Hansard Transcript 1993-Oct-20 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): It appears the Minister of Transportation is afraid to meet my questions in the House, since he's absent most of the time these days, so I have to ask him through this statement.

Minister, is it fair to charge substantial new fees for ferry services in eastern Ontario without any prior study on how this measure will impact the local economy? The people of Howe Island, Wolfe Island, Simcoe Island, Amherst Island and the Glenora-Adolphustown community are still waiting for an answer.

A few days ago, I received a letter from a 15-year-old student on Wolfe Island. Here's what she says:

"We do not pay to use the 401 or Highway 2, and that is exactly what the Wolfe Island ferry is -- a highway.... Residents who work in Kingston will be forced to dig up an extra $1,500 a year just to get to and from work.... Young children will also be affected by this decision. Their parents will not want to pay the extra money to get them to sports and other activities in the city."

I call on the minister and I call on the Premier to cancel the ferry fee increase or at least to postpone the implementation of the new fee until an economic impact study has been done.

SALE OF PAPER MILL

Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): This statement is for the Minister of Natural Resources. It is from today's editorial by Derek Walter of the Arnprior Chronicle-Guide about the damage his ministry has done to the Braeside mill:

"As the story unfolds regarding the sale of the former Gillies mill to Canadian Wood Products Inc, we never cease to be amazed by the role Ministry of Natural Resources staff are playing," while the minister remains silent.

"Some recent incidents initiated by them are inexcusable. The timing of a letter sent to every major private wood supplier in the area regarding the use of crown logs was poorly handled. It so confused the private loggers that they withheld any offer of logs to CWP because they feared repercussions from the MNR on future licensing. The MNR later claimed they had no legal right to stop private sources from selling logs to CWP. If such be true, why the threatening letter?" Why does the minister not retract that irresponsible message?

"If the MNR wanted to stop the sale in the first place, they should have made it very clear...that no support was forthcoming. The whole exercise hints of hidden agendas, particularly in the light of native claims to large tracts of land within the Algonquin Park area. Why don't politicians and the ministry bureaucrats come clean on this subject and clarify their real thoughts" on the future of Algonquin Park? Will it continue to be a public park?

MARKETING COOPERATIVES

Mrs Ellen MacKinnon (Lambton): In recognition of Co-op Week, I'd like to highlight a new initiative recently announced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

The ministry's marketing cooperatives advisory service will help farmers and food processors who want to establish or improve marketing cooperatives. Staff at the service will provide a resource base for information on the establishment, structure, operation and development of co-ops. They will help link co-ops with other services and programs in the government and private sector, as well as offer advice on developing business plans.

Cooperatives are an excellent vehicle for pooling the resources and energy of local groups so they can help bolster both their own and their community's economic future. The cooperative model is not a new idea, but it's one whose time has come again, especially given the economic challenges brought on by the recession and intensifying global competition.

I know the Minister of Agriculture and Food is highly supportive of grass-roots-based efforts that encourage cooperatives and innovation in the agrifood industry.

The new service will provide a good opportunity for co-op members, both producers and processors, to work together to improve market access, while adding value to their products. Locally based, locally owned cooperatives will provide both jobs for the community and the kind of pride that comes from owning and operating your own business.

This initiative is a fine example of how this government is encouraging self-reliance and economic development in our rural communities.

TOURISM ONTARIO

Mr Hugh O'Neil (Quinte): It is with great regret that I convey to the members of this House today that Tourism Ontario, which is a private, non-profit federation of lodging, recreation, transportation and travel associations whose more than 7,000 businesses accounted for a sizeable portion of the estimated $16.9 billion in direct expenditures in 1991, is closing its doors at the end of this month.

The lingering recession and inequitable provincial fiscal and regulatory environment have resulted in indefinite layoffs for more than 62,000 employees in the tourism industry overall. Bankruptcies in the accommodation and food and beverage service sectors have escalated by 21% over the same time a year ago. Bankruptcies in Ontario's tourism and hospitality industry have increased by 39%. As a result, the industry has been unable to sustain itself and therefore its membership in Tourism Ontario.

We are told that the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Recreation and the government knew of this serious development over a month ago and did nothing to reverse it. In fact we are told they never even called to offer assistance. Although you will tell us that there is a tourism sectoral strategy under way, the people involved in tourism across this province are very concerned with the lack of interest shown in their industry by your government and are very fearful that the strategy is destined for failure.

Minister, how do you explain this very unfortunate situation? What do you propose to do to fill the void left by the closure of Tourism Ontario? When will the Rae government give tourism the attention it deserves?

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EDUCATION

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): My statement is directed to the Minister of Education and Training. On September 7 you announced the establishment of the Ontario Parent Council. This group of 18 members is expected to represent the views of parents throughout Ontario and to advise you on upcoming policy.

We strongly agree that parents play a very important and necessary role in the education of children; however, we have a number of concerns with the announcement.

There will now be 44 councils in the Education and Training ministry alone. The Ontario Parent Council will cost the Ontario taxpayers $600,000. What role will home and school associations and parent-teacher associations play at the provincial level?

In May you appointed the Royal Commission on Learning to "reach out and listen to everyone committed to quality education," including parents. This commission, which is currently travelling the province, is costing the taxpayers $3 million.

Which of the 44 councils are you listening to? What is the relationship between the parent council and the royal commission? Aren't they both listening to parents? Is this going to be yet another level of bureaucracy?

You state that your government's goal is to have ordinary parents from all over the province participate in this parent council. Yet you will be appointing the majority of the 18 members. In other words, only a minority of the council may end up being ordinary citizens with new ideas.

As parents and taxpayers, we know that we can make a significant difference in the education of our children. We also know that we don't need more levels of costly bureaucracy to do this.

EVENTS IN COCHRANE NORTH

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): On Thursday of last week I attended the 35th anniversary of TransCanada PipeLines. The event marked the result of the final weld which took place near Kapuskasing in 1958, when gas began to flow through TransCanada's system to markets in Canada's heartland. By transporting gas from the west to meet the energy demands of millions of Canadians in the east, the pipeline has put 1,800 people to work in five provinces.

The company generates close to $55 million per year in municipal taxes and about half a billion dollars in provincial taxes. They also made a significant contribution to the Sensenbrenner Hospital in Kapuskasing to build a doctors clinic. We can see the enormous contribution this company has made to our economy at every level, and I would again like to congratulate the achievements of TransCanada PipeLines.

Another important achievement that I would like to mention today will be celebrated at the official inauguration of the thermomechanical pulp facility at Spruce Falls Inc. The event will take place this Friday at the mill in Kapuskasing.

I am extremely pleased that the Premier will be able to join me, and it seems most fitting as he worked very hard to make the employee buyout at Spruce Falls a successful reality. Eight hundred people are still employed because of this, and the company with its new TMP facility is now in a position to compete in a technologically advanced marketplace. I am proud of the progress Spruce Falls Inc has made over the past two years.

Our government's Jobs Ontario programs have also played a significant role in preserving and creating jobs. At the same time we have kept our community infrastructures upgraded to meet today's market demands. Several Jobs Ontario initiatives have already begun and more announcements for Cochrane North will be made by the end of this week.

LEADER OF THE THIRD PARTY

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): Next Monday, October 25, is federal election day. Canadians are concerned about the future of our country. Canada is experiencing problems, including high unemployment and high debt. Canadians are deciding how to vote. They're asking the federal parties how they plan to solve the problems our federal government faces.

Voting is a personal act that requires significant thought and deliberation. I know from his past statements that Mike Harris is having a lot of trouble deciding how he will vote on October 25. Will he cast his vote in favour of Kim Campbell, his federal leader, or has he decided, like many others, that the federal Tories don't have what it takes to lead the country?

I know that he won't be voting for Lucien Bouchard. Will Mike Harris be casting his vote for the Reform Party and Preston Manning? That would not come as a surprise to me, as Mr Harris's and Mr Manning's platforms are very, very similar. They both say that we should bring in user fees for health care. Mike and Preston are singing out of the same hymn book.

Mike, I stand in my place today urging you not to vote for Preston Manning. Join me, join the Liberal caucus and thousands, millions of Ontarians and Canadians, mark your ballot for the Liberals and help make Jean Chrétien the next Prime Minister of Canada.

Reconsider, Mike; there's still time. Vote your vote with us.

CAROL CULLAIN

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): The people of Sudbury recently experienced the shock and sadness of the tragic death of Constable Joseph MacDonald, killed in the line of duty two weeks ago.

Today Sudbury and Burlington share a mutual grief in the passing of a Sudbury native, Constable Carol Cullain, who made her home in Burlington as a member of the Halton Regional Police and who at the age of 31 has tragically died of cancer.

Hired just last November 12, Constable Cullain described herself as being on cloud nine after her swearing-in ceremony. She said, and I quote: "It's the proudest day of my life because I have been accepted in what I feel is one of the most important careers this country has to offer. I wouldn't dream of being anything else."

Her fiancé, Blake Freure, a Peel Regional Police officer, was present and the two were planning to marry next May. They met at an explosion site in Mississauga in 1991 when Constable Cullain was an ambulance officer.

Constable Cullain's funeral was held at Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in Sudbury yesterday together with a full police honour guard. On behalf of all members of this House and all police service personnel, I extend my sincere sympathy and condolences to the bereaved family of Constable Cullain. An achievement award has been set up at Humber College in Etobicoke in her memory.

Constable Carol Cullain of Burlington was a person who dedicated her life to the service of others and to the community she served with such high distinction, if even for so brief a time.

Today both she and Constable MacDonald are heir to the promise echoed in chapter 15 of the gospel of St John: "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. And if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love."

SUDBURY ROTARY CLUB

Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): As everyone in the House knows, Rotary clubs around the world are dedicated to the betterment of persons, particularly through education, and the Sudbury Rotary Club in my riding is no different.

Last Saturday evening, despite a Blue Jays game that was on, we had a Trivial Pursuit tournament put on by the Sudbury Rotary Club and organized by a young woman by the name of Monique Vincent, who did a phenomenal job.

There were eight teams sponsored by different businesses and corporations and associations throughout the city. We played from about 7 o'clock till about 10 o'clock. I'm proud to say that my team did make it to the consolation round. However, we lost on a tie to the Sudbury Regional Police Association.

It was a fun evening. It was good for everyone, but it was particularly good for the cause of literacy, and the Sudbury Rotary Club is to be commended for doing this work. I want to congratulate them for continuing that practice. Last Saturday was the second annual Trivial Pursuit tournament. I'm challenging everyone in Sudbury to put out more teams for next year.

I want to thank everyone who sponsored me, and my team, and I would also just finish off with a statement that was made by another Sudburian whom we see every night on television, Alex Trebek, who came and kicked off Literacy Week in Sudbury by saying that the pursuit of literacy is not trivial.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): It is now time for oral questions. Is there a member of the opposition who wishes to ask a question?

ORAL QUESTIONS

CANCER TREATMENT

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): I was to direct my question to the Minister of Health, but in her absence I'll present it to the Premier.

In 1992 there were 44,800 estimated new cases of cancer in Ontario. In 1992 there were an estimated 21,600 cancer deaths. In 1985 a report commissioned by the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation and the Ontario Cancer Institute reported on the funding and delivery deficiencies in Ontario for cancer treatment and the dramatic incidence of cancer.

The Liberal government recognized the urgency that was pointed out in that report, both in the short term and in the long term, added $200 million for cancer treatment facility improvement, increased operating budgets for specialty care, introduced a cancer care coordinator to the MOH and, in January 1990, an additional $300 million was budgeted for facilities to provide care and treatment for cancer patients.

For the last government, Mr Premier, cancer care was a clear government-wide priority. We would like to know from you today where cancer care fits in your priorities.

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Hon Bob Rae (Premier): It's my understanding that the minister is literally just arriving and will be present shortly in order to answer the question.

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): The question is, is it a priority for your government?

Mrs Sullivan: Is this an appropriate way to conduct the question period meeting?

Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): You said you wanted to ask the Minister of Health.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order. Question period is obviously an important element of the sitting. It's important to both sides of the House. Indeed, I know the honourable member would not want the minister to be at a disadvantage and not hear the question. In fairness, what I would ask is -- it was a serious question posed by the member for Halton Centre -- that we would restart the clock and the member would pose her question over again. The minister is here to hear the question and we can begin afresh.

Mrs Sullivan: I will now, given that the Minister of Health has joined us in the assembly, repeat the question to her.

In 1992, Minister, you will know that there were an estimated 44,000 new cases of cancer in Ontario. In 1992 there were an estimated 21,600 cancer deaths. In 1985, you will recall, a report commissioned by the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation and the Ontario Cancer Institute reported on the funding and delivery deficiencies for cancer treatment in Ontario and also reported on the dramatic increases in the incidence of cancer.

The Liberal government recognized the urgency -- as I believe any government would have done at the time -- both in the short term and in the long term. They added $200 million for cancer treatment facility improvement, increased operating budgets for specialty care, introduced a cancer care coordinator to the MOH and, in January 1990, added an additional $300 million to provide for facilities to provide care and treatment for cancer patients.

For the last government, Madam Minister, cancer care was a clear government-wide priority. Where does cancer care fit in your priorities?

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): Without hesitation I can say that the same priority has been accorded to care of cancer by this government as by the previous one.

As I acknowledged in response to questions on this subject earlier this week, the report that was received by the previous government in 1985 and indicated the increasing number of cancers that were anticipated has been the basis for planning -- planning that has continued.

In addition, in our discussions and round tables with all of the stakeholders from survivors to volunteers to the treatment centres, we have been looking at how we can expand the range of services, whether it be support services in the community for cancer patients after they have received treatment, moving to what we can do to try to prevent this shocking increase in a disease that in some cases is preventable by things like an anti-tobacco strategy, for example, or dealing with toxins in the workplace or in the environment.

So there is a spectrum with respect to making cancer a priority. Treatment is very much an important part of that, and the work to expand the treatment facilities is a priority and is continuing.

Mrs Sullivan: The minister speaks of planning, which she tells us has continued in the steps of the positions that were put in place from the last government. But my concern is that the implementation plans have not been put into place and the urgency has not been recognized.

I will give you an example of that. In October 1989, the Liberal government approved $18 million for construction and radiotherapy facilities at the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre. Your government stopped that project with your halt to hospital capital construction plans. Today, those facilities are not yet built.

My colleagues in the House from the Liberal caucus have been urging on many occasions that action be taken. In the summer of 1992 there were 350 patients on the waiting list for treatment in Ottawa with an 8-to-10-week wait for that treatment. That crisis situation could, I'm sure you will recognize, easily occur again.

The Ottawa treatment centre handles more than 155,000 visits for treatment and consultation each year, and each year more than 3,000 new cancer patients require treatment at that centre.

Minister, I am asking: When will you provide the funding to the Ottawa cancer treatment centre to ensure that new facilities and new equipment are put in place so that people who've been diagnosed with cancer can be assured that they will get the treatment they need, when they need it?

Hon Mrs Grier: I've already indicated to the House, and am glad to repeat, that in fact construction of the expansions in Ottawa is under way and of course, when completed, will be funded. I should also say to the member, though, this is not a desired way of dealing with what is an acknowledged problem. Two new machines in the cancer centre in Hull are also under construction and that could in the short term, when they are effective, expand the capacity in that particular area.

I'm happy to tell her with respect to the overall expansion of the system, to which I have spoken this week, that I have been informed, and I would like to give this additional information to the House, that the construction schedule of the Toronto-Bayview Regional Cancer Centre, which started just this summer and which was scheduled to be completed in two and a half years, has been accelerated. In fact, I'm delighted to inform the House that that centre is going to be completed in one and a half years rather than the two and a half years that was originally anticipated.

Mrs Sullivan: The government clearly does not have a plan for the short term and across Ontario we see waiting lists that are expanding with no alternative planning and implementation programs being put into place to meet that requirement for today.

The Canadian Association of Radiation Oncologists had set a standard of four weeks from the time of diagnosis to the time of treatment. Many people have to travel significant distances at a very stressful time in their lives to obtain that treatment in a timely way and to be absent from their close family, their children and their friends, by whom support would be provided.

The referral centre at the Princess Margaret Hospital works with cancer patients to ensure that they will receive timely treatment in another centre if it's not available at the local regional centre, and the cancer society has been generous with its volunteer time to assist, whenever possible, to ensure that the patient receives comfort.

We hear from patients that there are other stresses, though. The cost of travel and other expenses must be borne by the patient, along with many other costs associated with receiving treatment in a community other than their own. That travel, I remind you, Minister, is medically necessary. Will you agree to cover the costs of travel and the associated costs when a patient is referred to another regional centre or where the distance and cost is such that a patient is denied access to cancer treatment on the basis of ability to pay?

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me say to the member that the stresses she identifies I think we are all aware of and are all attempting to prevent from having to occur. The expansion that has occurred in our cancer treatment centres since 1985 is really quite phenomenal when you look at other sections of treatment and other provinces and is in response to the need and following a plan.

Our attempt has been to cut down on the number of re-referrals and the amount of planning, and I'm happy to tell the member that in the first five months of this year there were in fact no re-referrals. That happens on occasion, and when it happens and when it is excessive, there have been times when the ministry has looked at it and, yes, acknowledged that there ought to be some compensation for travel time. But our ultimate objective is to make sure that people do not have to travel out of their own area and that there is not a need for re-referral, and that is the entire objective of our plan.

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SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): We were told that the Minister of Community and Social Services would be here 15 minutes ago; he is not. In his absence, I would go to the Premier of the province.

There is a report in the Vancouver Sun, also copied in the Ottawa Citizen, that has indicated that welfare fraud is widespread; in fact, a connection has been made in this story between welfare fraud in the Somali community and the funding of the activities of warlords in Somalia. There is a conviction of one Somali man last year on the basis of $6,500-per-month fraud in Ottawa. I want the Premier of this province to tell me what action his ministry and his government have taken to ensure that this type of fraud is not occurring and does not occur.

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I can assure the honourable member that fraud against any public body with respect to receiving of grants, whether it's the welfare system, the tax system, unemployment insurance, whatever it may be -- in the case which you've spoken of in terms of welfare fraud, any facts which are brought forward are to be thoroughly investigated by the authorities in question. They have that clear, legal responsibility. If the honourable member is privy to any particular information as a result of the extensive research he has done in reading the Vancouver Sun or the Ottawa Citizen, then I'm glad to receive it and I'm sure it will be thoroughly investigated by the people who are responsible.

If there are any instances of people who are either individually or systematically abusing the welfare system or engaged in a fraud of the welfare system, those instances and those individuals should be investigated. If there is information which would lead to a prosecution, they should be charged. That's the law of the province. The law of the province and the law of Canada should be and must be upheld and maintained, and that's the way it should be.

Mr Elston: This story in the Ottawa Citizen indicates quite clearly that the welfare fraud is widespread across the country and isolates an incident in Ottawa where a person has been convicted of welfare fraud. My question to you was, what has your government done to prevent it?

Last week when we asked the question, the honourable member for Oriole got this answer: "If you tell us the facts, we'll pass them on and we'll take whatever action is necessary to stop it." If the Vancouver Sun and the Ottawa Citizen know about the conviction of one Somali who was convicted of defrauding the system of up to $6,500 per month -- and the suspicion is that the fraud was actually over $12,000 per month -- can you tell me what action was taken by your ministry, by your government, to stop the fraudulent applications for welfare in this province by people like this? I want this prime minister to tell us, what are you doing to stop the flow of welfare fraud currency out of this country and into Somalia?

Hon Mr Rae: I never cease to be amazed at the waves of synthetic indignation which carry off the honourable member for Bruce. I would say to him very directly that I haven't seen the newspaper article to which he's referring, but even in the face of the rage he was expressing he admitted that in fact there had been a prosecution and indeed, from what I can gather from his question, there had also been a conviction.

When he asks what the provincial government is doing, my response would be that the provincial government has an obligation to monitor, to investigate instances of fraud, to charge those who are responsible for fraud and to deal with it on that basis. That is the responsibility we have, that is the responsibility the federal authorities have, and that is the responsibility his government had when it was in office.

