Hansard Transcript 1993-Oct-21 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

That, in the opinion of this House, since the mining industry is a major contributor to the economy of Ontario through employment, development of new technology, taxes, and the community life of many northern Ontario towns; and

Since Ontario government policies directly affect the economic, social and regulatory climate within the province; and

Since the mining industry is affected by the policies and regulations of the numerous provincial government ministries; and

Since the efforts alone of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines have not been enough to restore confidence within the Ontario mining community;

Therefore, the government of Ontario should co-ordinate its various labour, social, economic, and regulatory policies in order to establish a stable climate in Ontario which will encourage continued mining and exploration in Ontario.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Pursuant to standing order 96(c)(i), the honourable member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): Let me begin with a statement which is very familiar to anyone who knows the mining industry across this province. This statement has often been referred to and we often look at the mining industry as a pillar of the economy of Ontario.

I must say it is truly unfortunate that a good number of Ontario citizens do not realize the value of this industry and the value it offers to the economic wellbeing of the province, especially northern Ontario, where it is one of the largest non-government employers.

I must say that when we take a look at the crux of this resolution, it indicates that we must get the ministries of the Ontario government to coordinate their various efforts to ensure that mining continues in this province and that it grows.

I must repeat part of the resolution, which indicates policies "which will encourage continued mining and exploration in Ontario."

Throughout my comments this morning, I will be referring to a good number of groups, groups from northern Ontario that have made many suggestions to reinforce what I will be saying, and they've made these suggestions over and over again.

Again, I cannot stress enough the importance of the industry in this province. I would just like to begin as well by touching a little bit on that, noting that the mining industry creates some $5 billion in new annual wealth in the province of Ontario. As well, the municipal, provincial and federal governments receive more than 50% of the wealth generated by the mining industry in Ontario. We must take a look at the taxes paid by the industry. This is especially important in municipalities in northern Ontario, knowing that the taxes to the municipalities alone range in the area of $51 million. One can see why it is such an important industry, especially in northern Ontario.

Employment generated by the industry: Something a lot of people don't realize is that the industry employs some 30,000 people directly and another 70,000 indirectly across this province and in northern Ontario, again very important, provides 10% of the employment and pays more than 20% of the local taxes. Of course, a lot of people will know that mine workers are some of the highest average industrial wage earners across the province; they're earning somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1,000 per week, just a little bit of why this industry is especially important. These statistics give a bird's-eye view of its importance in Ontario.

When we talk about the actual spending of this industry in the province, when we take a look at the costs of opening up a mine, just getting a mine under way, in 1950 we looked at a cost of some $15 million, but that cost has increased to over $100 million in 1992 dollars, again a real influx into the economy.

I indicated that various groups have come forward to express concerns about this industry and about the attention it's receiving from government these days. If I just might quote one of the resolutions that will actually be presented to the Ontario NDP government cabinet on November 3, some three weeks away, what it has indicated is, "That the provincial government critically review all pertinent legislation and regulations affecting the mining industry and derive a coherent and workable set of requirements and incentives to both revitalize and sustain the exploration sector of the Ontario mining industry." I think the stats I have given indicate that they too realize how important the mining industry is to us.

If we take a look at what is happening in terms of the investment -- I spoke a little earlier about the investment of this industry -- and we go back to 1988, where we see that $450 million was spent on exploration in the province of Ontario, if we take a look at the figure in 1991, we find that the figure has decreased to $125 million, and in the most recent figure, 1992, we find out that only $90 million has been spent. If you take a look at that decrease in the amount spent on exploration, you can see that the sky is actually falling on this industry, and it's falling quickly. That's why I bring this resolution forward today.

Mr Speaker, you and many of the other members of the House will be watching today and will probably have a question as to where this industry is going. As I indicated with the figures on exploration, we can see that the exploration is not as involved in this province as it once was, back in earlier years. I must say that during my tour across the province -- I took a tour and visited many of the mines and the associations across the province -- the news was not encouraging. We found out that the industry is not happy with what is happening in terms of what is going on here in government.

Increase in production costs was one of the main areas most industry was concerned about, that most people I talked to on a one-to-one basis were concerned about. I think one of the major areas they were really concerned about was the government-mandated costs; the workers' compensation costs, for one example. They've indicated that as their safety record is improving, the rates are rising to a proportion where they're getting to a point where they cannot handle the rates that are being offered to the mining industry. I've heard many times, as I've heard from other employers across this province, that we must push for an inquiry, a commission to investigate all the matters pertaining to the Workers' Compensation Board.

Another major area of concern was Ontario Hydro rates. We know that in recent years hydro rates have increased at a rate double or triple the pace of inflation. We also know that this industry is heavily dependent on electricity. The impact of these rates has impaired the competitiveness of the industry within Ontario. I can't express enough how this is affecting a very important industry.

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I also heard about the environmental legislation and regulation going on in this government today. As you will know, we have a very important development going on in my riding, in proximity to the first nation of Shoal Lake. I must say they are very concerned with some of the regulations and the legislation from this government that they are being requested to go with.

When we take a look at what was in the budget, the budget indicated that there would be some relief for mining companies across Ontario. In the Ontario budget address they indicated that they were going to support further development of the mining industry, particularly in northern Ontario communities. In order to do that, the Treasurer said he was providing capital tax relief for junior mining companies issuing flow-through shares to individuals. In addition, he said that he was going to introduce legislation to allow mining companies to deduct immediately their contribution to reclamation funds for the cleanup of mine sites. This measure will preserve our environmental goals while providing a cash-flow benefit, especially for small mining companies.

