARIO COMMUNITY ACTION

CONTAMINATED SOIL

CLEANUP OF INDUSTRIAL SITE

COURT REPORTERS

MOTIONS

CONSIDERATION OF BILL

PETITIONS

HEALTH CARE

PUBLIC SERVICES

HEALTH CARE

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

CASINO GAMBLING

HEALTH CARE

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

HEALTH CARE

LANDFILL

POLICE SAFETY

PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYEES

ONTARIO DRUG BENEFIT PROGRAM

CASINO GAMBLING

GAMBLING

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

ASSOCIATION OF HEARING INSTRUMENT PRACTITIONERS OF ONTARIO ACT, 1993

VICTIMS' MEMORIAL DAY ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LA JOURNÉE À LA MÉMOIRE DES VICTIMES

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SOCIAL CONTRACT