I would say one other thing: It will be a sad day when we start charging, trying and convicting people on the floor of the Legislature on the basis of newspaper articles, which seems to be the direction in which the honourable member is headed. It must be dealt with by the proper authorities.

Mr Elston: To that honourable member: I want to bring his attention to the fact that the allegation is that millions of dollars are going into the hands of people to buy arms to be used in the warfare that is going on in Somalia, which includes the use of those weapons against peacekeepers who are there on missions of mercy and peace.

There is also a project reported in this particular article -- Also Known As is its code name -- which is supposedly being undertaken by the federal authorities.

I want to understand when the government of Ontario was made aware of these types of fraud, what it has done to cooperate with the federal authorities and what sort of steps it has taken to assure us that the fraud, which was raised a week ago, as an example, by the member for Oriole and which the Minister of Community and Social Services seemed to know nothing about -- what steps you have taken as a government to ensure that these types of fraudulent applications are not still going on, and what have you done to prevent the flow of money that is used to buy arms which are being trained on the peacekeepers in Somalia?

Hon Mr Rae: I would say to the honourable member, and I say to him in as calm and civil a way as I possibly can, that the way to deal with this issue is to deal with the information that's there, to deal with any information on a systematic basis and to deal with it in a way that respects the civil liberties of all Canadians, regardless of where they come from, and to respect the civil liberties of all applicants regardless of race, colour, creed or any other aspect of their lives. We have an obligation as a civilized people and as a civilized government to do that.

We also have an obligation to prosecute those people where there's found to be reasonable evidence of fraud. Where we have those instances --

Mr Elston: What about the audit? You have taken insufficient steps to do anything about the welfare fraud.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Hon Mr Rae: This is an issue that's costing us, and we intend to deal with it. But I must say I've learned a great deal about the honourable member this afternoon.

The Speaker: New question, the leader of the third party.

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): I guess the OPP is too busy investigating all the leaks on the NDP scams.

CANCER TREATMENT

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): My question is to the Minister of Health. Minister, it's increasingly clear that we have a crisis in cancer treatment in Ontario. We have growing waiting lists for radiation treatment for a disease with which time is of the utmost importance. As Minister of Health, you should be doing everything possible to ensure that Ontarians are treated as soon as possible.

That is why I want to ask you if you can assure every single Ontarian, every single taxpayer of this province, every single person who is on a waiting list for radiation in Ontario, that no one from outside the country would ever receive treatment ahead of them on the waiting list before they do. Can you assure us of that?

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): To give that kind of blanket assurance, much as I wish I could, without having all the information available to me -- that I suspect the member has available to him for his second question -- would not be something I would want to do. But let me say to him very sincerely that my objective and the objective of my ministry and of this government is to make sure that the people of Ontario get the treatment they need with as little waiting as possible, and that's what our plans and our efforts are directed to achieving.

Mr Harris: The information I have is available to you, because I have a copy of a letter that was sent to you by Judy Thompson of Kitchener. In February of this year, Ms Thompson was told she'd have to wait three months for radiation treatment for a recurrence of cancer. While Ms Thompson was in London for her treatment, she met an American woman who was being given the same treatment after waiting just over a week. How could this happen? How can it happen that Americans can jump the queue and get radiation treatment in Ontario while we have Ontarians sitting there waiting on the list?

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Hon Ruth Grier: I don't have an answer to that question. I hope the member will share with me the specifics of the case. I can assure him it is something I will take up with the London hospital and ask for the information he is requesting.

Mr Harris: The information is available to you. The letter was sent to you and copied to me. To date, apparently only my office has had the time to call and find out what happened. We spoke as well with the American patient this morning. She confirmed the details of Judy Thompson's letter. She confirmed that she does not have an Ontario health card. She has a private plan.

That even one American -- and if there's one, we must assume there are others -- has taken the place of an Ontario cancer patient is unacceptable. Will you immediately investigate how this happened to ensure that not one single Ontario taxpayer, Ontario cancer treatment patient, is kept on waiting lists because someone outside the country is coming in paying his or her own way?

Hon Mrs Grier: Shortly after I became the minister I became aware of the fact that a number of our institutions were planning to market their services to fee-paying patients from south of the border. I made it very clear to them, and I have no hesitation in repeating today to the member and to the House, that as far as this government is concerned, Ontario's health care system is for the people of Ontario and is not for sale. I share his concern about this particular case, and as far as we are concerned, that is not what ought to happen.

Mr Harris: But it's happening and it's happening every day.

My second question is also to the Minister of Health. Can you tell me, Minister, whether you and your government think a person who is 64 years of age and is suffering from cancer is not worth treating?

Hon Mrs Grier: I know the member is raising a question with respect to a specific individual who has written to my ministry. I'm not in a position, nor ought I, to comment on that particular case, and I'm afraid I can't do it in the Legislature.

Mr Harris: Mr Donald Porter of Orangeville is in Orangeville today watching as I speak and as you speak. He believes that OHIP told him he was too old to treat. After he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, his oncologist, Dr Steven Reingold, recommended that he should get a bone marrow transplant. OHIP refused to pay even though he was given only three to nine months to live. Mr Porter claims he was denied coverage because of his age and because there was an "element of risk." After years of working, after years of paying into our health care system, he was told that when he needed it the health care system wouldn't be there for him. Minister, Mr Porter wants to know why. Can you explain that to him?

Hon Mrs Grier: As the member well knows, it is not appropriate nor is it proper for me to comment in public on an individual case. Let me assure him and anybody who's watching that cases of this nature that come to my attention are investigated and that the questions are asked by me of OHIP. That will certainly happen in this particular case.

Mr Harris: Donald Porter couldn't wait for you and your government. Donald Porter couldn't wait for the system. Donald Porter is alive today and watching because he sold his business and he sold his home and he spent his retirement money to pay $150,000 for bone marrow surgery in New York. He is healthy today.

Minister, you and your government have mismanaged our system to the point where people are forced to give up their life savings to stay alive. This is Ontario. This isn't what universal health care was supposed to be. This isn't the OHIP system that was conceived of and dreamed of in this country and in this province and built up over all these years. In a province envied for its health care system, this shouldn't be happening. The bottom line is that if Mr Porter were poor, if he couldn't have sold his house, if he didn't have life savings, he would not be alive today.

What advice do you have for other seniors who are being told the same thing and who don't have the money to go elsewhere and get the treatment?

Hon Mrs Grier: The judgements and the decisions made by OHIP have been made since the beginning of the system. I don't justify this particular one. I don't know the details. I have undertaken to investigate it. But I don't want anybody in this House, or the member, to infer that there is any lack of commitment by this government to the medicare system, to the protection of universality and accessibility.

I want to say to the members opposite that in the face of constraints and cutbacks --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Minister, conclude your response.

Hon Mrs Grier: I want to conclude by pointing out to the leader of the third party that the medicare system of this country, which the members on this side of the House fought for, created and have protected all these years, began as a shared --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: To correct the record, I'm sure the record will show that the NDP created nothing and weren't in government when this system was created.

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

MENINGITIS

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I have a question also of the Minister of Health. Madam Minister, you will be aware of the continuing concern, if not panic, throughout the region of Peel over the incidence of cases of meningitis. Today more school kids and their parents are pleading for an inoculation, but the vaccine is not available.

You will remember that in the Ottawa-Carleton area, where there was a similar outbreak, massive inoculation was ordered. However, you must also be aware that for a significant period of time there wasn't sufficient serum to meet the needs. Special efforts were needed by the Ministry of Health in that case.

Keeping in mind the lesson from Ottawa-Carleton and the reality of the region of Peel, will you assure this Legislature today that efforts are being undertaken by your ministry to ensure (1) that there is sufficient serum available on an as-required basis, and (2) that there is a proper plan in order whereby that serum can be distributed?

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): I have certainly asked that question of the chief medical officer of health of the province, because it was one of my first concerns when I heard about these incidents of meningococcal disease: Was there sufficient serum? My information was that indeed there was and that Connaught Laboratories could provide that which was required. In the Ottawa case, I understand that serum had to be found from another country, but the serum was found. I have no information that leads me to suspect there is a shortage here. If the member has been told something different, I will certainly want to follow up on that.

Mr Offer: The parents of the children in the region of Peel would take strong issue with you with respect to that particular answer, because in fact there is not sufficient vaccine serum available for them today. The question to you again is: What efforts are you taking to make certain that serum in sufficient quantities will be available for the people, the children, in the region of Peel? We want to know what actions you are taking to make certain that is available.

Hon Mrs Grier: I can merely repeat in response what I said in my first answer. My information is that there is a certain amount of serum that the ministry keeps and that Connaught Laboratories has an additional supply, and that if serum is needed, it is available and will be found. I have not, as recently as my briefing at 1 o'clock, been made aware of a shortage or of any physician seeking serum who was unable to find it.

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BIRTH CERTIFICATES

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): My question is to the Premier. The Toronto Sun reported today that an illegal ring has been caught selling Ontario birth certificates. In response, the deputy registrar of Ontario said, "There's no practical way to prevent this type of abuse." Premier, once a person illegally obtains an Ontario birth certificate, it's a licence to spend the taxpayer's money. It's an open invitation to our welfare system. It gives you gold card access to our health care. Premier, do you believe the deputy registrar is right? Do you believe there is no way to stop this?

Hon Bob Rae (Premier): I'll refer this to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): The police haven't directly contacted the office of the registrar general to date and the ORG will be contacting the police to offer full cooperation. I can tell the leader of the third party that there are approximately 360,000 birth certificates issued each year and 90% of those are issued through the mail. The eligibility criteria are the same as, restricted, and consistent with other Canadian jurisdictions. But what I would like to say is that since the relocation of the ORG from Toronto to Thunder Bay, which everybody here is aware of, there has been extremely tight security around --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Hon Ms Churley: There has been extremely tight security around the birth certificates. To date, we don't know whether those birth certificates were stolen or are counterfeit and that's something the police will now start investigating.

Mr Harris: Minister, we're losing millions in fraudulent health care claims. You've heard that every day. We're losing millions in welfare fraud. You hear that every day. Now we find out anyone can pick up an Ontario birth certificate on the street for a few hundred bucks.

This is the card, this is the gold card, this is the one that accesses all the manna, all the free government money. Do you think it's acceptable that your deputy registrar says there's no way to stop it? Do you accept that as a cabinet minister? That's the question I ask you and now, by way of supplementary, I ask you this: If you believe that, if you accept that, isn't it time you moved aside and got somebody in who can manage these systems? Because it's not acceptable to me that there's no way to stop this fraud.

Hon Ms Churley: As I said, the police have not determined at this point whether these certificates are forged documents or stolen property. Of course, I don't accept the statement. Of course, it isn't acceptable. I believe what Mr Kelly is getting at is that out of the 360,000 birth certificates that are issued each year, 90% of them are through the mail.

Mr Harris: Everything you touch is falling apart, all the sacred social programs, the health care system; it's all falling apart.

The Speaker: Leader of the third party, come to order.

Has the minister concluded her response?

Hon Ms Churley: I'd be interested to see the context of the statement alleged by Mr Kelly, because I believe what he may have been getting at is that with that number of birth certificates going out every year -- and people can apply through the mail -- in certain instances, if people get the right information, even with the tight security it can happen sometimes.

But let me say again that I take it very seriously. We don't know yet whether these documents were stolen or received in that way or whether these are counterfeit. The police will be investigating and I will have more information for you when they reach conclusions at the end of their investigation.

HEALTH CARE

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): My question is for the Minister of Health. The Ministry of Health has undertaken to provide quality health care to Ontario residents who have suffered brain injury. Current efforts are under way to develop a pool of expertise in several Ontario centres so that we can treat Ontario residents here instead of in the United States. This will provide us with more affordable health care that is close by.

While we develop this program, American-owned, for-profit centres are being slated for southwestern Ontario to meet the demands of Ontarians with private health insurance. Those Ontarians who have only OHIP coverage are forced to get their treatment south of the border.

What are you doing to speed up the provision of treatment for people with brain injury in the province of Ontario?

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): I share the member's concern about this particular issue and I'm happy to tell him that our response to the situation has been a $9.5-million allocation for a combination of institutional and community initiatives to repatriate Canadians, Ontarians, who have had to receive treatment south of the border.

Of the approximately 12,000 traumatic head injuries sustained each year in Ontario, only about 100 are treated in American facilities. The majority of the cases receive their treatment here in Ontario. Those that are typically going to the United States are people who are slow to recover from brain injury or who demonstrate particularly aggressive behaviour that we don't have the facilities here to deal with. But it is a real concern, and I hope in the very near future to be able to have some information about a further expansion of our treatment facilities here in Ontario.

Mr Hope: Especially in southwestern Ontario, there are a number of residents or family members who would like their families closer, to participate in the recovery aspect. I must ask the minister: If we're not able to provide non-profit facilities faster, will it be possible for Ontario residents with brain injury who do not have private health insurance to access the American-owned clinics in Ontario until the system is fully in effect? I guess my question would be, can they use the American system while we wait for non-profit?

Hon Mrs Grier: Yes, access to US services continues to be approved by the ministry until we have adequate facilities developed in Ontario. As I indicated, we acknowledge that there are some areas where we still do not provide the service. We understand the concern people have with the slow rate of development of our facilities here in Ontario, and it is a priority of a gap that we're attempting to close.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): My question is to the member for Dovercourt, the Minister of Community and Social Services. There has been for some months now an investigation by the federal authorities into welfare fraud surrounding the issue of Somalis who are reportedly using money from welfare claims here in Ontario and in other parts of Canada to fund the purchase of arms for Somali warlords in their home country.

Immigration department spokesman Milt Best in Toronto has indicated that there is a program called Also Known As that has been ongoing for some months in relation to this. Will the Minister of Community and Social Services tell us what cooperation he has provided that project and how long he has known about the investigation into this welfare fraud, and can he tell us, further, how this particular project dovetails into the projects that he has under way on his own in relation to welfare fraud?

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Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Community and Social Services): I will say very straightforwardly to the member, I don't have the details of this particular investigation, but as he has raised them here with me, I will ensure that we look into those and be able to respond in more detail to the member at a later point.

Mr Elston: I am absolutely astonished by that particular response. The auditor had indicated in his report that the ministry's efforts to prevent and detect fraud were insufficient; he didn't say they were non-existent. I want the Minister of Community and Social Services to tell me today exactly what his department is doing to detect welfare fraud, the same type of fraud that is allowing certain individuals to get multiple applications approved for welfare, certain individuals, it is now alleged, who are sending that money out of the country to fund the purchase of arms to be used against our peacekeepers in other countries.

I want this minister to tell us what steps he has taken in his ministry to prevent welfare fraud and how they are going to get to the bottom of the problem that is reported today in the Ottawa Citizen, about which I spoke to the Premier earlier.

Hon Mr Silipo: I think it's important that we not make policy on the basis of news reports. I want to say to the member that we take the issue --

Mr Elston: You don't have a policy to investigate fraud?

Hon Mr Silipo: If he'll let me finish the answer, we take the issue of welfare fraud very seriously. In fact I can tell the member that in the process we're going through now we've identified and we're putting in place, together with the municipalities, a process we believe will identify a fair amount of the fraud that exists in the system. Even if we believe that it's a relatively small amount, it's important that we get to the nub of that.

On the issues that he has raised, dealing with a specific part of that, I wanted to be very direct with him in saying to him that I don't have the details at my disposal and, rather than trying to invent them on my feet, what I will do is get the information and be prepared to come back to the House and deal with that issue very directly.

TEACHERS' DISPUTE

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): I have a question for the Minister of Education and Training.Today is day 27 of the strike in Lambton county. The students have been out of the classroom for six weeks. If the students and the parents affected were asked whether their education is in jeopardy, Mr Minister, they would say yes.

Despite this, the Education Relations Commission will hold a public meeting on Thursday night at the Canterbury Inn to discuss the impact of the strike on the students. No other outstanding issue will be discussed. Five ERC bureaucrats will come down from Toronto and rent hotel space to discuss an issue that is blatantly obvious to everyone but the minister and maybe the ERC; we don't know that. Could you tell me the exact cost, including salary, transportation and hotel expenditures, for this grandstanding exercise?

Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): The Education Relations Commission announced last Friday that it was going to proceed with a public meeting to deal with this issue, a process that the ERC used to use quite often in disputes like this. As the member will know, some very serious negotiations have occurred in the last 24 hours. In fact it's my understanding that all of the issues at the bargaining table with the exception of one have been dealt with.

Now, the first time that she asked the question a few weeks ago, the member advocated legislation and claimed jeopardy. That's the politically popular thing to do; that's not the responsible thing to do. When you've given people the right to strike, then government should not be moving in unilaterally just at the whims of questions from critics from the opposition parties to bring in back-to-work legislation.

We take this seriously. We understand the implication for any other further negotiations in other jurisdictions across this province, and I will not act until I've received a recommendation from the ERC and the law of this province has been followed.

Mrs Cunningham: I don't think that "political whims," as expressed today, is an appropriate term for the minister to be using. We're representing parents and students here today in asking these questions in the House, not political whims.

Minister, the ERC will not report on the result of the meeting until Friday; hence, you have condemned the students to being out of the classroom for yet another week. You've been pushing voluntary arbitration as a solution to this impasse, yet Bill 48, the Social Contract Act, does not allow arbitration.

Subsection 40(1) reads: "No increase in compensation shall be given as a result of any arbitration award or decision made on or after June 14, 1993." Interesting.

The education subsectoral framework agreement, under 7.3, states -- Mr Speaker, it's technical; you'll have to bear with me:

"The actual number of FTE, full-time equivalent, day-school teachers in place on September 30, 1993, or contractual PTR staffing provisions, whichever is greater, will be the base against which modifications will be made."

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

Mrs Cunningham: "The modification will result in a 4.75% reduction in staff or its PTR equivalent no later than September 1, 1996."

Forgive me, Mr Speaker, I will ask the question now. Since the two contentious issues of the strike, compensation and PTR, cannot be determined by arbitration under the terms of your social contract, when will you bring in legislation to get the students back into the classroom?

Hon Mr Cooke: I've indicated to the member before, and I understand the difficulty with this issue, but she has to understand, as all of us do, that when you move forward with legislation or whatever she is proposing, there are implications for negotiations in other boards across the province.

I don't want to do anything and this government doesn't want to do anything that encourages more disputes and sets up expectations that we're going to intervene when the proper place for these disputes to be settled is at the local bargaining table. What I will do is follow the same rules that all other ministers of education have followed, and that is follow Bill 100 and wait until the Education Relations Commission makes recommendations to me.

Mrs Cunningham: You don't even understand the question, David, do you?

The Speaker: Order. The member for London North, come to order.

Hon Mr Cooke: The member should understand that this is for a collective agreement that's previous to the social contract, and neither party is even stating that this is a social contract set of negotiations. They've said very clearly that it has nothing to do with the social contract.

LIBRARY GRANTS

Mr Gary Wilson (Kingston and The Islands): My question is for the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Recreation. I'm proud to be wearing the medallion --

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): We are giving you all the answers in this House.

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

Mr Gary Wilson: I'm glad the member is interested in what this medallion is. My question, again, is for the Minister of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, and it involves public library operating grants. As I said, I'm proud to be wearing the INFO medallion here. INFO stands for the information network for Ontario.

Mr Michael D. Harris (Nipissing): What a waste of money.

Mr Gary Wilson: Well, it's a waste for some people. Perhaps the leader of the third party would be wondering what its use is. But I invite all members to head down to the legislative library for a demonstration.

Anyway, I was pleased to be given this medallion by the chief librarian for the Frontenac county library system. She was extolling the virtues of the INFO system and was about to show it at a conference. But in conversation she mentioned that there is a concern about the public library operating grants for the forthcoming year. Of course, as you know, these grants represent 11% of the operating grants across the province on average.

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Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

Mrs Cunningham: On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: You cut me off from making a legitimate statement and this is a joke.

The Speaker: Would the member for Kingston and The Islands place his question.

Mr Gary Wilson: Thanks again, Mr Speaker. I'm afraid it suggests that information is lost on some members of the House, but I will continue because it is a very important question. Information and libraries are crucial to my riding.