As I spoke to various organizations across the province, they indicated that they were great words, nice words, but that there's been absolutely no follow-up to this commitment that was made by the Treasurer. Even at the Meet the Miners night, I listened to the Minister of Northern Development and Mines indicate and reassure us that this initiative was going forward. I must indicate nothing has happened.

When I see headlines like "Ontario is Rapidly Becoming a Bad Place to Invest," relating to the mining industry, I think we all have something to get nervous about. I think we must encourage this government to move ahead, not only the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, but all of the ministries to come together to take a close look at what is happening to this and what is happening to what I indicated earlier was truly a pillar in terms of the economic climate in Ontario.

You must realize that, being from the north, I do have a very close interest in what happens, not only in what is going on in the industry today but in its future development. As we know, there is a lot of room for expansion in this industry. There's a lot of room for the much-needed jobs that we need in northern Ontario. But it's certainly going to take the coordination of the various government ministries to ensure that investment comes to Ontario and moves ahead.

Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak this morning in support of the member for Kenora's resolution on the mining problem.

The resolution is a timely acknowledgement that our mining industry is in dire need of new policies and new plans to ensure its survival. In essence, we need an entire overhaul of government policies affecting mines in Ontario. Without a coherent strategy for mining from both provincial and federal levels of government, Ontario's mining industry may come to a grinding halt in the not-too-distant future.

The resolution, as put forward by the member for Kenora, states that "the mining industry is a major contributor to the economy of Ontario through employment, development of new technology, taxes, and the community life of many northern Ontario towns." The mining industry is not only a major contributor but a crucial component of our entire economy. The health of this industry determines the health of the entire province.

I can illustrate this fact by reminding the government that 30,000 people in Ontario are directly employed by the mining industry. Another 56,000 people are employed in related fields that are entirely dependent upon mining. For the entire nation, 100,000 Canadians are employed in the mining industry, with another 300,000 in directly related sectors. Mine-related jobs in Ontario form a total of 21% of the Canadian mining workforce.

On a national level, mining contributes $18 billion to Canada's balance of trade, of which Ontario accounts for 30% of this activity.

In 1990, the Ontario mining industry paid out $504.5 million in taxes and donations. This breaks down to $280 million to the province of Ontario, $165 million to the federal government, $51 million to municipalities and $8.5 million to charities and community projects. Furthermore, every year the mining industry generates $7 billion in new wealth in Ontario alone.

It should be evident to this government that the mining industry contributes significantly to our economy and high standard of living, yet it appears that the NDP government has failed to grasp the fact that it is its policies that are making mining in Ontario less and less viable. In fact, if the government continues on its current course, it will have managed to squeeze out the mining industry altogether. Their labour laws, their environmental regulations, pay equity, employment equity -- it goes on and on, making it more difficult for the mining industry to survive.

In order to relay the message about the effects of this government's policies, I will read from the following article published in the Sudbury Star by Don McKinnon. The article is entitled "Government 'Strangles' Mining Industry." It reads as follows, and I quote from the article in the Star:

"As one who has made a living in mining for more than 30 years, I am deeply worried about the state of the industry in Ontario.

"The present government, the New Democratic Party regime of Premier Bob Rae, is dedicated to strangling mining.

"The number of mines closing outnumber the ones opening and exploration is declining."

These are hard words against the government, yet it is a message which must be heard. More mines are shutting down than are being opened. We are witnessing a brain drain whereby mining interests are taking their jobs and their skilled workforce to other countries and jurisdictions.

Ontario mining jobs are being driven to the United States, they are being driven to Central and South America and they are being driven to Europe. They are actually being driven out not for a lack of resources -- we have the resources -- but by the harsh regulatory environment created by this government.

I think the members present of this government should surely take note of the seriousness of these regulations and laws that are making it so difficult that we are losing one of the best Ontario industries we have had over the years, especially related to the development of the north.

The primary example of the harsh climate created by this government is evident in its approach to exploration. Without exploration there's no future for the mining industry.

As it stands now, close to 75% of the land in this province is under exploration freeze. Can you imagine that -- 75% of the land in this province is under exploration freeze? Exploration has been brought to a standstill in three quarters of this province due to ongoing negotiations with the natives. This is also the problem that's killing the lumber industry in this province.

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I can see no reason why the government would deny access to these resources. There is no reason, unless this government has a hidden agenda to bargain away our resources throughout the course of land claim negotiations. Instead of trying to appease one segment of the population, the government must recognize the immediate need for mining activity that benefits all of Ontario. I suggest they do so by lifting the freeze on mineral exploration wherever possible.

Another factor that has led to the decline in mining is this government's lack of respect for mineral property rights. The Ontario Mining Association has pointed to political decisions on land use designations as an example. These decisions threaten to remove land from further exploration and development even after large investments have been made on exploration and study. You can see how quickly a company loses confidence in the future of development in this province. They've already spent millions of dollars on exploration, and all of a sudden the government, through a regulation, removes this land from exploration. So there you are with the land locked up, and the money is there.

The Ontario Mining Association's message to this government is quite simple: If there is no security of access to resources they have already explored, they will not have the confidence to continue exploration in Ontario. Without exploration and without confidence, the mines will continue to close.