The Speaker: Could you place the question.

Mr Gary Wilson: Certainly. The question is this: As you know, Madam Minister, public library operating grants amount to about 11% on average, but in rural areas it's more like 24%, which is what it is in the rural areas of my riding.

The Speaker: Does the member have a question?

Mr Gary Wilson: I want to know what you're planning for the next operating year as far as the level of provincial library operating grants.

Hon Anne Swarbrick (Minister of Culture, Tourism and Recreation): I think the member has actually asked an extremely important question. We're going into a time period now --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would the minister respond to the question.

Hon Ms Swarbrick: Friends of public libraries are understandably quite nervous in the fiscal time period that we're in, and I understand that as we're approaching the budget-making process everybody gets nervous about their operating dollars. I can't make any commitment, since we're just beginning that budget process, as to what the impact will be on libraries' operating funds.

I would like to say that I understand how rumours run rampant. I know last year I heard rumours we were going to close hundreds of libraries, which was of course never true.

Mr Harris: How much did the medals cost?

The Speaker: Order.

Hon Ms Swarbrick: Last year, in spite of the fiscal pressures on this government and the realities that we faced, because the NDP government caucus is tremendously committed to the value that libraries commit to literacy in this province as well as to the universal access to education and information, we were fully able to protect operating dollars to libraries and we hope --

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

Hon Ms Swarbrick: -- that we'll be in a position to do that this year. But at this point of course I cannot make that commitment.

Mr Gary Wilson: I had some difficulty hearing that answer. I wasn't sure whether the minister touched on the capital expenditures in the library field.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would the member for York Mills please take his seat?

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): I have asked for a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker: I cannot entertain a point of order until this House restores order to itself.

The member for York Mills has a point of order.

Mr Turnbull: Yes, Mr Speaker. In the supplementary I hope he's going to ask how much these medals are costing the taxpayers.

The Speaker: You do not have a point of order. Could the member for Kingston and The Islands place his supplementary.

Mr Gary Wilson: I am really pleased to see all the interest in public libraries here. I do want to touch on the other issue. As I say, I wasn't quite sure I could hear whether the minister touched on the issue of capital expenditures in public libraries.

INFO of course is a very important development here, and I know the members are all very interested and will want to see the display in the legislative library, but I would like to know, Minister, whether the capital costs that are associated with libraries will stay at the same or an expanded level.

Hon Ms Swarbrick: Again, I think in spite of the difficult fiscal pressures that we face, because of the importance of public libraries I'm pleased to be able to answer the member's question.

We've been able to put over $3 million of Jobs Ontario Community Action money into building and improving and repairing the infrastructure system of libraries in this province. We've also recently been able to put over $1 million into developing the CD-ROM infrastructure system to help make sure that people throughout this province can go to any one of over 200 libraries and be able to access for the first time ever the information about all books that exist throughout the entire Ontario provincial library system.

VIOLENCE

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): My question is to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. Lyn McLeod and I have repeatedly called on this minister to take action and restrict the sale of serial killer trading cards. These cards glorify violence and give our children a new set of heroes: violent criminals such as Karla Homolka and Paul Teale.

Three months ago I introduced a private member's bill to prohibit the sale of these violent crime trading cards to minors. The tools are there and yet you, Minister, have given all sorts of excuses for not taking action.

Last week you told reporters, "As Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, I do not have powers over retail sales." Minister, I am astonished that you, as Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, are not aware that you have power to regulate the retail sale of liquor. I'm also surprised you don't realize that you have power to regulate the retail sale of lottery tickets.

There is no earthly reason why you can't regulate the sale of violent crime cards. All you need is the political will to act. Why won't you take leadership and act to help stop the celebration of violence in our society?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): First of all, let me correct the member. I don't have jurisdiction to control the sale of lottery tickets. That's under the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation.

I would like to say to the member, as I said to her leader last week, that this issue is one that I take very seriously, as this government takes very seriously. I think it is irresponsible for that party to continually stand on its feet and give false information about what this government can do about an issue as serious as this. I think it gives false expectations to the public out there who are concerned about that issue.

Having said that, it looks like that party --

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member for Halton Centre.

Hon Ms Churley: -- may have very soon a Liberal government in power. I would like to ask the member if she will work with me to get that government to take its responsibilities in this area and other areas of violence as well that they keep asking me to do, when they know very well I don't have the jurisdiction to do it. I think it's a shame to get cheap headlines about something this serious to the province of Ontario.

Ms Poole: I really resent this minister implying on an issue as serious as this that we are, first of all, providing false information, which is patently not true, and secondly, trying to get cheap headlines. This minister has missed the entire point.

Nobody has taken jurisdiction for controlling the retail sales in this province and yet this very party did not hesitate, when it had no power over controlling the collective bargaining in this province, to take steps there. You had no power to regulate casinos in this province and you, as the minister, took power there. So why cannot you bring the issue to this Legislature with a piece of legislation? I don't care if it's my bill or your bill, but deal with the problem. You have the power to enact legislation. That is what this Legislature is for. You can take jurisdiction, Minister, and you are copping out.

Why won't you take a leadership role and stop trying to put it over to other jurisdictions, other levels of government when you can act?

Hon Ms Churley: The member doesn't understand jurisdiction. She stands here and talks about powers that I have within this government and in the province.

Interjections.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): You are taking the free trade agreement to court and we don't understand jurisdiction? Holy smokes.

The Speaker: Order.

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Hon Ms Churley: I would again ask the members opposite to be responsible about this issue and to join with this government in demanding that the federal government take action. Our position is that we want those cards kept not only out of Ontario, which the federal government could do and hasn't done -- we have no control of what comes over the border, as the member knows. Some of the community people who are involved directly in this issue are saying publicly that it is a federal jurisdiction. They understand that, and I suggest you talk to them.

In the meantime, I will be pleased to work with the member, because we both care very much about this, to get the federal government to stop those cards from coming into the province.

The Speaker: New question. The member for Willowdale.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): My question is for the Minister of Community and Social --

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: When my colleague was asking the question, the minister used words like "cheap headlines," that it was incorrect information, "false" information. The minister should be required under the rules to withdraw those comments with reference to a colleague in this House.

The Speaker: First, I had recognized the member for Willowdale, so he will have his question.

To the member for Brampton North, the language, as I determine it, was not unparliamentary. However, if language used by one member of the House offends another, the practice that I have used is to allow the member who made the remarks an opportunity, if she or he wishes to, to withdraw those remarks, and I so offer that to the minister.

DAY CARE

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): My question is for the Minister of Community and Social Services. Today, North York city council will be discussing a motion that asks you to respond to the discrepancies in your funding practices for day care.

Minister, your government has refused to fund the McKee McKids day care centre in my riding, you've put the private day care centres out of business, and now you refuse to adequately fund the Little Prince day care centre.

Can you explain to the people of my riding what your government is doing to provide workplace child care services in central North York, where studies have shown that these are a priority and are totally lacking?

Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Community and Social Services): As the member knows, because he and I have talked about this, we are still trying to see what we can do about the specific applications dealing with the centres that he's mentioned, but certainly I can tell him that overall we are continuing to do a great deal with respect to expanding child care.

I think just a couple of days ago I was able to outline, in answer to another question, that we have put into the system, in the space of four months, 4,000 additional subsidized spaces and expect another 4,000 subsidized spaces to be in the system between now and Christmas. In addition to that, we are continuing to provide capital dollars throughout the province for new child care centres to be built and existing ones to be rebuilt, so overall we're doing a fair amount, given the limited situation that we all find ourselves in.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The time for oral questions has expired.

USE OF QUESTION PERIOD

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: I have a very important question dealing with day care. My question did not get on in full today. I didn't have a chance to ask my supplementary because the member for Kingston and The Islands --

Interjections.

Mr Harnick: I wish to finish my point of personal privilege.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order. The member for Willowdale has the right to raise a point of privilege. I need to hear him and I would ask the House to come to order. Would the member for Willowdale place his point of privilege.

Mr Harnick: I appreciate that. The reason I didn't get my supplementary question on today is because the member for Kingston and The Islands decided to use his time to make a member's statement. It was a totally improper question. It could have very easily been done in the form of a statement. In fact it was a statement, and I object to the fact that I did not get my supplementary question on and that you allowed him to continue to ask it.

The Speaker: The member for Willowdale will know that he does not have a point of privilege. The time allotted for oral questions has expired. I did observe that today in fact the leadoff questions occupied considerably less time than they often do, presumably leaving an ample amount of time for a number of other members to ask questions.

However, in the ensuing 34 1/2 minutes, a considerable amount of that time was occupied by members I can best describe as exercising unruly behaviour. It's your question period, and if members choose to use that time by making noise instead of asking questions or responding to questions, that is something which the members will have to live with.

Mr Harnick: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I wonder if I might ask my colleagues for their unanimous consent to ask my supplementary.

The Speaker: Is there unanimous consent? No. Another point of order?

Mr Harnick: Yes. I'd just like to thank my colleagues for their appreciation for an important day care issue in my riding. Thank you all very much.

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I need you to perhaps give us some indication here. Is it reasonable for me to assume that questions by backbenchers on the government side are of equal importance as the questions from the opposition?

If it is, then why is it that when the member for Eglinton got up to make her question, she was allowed a minute 19 seconds on the first question and a minute seven seconds on the second question, and that the time allocations on this side of the House are significantly less? I would appreciate it if perhaps you could do one of those studies again to ascertain whether or not they are getting an unreasonable amount of time in their questions.

The Speaker: To the member for Durham West, I am always pleased to share the time sheets with any member who has the interest, and they're often a surprise to the member who poses the question.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: As required under standing order 34(a), I give you notice of dissatisfaction with the answer to my question that was asked of the Premier of this province and would ask that we be allowed to debate the issue Tuesday next.

The Speaker: I trust the honourable member will forward the necessary document to the table.

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: With respect to the point of order that the member for Durham West raised in this ongoing discussion about question period today, I was watching the clock as the member for Kingston and The Islands was posing his statement, and it took him approximately three minutes to pose his first statement.

Interjections.

Mr Eves: Here we go again.

The Speaker: Order.

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Mr Eves: I would ask you, Mr Speaker, to inquire into the matter, as I know you keep track of these things, as to how long it ultimately took for the member for Kingston and The Islands to pose his two questions. It would appear to most objective observers that in fact he did not have a question at all but rather a member's statement. We have a period under the rules for members' statements. I can appreciate why he didn't want to make his statement during members' statements, because they're only 90 seconds and his was four and a half minutes long. That's why he couldn't do it by way of a member's statement.

The Speaker: I understand. Would the member for Parry Sound take his seat, please.

I don't believe the honourable member wants me to investigate, each time a member's been on his or her feet, to determine whether or not an interrogative was found among the statements that were made. However, the member's point, and it's been made on several occasions, is that often the question period does not unfold as smoothly as it should, and members have to be aware of the time. I try to encourage members to be brief in their questions and their responses, but ultimately it is your question period, not mine.

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I take the position put forward to you in the point of order by my friend from Parry Sound very seriously. If the table officers are able to assess the time it took for my friend the member for Kingston and The Islands to pose his question, I hope that in calculating that total time and comparing it to other members' question times they will take into account the amount of barracking on the other side that forced my friend to take twice as long as he should have to pose his question.

The Speaker: The member for Simcoe West.

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): I firmly believe that the privileges of opposition members have been violated, and I want to make the point. Your job, Mr Speaker, is to uphold the traditions of this chamber. Parliament, and in particular question period, is time set aside so that all members may raise issues of public importance and public issue.

The Speaker: What is your point of privilege?

Mr Jim Wilson: In the question that was posed, or the statement that was made, by the member for Kingston and The Islands, I fail to see the public importance or the urgency of that statement. Hence, the time he took to raise and make that statement cut off the --

The Speaker: No. Would the member take his seat, please.

Interjection.

The Speaker: The member is out of order. I will name the member. If the member refuses to take his seat, he will be named.

STATUS OF BILL

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): On Monday, October 18, the member for Dufferin-Peel, Mr Tilson, introduced a bill entitled An Act to amend the Law related to Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy. It has been brought to my attention that this bill is contrary to subsection 3(2) of the French Language Services Act, 1986, and contravenes section 37(d) of our standing orders in that it is in improper form. I must therefore rule that this bill is out of order and it must be omitted from the order paper.

MOTIONS

CONSIDERATION OF BILL 40

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): I move that the order for third reading of Bill 40, An Act to stimulate Economic Development through the Creation of Community Economic Development Corporations and through certain amendments to the Education Act, the Municipal Act, the Planning Act and the Parkway Belt Planning and Development Act, be discharged and the bill be referred to committee of the whole House.

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

PETITIONS

GAMBLING

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

"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 totally support this petition and will affix my signature to it.

PROCEEDS OF CRIME

Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): Thousands of constituents from my riding of Oakville South have asked me to table a petition in support of private member's bill 85 which reads as follows:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas criminals can currently derive profit from the sale of recollection of their crimes; and

"Whereas criminals can also derive profit for interviews or public appearances; and

"Whereas this can cause suffering of crime victims and that of their families,

"We, the undersigned, demand that private member's bill 85, introduced by the member for Burlington South, the Proceeds of Crime Act, 1993, be passed into law."

I would urge the government to do that.

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas it is the right of every Ontario citizen not to be victimized; and

"Whereas victims of violent crime and their families have a right to be protected against exploitation by criminals who receive payments for their recollections of their crimes; and

"Whereas such payments should be dedicated to victims of crime; and

"Whereas private member's bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime, will ensure that money obtained by criminals as a result of their recollections of their crimes will be paid to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board in Ontario to be applied to the needs of and services for victims of crime;

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

"That the Ontario government endorse and support fully private member's bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime, and ensure its speedy passage into Ontario law."

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

"Whereas it is the right of every citizen not to be victimized;

"Whereas victims of violent crime and their families have the right to be protected against exploitation by criminals who receive payments for their recollection of their crimes; and

"Whereas such payment should be dedicated to the victims of crime; and

"Whereas private member's bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the proceeds of crime, will ensure that money obtained by criminals as a result of their recollections of their crimes will be paid to the Criminal Injury Compensation Board to be applied to the needs of and the services for victims of crime;

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

"That the Ontario government endorse and support fully private member's bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime, and ensure its speedy passage into law."

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LANDFILL

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): A petition, Madam Speaker.

"Whereas on October 24, 1991, the NDP government introduced Bill 143, the Waste Management Act, and tried to force the Legislature to pass the bill before Christmas in 1991 without public consultation or notification to affected municipalities and residents and without naming the candidate landfill sites; and

"Whereas the NDP were forced into five weeks of public hearings and listened to over 200 presenters all recommending amendments to Bill 143; and

"Whereas the NDP refused to listen or pass any opposition amendments to Bill 143, which would protect and secure individual and municipal rights to full environmental assessment hearings on waste alternatives such as rail haul; and

"Whereas the NDP used their majority to pass Bill 143 on April 23, 1992, with the full support and endorsement from Jim Wiseman, MPP, Durham West; Larry O'Connor, MPP, Durham-York; Gordon Mills, MPP, Durham East; and

"Whereas the NDP named 57 candidate landfill sites on June 4, 1992; and

"Whereas Ruth Grier and the Premier refused to meet with groups opposing the dumps and refused to consider the alternatives like rail haul, contrary to Mrs Grier's support of rail haul in January 1991; and

"Whereas Mrs Grier refused to meet with the residents and the mayor of Kirkland Lake to review the Adams mine proposal and proceeded to ban rail haul without considering the impacts on the northern economy; and

"Whereas the NDP government created the Interim Waste Authority to find a solution to GTA waste and operate independently from the Minister of the Environment, but at the same time the IWA was forced to adhere to Mrs Grier's ideology and her ban of waste alternatives such as rail haul and incineration; and

"Whereas the IWA and the NDP government refuse to conduct an environmental assessment on the alternatives and remain firm on subjecting communities in the regions of York, Durham and Peel to a process that ignores their fundamental rights to a review of alternatives and employs a system of criteria-ranking that defies logic and leads to the selection of dump sites on environmentally sensitive land or prime agricultural land and on sites located near urban areas;

"We, the undersigned, want Bill 143 revoked and replaced with a bill that would allow a full environmental assessment on all waste management options."

I sign this petition, knowing full well that the people of my riding and the people in York, Metro and Peel are dreadfully concerned about this petition and what the government is trying to do to bring in these landfill sites which we're expecting very shortly. The government has broken the law. They continue to break the law with this very action, and we take offence at it.

PROCEEDS OF CRIME

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

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): The members would like to be able to hear the member who is speaking. Please take the floor.

Mrs Marland: I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas it is the right of every Ontario citizen not to be victimized; and

"Whereas victims of violent crime and their families have a right to be protected against exploitation by criminals who receive payments for their recollections of their crimes; and

"Whereas such payments should be dedicated to victims of crime; and

"Whereas private member's bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime, will ensure that money obtained by criminals as a result of their recollections of their crimes will be paid to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board to be applied to the needs of and services for victims of crime;

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

"That the Ontario government endorse and support fully private member's bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime, and ensure its speedy passage into law."

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

PICKERING AIRPORT LAND

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): "To the Legislative Assembly and the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario:

"Whereas the federal government intends to dispose of surplus lands on the Pickering airport site" -- I still don't know what they want to do with them, but anyway -- "that are agriculturally rich and environmentally sensitive; and

"Whereas the residents have not been informed of the immediacy of the federal sale plan," in fact, are being confused because one wants to put an airport there and the other one's writing letters saying not to;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature of Ontario as follows:

"Therefore, that the provincial government of Ontario request of the federal government of Canada to initiate a public review by panel of the federal Minister of the Environment to ensure an organized disposal protecting these resources and the community of residents there."

This is the headwaters of many creeks and streams and also on the Oak Ridges moraine, which is covered by our Oak Ridges moraine policy, which the federal government continues to just defy.

This petition has been signed by people all over southern Ontario from Ashburn, Uxbridge, Pefferlaw, Willowdale -- you might want to take note, Mr Harnick -- Greenwood, Guelph, Greensides in Toronto, Mississauga, Oshawa and all over southern Ontario, people who are outraged by the federal Tories' continued disrespect for the rights of the people of North Pickering, and I have signed this petition.

PROCEEDS OF CRIME

Mr David Johnson (Don Mills): A petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas it is the right of every Ontario citizen not to be victimized;

"Whereas victims of violent crime and their families have a right to be protected against exploitation by criminals who receive payments for their recollections of their crimes;

"Whereas such payments should be dedicated to victims of crime; and

"Whereas private member's bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime, will ensure that moneys obtained by criminals as a result of their recollections of their crimes will be paid to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board to be applied to the needs of and services for victims of crime,

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

"That the Ontario government endorse and support fully private member's bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime, and ensure its speedy passage into Ontario law."

It's signed by a number of residents of the province of Ontario, including the riding of Don Mills, and I affix my signature to the petition.

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): I have a petition addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario which reads as follows:

"Whereas it is the right of every Ontario citizen not to be victimized;

"Whereas victims of violent crime and their families have a right to be protected against exploitation by criminals who receive payments for their recollections of their crimes;

"Whereas such payments should be dedicated to victims of crime; and

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

"That the Ontario government endorse and support fully private member's bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime, and ensure its speedy passage into Ontario law."

I've included my name on this petition.

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

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

The Acting Speaker (Mrs Margaret H. Harrington): Does the member wish to make a brief statement?

Ms Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): I am very happy to submit, on behalf of the standing committee on government agencies, that report today. There are two appointments contained therein, one of Dr Murray Waldman and one of Ms Jean Pigott. Both those people are being appointed to government agencies, and through their service this province will be well served.

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

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INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

CITY OF TORONTO ACT, 1993

On motion by Ms Akande, the following bill was given first reading:

Bill Pr45, An Act respecting the City of Toronto.

CITY OF TORONTO ACT, 1993

On motion by Ms Akande, the following bill was given first reading:

Bill Pr48, An Act respecting the City of Toronto.

CITY OF TORONTO ACT, 1993

On motion by Ms Akande, the following bill was given first reading:

Bill Pr61, An Act respecting the City of Toronto.

OTTAWA JEWISH HOME FOR THE AGED ACT, 1993

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

Bill Pr56, An Act to revive Ottawa Jewish Home for the Aged.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

CAPITAL INVESTMENT PLAN ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE PLAN D'INVESTISSEMENT

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for third reading of 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 / Projet de loi 17, Loi prévoyant le plan d'investissement du gouvernement de l'Ontario et concernant d'autres questions relatives à l'administration financière.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): I believe the member for Markham had the floor.

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): It is difficult to just pick up in the middle of where one was at that time on Thursday last week.

We're dealing with Bill 17. The bill is badly named. It's called An Act to provide for the Capital Investment Plan of the Government of Ontario and for certain other matters related to financial administration. It's badly named in that you really don't begin to realize that this is the bill that is going to establish three new crown corporations and give power to another one. We have the Ontario Financing Authority, the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp, the Ontario Clean Water Agency and the Ontario Realty Corp.

What it should really say is that it's the expansion of government into other sectors. It's an example of the government creating a bill and a new administration when it doesn't need to.

I'm opposing the bill. Our caucus will do everything we can within this legislative debate to fight it. Regrettably, the Legislature can no longer do anything more than just have short little chats on bills, because the government has restricted the amount of time that we can deal with a bill.

As the first speaker for our party, the maximum I can have is an hour and a half, and then every other member can only speak for up to half an hour. There's a short time for a few questions and answers on what one has said, but the fact remains that since the New Democrats came to power, the Legislative Assembly has been very restricted in the amount of time that members have to speak on bills.

They've also restricted the ability of members to deal with what government is doing. An insidious problem exists within Bill 17 in that what we have here is the creation of a bureaucracy outside the Legislative Assembly, now reporting through to ministers, removed from direct reporting to the floor of the House. That therefore means that the ministers have a way of diverting resources through to these agencies. The ministers can then divert funds through to them.

We've already talked about the way the government is fraudulently allowing the books for the province of Ontario to say that there is going to be a debt of so many billions of dollars, when on the other hand, $800 million has been allocated for the startup of these crown corporations. I was chastised by the Speaker last week for using the word "fraud" when I said that the government, in bringing forward this legislation, was making a fraudulent act. The Speaker himself was sitting in the chair and he took strong exception to anyone calling this "fraud."

I brought along my thesaurus, because I'm trying to figure out -- I'm still dealing with the problem we have, in that on the one hand the government already could do everything it needs to do within existing legislation, within existing ministries, without any more creation of a bureaucracy, without any shoving off from the books of the province of Ontario into another series of books. It could do everything within its own fiscal realm as we have it, reporting through to here, to the Legislature, but instead the government has said, "Now what we're doing is we're taking it off the books and we're setting up these crown corporations."

When I called that fraud, the Speaker took strong exception to it. Fraud really is the act of taking information, data, or doing a deed in a tricky, underhanded way, moving it somewhere else. So I want to look at this thesaurus.

I've looked at the dictionary, but fraud is deceit, fraudulence, misrepresentation or deception, fake, bastard, sham, humbug, four-flusher, imposter, pretence, racket, swindle. There are a lot of things. I don't know which word would work best to describe what the government is doing to the people of Ontario by setting up this series of crown corporations, but it's something like all those put together.

What I'm really trying to find is the word in the English language which is so perfect in so many ways. I'm not able to find a word to describe this mechanism the government is using to establish these four unnecessary agencies, which it doesn't need to do, to get the data off the books, which it doesn't need to do, to hide the staff and the people who are going to be in these agencies and to hide the amount of money that's really going to be going out to them. I hope someone will come forward and give me a name to call this. I can think of many names to call the honourable members, but I want to get some special name that allows me to describe this act, which is all composed in Bill 17.

This is just another example of the province of Ontario moving farther and farther away from the people. We're watching an election in process in Canada where the people are angry, and they're looking to their individual members to say: "What are you going to do for us? How are you going to represent us? What are you going to do to make a difference?"

When we are elected to this very high office, there isn't one of us who doesn't come into the place without the sense of wanting sincerely to improve the province of Ontario. Yet our ability to put our finger on the problems and the issues is being eroded by the efforts of the government to move things away from where we sit into the inner sanctums, the sancta sanctorum, of each of the ministries so that it's again out of reach of the public, out of reach of the public's representatives, those members of the opposition, and even the backbenchers if they ever stop to think about it. It's only the ministers themselves who are able then to deal with what's going on, truly and completely.

I'll never, ever be able to figure out what's going on, certainly as we've tried to with the Interim Waste Authority. There isn't one of us in opposition who hasn't tried to ascertain how much money they're spending, what's going on, what criteria they're using, yet we have been stonewalled consistently by the ministers of Environment, first of all Mrs Grier and more recently Mr Wildman, who consistently refused to answer questions on the Interim Waste Authority. I have to believe that the same kind of stonewalling will be just part of our general day's fare at Queen's Park when we're asking questions on any of these crown corporations. We will continue to be stonewalled.

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So as we look at the different authorities, it is with no pleasure, absolutely no pleasure at all, that I have to spend time in the House fighting a battle I will not win. I cannot win. The NDP have 70 seats and the members of the government vote with the government, for the government, on a consistent basis. There are two or three independents around the House, not enough to make any difference to what we're really trying to say, and the government votes en bloc. The government's not going to fall if this doesn't go through, but it's a blind following in the footsteps of what the cabinet and the government want them to do.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: The member for Markham is making very important remarks during his speech in this House and I think there should be a quorum present for that.

The Acting Speaker: Would the clerk please determine if a quorum is present.

Senior Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals (Mr Alex D. McFedries): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

The Acting Speaker: A quorum is now present. Would the member for Markham care to resume the floor?

Mr Cousens: Thank you very much, and thank you to the member for Mississauga South. The government has a responsibility to have the number of members in the House, and they're obviously doing other things.

An example, as I'm trying to point out, in the Ontario Financing Authority is the inability of members of the Legislature to determine what is going to go on within these different agencies. I mentioned the Interim Waste Authority as an example of how the government sets up an arm's-length relationship of another crown corporation and at that point the government is able to absolve itself from responsibility for what goes on within that organization. By so doing, it means that when members of the opposition ask questions, as we have many, many times, about the planning or lack of planning or the bad planning that's going on within the Interim Waste Authority, we have achieved zero results. We have not succeeded at all in getting through to the minister, nor are we able to get through the whole process that's now established in the Interim Waste Authority.

Another example of that kind of distancing of ministries and government from opposition and the floor of the Legislature is what the government is doing with the social contract secretariat. This, as we talk in particular about the Ontario Financing Authority, is a ministry that, though I have a very high personal regard for the Minister of Finance -- I don't think there is anyone here who on a personal basis doesn't like the Minister of Finance as a human being, an individual. But I have had great frustration in dealing with his ministry and in trying to obtain information as it pertains to the social contract.

You go back to, again, the fundamentals. When Mr Rae and his government came to power on September 6, 1990, it was an election, in fact, I wish more people in Ontario would remember. The effect the election had -- just a little, small diversion, but it's a fact. I mean, that was an election where a government was voted out --

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): A small diversion? You're trying to stop a flood.

Mr Cousens: They caused more than that, Murray. We had the election that Ontario should be remembering right now, before we get to the election on the 25th. There was a government that was voted out of office, and someone else got in. They weren't voted in; it was one of those freaks where people don't vote in a government, they vote someone out. That's part of the process that's going on now.

Mr Elston: I prefer the last government to this one.

Mr Cousens: Aren't you something.

The Acting Speaker: Would the member direct his comments to the bill, please.

Mr Cousens: In fact, you're absolutely right, Madam Speaker. I apologize for going off on that little diversion.

But I was in particular trying to illustrate that the Minister of Finance has obstructed the work of the opposition by virtue of the way in which information has become unavailable on the social contract. The moment anyone tries to find information out about it, you just get no answer.

I wrote a letter. First of all, I put order paper questions in which I tried, as Finance critic for our party, to gain access to the contracts and agreements of the social contract, wanting to at least go through them on a personal basis to see what they contained, what they didn't contain, how consistent they were with one another, whether or not they really did achieve the goals the government had hoped they would, whether or not you had different standards for different groups. Having a certain belief that things wouldn't be perfect, I wanted personally to go in and have a look at it with my staff. So, having tried everything, this is the letter I wrote on August 17, in which I said:

"On July 20, in a meeting with representatives of the Minister of Finance's staff, I was assured that the contracts that had been made would be available to my office. On July 29, I filed a request via the order paper for information so that I could see the contracts. During the week of August 3, I again through my office made a request of the social contract secretariat to review the contracts the following week. Each and every attempt to review these contracts has been denied by the Ministry of Finance."

So in trying to do one's job on an issue that's current today, the social contract, which is still going on and is still not working and on which I still have many questions, I can't get any answers. It's so frustrating and infuriating --

The Acting Speaker: Excuse me. To the member, could you connect this to Bill 17, please.

Mr Cousens: I sure can, because that's exactly the fear I have when the government sets up another bureaucracy, known as the Ontario Financing Authority. That's exactly what they're going to do: They're going to prohibit opposition and other members from gaining access to that information. That is the lunacy of this Queen's Park these days. The government moves information and power and responsibility away from a minister into a secretariat, into a crown corporation, into an agency, and then it disappears. It disappears so that members of this House can't deal with it.

That is in fact a major problem, because we're elected as members to deal with the public will, the public good, what's going on. When you're stonewalled, when you can't get through -- there are so many instances that we have had where we've tried to get information.

Just think of the days when the New Democrats were in opposition and demanding a freedom of information act so that they could then say, "We could get into the ministry so that we could get to something." Now we have the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The bills I have had to pay that come out of my own funds to pay for information, and when you finally get it -- you don't know whether it's going to be any good or not until you see it, and most of what I've ever asked for hasn't been of the kind of use that I'd hoped it would be. Therefore, you keep exploring and looking so that you can get on top of it, but because information is not readily available if you don't ask the exact right question, you get nothing.

Now what we're going to have -- and we have it in spades with the freedom of information act. It doesn't work, it's expensive to use and it's very, very cumbersome to try to get through it to get to the bottom of anything. I then say that a concern that is uppermost in my mind is the inability for members of this Legislature to interrogate and to find out what is going on within these different crown corporations.

I see it as another example of the government shoving accountability away from itself to these crown agencies to circumvent the involvement of members of the opposition. The last thing they want to do is have the member for Mississauga South, Mrs Margaret Marland, raising questions on housing matters. If they can, they'll just keep them buried for years.

The problem is that people like Mrs Marland and members of our caucus will not let up. There is a determination to stay with it, and eventually we get to the bottom of what's going on. But I'm concerned that it's not only a removal of information from the legislative process; it's a removal of accountability.

What we're also seeing are the decisions being moved to another level. I don't know who is going to make the decisions now so that when the local hospital in every community, through its agencies and the health committees that they have -- when they make a request for moneys, is it in any way going to be blocked through this financial authority? If a school board is looking for funds, if a municipality is in need of certain financial support or assistance or grant structures or special plans and programs, if the universities are also on the search for certain moneys along the way and commitments have been made by government, is there a guarantee that the moneys they've requested are going to be forthcoming through these crown agencies?

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But you see, by again moving them away from the ministry directly, which can do it right now without establishing these crown corporations -- then these municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals, known as MUSH when people talk about it in Queen's Park jargon, would be able to know they have a direct contact with the ministry officials. Now it just becomes another layer of bureaucracy, another level that they have to go through. It is an example where the government has again just bureaucratized things even further.

I also find it so ironic that the government can, in the same ministry, stand up in this House, as Mr Laughren did last week, and require businesses that are on the public stock exchange, listed in the Toronto Stock Exchange, to list the salaries, incomes, compensation packages and benefits of the top executives of those companies that are so listed. That becomes a way in which the government wants to universalize this availability of information, which is true in the States. But the same government, under the Liberals just a few years ago, went and closed off that information as to what the salaries were of the public service in the province of Ontario. So no longer in the annual report is there a listing by name for each deputy minister and assistant deputy minister and other staff at the senior levels. No way is that public information. The government of Ontario is going to come along and require of the private sector all kinds of information about the salaries of executives in business and industry, and yet the government doesn't do the same kind of service here in the province of Ontario.

Mrs Marland: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I do insist that the member for Markham is making remarks in this debate that are important to everyone in Ontario, and I think there should be a quorum in this House.

The Acting Speaker: Could the Clerk please determine if a quorum is present.

Senior Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals: A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

The Acting Speaker: A quorum is now present. We will resume the debate on Bill 17. The member for Markham.

Mr Cousens: If the government is going to require private sector companies to make public the salaries, perks and compensation packages of their executives, why then does not the government do the same with its own senior staff? I don't expect you to answer that, but I had tabled that as a question on the order paper that afternoon on October 18 when the minister made this special announcement, which has not received any support from anyone that I know.

I have also asked that the Minister of Finance release the details of salaries and any other compensation and benefits paid to all deputy ministers and each of the four highest-paid public servants in the province of Ontario in each of the ministries so we can get that from them.

You know something? Isn't it terrible that I had to come along and start asking for that this way when he's coming along and making the demands in other ways? I think we're going to extend that so that we can get the salaries of union heads and some others as well. But, you know, it's a double standard, and we've become somewhat accustomed to it from the NDP government in Ontario. They'll expect one thing from people outside of this place, but they will not reciprocate.

That is part of the frustration we have in dealing with the introduction of another authority such as the Ontario Financing Authority. The Ontario Financing Authority will just become another one of those pocket organizations of our Treasurer and the Ministry of Finance and again ceases to really serve the needs of the people of the province of Ontario because you don't need it in the first place, because you don't need any legislation in the first place, because the ministry would be able to continue to provide these things, these services, these moneys through the existing channels that are already existing, because the government already has the staff and people who are doing it already without coming along and moving them out of that ministry into other places and saying, "Oh, look at that; we've reduced the public service and we've found a new way of funding things." What they've done is take it off the books. I don't find it palatable at all and I will fight introduction of this part of the bill.

The second thing that I have concerns with is the Ontario Realty Corp. This is one of the other corporations that's being established by the government in order to set up a continuation of the whole land corporation that was existent before. What we're talking about there is all the lands that are owned by the province of Ontario which the government at some point decides to sell. I can understand that the government's not going to hold on to it for ever. But now what they're doing, instead of accepting the fact that the Ontario Land Corp, which is already working and running along, we're changing the name and it's now going to become this, the Ontario Realty Corp. And what's going to go on there? Well, I can see the government wanting to get rid of certain properties, and I accept that. But I have to ask you, first of all, is it needed? The answer is no. We have a service already providing it. So why come along and change it and give them even more powers?

The problem we have is that once it's further removed from the Legislature it's going to be an awful lot like the Ataratiri project, an example of where the government, in its great wisdom when the Liberals were in power -- and it doesn't take much to go back to the days when the government decided that this was going to be a new non-profit housing project and the government had decided that that 80-acre site down on the Don River would house a community of some 12,000 people. They were going to establish a partnership with the city of Toronto. This would become the Ataratiri project. I think it's a Huron word meaning "village beside water."

The government then was going to give a guarantee of some $800 million to the city for the purchase of the land and the money was to be recovered through the sale or lease of some 7,000 housing units. It all had good mathematics and arithmetic to David Peterson and the then Liberal Party. What happened is that once they started looking at the land they realized that the site was unacceptable. They looked at it and they realized immediately, once they had the land, that they were going to have to flood-proof it, and that was going to cost another $15 million. No one had thought of that beforehand when the Liberals were coming up with the proposals for the Ataratiri. But suddenly it became necessary that it had to be sound from any flooding of the Don River.

Approximately $3 million an acre was paid for the Ataratiri site, which had some 500,000 cubic metres of polluted soil. The cost of cleanup for this polluted soil escalated to $1 billion from the originally anticipated $32.5 million. What kind of a percentage increase is that from $32.5-million expected cleanup cost to over $1 billion for the Ataratiri project alone? A UDI study of that project showed that the cost per unit of the project, including the cost of the environmental cleanup, would average $250,000. The completion of the project, according to the same study, said that it would have risen to an over $2-billion price tag from the original estimated cost of $444 million.

What we ended up having was an example where the government started meddling in the private sector. They came along with their fancy dream -- David Peterson, Chaviva Ho_ek and the Liberals of the day -- made their magnificent announcement of this new Ataratiri project. Then what we end up having now is, the project is cancelled, it's financially unfeasible, the project is scrapped --

Mrs Marland: Chaviva Ho_ek is now advising Mr Chrétien.

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Mr Cousens: That's right. As my friend Mrs Marland, who is also our Housing critic, probably one of the most influential people in our party on housing matters, and certainly the government listens to what she has to say -- in fact, I can point to one of the press releases I happen to have here from the member for Mississauga South that ties in to the whole problem of government meddling around in things it doesn't understand.

Let me just give credit to this noble lady for the way in which she called for a probe of the Ataratiri project at the time:

"PC Housing spokesperson Margaret Marland today called for a committee of the Legislature to conduct a full investigation into the Ataratiri fiasco. The aborted public housing project has already cost taxpayers more than $300 million, and some estimates suggest the final price tag may reach $1 billion.

"'Ataratiri has been an obscene waste of taxpayers' money, initiated by the Liberals and kept alive by the NDP for another 18 months after they took office,' said Marland. 'It's unacceptable that they pour hundreds of millions of dollars of the people's money down the drain and then be allowed to wash their hands of the whole thing. They must be held accountable.'"

That's what Mrs Marland said back on January 14. That's what I'm saying is going to happen with the realty corporation. It's just one great opportunity for the government to shove things into other agencies and crown corporations to get rid of them, rather than deal with them here, where they should be dealt with. You have a marvellous way, when you're in opposition, of saying it has to be one way; when you're in power, it becomes very much a different story.

This is an example of how the government has gone sour, how it's gone wrong, and why we have nothing but distrust of a government that is going to try more such kinds of projects. The government comes along and says: "Aren't we full of good intent? Aren't we going to do something?"

The very opposite happened in the UK. Margaret Marland -- there's another Margaret in the world besides you; I mean Margaret Thatcher.

When Margaret Thatcher came to power in the UK, one of the major thrusts that she had in government was to divest the government of all the lands it owned. What we're into now in Ontario is the opposite. We have Mr Rae and his government with their social policy buying up land and building social housing. What we drew to the attention of the government just a few days ago in the Legislature is the cost of that.

We had one example where a shelter cost $1.3 million for four units. When you start looking at the cost of it, the cost is well over $300,000 per unit. If you start taking the interest on that alone, you have a sufficient amount that if you even just gave a subsidy of some kind to people in already existing rental accommodation that's available in Toronto, you wouldn't have to build more accommodation and then subsidize it and carry it and pay for the money on an ongoing basis.

What will probably happen is that with this government's policy of buying up land and building subsidized housing, in five or seven years one of the things it's going to have to sell off through the Ontario Realty Corp is all this land that it's building up now for affordable housing.

Government has no financial accountability, this government in particular. The Liberals were very much the same in the way they set up the Ataratiri project. This government's own housing program is one that is going to be doomed to defeat and will be on the selling block before the century is over, as the government really can't --

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): They make the Liberals look good.

Mr Cousens: It's hard to say that, but it's true.

There they are, setting up another bureaucracy, and continuing to pour money into it now. People think wrongly that the government is trying to balance the books right now, with its $10-billion-plus deficit this year, and it will be over a $10-billion deficit, even though their own forecasts would make you believe it's less. The government continues to spend loads of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, on this whole affordable housing policy.

Mr Murdoch: What's the auditor saying?

Mr Cousens: My honourable friend behind me is pointing out the auditor's report on non-profit housing. He has come out and soundly criticized this government for the way in which it has no controls. In fact he says, in assessing the Ministry of Housing's controls over project selection and development and controls over completed projects, that it's just a total mess.

He says, "The controls in place to ensure projects were only built where needed and at a competitive cost were less than satisfactory."