The burden of environmental regulations has become so severe that it can take as long as 10 years -- 10 years -- to open a mine. The Ontario Mining Association reports that these delays are caused by variations between federal and provincial environmental assessment processes, duplication of the processes, indeterminate time frames and a constantly changing regulatory framework. It's quite clear a new process is needed to establish streamlined federal and provincial environmental regulations. Failing that, mining companies will continue to relocate because they cannot afford the time, money and uncertainty of our present government.

On September 23 of this year, the Ontario Mining Association, in conjunction with the national organization, released a plan to deal with the problems we have discussed here today. The report was developed through the Whitehorse initiative, an action driven by the mining association to bring all stakeholders together to find solutions to the problems facing the industry. Through these meetings with federal and provincial mining ministers, the association has developed some of the following recommendations:

-- Minimize upfront environmental costs by introducing a RRSP-type of reclamation and rehabilitation fund. The money, the capital, has to be set aside to reclaim the mine after they finish the mining. So what the mining companies are asking is that that money be tax-exempt. It will be set aside to reclaim the mine, but it will be tax-exempt like a RRSP and it will also provide collateral for them to draw on in exploring further.

-- Establish a process for land use planning to ensure both the protection of Canada's natural heritage and access for mineral resource development.

-- Respect mineral property rights to reduce uncertainty and restore investor confidence.

-- Change the tax laws on mine reclamation funding to encourage new investment in mines.

The mining industry has shown its willingness to stay in Ontario. They have formulated a plan that will enable the industry to continue to prosper and create employment. Now it is up to the government to do its part. Implement the reform measures brought forward by the industry and formulate a coherent plan to enhance mining in Ontario.

Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): It's a pleasure for me to be here today to address the resolution the member for Kenora, Mr Miclash, has brought forward. Two or three different areas that I want to touch on are land use planning, mining in provincial parks, the interim measures agreement and the one-window approach that we have to service.

I must point out the fact that I will not be supporting this resolution, but as the parliamentary assistant I want to cover some of the areas the Ministry of Natural Resources has put forward that I believe do a lot for the mining industry.

On land use planning, we have successfully held meetings on the first public discussion paper that was issued back in December and we received a lot of public input. There's a second public paper that will be put out within the coming month. Mining interests and organizations have been involved right from the beginning: the Ontario Mining Association and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada. MNR wants to see how land base use could be used by all stakeholders: mining, forestry and recreation. Public review has been well received by many of the stakeholders.

MNR believes in multiple-use prescriptions for crown land. Each stakeholder wants to use crown land for a specific purpose. It is MNR's responsibility to ensure that the uses are compatible with each other and with the premise of sustainable development.

I might point out that in 1988 the Liberal MNR minister, Vince Kerrio, prohibited mineral exploration and mining activities in provincial parks. We agree with this. We are not going to change this. No mining activities will be allowed in provincial parks.

But I must point out that the resolution that's being brought forward by the Liberal member -- he must be reminded that their government brought forward some restrictions in 1988 by Vince Kerrio, but we agree with those.

The provincial parks system promotes the protection of the environment, compatible recreation, heritage protection, science, education and tourism-related activities. The parks system is doing what it was meant to do, multipurpose use, and the parks system is very good for the whole ecosystem throughout the province.

MNR has been working very closely with the Minister of Northern Development and Mines and the mining industry before setting aside land as a provincial park, and will continue to do so.

In the limited amount of time I have I just want to touch on the interim measures agreement our government brought forth, which allows for consultation during a 30-year period. It has worked very well. It came into effect in 1991. It's had a 92% success rate over the time it's been there.

In my particular riding, Blue Falcon Mines has used that system for exploration for diamond mining near Attawaspiskat and it's working out very well. That's the second year now that they've been doing exploration there. It's not adding more red tape, as some of them have suggested; it's having everybody involved. We're getting a good feedback from that particular area that we're covering.

MNR, MNDM, Labour and Environment and Energy have all worked together to bring one-stop shopping to apply for land use permits and other processes which under the former Liberal government would take many trips to different ministries to accomplish. We did it on a one-window approach to service and our feeling is that it's working very well. We did this back in 1991 in a direct response to mining industry concerns regarding permits.

I'd just like to point out again that I will not be supporting this particular resolution because I believe we have come a long way to address the concerns of the mining and exploration industry throughout Ontario, and we will continue to work with it in developing and exploring mining throughout the north.

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Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): I'm shocked to learn that the member for Cochrane North isn't going to be supporting a well-thought-out and important resolution that I thought particularly all northerners would choose to support. You would note that this just asks to coordinate the various labour, social, economic and regulatory policies in order to establish a stable climate in Ontario which will encourage continued mining and exploration in Ontario.

Interjections.

Mr Brown: Mr Speaker, I'm having a little difficulty.

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): That's because you're not confident enough.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. The member for Sault Ste Marie, order, please.

Mr Brown: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to remind members of the importance of the mining industry to the province of Ontario. In Ontario, the treasury benefits hugely from the efforts of our mining companies, the employees of our mines, the people who work in our mines -- hugely. There's an estimate that $500 million in taxes comes to this and the federal government from the mining industry each year. The industry also employs about 21,000 people in this province.

Mr Jordan: It's 30,000.