He says, "Need and demand studies were not thorough, and so a number of projects were allocated to communities with high vacancy rates and little demand for 'market rent units.'"

He says, "Despite a significant decline in land prices and construction costs...the cost of projects approved...in 1990 and 1991 continued to increase...."

He says, "In the absence of competitive procurement practices, the allowable maximum unit price became a target price for developers rather than a ceiling...."

Despite being "satisfied that income verification procedures were properly performed," the auditor was "not sure whether the most needy were being housed in an equitable and sufficient manner." He said the potential savings to the ministry if adequate controls are implemented stand to be over $264 million.

When you start talking about this government setting up another bureaucracy known as the Ontario Realty Corp, it just becomes another way for it to sidestep accountability, responsibility, fiscal reality. Because the Speaker has not allowed me, I can't call this a fraud; I can't call the government liars, cheats. What else did the thesaurus say I couldn't call them? Deceitful, tricksters, imposters. I will not call the government that, but I can't think of a better word to use.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Markham, please be careful in your comments.

Mr Cousens: I understand, Madam Speaker. I'm on the edge, aren't I, where it might upset you, and that is not something I want to do.

When I start talking about the creation of the Ontario Realty Corp, it is to me an example of the government again trespassing, cutting into an area where it doesn't need to. There are already the mechanisms to deal with land and selling of land, and to come along and have this whole process established so that it's one step removed from the Legislature and reporting only through the minister is a way in which they are going to have it easier to cover up the data and the information from criticism and investigation by opposition members.

That's how our system works. Our system is effective only when the opposition is able to ask questions and is able to deal with information. Because we can't get information, because it's a massive coverup within the bureaucracy, because it's so buried within the different agencies, it then becomes all the more impossible for us to deal with what's really happening there.

The Ontario Transportation Capital Corp: Now, I have mixed feelings from people who have talked to me about how wonderful it is that your transportation corporation is going to be involved with the construction of Highway 407. I, for one, am pleased to see 407 accelerated. It is a major highway that's needed, and indeed other major highways are needed across Ontario. We can't continue to just close our eyes to the need for infrastructure. We need infrastructure. It's the way in which people travel, it's the way commerce works, and without 407 until now it's been a loss of tremendous amounts of money for the greater Toronto area and for the province of Ontario as whole. To have 407 built will be a tremendous boost to our long-term economy, for tourism and for other reasons.

The problem we have around it is that already I have the sense that 407 is becoming another one of the examples where, because it's going to be built by outside resources -- if that's a faster way of building it, I'm willing to accept that, but are there changes being made in the overall planning process for 407? I am led to believe that 407 is being reduced in size from a 10-lane to an 8-lane highway. I have been led to believe that some major intersections are being eliminated, already being cut back. I don't want to tell you which ones, because I haven't had a presentation by the ministry, but it would appear that because of -- I don't know, I haven't been told; I'm finding it out through other sources -- that these changes are being made.

There isn't any reporting through the Legislature. It's going off to a separate area of the ministry and into another agency maybe, so that we, as legislators, will have to work all the harder to find out what's really going on. Then, when we do find out and don't like it, we have less we can do about it. We have less pressure we can put on the minister, because the minister is going to say, "Oh well, talk to the chairman of the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp" -- or chairwoman; I don't care who it is. I know I'll have less contact through the ministry itself in order to deal with it.

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Recently one of the people in my community was suggesting that if it were possible, with the surplus lands around the building of Highway 407, that some of those lands could be accessible for nature walks and for people trying to go through the Rouge Valley, to build connectors between some of the sections that aren't otherwise available, it would be wonderful.

If we had some way of dialoguing and talking with the people who are planning this highway, we would be able to interface more effectively with them. Everybody benefits by the building of a new highway. The people who build it will benefit, and over the long term our people in Ontario will benefit through improved commerce, trade, tourism and other factors.

In the meantime, the planning process has to be open and available so that all of us who are interested and want to be involved have a way of participating. What is happening now is that the decisions are being made in areas where we cannot reach them, cannot find out, cannot determine. You say the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp is going to help build Highway 407. I'm happy about that, and I'm glad it's going to be accelerated. I've said that from the beginning.

Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): But.

Mr Cousens: Yes, but: But I'm concerned we're going to have a toll on it. The group that is going to levy the toll is not going to be the Ministry of Transportation; it's going to be this corporation. If we have some problems with the information it's gathering and how much it's charging, are we going to be able to do anything in the House?

I can just hear the answer. We'll say, "We're concerned that the toll rates on 407 are too high and we would like to ask the minister if there's anything he can do about it," and the minister's going to say: "I can't answer that question. That's under the auspices of the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp, and I'll have to refer that to them. If you want to ask them, write them a letter." Then it's just like writing a letter to some of the other people who don't answer you.

I want the people who are responsible for the big things in our province to be accountable to the Legislature, not accountable through to some other level. I want it so that if you need an answer and the answer is in the ministry, the minister can be forthcoming with the response.

That has to be fundamental to a working democracy, and as democracy is now being eroded, the power that once resided in the chamber of the province of Ontario is now being taken away gradually, systematically and being passed through to other levels. If you see that as progress, I see it as an erosion of democracy at the same time. I see it as a total undermining of democracy when you start setting up this arm's-length process. I see it as a way for the government to evade responsibility. I see it as a way for the government to cover up what it's really doing.

Therefore, I oppose the section as it pertains to the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp too, because we could get all we want in the building of new roads and setting up of new systems, have a toll collection system and anything else we want to do within the transportation network of the province, through the existing Ministry of Transportation without having this new agency formed.

Mr Sutherland: No.

Mr Cousens: I know that, and you say no. Kim, I have to tell you, you believe the government line; it's just fine that you do. You don't need to have it. If you want to have new bills that give special powers to the minister to carry on what he's doing, do it within the existing system. Don't start creating another system that runs outside of the Legislative Assembly. That is the damnable thing about the creation of these four crown agencies.

Now we come to the fourth one, and I'm running short of time: the Ontario Clean Water Agency. Clean water has to be one of the things all of us in the province of Ontario have taken too much for granted. We want to make sure that everyone has clean water, and I have been a supporter of the MISA guidelines and the efforts through environmental acts. We have, through cooperation in joint Canadian and American laws, designed ways to protect our water. This is something that's gone back through Liberal, Conservative and now NDP administrations: doing everything we can to protect the Great Lakes. Clean water is something we want to have.

But the question I raise is user fees. If the Ontario Clean Water Agency is another way of describing the beginning of a tax on business and the consumer for the use of water, that's probably more close to what this agency is all about. If the role of this agency is to manage and protect our water resources, why impose a water tax? Will these funds go to clean up our water resources? You certainly cannot buy more clean water with a user fee. What you're trying to do with this bill is find another way of imposing a tax on users.

Mr Sutherland: Oh, come on.

Mr Cousens: Well, it is. There is no doubt that this clean water agency has the power to start collecting money for water, till now free. Industry's spending money cleaning it up, and now there's going to be a user fee; now you're going to have a another way in which business and the private enterpriser are going to be paying for water. All I'm saying is --

Interjection.

Mr Cousens: We've got to find ways of paying for it; I'm willing to pay for anything. But don't hide it. Don't be so hypocritical and deceitful and fraudulent that you put it in a bill and then say you're not doing it.

The Acting Speaker: Order. The member for Markham --

Mr Cousens: That's the problem. That's why it's a fraud. So much of what you're doing is that out of one side of your mouth you say one thing --

The Acting Speaker: I caution the member for Markham.

Mr Cousens: I thank you, Madam Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: Would you please conclude.

Mr Cousens: We want a good, clean Ontario, but all we're going to do is find more taxes, more cost, more bureaucracy, more government.

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: The member was making a direct comment about the members opposite that I think was unparliamentary. I believe he owes the members a direct apology and should remove those remarks from the record.

The Acting Speaker: Would the member care to withdraw?

Mr Cousens: I know I offend the member because I call it hypocritical. Did I say you specifically were hypocrites? I don't think I did, but if I have used a word that is unparliamentary and I've offended one of the honourable members by using that, I withdraw it. My point is that I want very much to make the case that this bill is not necessary and it is a duplication of things that have already been done.

The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. Are there any members who wish to participate in questions and/or comments? I recognize first the member for Oxford.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: This is a terribly important issue, and the government should be keeping a quorum. I don't believe there is one.

The Acting Speaker: Could the clerk please determine whether a quorum is present.

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

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

The Acting Speaker: A quorum is now present. The member for Oxford has the floor.

Mr Sutherland: Madam Speaker, do I get my full two minutes as a result of the interruption by the member for York Mills? Thank you.

Once again the member for Markham is trying to put forward opposite arguments, as he does on many occasions. We hear the member for Markham say that the government should work with private business, should go into more cooperative ventures, should do that type of thing. We have a proposal here through the Capital Investment Plan Act to start those types of ventures, to have those ventures developed and created. But no, the member for Markham doesn't support that because he thinks it's distancing these things from the Legislature. There are all kinds of accountabilities set in place.

The member for Markham wants to have it both ways. Unfortunately, the member for Markham, who seems to live in Utopia, doesn't realize you can't have it both ways. What these capital corporations will do is allow for a more flexible and businesslike environment to occur, allow for joint venture partnerships to occur, which he has promoted in the past.

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At the same time he says, "I want Highway 407 built," he says "but I'm concerned about the tolls that may be put on" or "but I'm concerned about the way it's done." The member for Markham knows full well that no individual government, no matter who's in power, has the money to allocate in one year or in two or three years to pay for the cost of building the entire Highway 407. We have an innovative setup here that will allow this to be constructed far more quickly.

With respect to his comments about the clean water agency, as I've stated in committee and have stated here several times, local municipalities will set water rates. The clean water agency's purpose is to work with municipalities, to examine conservation methods to ensure that they can have the most effective clean water and sewer systems possible.

The Acting Speaker: I recognize the member for Yorkview.

Mr Turnbull: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I don't think you have a choice but to do a rotation.

The Acting Speaker: I want to explain that I did not see the member for York Mills. I do have to go in rotation if the members are standing. I will recognize the member for York Mills at this time.

Mr Turnbull: My colleague the member for Markham brought to this debate some very salient points, which I notice the government members have decided they want to disagree on, as is their wont. The fact is that there is no reason that has been demonstrated why you need separate crown corporations in order to enter into joint ventures with the private sector.

More than this, I would hazard a guess, and I don't think I would be wrong on this, that there is no member of the government currently on the benches who has ever spoken to a senior banker or a senior lender or any of the organizations who would likely go into these joint ventures on this issue about whether they need the structure of a crown corporation to enter into these agreements.

I have done this, and I would suspect my colleague from Markham has done this, so when he brings this knowledge forward, I think the government should at least listen. We do have the business experience that they are lacking. When the government was in the hands of the Conservatives, this was an extremely well-managed province, which laid down a significant amount of infrastructure which has not been regenerated since then. That's one of the basic problems we face.

I would ask that perhaps the members of the government at least go out and speak to the bankers and speak to the companies who would enter into these construction contracts and find out whether this is indeed the case, because I think they will find that they are wrong in their assertions.

Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): While I have great respect for the member for Markham, this time I've got to say that I didn't enjoy his speech. I didn't like what he had to say. I thought it was a total misrepresentation of what's going on here. When you talk about Bill 17, you need to talk about --

Mr Cousens: Madam Speaker, on a point of order: He says I have given a total misrepresentation of this, and I take strong exception to that. I would ask him to withdraw that.

The Acting Speaker: Could I ask the member to consider the words that he is using, please.

Mr Mammoliti: I could consider that, yes. I do withdraw that.

Mr Cousens: On a point of order --

The Acting Speaker: The member, could you clarify? Have you withdrawn?

Interjections.

Mr Mammoliti: Madam Speaker, I've got to tell you that this speech, as I said, doesn't please me very much and I'll tell you very shortly, very quickly, why it doesn't please me. Not once in the hour that the member for Markham has spoken did he talk about the amount of work and jobs this will create.

He didn't talk about the amount of people who came out in front of the standing committee on general government -- that's the committee that dealt with this -- and who were repeatedly asked how they felt about this bill, Bill 17, and consistently, from construction workers and labourers, and even colleagues of his in the business community, after being asked, consistently told us that this will create literally thousands of jobs, immediate jobs, jobs that will, yes, after asked, help the economy and get the economy rolling as it should.

Not once did he mention that in his speech and for that reason, I am not happy with the speech. I hope that in his response he will talk about the thousands of jobs that Bill 17 provides for Ontarians.

The Acting Speaker: It would be very helpful if members could direct their comments through the Chair. In rotation, I recognize the member for Bruce.

Mr Elston: I would like to --

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): Point of order, Madam Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: Just a moment. A point of order, the member for Downsview.

Mr Perruzza: The point of order is this: I believe you go in rotation three times. I think you've heard three speakers, and now you give two minutes to the member to wrap up and I think you're giving one extra opportunity.

The Acting Speaker: I believe we are in order. The member for Bruce.

Mr Elston: Just a point that's of interest to me with respect to the remarks by the member for Markham, and that is with respect to his analysis of the Ataratiri program. I don't care to get into the issues about expense and all of the issues around disagreements about whether it should have been done or not, but I do want to raise a particularly interesting concern from a public policy point of view.

The public policy that I think has been missed in all of this, while we examine the expense or alleged expense around the project, is the fact that we now know there are contaminated soils in that area, that as a result of the project not going on those soils remain, that a cost for cleanup that is associated with those soils remains outstanding, and it seems to me the environment has not been improved one iota once it was decided not to go forward with the project.

If this bill, which is designed to do certain things that the member for Markham doesn't agree with, which raises concerns in my own mind, allows something to be done when a discovery of contaminated soils like that of Ataratiri has come to the public attention, if they can go forward and make a cleanup as a result of just the public policy of eliminating an environmental problem, then perhaps some steps will have been taken in a positive fashion. Right now the way things are, nothing is being done with that particular problem and it remains as a problem.

The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. The member for Markham has two minutes to respond.

Mr Cousens: I'll start with comments in the reverse order. The weasel words from the member for Bruce are just the kind of thing that gets people upset about what goes on in the Ontario Legislature --

Mr Mammoliti: Point of order, Madam Chair.

Mr Cousens: Come on, sit down. Just take a powder.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Yorkview on a point of order.

Mr Mammoliti: "Weasel words."

Mr Cousens: The fact is, he said there's an alleged expense. There's a cost of cleanup and there's a cost of working out --

The Acting Speaker: Could you resume your seat.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. The member for Yorkview on a point of order.

Mr Mammoliti: "Weasel words": Is that parliamentary, Madam Chair?

Mr Perruzza: Ask him to withdraw.

Mr Mammoliti: And ask him to withdraw, please.

The Acting Speaker: To the member, I would ask you not to be provocative. It would be helpful if you could use other words.

Mr Cousens: The first thing is that you call it an alleged expense. There's a huge expense that the Liberals incurred and the government has incurred around Ataratiri.

Mr Perruzza: Point of order.

Mr Cousens: What a waste of time you guys are up to. First of all, you don't know how many are going to speak and now you're interrupting in the short time we have.

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The Acting Speaker: The member for Downsview on a point of order.

Mr Perruzza: Madam Chair, I thought you stood in your place and you reprimanded the member for Markham for using the words "weasel words" in referring to a Liberal. Now, this is a Conservative referring to a Liberal as using "weasel words," and I believe --

The Acting Speaker: The member does not have a point of order. Will the member please take his seat.

Mr Perruzza: -- my colleague the member for Yorkview asked that the comment be withdrawn. In fact, I believe you asked the member to withdraw but he hasn't withdrawn it, so I would ask that he withdraw that remark.

The Acting Speaker: Will the member please take his seat. We have dealt with that point of order. I would now give the member for Markham at least one minute to respond.

Mr Cousens: Okay, so there are costs and everybody is tired of politicians just constantly playing games and that is what you're doing in this House right now. You can't even face up to it and you're taking the time of the House. But that's your privilege as a member, so I respect that.

You did raise one point earlier about the 26,000 jobs. We're delighted to see the jobs, but you didn't have to create this legislation in order to create the 26,000 jobs through the speedy building of Highway 407. That could all be done through existing ministries and jobbing out of these things.

As for the member for York Mills, I think he touches on the real core point of this bill, and that has to do with the fact that the legislation isn't needed in the first place. The legislation is not required to build relationships with business and other sections; you can do this through existing ministries. The fact is that this government has not been building the bridges of friendship with other groups. You can't operate in isolation and that is the severe problem this government's all about.

The member for Oxford, I appreciate your remarks. The problem is that we want to see the government work more with the private sector and you can do it without having to create Bill 17. You don't have to do it this way; you can do it other ways. By the way, when you said Markham is Utopia, you're right. It is a great place to live and I'm glad to represent it.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you to the member, his time has expired.

Mr Turnbull: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: The government is not maintaining a quorum. This is a very important issue involving taxpayers' dollars.

The Acting Speaker: Would the Clerk please determine if a quorum is present.

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

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. We will resume the debate on Bill 17. Are there any further members who wish to participate in the debate? I recognize the member for Bruce.

Mr Elston: I rise today to speak on this issue to raise some concerns about the type of activity that's going on, not to stop the process that has been under way now for some time under the auspices of what was formerly known as the Treasurer of Ontario. His name has been changed to protect him, I guess, for some reason. He's no longer Treasurer, he's the Minister of Finance. Since when did provinces have ministers of finance? This is starting to make us sound a little bit like some kind of a sovereign province, a little bit like Quebec.

It is very much a concern to me that we are now pretending to take on the trappings of a sovereign country. It isn't, in my view, appropriate that we act in a way different from what we are. We are an integral part of a Confederation and we don't have a finance minister in the manner that the federal organization has a finance minister. But here in this bill, there for all to see and sitting in the House generally on most days, is our Finance minister, which leads us to believe certain things are taking place which of course cannot be accomplished by the person occupying that chair.

Certain things are happening with respect to Bill 17, under which he has some authority and under which the current Finance minister is going to be able to delegate some of the jobs he used to do internally through his deputy minister.

It is a concern to me that what is taking place and what has taken place over the 13 years, roughly, that I've been in this House is that we have been slowly but surely delegating the work that used to be done under the auspices of the Legislative Assembly, the executive council and the Premier of this province to people who have no contact on a daily basis with the people's council chamber.

That bothers me a great deal, not because the people who will necessarily have to be appointed to the positions in those crown corporations are bad people, not because they have some evil desire to do something against the public interest, not because there is some conspiracy to steal away from the people their sovereignty, but just the fact that the people of the province have spoken, whether it was under Meech or under the Charlottetown accord vote or under the election of 1990 or currently under the election federally of 1993, about wanting to be intimately involved in the decisions that have remarkable cost implications for them. Taxes are a very big issue for the people of this province.

We are all running around as members talking about holding forums so that the people can talk to us and so that we as their representatives can come back and influence what is actually taking place in this province. Well, the chances for a member in this House to come back here and actually influence what is going to happen is being eroded every time we turn around.

This is another piece of legislation that does that, because the people who are responsible, although set out here as being the Finance minister, as being the Transportation minister, as being the Minister of Environment and Energy, as being the ministers of Education or Health in various parts of this bill, really aren't going to be involved in the day-to-day workings of these organizations, which will make decisions that will deal specifically with the cost implications for our constituents.

I don't like that as a process. I don't like it from the standpoint, and it's a very parochial standpoint, as the member for Bruce.

I can't go to the people of my constituency and tell them that I will be able to take their case directly to the Legislative Assembly to influence the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Education or the Minister of Transportation as to the adequate or inadequate nature of our capital structures in the province. I won't be able to go, as we have traditionally gone, to the Minister of Environment and Energy, as he is now called, to tell him or her, at whatever point we may have gone to see that minister, that the people of Sauble Beach need to have clean water guaranteed and therefore we need to have that area serviced with sewers and water. I can't do that because the removal of the minister from the actual dealings on a day-to-day basis with the setting of priorities is quite clearly established by this particular piece of legislation.

It isn't, in my view, going to be any better than it was before. In that regard, I very much agree with the member for Markham. I agree with him that there will be very few improvements on the manner of distribution of the funds that will be used to redeploy the capital dollars throughout the province of Ontario. I very much agree with him that there will be days when we will want to stand in this House and accuse the government of the day of having no priorities whatsoever, and the reply will be, as it has been from various ministers as we talk about their crown corporate responsibilities: "That's an arm's-length transaction. I have nothing to do with it. Don't talk to me. It's a matter that's in front of an independent board."

When we're looking at the future of our province and the investment in the infrastructure of our province, I think the people's council chamber ought to have a great deal to say about that, and more than just on one occasion a year as we take a look at the various estimates, or as the standing committee on agencies, boards and commissions goes over its analysis of what is taking place among the various agencies.

God knows that now the work that is up for those people to do is unfortunately so vast that they can choose only a handful of the over 850 crown corporations and agencies and boards and commissions which actually exist in this province. Some of those are so large that you could not possibly have a committee that would do a thorough analysis in one whole session's sittings. But here we are, adding four more corporations, or at least three new ones and continuing the Ontario Land Corp in a new format called the Ontario Realty Corp, so that the work of that standing committee, which is charged to monitor and review and carry on an analysis of the work of the crown corporations, agencies, boards and commissions in this province, will be just that much more difficult to complete.

I don't like the sense that the people's representatives can't bring their questions to this chamber and get an answer. I don't like the sense that the question of how much money is being put aside by each particular minister who is responsible --

Mr Cousens: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: In looking about the chamber, it would seem that there may be now but there has not been a quorum. Could you check to see if there is that? I think inasmuch as the member for Bruce is being complimentary to me, the least we can do is have a few people listen to him.

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The Acting Speaker: Would the clerk please determine if a quorum is present.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

The Acting Speaker: A quorum is now present. Thank you. Would the member for Bruce resume.

Mr Elston: As I was going to be saying, we are doing so many things with our institutions these days where the people can actually have a say that this bill just adds to the controversy about whether or not we really mean what we're telling our constituents. As I said before, we go back and we say they must, through the grass roots, give us an expression of what they want us to talk about here and how they want us to solve the problems. While we go around talking about grass-roots involvement, we then pass legislation like Bill 17, which really means that the representatives of our constituents have less ability to get at the real state of affairs.

There is a whole series of other items which I think should be uncovered in this that leads me to have some concerns. I am not as upset about the nature of the desire of the New Democratic Party government to get into joint ventures and to do other things in a new and interesting business relationship way, of trying to create new programs for redeploying capital dollars. I don't argue with having to update the way we do business in the province.

But I do argue with the way in which the organizations are being set up to do that. For instance, there was a great deal being made of the New Democratic Party government's reorganization of government. There was a wonderful series of press releases and public pronouncements by not only the member for Hamilton Mountain, the Chair of Management Board, and the Premier and the member who is now in charge of economic development in the cabinet; there was a whole series of things said about how few departments they were going to be actively pursuing, how few ministers they had. Of course, they reduced the number of ministers who actually sat and made decisions at the cabinet table, but the number of ministers stays the same and in fact there's one more now than there used to be because of the junior minister idea.

There was a great deal said about how reorganization was going to ensure that there was a flat-lining of the public service. Well, here is a real problem for me because, under this particular legislation, what we have done is created the equivalent of four new deputy ministers in the public service. You will see, if you take a look at the sections, that under the auspices of the ministers of Finance, Transportation, Environment and Energy and Management Board, there will be a series of four crown corporations created and, as a result of section 8, "The chief executive officer of a corporation has the powers of a deputy minister and the chair has the powers of a minister under the Public Service Act." What that really says is not just that they have those powers, but that they also have the ability to obtain the salary of deputy ministers.

In legislation, for the people who don't know the language, whenever we talk about some person occupying a position of authority, if it says, "If they occupy the position of authority as if they were a deputy minister," that's code for saying, "and these people will be paid as deputy ministers." They will be paid an equivalent salary; they will be paid the benefits; they will be given the benefits; they will be given the pension benefits and, in fact, under subsection 8(3), "The public service pension plan established under the Public Service Pension Act applies to the employees of the corporation." It is extremely interesting that section 8 really is code for, "We've set up a new government department."

But you know something? Interestingly enough, those people will not show up on the complement officially registered under the Chair of Management Board's report to the people of the province. There will be a reduction of some, I'm told, 3,000 people, public servants, who will be transferred out of their current positions in Transportation, Energy and Environment, Management Board and Finance. Those people will find their way into these crown corporations, supplemented, I am sure, by significant outside assisted appointments.

I mean to say in that regard that there will be members of the board, I'm sure, who have interesting connections with the political intelligentsia of the NDP organizations. There will be people on the boards of directors -- who, by the way, this bill says runs these corporations -- who will come from the New Democratic Party faithful. I'm not sure how broad a group that is now. Perhaps it'll be fewer to enumerate as the months and days go on, but I'm sure there will be someone who will be found to lead these as chairs and as co-chairs and as board members.

So it's interesting to me that as we analyse what this bill does and we read between the lines, there is significant building up of the public expense, because no matter where you put these people, they've got to be paid. Their benefits must be paid. Their pension plan contributions must be made on behalf of their employer. And you know something? In the end, all of this comes back to us.

The provision in Bill 17 that guarantees it is that the Minister of Finance must make the money available to these crown corporations to allow them to do what they are to do. If they are to buy our jails and courthouses, if they are to take over sections of our highways and enter into some kind of venture programs with the private sector, the money must come from somewhere, and the money must come ultimately from the taxpayers, by way of borrowings, if necessary, and God knows that in this province our borrowing record over the last three years has been an extremely interesting one indeed. In the House, I think yesterday, there was some allegation made by a member of the opposition Conservatives that we are now the single largest- borrowing government in the world. I don't know that that's true, but in any event, he's made the allegation; I merely repeat it for effect.

The problem is that no matter how we deal with our assets, if the realty corporation, for instance, is to buy from the government of Ontario buildings now owned by the government of Ontario, it must get the money from someplace, and where does it come from? These organizations are to be funded from money that is given to them by the Minister of Finance. And do you know that the Minister of Finance basically has the final veto over what sort of financial arrangements are made by that organization?

It's extremely interesting that at the end of the day, the sole responsibility for control of all of these crown corporations will fall to the ministers in charge. They're enumerated under the sections in this bill. But the responsibility for day-to-day management ultimately will be passed off in this place to that board chairman, to that chief executive officer, named as a deputy minister equivalent in this legislation, by the minister of the day. I think that is a sad day indeed, because the money that we will have borrowed under the auspices of the Minister of Finance to fund these activities will be somehow secreted off the ledger books.

And you know something? When the member for Scarborough-Agincourt stands in his place and is critical of the manner in which the Finance minister brings together his budgetary numbers and speculates about the inadequacy of his exposition on where his revenues are going to be coming from as he is critical of how the expenditures are enumerated, he will not now be able to talk about these crown corporation numbers, because those numbers fall off the books.

The issue for me is, why do we think we can get away with it? I hope in the end that the activities which are enumerated for the various crown corporations are not allowed to slip away from the totally consolidated revenue and expenditure plan for the province. No matter what is said, no matter how it is designed to be done, the effects of the work done by these crown corporations must be included in the full plan of the government of the day.

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I will be quite blunt about this. In some ways I am enamoured of the desire to try new forms of relationships between government and the private sector in coming up with the programs needed to put in infrastructure, I really am. But I'll tell you, I am interested in a different way in making sure that the people know that all these things are being done through the government. I'm not interested in trying to hide the results of these experiments. That, for me, is what has caused us so many problems in the past.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Considering that the member for Dufferin-Peel has brought some people from the Orangeville area and considering they're in this House at this time, I think we should have a quorum to hear the salient comments being made.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): I would ask the table to verify whether there is a quorum.

Senior Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals: A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.

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

Mr Elston: I may have to start at the beginning. In any event, my concerns are real, in the sense that I don't think anybody who is in public administration these days should try to hide anything from the people. The taxpayers are fed up. No matter how we deal with it, the taxpayers are going to have to pay for some of the expenditures that are made even if we come up with new and novel ways of joint-venturing the installation of some of our capital infrastructure.

There are some other interesting things in this act that need to be highlighted for the people, and here's the reason I was concerned about our reports being part of the public record. Under section 17.3 it says, "Despite the Financial Administration Act" -- this is an exemption from it -- "the revenues and investments of a corporation do not form part of the consolidated revenue fund."

In other words, you will not, Minister of Finance, have to report to the people the results of your experimentation. You will not have to file, as part of your full year's explanation of your record of financial investments, the activities of these particular crown corporations. I don't like that. If we're going to do it, I think everything should be above the board and should be available for people to see.

It's interesting as well that section 18 under the act really contemplates not just these crown corporations but anticipates that there will be others. Section 18 says there will be such subsidiaries -- I'm just paraphrasing to make it understandable -- as the Minister of Finance agrees there will be. The crown corporations can go out and set up any other subsidiaries that any organization created by this statute warrants.

That, for me, says it all, that we will be dealing with a series of spiralling and increasing accretions to the number of crown corporations and subsidiaries to these organizations. For me that is a concern, because the more you create, the harder it is to manage and the more difficult it is to control.

Section 19 is interesting. It goes on to say, "A recital or declaration in any resolution of a corporation that a transaction is for the purpose of carrying out the corporation's objects is conclusive evidence" that that is so. It basically says that if the corporation says it is, then it must be, and nobody can question it. I am concerned by that.

I am concerned by section 21, which says the province is authorized to raise funds for the corporations. Not only is it authorized to raise funds; in fact, that is what must occur to have anything go on with these corporations at all.

I'm quickly running out of time, and there are several sections I want to highlight. It's particularly interesting for me that this statute goes all the way back to April 1, 1993, as it applies to the Ministry of Education and Training with respect to the grants that have been given. It says under subsection 33(1), "A payment for capital purposes, made by the Minister of Education and Training to a school board, that is charged to an appropriation of the Ministry of Education and Training made for the fiscal year commencing on the 1st day of April, 1993, shall be deemed to have been a loan from the province to the school board if the payment was made in respect of one of the following..." and it enumerates, among other things, the capital grant plan of 1979. Of course, as everybody knows, particularly in our part of the country, those are the grants for building capital additions to schools and other things.

Basically, it means that those grants, up till now considered grants, are now going to be considered as loans. For me that is a bit of a problem, because the people who entered into the arrangements for the building of schools didn't always think about this as being loans.

Mr Sutherland: Tell the rest of the story.

Mr Elston: Oh, yes, there will be arrangements made for the repayments to be made. But you know something? It's going to cost us as a province the principal amount plus the interest. It is going to be an extremely expensive proposition; postponed, in some ways, to future years for others to pay off, but it will be an expense. It will be an expense which our children will not thank us for, in my view. In any event, let me say that they are changing the arrangements under which certain loans have been made to this point in time.

I'm very interested as well to indicate to you that under certain circumstances the Minister of Health now has an absolute veto with respect to the activities being carried on under the auspices of the Ministry of Community and Social Services. As long as those facilities under the Community and Social Services ministry are dealing with long-term care services, the Minister of Health will now be able to veto any of the activities that are ongoing.

Is that right? I don't think it necessarily is, because when I go and talk to the Minister of Community and Social Services about a problem with respect to one of those long-term facilities, that person is going to have to stand up and say, "I would have liked to do it, but the veto came down from the Minister of Health." The Minister of Health will say of course: "Well, my goodness me, that really was a recommendation to me from one of the capital corporations, and I'm not in a position to change it. It's just that it says in the act that I have some authority to deal with those issues."

In the last five or six minutes I have, I want to make a couple of other observations. The member for Markham had raised the issue of whether or not we are getting anything new, and the member for Oxford joined in a reply; he may speak later on. He basically said that things we're doing under this act could not be otherwise done, but if you go through and analyse the sections of the act which deal with the creation of these new capital corporations, you will notice that most of them are all referred back to particular existing provisions of government regulation and/or legislation.

For instance, under section 46, which deals with the clean water organization, I think -- sorry; it's actually part III under the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp. Section 46 says, "The approvals issued to the Ministry of Transportation pursuant to order in council 3426/92 that deal with class environmental assessments with respect to provincial highways apply to the corporation as if it were named in the approvals."

What it basically says is that these are just the successors in situation to the Ministry of Transportation, as is the case with the clean water agency, as is the case with the Ministry of Education. All of those carry on from where the organizations previously were. They take with them deputy-minister-status executive officers, take with them chairmen of boards and other things that existed previously.

For my money, it seems to me we ought to be very concerned that we find a way in this Legislative Assembly, in this people's council chamber, to bring these people back to us to account directly to us for their public activities. I repeat, I mean more than once a year when a cursory review is allowed of some of the estimates of some of the ministries. That for me is not acceptable.

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Something that I found very significant, by the way, when I was looking into this issue around the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp was subsection 47(4). Some of you will know -- Mr Speaker, you will, because you will have heard us talking about this -- we are concerned about the prospect of using photo evidence in trials for speeding convictions. It's the photo radar bill which is to be brought forward, I think, tomorrow in this House.

But here fully under section 47(4), hidden way back in the darker parts of the bill, someplace where most people never get to read, is a section that says that if you don't pay a toll -- by the way, everybody knows that tolls will be charged under these things -- all they've got to do is take a picture of your vehicle and you get to be convicted of an offence.

There are a couple of things you can raise as a defence to these, but the whole issue of photo surveillance as an issue in the province, to me, has not been dealt with. The whole legal ramification of that as evidence enough to convict a person of an offence, even a provincial offence, has not yet been fully and totally debated, and has not satisfied my curiosity as to how we make sure innocent people are not forced to pay big amounts of revenue for offences caused by other people. That can happen. People can borrow other people's cars and run the toll. Now a photo under this section is going to be sufficient, without that issue having been made carefully and most certainly clear in terms of its efficacy as a piece of public policy.

I'm concerned by that. I don't know that anybody else is concerned because it doesn't really deal with the essence of the bill, but it deals with the enforcement of some of the provisions which until now, in my experience here, are brand-new. Tolls are brand-new for me. They were not new for my great-grandfather, for my grandfather.

They were used to them in the good old days when they were building new bridges over newly opened territory. For instance, at Riversdale there was, I believe, the first toll bridge in Bruce county, from the good old days. It was built in that manner because people knew they had to have a way of getting some money into that part of the country so they could open it up. I understand that. But the advent of tolls in 1993 is something brand-new for me. It is something that is not particularly --

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): Haven't you ever travelled down to Washington?

Mr Elston: No, this is Ontario. Mr Mills asked me if I've travelled in the United States to Washington. This is not the United States. This is Ontario. There are no toll roads here. There are tolls to get out of the country to go to the United States over the bridges; they are privately owned. It's something brand-new, though, to have a means of communication from my town to some other town in my province requiring me to pay a toll.

I understand what is now transpiring, because people want the user fee to dominate almost every piece of public policy discussion. I don't think that's necessarily a good idea.

I am concerned by the fact that this photo surveillance stuff has got in here, as a matter of course, without us fully deliberating on the issue when it should be debated under photo radar.

There are a couple of other sections which quickly I must just highlight for you. Do you know there is an interesting thing that requires the crown corporations to pay any surplus money they may have if the Finance minister directs them to do it?

Basically he can say: "If you've got a few extra dollars to make my balance sheet look better at the end of this fiscal year, you pay me, and pay me before March 31. By the way, if you pay me," wink, wink, nod, nod, nudge, nudge, "I will give it back in the form of a loan on April 15." That for me is something that can corrupt the manner in which our accounts are shown.

There are so many things I haven't touched on but I hope in the next couple of minutes or so, in reply, that I will be able to add some more comments.

The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr Sutherland: I'd like to respond to several of the issues the member for Bruce raised and I appreciate him referring to specific sections of the act that he has concerns about.

First of all, he expressed concerns about not having direct accountability here in the Legislature in terms of the ministers, the ministers of Finance. He should be aware that many of the plans of these corporations -- business plans, corporate plans and, more particularly, capital plans -- will be approved by the treasury board before they are implemented. They will be approved by the treasury board, as other things are. He also needs to be aware that operating reports of the agencies will be reported in the public accounts reports, tabled and subjected to scrutiny.

He talked about things being secreted off. The member for Markham talked about trying to hide things. Everything here is very clear and up front and transparent. Legislation is coming here before -- discussions have already occurred with investors or the people who loan us money. I disagree that people are trying to hide specific things.

Another thing he talked about is the average citizen not being able to see what's going on. He needs to be aware that the Provincial Auditor will be auditing the accounts and financial transactions, not only of the main corporations; the auditor can also be appointed as the auditor for the subsidiary corporations.

He also has expressed some concerns about some of the loans-based financing. Let me just say that most of the agencies or boards of education were aware and understood the process. There was nothing going on there.

The point of the matter is that we have an innovative process here, a process that allows us to get on with work much sooner, and we have a very strong accountability framework to the government, to the Legislature and to the people of Ontario.

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I want to commend the member for Bruce's comments. He's absolutely dead on in terms of where this will lead in reporting to the Legislature. This is exactly like the Workers' Compensation Board. There is no question of that; it is set up exactly the same.

Mr Sutherland: No, it's not.

Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): It's not at all.

Mr Phillips: Anyone who believes it isn't has not come to grips with what a schedule 4 agency is. It's nonsense to think we will have the reporting any differently than from the Workers' Compensation Board. Anybody who paid any attention in the Legislature knows that when a question comes up about workers' compensation the minister says, "I'm sorry, this is an arm's-length, independent agency that makes those decisions and I'm not going to interfere in them." Make no mistake about it. The schedule 4 agencies are exactly that. We must not kid ourselves.

In terms of the debt they will incur, the biggest scam in this is where the province will now continue to spend $600 million a year on school capital, but guess what, folks? They're going to make the school boards go out and borrow the money. They're going to make sure the school boards have $600 million a year of debt on their books, but they're going to say to the school boards: "Don't raise any fuss about this. Whomever you borrow the money from, tell them the province will commit to pay the principal and interest on it. So don't tell anybody."

I will tell everybody out there that the province is borrowing $600 million. They're making the school boards put it on their books and they're going to attempt to hide the debt. But people aren't that foolish. They'll find out about it. Make no mistake: That's what this bill is all about.

Mr Stockwell: It's a con.

Mr Sutherland: It's a contract.

Mr Stockwell: It's a con.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West, the member for Oxford, there is a period which we call questions and comments. You have two minutes to express your opinions. Take advantage of it.

Mr Turnbull: I listened very attentively as the member for Bruce made his comments, and indeed he made some very important contributions to this debate. He spoke about the question of hiding debt and the auditor's concern with this. We hear from the amount of excitement that we stir up across the floor that the government seems to want to orphan that part of it. But the auditor very clearly indicated that he was dissatisfied with the books of this province because they have been shuffling debt around so that it doesn't show in the fiscal year.

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The member spoke about the horror of photo surveillance on toll roads. This is the worst horror you can ever imagine: that this government is engaging in the Big Brother campaign.

The member also spoke about the question of the auditor's concerns with the accountability of this agency, but at the end of the day I'm a little confused because I understand the Liberals are going to vote with the government on this bill. This is one of the problems Conservatives have. We take a very clear position and we stick with it and try to offer constructive solutions, but the Liberals are simply saying, "This is terrible; we don't agree with it."

We've heard an excellent presentation on why one shouldn't vote with the government on it. Notwithstanding -- and perhaps the member for Bruce could enlighten me on this. Maybe I'm incorrect, but I understand you are going to vote with the government on this. Perhaps you could spend a little time in your reply addressing that: after all of the concerns you've expressed, how you can possibly vote for this legislation.

Mr Mammoliti: I want to bring this home a little for the member for Bruce, and I want to extend a challenge to him if he wants to take it. That challenge would include his coming up to Yorkview.

Our two ridings are not similar in any way. I would think that if Mr Elston wouldn't mind taking up the challenge and come up to Yorkview and talk to one of a thousand construction workers who are literally sitting by a phone waiting for their bosses to phone to give them a job -- during the speech of the member for Bruce I didn't hear at all about the thousands of jobs that Bill 17 would create. For me, it's very upsetting. For the member for Yorkview -- that's me -- it's very upsetting to know that the member for Bruce doesn't want to talk to that person who is sitting by a phone waiting for his foreman to phone him and invite him out to a job.