Mr Brown: No, it doesn't employ 30,000. It employed 30,000 in the late 1980s. It employs about 21,000 now.

We have a huge potential for mining in Ontario. We have the deposits, we have the skills, we have the expertise; we have everything it takes to be a leading mining jurisdiction in the world. So what's the problem? Why have we lost about 9,000 jobs? Why have we lost significant revenues to the province of Ontario? Why are northern communities facing a very difficult time in coping with unemployment?

I would cite just a community I represent. In 1989-90, we had 4,000 people working in the mines of Elliot Lake. Today we have less than 600, and some of that is at the doorstep of this government. This government told almost 2,000 miners in Elliot Lake that it couldn't afford to buy their product, that it couldn't afford to buy a product which had provided the energy to provide 30% or 40% of the electricity that is generated in this province and came directly from the uranium that was mined in Elliot Lake.

This government decided, against every principle it had enunciated for years in various election platforms, that no, the miners of Elliot Lake, the families of Elliot Lake would be better out of work than for the province to buy uranium that this party, the New Democratic Party, had over and over again in election campaign after election campaign promised to buy at any price. That is what the Elliot Lake mining community faced.

Mr Wood: Tell them about the millions of dollars you put into Elliot Lake for economic development, Mike.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Cochrane North, you had your time.

Mr Brown: I seem to have hit a nerve.

I would like to move on to speak, most importantly, about the report that Mr Miclash, the member for Kenora, has presented. Mr Miclash is known across the north and certainly among my colleagues as one of the leading proponents of mining in the province of Ontario. He served as a parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Northern Development at the same time I was serving as the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Mines. In January of this year, Mr Miclash travelled across the north and presented a report to our caucus outlining the barriers and impediments to increasing mining activity, thus increasing jobs and thus increasing provincial revenue to the people of this province.

And what have we got? This government knows that mining contributes huge revenues to this province, huge wealth, and what has it done? Let's go through some of the highlights of what the mines and mineral section of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines has done to help the mining community develop.

What they've done to help: They cut the administration of the Ministry of Mines by $3.6 million. They cut geoscience research grants by $700,000. They cut the client service branch by $800,000. They closed the Timiskaming testing laboratory and reduced grants, inspections and services to save $5.6 million. The party that railed against the cutting of the federal flow-through shares was pleased to cut OMEP, the Ontario mineral exploration program, by $4 million and to cut OPAP, the Ontario prospectors assistance program, by $2 million, very interesting things for a government --

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): On a point of order, Mr Speaker --

Mr Brown: Mr Speaker, this is private members' hour. He will have his turn.

The Deputy Speaker: Order; it's on a point of order.

Mr Bisson: I would ask the member across the way to be specific, because he is misleading the House in his assertions on OPAP. It is this government that has advanced that program through the northern Ontario heritage fund.

The Deputy Speaker: This is not a point of order. Please take your seat.

Mr Brown: Mr Speaker, he accused me of misleading the House.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Cochrane South, I would ask you to apologize and to withdraw your comments.

Mr Bisson: Mr Speaker, I would withdraw the word "misleading."

The Deputy Speaker: I ask you to withdraw your comments and apologize.

Mr Bisson: I will withdraw and apologize, Mr Speaker.

Mr Brown: Thank you, Mr Speaker. When you total this up, that is a cut from the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, just the Mines section budget, of $24.8 million. This is an industry that supplies governments with $500 million in revenue.

Most importantly to me, the member for Cochrane North talked about what this government has done for my miners in Elliot Lake. I want to tell you what they've done recently: They had announced 50 jobs, to do what I think was very important work for the mining community; they were to establish a mining reclamation centre in Elliot Lake. They were to provide that community, which has been devastated by the actions of this government, with 50 jobs. We've lost 3,400 jobs; 50 jobs is what this government was going to provide back. I supported it, I thought that was a great idea, but they cancelled it this spring.

What message does this give to people concerned with the environment about reclamation of mines? What message does it give to mining communities like Elliot Lake, that are being strangled by the policies of this government? I certainly don't believe it's positive. I believe all members therefore have an obligation to support Mr Miclash's very, very reasonable resolution to call for getting the mining industry going.

Mr Martin: It is with great pleasure that I rise today on this motion to put some comments on the record re the attempts by the members across the way to continue to approach challenges that face us in the north in the same old predictable ways that really produce no results and haven't in the past.

The two members from the Liberal Party who have presented today were members of the Liberal government in the late 1980s. I dare say that the difficulties we're experiencing in northern Ontario didn't start in 1990; they started quite a while ago, structurally and in the approach that governments took to the development of the resources of the north.

I want to give credit to the efforts and energy put in by the Save Our North committee in the north as it looks at the challenges that face us today.

It is wonderful that it has taken this challenge on and has begun to work cooperatively with this government to try and put in place those things that will produce the kinds of long-term results we need and expect in northern Ontario if we who live and work there are to have a standard of living, a quality of life we all deserve. But the same old "throw money at it and allow people to come in and high-grade the resources" attitude of the past Progressive Conservative and Liberal governments will no longer work.

I think we've shown examples in a number of different ways of how we will work in the north. We will get the people who live and work in that part of this province to be intimately involved in the ownership and the direction and production of the places where they work. In the end, because we've involved more people, because we've looked at sustainability and long-term results, we will all be better off.

I know that the member from Cochrane, who will speak after me, will speak more specifically about some of those things we've done as a government. I look forward, with you, to hearing him put on the record some of the very exciting things we have begun to do in partnership, in cooperation with those people who now live and work in northern Ontario, because we know that's the only way to go and it's the only thing that's going to produce the kind of results that I know the member across the way wants and in fact will be happy to experience as this government moves forward in the next five to 10 years to make those things actually happen.

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Mr Monte Kwinter (Wilson Heights): I'm pleased to join the debate, in support of my colleague's resolution. I think it's important. Members of the government side have been critical of the statements that have been made by members on this side, saying they are calling for solutions that require throwing money at issues and condemning previous governments for not responding to the concerns of the north.

If you read my colleague's resolution, he says he's calling on the government to coordinate -- he's not asking it to spend money, he's just saying coordinate -- its various labour, social, economic and regulatory policies in order to establish a stable climate in Ontario which will encourage continued mining and exploration in Ontario.

We are truly blessed in Ontario; we are blessed with resources that are the envy of the world, yet we have a situation -- to give you just one example, a headline appeared in the Toronto Sun on Friday, September 24, 1993. It says, "Investors Flocking to Troubled Cuba," and it says that Canada's MacDonald Mines Exploration is about to sign a joint venture agreement in Cuba to try to maximize opportunities there.

If you take a look at other areas that Canadian companies are exploring -- we look at Chile, we look at central Europe, we look at the CIS -- Canadian companies have always been at the forefront of mining exploration anywhere in the world. Yet at our own doorstep we have a situation where there is a perception by the industry that governments -- and I'm not just blaming the government of Ontario; this is governments across Canada -- for some reason have lost their focus on the importance of what this industry has contributed.

The overriding concern of people in the industry is that the increase in government-mandated production costs to their operation is making them uncompetitive, and it has literally forced them to look at other jurisdictions where they feel they have a chance of getting a return for their investors and concluding a successful operation. The industry has identified certain provincial issues to make its point. I want to just talk about a couple of them in the very short time I have.

One of them has to do with workers' compensation rates. The perception generally held is that the Workers' Compensation Board is operating as a social security tool rather than as an agency that oversees the rehabilitation of workers. This has led to an increase in assessment rates that cannot continue to be funded by the industry. Let me give you an example.

The mining industry pays an incredible amount in WCB expenses compared to other industries in Ontario. The average employer in Ontario has a compensation assessment of 3% of payroll and an unfunded liability of about $2,500 per employee. The mining industry has an assessment of 9%, which is three times as much, an unfunded liability of $45,000, which is 15 times as much, and this situation exists despite the fact that the industry has some of the highest safety standards and lower compensable injury claims compared to other large industries in Ontario.

As a matter of fact, according to industry statistics, there are only two industrial workplaces that have a better health and safety record than the mining industry, namely, the pulp and paper industry and hospitals. Yet the mining industry is being asked to pay this very, very large penalty.

Another major issue is hydro rates. Mining operations are heavily dependent on hydro. At one time, industry in Ontario enjoyed a very competitive situation compared to operators in other jurisdictions because of our very favourable hydro rates. Ontario Hydro has raised the cost of power by almost 30% over the past three years, the period from 1991-93. Let me give you a couple of examples of how important this is to the industry.

Kidd Creek, which is a mine: 18% of its operating costs are dedicated to energy. Algoma in Wawa: 17% of its production costs are related to Ontario Hydro. Royal Oak Mines spent $2.5 million last year in hydro costs. There's a whole list of companies that have had their hydro rates go up. To give you an idea, since 1975, Ontario rates have gone up by 428%, whereas the consumer price index has increased by only 198%.

Because of these things, we have a situation where it is becoming more and more difficult for companies to operate at a profit. When you consider the importance that the mining industry has in the economy of Ontario, and particularly the economy of northern Ontario, it is absolutely critical that this government take a look at all of its regulations, all of its laws that impact on this industry and make sure that they are coordinated in a way that will make it attractive and profitable for these people to operate, because when they succeed, we succeed and the people of northern Ontario succeed.

My very last point that I'd like to make is the fact that we have a situation where there is a critical need to address the whole situation dealing with what happens to the reclamation of mines and the taxation implications. The government has announced in its budget that it was going to do something about it; to date, it has not. I call on the government to bring forward the adequate legislation to make sure that the capital that is being used for this reclamation fund can be utilized now in the same way that a RRSP can be used. Then, as they need the reclamation, they can do something about it.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): I thank the member for Lanark-Renfrew, who brought forward this motion on October 19, 1993, and on September 28, 1993. It was good of him to bring this to the attention of the House and again for the Liberals to bring this resolution forward.

The difficulty you're faced with in the mining industry, as in all resource industries, is that during the 1960s, 1970s, even the 1950s and 1980s, resource-based industry in this country was very prosperous, it was very stable, it was a growing industry.

Governments during that time kept an eye on these kinds of growing resource-based industries. They taxed them heavily, they regulated them heavily and they created a whole bureaucratic maze, through environmental processes etc, that these groups would have to hurdle their way through during these --

Mr Martin: Where's your member for the north?

Mr Stockwell: I hear from the member for Sault Ste Marie, who rarely gets up to speak about anything but has a chance to heckle about this.

Mr Martin: Where were you when I spoke?

Mr Stockwell: Mr Speaker, with all due respect, I ask you to see if you can control this member, who never have a word to say in this House except heckle.