If the member for Bruce was sitting in committee, he would know that almost everybody who came in front of that committee is in favour of this bill and is in favour of it the way it is. Why? Because it provides for immediate jobs, jobs that the member for Bruce has not mentioned.

The Liberals and the Conservatives today have been very consistent in terms of their message, and that is, hide behind the message around jobs; talk about everything else except the thousands of jobs that Bill 17 is going to create.

Mr Elston: For whom?

Mr Mammoliti: For whom, you ask, the member for Bruce? That individual who is sitting by a phone waiting for a call from his boss to go back to the construction site and to start working.

The Deputy Speaker: Time has expired. The member for Bruce, you have two minutes.

Mr Elston: I have nothing against public works. In fact, the real truth in this particular bill is that it won't create one new job. It won't allow one new job --

Mr Mammoliti: That's not true.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Yorkview, you had your turn.

Mr Elston: -- one new piece of capital construction anyplace in this province to be undertaken that couldn't have been funded in one program or another under the auspices of some initiatives by the various ministries. That, for sure, is the way it is.

They have built sewer works, they have built waterworks, they have built highways, they have built bridges, they have built schools, they have built hospitals under the various capital programs that have existed to this very day. Now, if somebody wants to do it a different way, that's fine, but to pass this piece of legislation is not creating any new jobs in Ontario. It will not say one more bridge should be built, because all the bridges to be built have been there to be built for eons. Anything that hasn't been built yesterday wasn't built because you didn't fund it out of your consolidated revenue fund. This thing only allows you new ventures; it doesn't create new jobs.

I'm in favour of jobs. I'm happy to see construction workers going back to work. I would be happy to see economic activity in this province that would allow various investors to do more in this province, not just public works. But for the member for Yorkview to say that this bill will create thousands of new jobs is a pure fabrication, because the work is there to be done; the problem is the money.

I want to raise another issue which I wasn't really able to do. Under section 57 in the clean water act, there has been an existing problem under Ministry of Environment and Energy assessments for waterworks in Ontario. The various municipalities, particularly small municipalities, are concerned about being billed for part of the operating expenses of the ministry that deal with assessments for waterworks operation. They don't think it's part of their activities, and they don't want to pay it. Section 57 actually allows the ministry to keep computing those costs and billing them out. That is an error.

The Deputy Speaker: Your time has expired. The member for Etobicoke West.

Mr Stockwell: This bill we're dealing with today is --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West has the floor.

Mr Stockwell: This situation we're dealing with here has nothing to do with the title of the piece of legislation, An Act to provide for the Capital Investment Plan of the Government of Ontario and for certain other matters related to financial administration. That is misleading.

What we have before us today is a program in which the government chooses to build and fund certain infrastructure capital improvements by a different process. That's it. It's that short and that simple.

The arguments that were made before are simply --

Hon Mr Cooke: Everything is simple to Chris.

Mr Stockwell: I see the member from Windsor's making that uncomplimentary suggestion. What I'm trying to point out to the member from Windsor and others is, this piece of legislation is very transparent. It's very obvious what you're trying to do.

What is being done is we have built bridges and we've built roads and we've built sewers in this province for the last 100 years, and we've done so under a process of capital improvements, a consolidated revenue account, and they get built.

That's what every piece of legislation in this place has been surrounded around when it comes to capital improvements. That's how we built highways, that's how we built bridges and that's how we built roads.

Hon Richard Allen (Minister without Portfolio in Economic Development and Trade): How did we build the colleges?

Mr Stockwell: How we built the colleges is in a similar vein.

Hon Mr Allen: No, it wasn't.

Hon Mr Cooke: Don't listen.

Mr Stockwell: If they'll allow me to finish, I'll deal with the college issue.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. The member for Etobicoke West, if you address the Chair perhaps you won't attract as many comments.

Mr Stockwell: I'll do my best to address the Chair.

What this government is caught between is the problem that it deals with the International Monetary Fund, the taxpayers and itself, and they're caught in a very difficult situation. They know full well that they're on credit watch, and if anyone read the Globe and Mail article that was in the Globe and Mail on Monday, October 18, Peter Cook, it tells you exactly the situation that this government is in.

He cites a report that wasn't done by any partisan political group, wasn't even done by anybody in this country. He cites a report that was done overseas in Europe with respect to borrowers and lenders. Do you realize -- and this is where this government is caught -- that this government we are looking at today is the fourth-highest borrower in the world? The only governments or agencies that in fact top them on this list would be Sweden, the European Investment Bank and one other, and I have lost the place, but Ontario is fourth, and in fact when it comes to borrowing, last year alone they went to the market for US$8.6 billion.

This government is caught in a very difficult situation, and the deficit has become one of the most important debates and issues surrounding this election and maybe for the last year and a half. So this government now must establish with the world currency markets and the traders and the bond agencies a certain degree of fiscal responsibility. That's what the social contract was all about. They said the social contract will be a three-legged stool, as I recall; I think they got everything right except the three legs. They went for $2 billion in new taxes and they went for $2 billion in reductions and $2 billion elsewhere.

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The point that needs to be made is that this legislation is being instituted to fool the taxpayer. Ask yourself, what if they wanted to build a bridge in Etobicoke or a road in Huron or a bridge in Grey or even in the member for Oxford's riding? They seem to have been able to do that for the last hundred years. Why is it we need these crown corporations?

In the 1993 budget brought forward by the Treasurer of Ontario for 1993-94, it says on page 3 -- anybody who has a budget, look on page 3 -- "excluding sovereign countries, Ontario has become the largest borrower in the world." You move on to the graphs. I think it's page 100; it's been a while since I flipped through it. They say, without debate, that these crown corporations -- they themselves have said it -- are going to borrow up to $800 million. Of that $800 million these four agencies are going to borrow, not one nickel is shown on their books -- not one nickel. Why do they not show the nickel or the $800 million? Because they're trying to convince the taxpayers in this province that the debt is $9.2 billion, not $10 billion, which it truly is.

Hon Mr Cooke: Even though it is written right in the budget? It is written right in the budget.

Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): Oh, come on.

Mr Stockwell: They suggest it's in the budget. When you read the budget book -- and I'm sure the Minister of Housing has not; otherwise, she wouldn't be cackling over there. If she had read the budget book, the Treasurer himself has told the taxpayers in this province his deficit projection is $9.2 billion, thoroughly excluding the $800 million it takes to set up these crown corporations. If you don't think that's deceitful, then I don't think you understand the term. That is trying to kid the folks into believing that the taxpayers' $9.2-billion deficit is truly that and not $10 billion.

The question stands. I ask these members here, why is it you state that the deficit is $9.2 billion, yet today you stand in your place and tell us it will be consolidated and reported? Why was it not reported in your own budget documents? Why? Because you're kidding the folks.

Interjection: They don't care.

Mr Stockwell: The fact is, they don't care. They look at you and tell you you're wrong when it's their own budget documents you're using to ask the questions. If I am wrong, why did the Treasurer say the $800 million will not be shown as consolidated debt? Why? Because they're kidding the people.

I look directly at the Minister of Education and say he's complicit in this. He's complicit in this trickery, this jiggery-pokery, because he has done a very similar thing with the school boards, and I know the school boards are offended. They are very offended. Granted, they agree and they're going to do it. What choice do they have?

I look at the Minister of Education directly. You're now telling the school boards that for capital improvements for schools, they should go out and borrow the money and you'll guarantee the loan. Why are you doing that, Mr Cooke? Why is Mr Cooke doing that? Because he's going to move $600 million of debt off the provincial books to the school boards, guarantee the loan and never tell the taxpayers that he's accruing $600 million of debt per year for the next who knows how long.

Let's add up the numbers now. We have a $9.2-billion admitted deficit. We have a new $800-million deficit in these crown corps. We have $600 million they're guaranteeing to school boards. What does that make the debt? Well, $9.2 billion and $800 million is $10 billion, so it's $10.6 billion. They're making it $10.6 billion.

Hon Mr Cooke: We are not doing school capital this year, so I don't know where you are getting the $600 million from.

Mr Stockwell: The Minister of Education has now suggested to me that they're not doing any capital improvements in their schools. You should have a meeting with your Treasurer, Mr Minister of Education, because he's not saying the same thing, that you're not going to go out and do those capital improvements.

Mr Phillips: Not doing the capital?

Mr Stockwell: Well, he says they're not doing it. Frankly, we've got Mr Treasurer saying one thing, we've got the Minister of Education saying another, and all they're doing is trying to contrive a story to attempt to fool the taxpayers.

We have now got a deficit of $10.6 billion. The Treasurer, not more than two or three weeks ago, came out and said, "Revenues are seriously down and the deficit may climb $500 million to $1 billion." Is the deficit $10.6 billion now? We can only assume it'll be $11 billion to $11.5 billion.

Mr Sutherland: That is, if nothing was done.

Mr Stockwell: Nothing will be done. Nothing will be done.

Interjections.

Mr Stockwell: This is a very interesting argument. We have the Minister of Education -- I'll paraphrase this argument -- claiming they're not going to do any capital work projects in education this year. That's what he said. He said they're not going to do capital works, so the stuff we had in the budget is just fantasy because they haven't made the announcement. His exact words were, "It doesn't take a genius to figure this out, because we haven't announced any capital works." Maybe they'll save $600 million because they're not going to do any capital works in education.

This is the point exactly. You can't get a straight answer from these people. You can't get an honest answer from these people. They put $600 million in the budget and then they start answering your questions with questions. Are they going to spend it or not? If they are going to spend it, they're going to go the route of asking the school boards to get a loan, and they'll guarantee the loan and move $600 million off-book.

It's the height of arrogance to suggest that the opposition doesn't understand or doesn't know what we're talking about, when it's nothing but trickery, nothing but smoke and mirrors. For goodness' sake, after what the auditor said about you people last week, you'd think you'd try and come clean for once in your life. But no, you've got to defer a $528-million teacher pension contribution to the following year and force the auditor to call you a bunch of fudgers when it comes to finances.

Mr Sutherland: He did not.

Mr Stockwell: Oh, he said it. He said it. If you read his report, he said it.

Mr Phillips: That's $5 million down the drain.

Mr Stockwell: You just gave away $5 million because you deferred a contribution to the teachers' pension fund by 31 days so you could get out of that fiscal year and not show it on your debt. It's that simple, and it cost us $5 million so you could do that. That is an unbelievable waste of taxpayers' money.

Hon Mr Cooke: We would have had to borrow the money anyway.

Mr Stockwell: The Minister of Education doesn't even understand that either. He says we'll have to borrow the money anyway. You paid a premium to defer it, Mr Minister, a premium to defer that for 91 days, because the teachers said they wouldn't do it unless you topped up the interest rate. That's what I mean. They don't get the facts straight, and then they tell you that you don't know what you're talking about.

We are faced with a piece of legislation that doesn't build one bridge more than was being built, doesn't build one road more than was being built.

The other point that needs to be made here is that they're only fooling the people to the tune of $800 million this year. Next year, it's $1.2 billion. The year after that, it's $1.8 billion that they're moving off the books. When you add the totals up, it comes to nearly $4 billion in three years that you're moving off-book so you don't have to stand up and defend your decisions to the people who matter the most, the taxpayers. Shame on you.

If you think these projects are important, if you think these programs should be done, then have the guts to stand up and defend the spending. That's all I ask. There may be a debate about whether or not we need it. There may be a debate about whether or not it's important. But have the guts to show it in your collective consolidated debt. Until you have the guts to show it in your collective consolidated debt, I don't want to hear about it because you're trying to kid the folks.

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I wanted to make a point. You may be kidding the taxpayers but you're kidding nobody else. You're not kidding me and I doubt very much if you're kidding anybody on this side of the House. The most important thing is that you're not kidding the people who lend the money, the bond-rating agencies, because they put you on credit watch.

Mr Sutherland: No one is trying to.

Mr Stockwell: I hear the member for Oxford saying, "Nobody's trying to." Then why is it not showing --

Mr Sutherland: We've sat with them; we've talked with them.

Mr Stockwell: Of course, you're talking to those people because they'll see through this like a pane of glass. They're going to see through it. It's John and Jane Doe, average taxpayers, who won't take the time to sit down and review your budget and won't have the capacity to spend a lot of time to figure out your jiggery-pokery. That's who they're trying to kid and they know that's who they're trying to kid.

Those world bond-rating agencies have put you on credit watch. Why? Because they see through this piece of legislation, they see through your deferral of the teachers' pension fund contributions, they see through your school boards commitment to capital projects, and they say, "You people are trying to kid us and the taxpayers."

The most insulting part about it all is that they get members to stand in their place who have bought the party line hook, line and sinker and spout out the first thing they were told to do: "Don't let them get to you. We'll just keep this charade up. We'll just keep kidding the troops and maybe if we say it long enough and maybe if we say it loud enough, somebody will believe us." That's the only thing you're trying to do.

The next thing they're going to do is this: and again, it's just so transparent, it's insulting; it's absolutely insulting, it is so transparent. Let me tell you the next thing they're going to do. When it rolls around to the next election, they're going to move a considerable number of people on the payroll of the province of Ontario off into these crown corporations.

You're going to say: "Why will they do that? Why will they move them off-book, these people?" I'll tell you why. They're going to move thousands of employees off the government payroll and put them in the crown corporations and then Robert K. Rae, QC, if he's still here, will stand up in the debate and say, "We've reduced the public payroll by this much," and you haven't reduced anything; you just moved them from here to here. The taxpayers are going to say: "Gee, that makes a lot of sense. Maybe Robert K. Rae is right." All you're doing is trying to kid the folks into thinking you moved the payroll.

But you know what, Mr Speaker, for 25 years the people of this province and this country have lived with this kind of foolishness. They've lived with this kind of foolish financial work, this foolish manipulation of the books, this foolishness to make them believe -- and I say this; it's my party: For Kim Campbell to stand there in the middle of a debate and claim she doesn't know what the deficit is is insulting to the taxpayers of this country.

It's just as insulting for you people to sit here answering your letters and reading your reports and not as backbenchers and not as cabinet ministers -- you people should know better. You people should understand this, and stand up and say, "No, I will not be party to trying to trick the taxpayers into thinking we're financial managers who know what to do with your tax dollars." You should be more ashamed than anyone else because you people would know this. You of all people should know this. But they are not doing it. So it makes you no better than any other government in the last 25 years that tried to fool the folks with these kind of decisions.

I don't let the Conservatives off the hook. The provincial Conservatives started this preflow stuff and they were at fault. That was wrong, just wrong, the preflows that they allowed to come into the budget and offset that year. The Liberals were wrong when they allowed the same thing to happen on preflows. They were wrong. That's not the way accountants should do the books.

But you know, you've taken it to an art form, folks. Not only have you done the same thing with preflows, not only have you deferred the pension contributions to the teachers' fund that cost the taxpayers $5 million -- for nothing; they got nothing for $5 million.

Young people are sleeping on the streets, and mothers and single parents are looking for day care. Do you know how many people are dying to get into colleges? Do you know how many people are looking for shelter? You fritter $5 million away for nothing, just to make yourself look good. Talk about a shameful act. There's no excuse. It's absolutely disgraceful that you people would fritter away $5 million in hard-earned tax dollars because it would make you look good. That's it. That's disgraceful.

These people who need these kinds of things saw that money wasted, but nobody understood it because it was a complicated process. Nobody understood that you owed the money on January 1, and nobody understood that you deferred the payment from January 1 to April 1, and nobody understood that you paid the teachers' pension fund a premium on the money borrowed so you could do that, because you didn't want to show the debt on that year's books, because you were embarrassed about how much it was, and it cost you $5 million to move it 91 days.

How many people today could use $5 million? How many communities could that help? How many housing projects could that develop? How many day care centres could that open? How many food banks would that continue, for $5 million? You should be ashamed of yourselves for ever letting that happen, absolutely ashamed of yourselves.

Mr Murdoch: It isn't funny. They're laughing.

Mr Stockwell: It's not funny. Do you know what it is? It's beyond funny. It's sick. It's absolutely sick. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that $5 million in taxpayers' dollars so needed today would be used to buy you a new suit, and that's what it comes down to. To make you look good to the public is all it was used for. It's not funny; it's sickening, absolutely sickening.

That's the way I chalk this thing up to some degree. It doesn't sicken me like that does, but it does make me feel that sometimes the caucus over there and the backbenchers and the cabinet ministers simply get a piece of legislation and, without thinking, without reading, without using the head that God gave you, simply hold their hand up and say, "This must be right; I was told it was." Because you're just kidding the people.

I heard some words used earlier, like "deceitful," "fraudulent" and so on and so forth. Let me tell you this: If you were trading on the Toronto Stock Market -- and I say this very carefully, Mr Speaker -- and you were reporting out to your shareholders on your consolidated debt and you omitted $800 million of your consolidated debt, I think you could be charged for fraud. I don't think an accountant would have signed your report, because that isn't legal.

You just spent a great deal of time last week telling private sector companies that they must make their books cleaner and that they must report out certain aspects of their business more appropriately. You lot here have the nerve to tell anybody they have to do that when you're skulking around moving $800 million here, $600 million to the boards of education, calling your debt $9.2 billion when in fact it sits at $10.6 billion. Have you no shame? Doesn't that strike you as a terrible, terrible double standard to impose on the private sector when you can't even live up to your own positions that you've argued? That's what I'm asking: Doesn't that seem like a double standard? Doesn't that sound like, "Do as I say but not as I do?"

I don't have any difficulty at all voting against this piece of legislation. I don't know where the Liberals are coming from and frankly I don't care. If they want to support this, so be it. I care about where the government comes from, because I think it's wrong to do this and try to trick the taxpayer.

The final point I'd like to make: I don't really want to get involved in the debate about the bridges and roads and so on. That is a red herring, an absolute red herring.

Mr Mammoliti: Of course, you don't. You don't want to talk about jobs. You don't want to talk about employment.

Mr Stockwell: I know the member for Yorkview is suggesting I don't want to get into it. He's suggesting I don't want to talk about employment. I'm prepared to talk about employment, I'm prepared to talk about job creation programs and I'm prepared to talk about these job creation programs under a different light, under the light of let's debate it, let's discuss it and let's determine if it's worth spending, because they've been spent over the years. But don't try to convince me that you need to start four crown corporations to build roads and sewers and bridges, because you're not debating it under that light. You're simply using this as a guise to move debt off your books and pretend you know what you're doing.

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Finally, I would like to come back to one other point. The last point is, I long since lost my respect for the NDP, and I came here with some respect for that party. I did. I sat with members of council who belonged to the NDP who I felt had a true, principled position that they offered to various and sundry debates and elections, and I did.

What I particularly find offensive about this piece of legislation is this: I would love to debate the merits of government programs and government works programs, much like the Liberal government's much-vaunted federal plan to restart the economy. I think that's a waste of money. I think when you spend $2 billion in a $700-billion economy, much like Preston Manning said, you're trying to start a 747 with a flashlight battery. That's true.

But I'd be willing to debate this with you people, and I'd be willing to discuss this with you people, and I'd be willing to talk about the 407. I think those are the kinds of things that need to be discussed. But I am not prepared to talk about it when you're trying to kid the taxpayers into believing this is something it isn't. That's the breakdown. Until you deal with this --

Mr Mammoliti: It all relates to paycheques, my friend.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Order, please.

Mr Stockwell: The member for Yorkview is suggesting it all relates to paycheques, and I believe that. I think people need work and I think they need gainful employment out there. But this is just trickery. This is foolhearted trickery.

What really astounds me is that the Minister of Education can make the comments he made in this House and have no idea of what he's talking about. The other thing that astounds me is that the member for Yorkview can reduce this debate to a debate about jobs when it's not about jobs. It was never about jobs. It's about moving money off the debt book.

The member for Oxford can stand up and try to claim that this will be reported out in the consolidated debt when you didn't do it in your own budget. You've got your own documented budget saying you're wrong when you could have the Treasurer stand before us and tell us he's going to spend $600 million on capital improvements to schools, then tell the school boards to go borrow the money and, "Don't show it on our books."