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During those periods of time they became overregulated, overtaxed, and a bureaucratic maze was set up for them.

The difficulty they're faced with is they're in a very competitive market today, and it's a worldwide competitive market. The profitability has gone down, the costs have gone up, yet they're still saddled with very excessive government taxation policies, environment policies, regulated policies. Some of those were touched on, WCB, for instance, Ontario Hydro, and the bureaucratic environmental malaise they must go through.

All these policies have contributed to a once proud resource-based industry, a thriving resource-based industry, being brought to its knees, not by itself and not by the communities that it's in, but by government. Governments have regulated them to death. By regulating them to death, they end up having to bail them out in short-term bailout packages that do nothing but cost the taxpayers money.

On the one hand they bail them out and on the other hand they take more back, then they shock themselves when these industries close up and thousands and thousands of jobs are lost in this province and towns literally shut down.

I think the member for Lanark-Renfrew has offered a very comprehensive review of what needs to be done, and it's not a resource issue. It's not their problem; it's your problem. You have to examine your policies, your regulations, your taxes, and allow them to prosper. I will say, Mr Minister, if we get out of their faces, these resource-based towns and organizations can prosper. Rather than hindering them, we should be helping them.

Mr Bisson: It is with great and infinite pleasure that I have an opportunity to respond to the motion put forward by the Liberal caucus today.

I want to say up front that the body of what they speak of in their motion we could agree with. On paragraphs 1 and 2, which I don't have time to read, we are totally in agreement with the member. I want that to be shown on the record.

Where we fall apart and where we have a disagreement is what's read in paragraph 3. I'll put it on the record just so we know what we're voting on here today.

It talks of recognizing that "the efforts alone of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines have not been enough to restore confidence" within the Ontario mining industry. I'll tell you why.

First of all, to understand what happens in the mining sector, I'd like to back up and go to basically what's happened within the Save Our North group. I would say that about three years ago there was a group that was formed, actually in my riding, the riding of Cochrane South, in Timmins, on the part of people like Steve Parry, Bruce Jeffrey, Dave Meunier, Cid Samson and a number of other people.

They came together in order to be able to say, "Listen, we need to put together a lobby group that can speak to both provincial and federal governments about the problems we're having in the mining industry so that they can address those problems so we can build a mining industry that prospers and that everybody can benefit from."

What this group did was it successfully lobbied the provincial government and worked with the provincial government in order to effect a number of changes that this government has followed through on in order to be able to address the concerns raised within the Save Our North group. I think this is a credit to those people who worked within, and still work within, the Save Our North group.

What they basically did was this. They put forward a number of key proposals or key concerns before the government of Ontario. They said, "If you can respond to these concerns, it will go a long way to meeting the needs of the mining industry so that the mining industry can go ahead and prosper."

The first thing they put forward was, "We want a one-window approach to permitting." That is all about saying we need one window so that when the mining explorationist comes to government, he or she sees a friendly face and we can work through the system, through all of the various ministries -- Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, Ministry of Environment and Energy, Ministry of Natural Resources and Ministry of Labour -- all the applications of permitting in regard to exploration.

Under the past system of the Tory and Liberal governments, it was really a complex system of having to go from one ministry to the other, not quite knowing what one ministry was going to do, and it was a fairly complicated process. The Save Our North group said, "If you can provide a one-window approach, it would go a long way to be able to assist programs through the system." This government delivered.

The minister, Shelley Martel, who would have liked to be here to speak this morning, is not able, as a cabinet minister, to speak at private members' bills, and that's why she's not here herself. As her parliamentary assistant, as the rest of the members of this government, we applaud that effort.

It was Shelley Martel, it was the rest of the northern members, the northern caucus, and the Premier who made sure that particular initiative went through. We are now the only jurisdiction in Canada to have that. That's something that this government has done, something that the NDP has done.

The second thing they asked us to do is to amend what is called Bill 220, the Environmental Protection Act, because in 1988, the then Liberal government under Mr Peterson had made changes to the Environmental Protection Act that said we were going to cast the net out and catch all those people who had done damage to the environment on properties that were controlled by them.

What the Liberals tried to do, in all fairness, was the right thing. They tried to say, "Don't allow people to go out and destroy the environment and not be responsible for it." But what ended up happening is that they threw the net out and they caught many other people within that net who really were not intended to be under that legislation.

Again, it was the people within Save Our North, along with the people of the government of Ontario -- Shelley Martel, myself, Len Wood, Tony Martin, Howie Hampton, Bud Wildman, the Treasurer and the Premier -- who worked along with the then Minister of the Environment, Ruth Grier, in order to make amendments to the Environmental Protection Act under Bill 220, which says if I'm a mining explorationist and I go on to an existing property that has previously had environmental damage done to it, I will not be held liable.

That was the real key for the mining sector. The Ontario Mining Association lobbied very hard and worked with this government to make that happen. It was tried under the Liberal government; it didn't work. Who delivered? It was a New Democratic government of Ontario that delivered.

The next thing they asked us for, they said, "We want to be able to deliver and put together a system by which we pull together, in electronic format in databases, all of the geological information that the Ministry of Mines has, so the prospector and explorationist can gather the tools necessary to go out and to try to develop and find new mining properties."

The ministry responded to that. What we did was we set aside some $23 million by reallocating dollars within the ministry and also finding new dollars in order to do three very important projects. The first one is the earth resource and land information system; that's about $11 million. It's the geoscience database that the very member for Lanark-Renfrew talked about.

Interjection.

Mr Bisson: We did. If you knew what was going on and you took the time to find out what's happening in mining, you would have known that has already been done.

What that does, it basically puts an electronic format of an electronic-type mapping that puts all of the geological information so the explorationist can take a look at a particular piece of land and determine all of the activity that happened within that land to better determine if there's a possibility of finding a mining deposit in that particular property.

The second thing we did was AFRI, the assessment files research imaging program. That's where we take all of the assessment files, some 35,000 of them, and put them into the computer so that people in the mining sector can take a look at that information, again in order to be able to give them the tools to find mining properties.

The other thing we did was the claims client service technology system, which basically allows the prospector and the explorationist to go directly to the mining recorder's office to be able to pull forward all the information and the claims records so that he or she can have a better understanding of what's on a particular claim so they can really hone their skills. Who delivered on that? It was Shelley Martel; it was Gilles Bisson with the Ontario NDP government. It wasn't the Liberals and Tories.

The other thing we did is with regard to the promotion of the importance of mining. I will just touch on that very quickly. They wanted to put together a program by which the province of Ontario basically went to southern Ontario through TV ads to say: "Mining is important. Mining is something that's important to Ontario and to all of us." Again it is Shelley Martel, it is the NDP government that delivered on the response and on the question to Save Our North and the OMA.

The other thing is the question of mining exploration. I have a minute and 14 seconds, Mr Speaker. I can take two hours to speak on this particular issue because there are a number of things that we did. One of them is that we did do what the member for Lanark-Renfrew asked us to do, which is the whole question of the mine reclamation fund. That was done. The capital tax relief flow-through share system with regard to junior mining companies was done and put retroactive to 1985.

But we have a problem. One of the problems is that the Conservative government in Ottawa changed the investment rules in this country that allow the dollars that are made in profits within the mining sector to be taken out of this country and brought to Chile and other South American countries in order to suck the wealth out of this country. It was the Tories that did that. Just the other day, a $600-million investment taken away by Placer Dome of profits made here in Canada went to Chile because of the rules that were changed by the Tories. One of the problems we have is the very existence of what the Tories have done in Ottawa.

I only have 20 seconds, but I would like to speak in recognition of the major contribution made by the mining sector to the province and especially in the north where mining is a lifeblood to many communities. This government is committed to working with our partners in industry and labour during these tough times to ensure a prosperous and sustainable mineral exploration and development industry in Ontario. The initiative speaks volumes about the importance the NDP places on mining.

We continue to coordinate our labour and socioeconomic regulatory policies to maintain a stable climate which refers to all mining exploration in Ontario.

The Deputy Speaker: The time for the first ballot item has expired. I apologize to the member for Kenora. You still have two minutes.

Mr Miclash: I would truly like to thank the member for Lanark-Renfrew and the member for Etobicoke West as they have supported much of what I said in terms of what the resolution actually draws itself to and that, of course, bringing the various government ministries -- and this is important for the members who are going to be voting against this. I would suggest you re-read the resolution for what it is saying in the actual resolution. Nowhere do I talk about the spending of government or government increasing spending. I cannot believe some of the things I've heard from the government members today. Nowhere in the resolution does it talk about federal spending, about what the federal government is doing.

I particularly concentrated on what this government, the NDP government, is doing today. For them to get up and suggest that all these great things are going on, I must remind them of the dollars spent on exploration, the actual dollars spent on getting mining going, decreasing from $450 million in 1988 to $90 million in 1992. That itself speaks for what is happening in this industry.

I reinforce the portion of the resolution which asks that these government ministries get together, take a look at this industry and go forth to develop policies that will help the industry get going. I always have to go back to something the member for Wilson Heights, with the expertise he brings to the House, mentions: All we're doing is asking for a coordination of efforts by this government to ensure that we sustain mining development and allow it to go ahead in the province.

I would just like to thank those people who have supported the resolution. I certainly look forward to the way northern members are going to look upon what I've asked for this morning.

The Deputy Speaker: The time for the first ballot item has expired.

1100

PROCEEDS OF CRIME ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LES GAINS RÉALISÉS À LA SUITE D'UN ACTE CRIMINEL

Mr Jackson moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime / Projet de loi 85, Loi visant à empêcher les personnes de s'enrichir injustement des gains réalisés à la suite d'un acte criminel.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Pursuant to standing order 96(c)(i), the honourable member has 10 minutes for his presentation.

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): One of the most important challenges for our criminal justice system today is that of changing the emphasis from the criminal offender to the innocent victims of crime and responding to their suffering.

Private member's Bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime, is a practical piece of legislation which addresses these concerns, as it provides an offender- and revenue-based approach to funding victims' services like the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. Bill 85, in summary, would require that moneys that would be payable to an accused, a convicted or an admitted criminal for the sale of his or her recollections or for interviews or public appearances instead would be paid to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. The board is required to use these funds that it would receive to satisfy any judgements obtained by victims of crime in Ontario.

Before I proceed further, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome to the House today several family members of crime victims in our province. They are here today to bear witness to our debate and they are here in support of Bill 85. In fact, a petition they assisted with, which has been circulated around the province, around this bill is with me today. We have collected over 25,000 signatures in a very short period of time. It speaks of their level of support.