This is so transparent, I say again. It is so transparent and absolutely so honestly awful that they think that nobody can understand what they're trying to do.

So in conclusion, the final point I'd like to make is, come next election, I would like the people of this province in the next election, in any all-candidates' meeting they go to, in any area in the province, in any meeting at the door with an NDP candidate, to ask the candidate, when they talk about what the deficit is that year and what the debt is, whether they included the four crown corporations in the consolidated debt.

I will bet you $100 as we stand here today this government is going to go out to the people and not tell them about the consolidated debt that it has accrued in the four crown corporations. I'll bet you another $100 that this government is going to claim to have reduced the payroll by the number of people who are being moved off the Ontario payroll and put on to the four crown corporations.

I will bet you that, because that is the prime motive for this piece of legislation. It has nothing to do with bridges; it has nothing to do with roads; it has nothing to do with sewers. This has everything to do with pretending their debt is less, which is pretending their deficit is less and pretending their payroll is less. The only people they're not kidding are the opposition in this party and the bond agencies around the world, which are telling you you're on credit watch and you're going to be downgraded because you have absolutely no control of spending and finances in this province.

I will stand corrected if they include the debt from these four crown corporations in their next budget on the consolidated amount. I will stand corrected and will apologize. But I know full well that you will not do it, because you're trying to kid the troops.

The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr Sutherland: The member for Etobicoke West did talk about the province is facing financial difficulties. No one disagrees with that. But it's in that light that the government is approaching a more innovative and more creative way of how to finance capital projects in terms of working with the private sector, in terms of being able to go into joint venture partnerships.

The member for Etobicoke West said this has nothing to do with jobs. It does have to do with jobs, because the reality is, if we are able to find new, innovative ways of financing capital projects so that those projects can occur sooner, then people are going to get back to work sooner, and that's going to have a positive effect on the economy and create other types of employment out there.

It has a lot to do with jobs. The member for Etobicoke West is constantly trying to pick up on the comments of the member for Markham that somehow this is a hidden process. It's all very open. It's all a very open process. People can understand what is going on.

The point of what we're trying to do -- as the third party has constantly suggested, "Look, you need to work with the private sector." This is going to allow us to work with the private sector in ways that we haven't been able to do. The corporations will be able to enter into longer-term commitments, without having to receive the approvals from treasury board after the board has given its initial approval for a capital project. To enter in these types of longer-term commitments, or joint ventures, this fiscal aspect is critical, to ensure that there's a longer-term financial commitment there.

To me, this seems like a good thing. Many people have asked us to do it; the third party has. Somehow they don't see the benefits, that we can get people back to work more quickly and that we can do some of the work many municipalities have asked for for a long time.

Mr Phillips: I appreciate the member for Etobicoke West raising several issues that I'm not sure have been highlighted as much as they should be.

The point he makes on what are called preflows: There is no doubt that the way the province reports its finances gives a totally distorted view of the finances of the province. Now, the government's doing nothing illegal. As the member points out, the Conservative Party did it when it was in power, the Liberal Party did it when it was in power, but it's being taken to new extremes. I say unequivocally, as the member for Etobicoke West said, it was wrong then -- it was wrong when they did it, it was wrong when we did it -- and it is clearly taken to new heights in this piece of legislation. It clearly has to change, and that's what the Provincial Auditor is all about.

As the member for Etobicoke West said, if this were a private company, there is no auditor in the province who could sign off on the books of the province. They do not reflect the reality of the finances of the province. They're wrong. That's our concern about Bill 17. As the members know, in our opinion there's some merit in the bill, but the member has highlighted the problems in the bill.

I would also say he is absolutely right when he says, "In my opinion, Premier Rae told the Treasurer, the Minister of Finance, 'You must keep the deficit under $10 billion.'" That's why there was a delay in a required pension payment from last fiscal year to this fiscal year, and that cost $5 million. We paid 11 1/4% interest on that when we could have borrowed the money at 7 1/2%. It cost $5 million. That went right down the drain, for nothing other than allowing Bob Rae to report a deficit under $10 billion. He's right.

Mr Turnbull: There are two key issues that my colleagues spoke about. One of them is the challenge to the government that the debt and the staff that will be moved to these schedule 4 crown agencies from the government will be shown by the government as being part of the contingent liabilities of this government, part of the debt, and that the staff they move are still a part of the civil service. He has issued that challenge. He issued it in his usual very colourful way, offering to bet anybody $100. I certainly wouldn't take that bet against him because I believe that is the motivation of the government.

This has been claimed by several members in debate so far. I have not heard one member of the government get up and try to refute that. They've talked about everything else, but they have not refuted that. We want an unequivocal commitment from the government that it won't try that.

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Further, we've heard a lot of discussion about the creation of jobs. We have heard no evidence from the government that counters what we're saying, that you don't need these corporations to create these financial structures.

Mr Sutherland: I just gave you that answer.

Mr Turnbull: With all respect, you didn't. The trouble is that they're not listening to the fact that these corporations do not need this financial structure, this corporate structure, in order to do joint ventures with the government. It has been refuted over and over again, and the government has failed to offer any outside evidence to the contrary that my colleague is correct. We hear all of the rhetoric from the government, but there's no concrete evidence.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. We can accommodate one final participant.

Mr Hope: I've listened to the member and his comments. He talks about the perspective of the taxpayer. When we talk about clean water agencies, a lot of my communities are recipients of some of the moneys that are there. You talk about accountability to taxpayers. Well, talk to the taxpayers in the Mitchell's Bay area, who are now going to have potable drinking water in their community. Talk to the people in Paincourt, a rural community.

I notice the member from Etobicoke speaks from the metropolitan area with superroads and superwaterways and supersewer systems, but he forgets about those communities that have been neglected for years by other governments. This is an opportunity to look at innovative ways of maybe including the private sector in some of our communities with rural perspectives. When you talk about accountability to the taxpayers, also keep accountability to that perspective.

I notice you talked about those companies on the stock exchange. I want to know how many companies out there that are not currently registered on the stock exchange have four or five numbers on one property. I'm talking about numbered companies on one property: one property, one manufacturing base, but four or five different numbered companies to avoid issues.

Mr Turnbull: That's what private companies are, Randy.

Mr Hope: Let's look at it. You mentioned companies being on the stock exchange and being called for fraud. Let's put it in a little better perspective here. I see your consultant is advising you on what to say, but it's important that you understand about corporations that have several numbered companies: different names, different boards of directors, but the same individuals altogether.

When you talk about accountability to taxpayers, a lot of these programs around the clean water agencies are being accountable to our taxpayers. We're looking at financing over a longer period of time, which helps reduce the water rates and sewage rates. These communities say these are important projects to them. The ones we need to be accountable to, instead of the theatrics that go on in here, are our taxpayers in our communities who are looking for these initiatives.

The Acting Speaker: This completes questions and/or comments. The honourable member for Etobicoke West has two minutes in response.

Mr Stockwell: I don't know how the member for Chatham-Kent thinks all these things have been done in the last 100 years. We didn't have these four crown corporations.

Quickly, with respect to numbered companies, they're privately held as opposed to publicly traded. Privately held companies can report their functions any way they want as long as it's within the parameters of the law. Publicly traded companies are under more stringent control, much like a government should be.

As to your clean water and superroads, we've had a lot of clean water delivered in the last 100 years and a lot of superroads built. I don't know how we did it if we didn't have these four crown corporations.

As to the improvements to Highway 407 etc, there's nothing that says you have to create a crown corporation, that you can't enter into private agreements now. You enter into private agreements as a government every day of the week. That is simply a red herring to try and confuse the public.

I thank the member for York Mills. I thank the member for Scarborough-Agincourt.

The member for Oxford -- I don't see him right now; maybe he'll come back in -- suggests that we have to do this and the biggest reason is so we don't have to go back to treasury board to get approvals. Thanks very much, but I think that's a great check in the checks and balances: to go back to treasury board. I think that's an important thing that you should continue. If that is an argument about why these four crown corps should be struck, that's an argument on the opposite side of what you want to put forth. The last thing I would do with you as a group is allow you to do what you wanted in terms of capital improvement expenditures without checks being brought forward by treasury board and the auditor and consolidated debt. If that's your best example, that's a rather hopeless case.

Finally, to the taxpayers out there, you are being buffaloed, you are being kidded, you are being tricked and you are being used as some kind of dupe if you believe Bill 17 is anything more than typical socialist pap intent on extracting more money out of you and not telling you about it.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate on third reading of Bill 17?

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): It's a pleasure to rise on third reading with respect to this bill called the Capital Investment Plan Act, which, as has been said by several members in this place before, really doesn't explain what this bill is all about. In fact, the whole issue brings me to recall an incident this summer when I was walking on the street of a municipality in my riding and I was approached by a constituent who indicated to me, "What is all this about, about the government selling jails and hospitals and courthouses to itself?" I must say, I shrugged my shoulders as much as he did. It really didn't make sense, why the government is proceeding by selling everything it owns to itself; in other words, moving everything out of the right pocket into the left pocket, to use a play on words. It is a strange procedure. You do ask the questions on this bill: Why are we doing it? Why is it being done?

Well, jobs have been mentioned. I, for the life of me, do not understand that rationale and I look forward to more rationale from the government. With due respect, it hasn't really been explained to me why we're doing this specific bill.

The words that have come out in this debate -- "buffaloed," "trickery," "fraud," "deceit," "double standard," all of those words -- certainly adequately describe what this bill is trying to do. There's no question. It's as if this bill is going to create more money, and it's not going to create more money. Yes, it means that the hospitals and the municipalities and the school boards are going to have to use credit to raise more money, in that respect. In other words, the taxpayer, the person we're trying to represent in this place, is going to get dinged once again, because what you're doing --

Hon Mr Cooke: That's dead wrong and you know it.

Mr Tilson: I raise the example of the hospitals. We've been trying to get a hospital in my riding for a number of years, going back to the Liberal government; we're still trying to get it and hopefully we're very close and hopefully this government will cooperate and we'll have a hospital very soon. But there's a paragraph in one of the sections of this bill, subsection 33(3), which I'd like to read to you, because my interpretation of this bill shows you the trickery and the fraud that is being created on the taxpayer of this province.

Subsection (3) is one of the sections that deal with capital payments deemed to be a loan. In other words, in the past, moneys came in the form of grants, whether to school boards or to hospitals. Those were called grants, and they didn't have to be paid back. Those were moneys that came from the province to assist a municipality or a school board or a hospital in developing a capital project.

Hon Mr Cooke: We had to pay them. We borrowed the money.

Mr Tilson: That's right; you did borrow the money, but now you're getting the property taxpayer to borrow it. That's exactly what you're doing.

Hon Mr Cooke: No, no, that's not true.

Mr Tilson: There's no question you borrowed the money, and that's the problem. You've reached your debt capacity and now you're going to move on to the hospitals and the school boards and the municipalities and you're going to push those groups to debt they've never seen before. That's the only other way you're getting money in this province, because the credit rating of this province has really gone down the tubes.

Subsection (3) of section 33 says: "Except for capital projects where the Minister of Health's share is less than or equal to $1,000,000, a payment for capital purposes made by the Minister of Health to a hospital as defined in the Public Hospitals Act or any other facility receiving funding for capital purposes from the minister, that is charged to an appropriation of the Ministry of Health for the fiscal year commencing on the 1st day of April, 1993 shall be deemed to have been a loan."

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I apologize for reading all this gobbledegook, but that's what we get down to: All grants to hospitals for capital projects over $1 million are now loans. Oh, well, what happens is that the Ministry of Health says: "We'll pay it back. We'll give you the money to pay to this crown corporation to pay it back." That's what they say they're going to do. But do you trust them? I don't, quite frankly, trust you. You've said so many things since 1990, that you're going to do certain things, and you don't do it.

My problem is that the hospitals, and there are many people in this province, many hospital boards, that are trying to raise capital projects in excess of $1 million, up to now have been led to believe that those capital improvements were going to be grants. Well, they're not grants any more; they are loans.

Mr Sutherland: It's a legally binding contract.

Mr Tilson: Yes, if the province agrees to pay back what it said before were grants, which are now loans. That's the magic of it. It's trickery, it's absolute trickery, I say to you, and you know perfectly well it is.

The same applies to school boards. We spent a great deal of time on that. I'd like to spend some time on what this bill is going to do. Bill 17 has been summarized many times, but I'm going to provide some more --

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. There are a great many conversations going on. The honourable member for Dufferin-Peel has the floor. Please allow him the opportunity of participating in the debate.

Mr Tilson: Bill 17, as we all know, is going to create three new crown agencies, and it's going to revitalize a fourth. It sets out responsibilities for certain areas for each of these corporations. It sets out standards for the creation and operation of the corporations. Again, I ask the question as to why that is being done. There's no logical reason why it's being done other than has been said by the previous speaker and the previous speaker before that.

We know perfectly well that the deficit in this province has got to unbelievable heights, and we know perfectly well that the Treasurer is trying to improve the credit rating in this province, and unless he fudges the books, as the Provincial Auditor in this province has said, the independent Provincial Auditor who spoke unsolicited at the committee dealing with Bill 17 and who is very critical of Bill 17 -- and I'd like to refer to that if we have time this afternoon. There's no question that it's trickery.

The corporations are established as corporations without share capital and with special crown agency status. Why are we doing that? I don't know why. Does that mean that with what we're doing now with the various agencies, the various ministries, they're not doing their job? Is that what that means? You say that it's going to create jobs. The fact of the matter is, why are you doing it? Are you acknowledging that you can't do what you want to do now with your existing machinery? Is that why you're saying it? All you're doing is creating more bureaucracy. I can tell you that all the bureaucrats who are going to be laid off from a particular ministry are now going to be moved into this crown agency. Who do you think you're kidding?

There is the story that came out in the summertime, the constituent in the town of Orangeville coming up to me and saying, "What in the world is going on, selling the jails and hospitals and courthouses to the government itself?" It just doesn't make sense.

The corporations are granted the capacity, rights, powers and privileges of an actual person. The corporations are to be managed by their boards of directors. This is the next interesting part, who is going to be appointed to these things, because they're appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council. Each board will include a chair and four to 12 other members, all of whom will be appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council. It's going to be interesting if this bill passes, and obviously it's going to pass. You've made up your minds it's going to pass. I wonder who those people are going to be. I wonder who they're going to be. Are they going to be independent people?

The real issue it gets down to is that in the existing system we have now, which albeit has its weaknesses, there is a process in which members of the public can get to the government members, through members of the opposition, through yourselves; they can get to your constituency offices and raise questions.

This bill has been compared to creating a new IWA, a new Ontario Hydro. How often has the Minister of Labour stood in his place with respect to questions dealing with Ontario Hydro, or the Workers' Compensation Board rather, and said, "It's none of my affair; I have nothing to do with that," or the Minister of Environment and Energy stood up with respect to the Interim Waste Authority settling the three dumps in this province and said: "I don't know anything about it. They're on their own and they're doing a wonderful job. I really can't help you." Is that what is going to happen with these new crown agencies which are going to have NDP people in them, operating them? Is that what's going to happen? I fear that.

The Minister of Finance, I understand, is the minister responsible for the Ontario Financing Authority. The Deputy Minister of Finance -- which is interesting, talking about the independence of these crown corporations -- will be ex officio and be the chair of the board of the Ontario Financing Authority. The Minister of Transportation is the minister responsible for the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp.

I thought these things were independent. I thought these corporations were independent, but they're not. The same people who are running what's in the government now are going to be running these things with more bureaucrats and more expense. Then the Treasurer's going to be able to stand up in his place at the next budget and say, "We have reduced the deficit in this province by millions of dollars." You know where the deficit is? It's going to be in these crown corporations. The member for Etobicoke West in his usual forceful way has said exactly that and he predicts that's exactly what's going to happen, that the Minister of Finance is going to stand in his place and say just that.

The Minister of Environment and Energy is the minister responsible for the Ontario Clean Water Agency and the chair of Management Board of Cabinet is the minister responsible for the Ontario Realty Corp: again, questions as to how independent are these groups.

Why are we doing it? Why do we have ministers, who are doing what is going on now, now going to be moving to crown corporations? We have seen how Ontario Hydro, the Workers' Compensation Board, the Interim Waste Authority, have turned out to be a complete fraud. All of these things are. They are failing. They are going bankrupt.

Workers' compensation is an absolute sham in this province. They say it's helping the worker but it's not. More problems have developed with workers' compensation in my office, and I'm sure in your office. The number of people who come to my office who have shown complete dissatisfaction with workers' compensation is by far the highest number of complaints. I'm sure if you all stood up in your place and admitted that, you would say the same thing.

That is basically what this bill in a nutshell is trying to do.

The labour considerations: Remember who we have running this place, the province of Ontario, now. We have a socialist government. If you start listening to what exactly is going down, Bill 17 as I understand it is going to provide even greater protection to crown employees by actually prohibiting the four corporations established under Bill 17 from contracting out an activity of a corporation, if the contracting out has the effect of replacing the employees of the corporation, of terminating the application of the Public Service Act to those employees. Isn't that, to use the member for Etobicoke West's word, wonderful socialist pap? I mean, that's just great.

Now, of course, it's clear: This prohibition is not absolute because Bill 17 also allows the responsible minister who is in effect controlling these things, either indirectly or through his or her deputy, and the corporation to agree otherwise. So if they agree to that, they can do that.

Of course, obtaining such an agreement will probably be one of the more challenging issues of what they're calling public-private partnerships. That's the even further fraud of this thing. They're calling this a public-private partnership. Can you imagine a public-private partnership? There's no way in a million years that's what this is.

Mr Speaker, if you wonder why we are all so cynical over here with respect to this bill, those are some of the issues we're concerned with.

We start talking about the crown corporations that have been developed in this province. Ontario Hydro, for example, is one. It has grown so large it's even bigger than the Ministry of Environment and Energy. I guess that's the fear, that you create these new monsters, and we're creating three of them, and they're going to be monsters and they're going to be out of control. Meanwhile, the size of the Ministry of Environment and Energy --

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy): I thought the Tories created the monster Ontario Hydro. We didn't create Ontario Hydro.

Mr Tilson: Now I'm hearing heckling from the Minister of Environment and Energy. It's a monster and he knows perfectly well it's a monster. We have no idea what the size, the number of employees of these corporations is going to be. The administration: None of this has been made clear. We have no idea what the total size of the corporation's going to be. The fear we have is that it's a monster, it's bureaucracy, it's cost and it's deception that this province has never, never seen before.

I have quite a bit to say further, but it is almost 6 of the clock. I would like to adjourn this debate so that I could continue my remarks on another day.

The Acting Speaker: It now being 6 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 10 am tomorrow morning for private members' public business. This House now stands adjourned until tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 1802.

October 20, 1993

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

FERRY SERVICE FEES

SALE OF PAPER MILL

MARKETING COOPERATIVES

TOURISM ONTARIO

EDUCATION

EVENTS IN COCHRANE NORTH

LEADER OF THE THIRD PARTY

CAROL CULLAIN

SUDBURY ROTARY CLUB

ORAL QUESTIONS

CANCER TREATMENT

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

CANCER TREATMENT

MENINGITIS

BIRTH CERTIFICATES

HEALTH CARE

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

TEACHERS' DISPUTE

LIBRARY GRANTS

VIOLENCE

DAY CARE

USE OF QUESTION PERIOD

STATUS OF BILL

MOTIONS

CONSIDERATION OF BILL 40

PETITIONS

GAMBLING

PROCEEDS OF CRIME

LANDFILL

PROCEEDS OF CRIME

PICKERING AIRPORT LAND

PROCEEDS OF CRIME

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

CITY OF TORONTO ACT, 1993

CITY OF TORONTO ACT, 1993

CITY OF TORONTO ACT, 1993

OTTAWA JEWISH HOME FOR THE AGED ACT, 1993

ORDERS OF THE DAY

CAPITAL INVESTMENT PLAN ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LE PLAN D'INVESTISSEMENT