On behalf of the victims of crime in Ontario, their families and all those who have voiced their support for Bill 85, I would like to ask all members of this House to give serious consideration to this bill, to vote in its favour and to then send it to one of the standing committees of this House so that we can receive public input, through public hearings, from crime victims in this province, as well as the advice we could get from the Attorney General's office.

In 1989, I first introduced and tabled a victims' bill of rights for Ontario. It contained an entire section, section 7, devoted to preventing criminals from profiting from their crimes. Unfortunately, that bill was defeated in this House. I have subsequently tabled it twice; it's been defeated. I feel badly about that, but I won't give up. I'm convinced that Ontario can be as compassionate as other provinces which have victims' bills of rights, but there's nothing excusing our actions today from not supporting this bill in order that we can be on the leading edge of this kind of reform legislation.

I was pleased that with the support of the PC caucus we were able to convince the standing committee on justice to cause a review of criminal justice issues, victims' issues and how well the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board is serving the citizens of Ontario. Those hearings were conducted in May and June. During those hearings the Attorney General, Marion Boyd, stated that her government would refuse to support a crime victims' bill of rights for Ontario. She said: "A victims' bill of rights that cannot deliver on its promises is little more than empty rhetoric. I am much more comfortable with assessing what the government can provide and making those services directly available."

In response to further questioning, the Attorney General admitted that by comparison in Quebec, which has this type of legislation, it was working well but that it was adequately funded and that her concerns were that in these economic times she couldn't fund criminal justice issues to the same extent.

The provincial coordinator for victim/witness assistance, Susan Lee, told the justice committee on May 7, and I'll quote her directly, "The available services to victims are inconsistent, inequitably distributed and underfunded." She went on to say, "We're obviously severely restricted by the financial realities of the province."

In her presentation before the justice committee the chair of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, Wendy Calder, discussed the backlog of 6,000 victim applications before the board which result in endless delays while making the board less accessible to victims in Ontario due to its financial constraints. Her board has the right under the law to recover these damages from criminal offenders by civil proceedings with respect to injury or death cases.

In 1990-91, under the NDP government, the province recovered $39,000 from criminals in this way, only $39,000, yet paid out $9.75 million in compensation to victims that year. The record, therefore, of recovering funds is one of the worst in all of Canada and is completely unacceptable to victims of crime, especially when the Attorney General tells us that justice for victims is now a funding issue. It demonstrates that there must be a political will in place to develop strategies, to recover moneys from the provisions of our current laws and to constantly be seeking out new ways of getting funds out of the criminal perpetrators', and not solely from the taxpayers', pockets. That's how we can help pay for expanding victims' services in this province.

Instead of blaming the federal government, which I'm sure some members are going to do today, our province should be finding ways of deepening its cooperation with Ottawa. Other provinces have succeeded on behalf of their victims. I want to quote directly from a recent submission -- it's been out only a week -- on crime prevention by the Canadian Police Association which was sent to Ottawa. It states: "The justice committee report on crime prevention estimated the money spent annually on our criminal justice system is about $7.7 billion. A shamefully small portion of that goes to compensate or care for victims of crime because of the provincial practice, in at least Ontario and Alberta, of avoiding the intent behind section 727.9 of the Criminal Code, diverting moneys received through the victims' surcharge into provincial general revenues."

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That's a terrible indictment. We must find positive ways, fairer solutions, more cost-effective means of paying for our criminal justice system. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Board is essential in this province, but it's not meeting the demand and it's not living up to the needs of this province.

On May 31 before the justice committee, Priscilla de Villiers, representing Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating its Termination, said: "As victims, we had no persona, we had no face. My daughter Nina's death was sensational at the time, and yet we received little consideration as victims. What consideration, then, can the equally tragic, less publicized cases expect? All the programs, services and vast funding are focused on the defendant. There is little offered to the victim, and the little that is available is haphazard and underfunded."

Debbie Mahaffy, representing Canadians Taking Action Against Violence, after many conversations with families who'd been before the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, indicated, "To profit from crime, the murder/violation of another human being, is quite a repulsive reality in Canada." She pleaded with members of the committee not to allow profiting from crime to go on in such a fashion.

Doug and Donna French, who are in the House with us today and who wrote a letter to every single member of this Legislature, said: "Several books are in the process of being written, as well a movie that is in the works. There are also TV shows wanting interviews in regard to these murders."

The fact that people want to profit from someone else's tragedy is disgusting. But the fact that the criminals themselves can profit from crime is an outrage. It exploits victims and their families and in fact promotes crime.

These families have been devastated by their victimization. They seek justice. Will they get justice? You in this House, all members, can find a practical solution and can begin with bills like Bill 85 and others, but there are going to be serious questions raised in the House. Is this bill constitutional? Of course the bill is constitutional if it's tied to sentencing and we give direction to our judges that during sentencing this should occur. This is occurring regularly in the United States. In 1989 they collected $125 million just from recollections, because judges were directed by legislators like us to tie it as part of the sentencing that they cannot profit from their crimes.

Is this our jurisdiction? Of course it's our jurisdiction. Section 92.14 of the British North America Act gives our province the authority over our criminal justice system. We administer our courts. Section 92.13 of the act gives us sole responsibility over property and civil rights matters. It is clearly within our jurisdiction.

I want to implore all members of this House to consider the thoughtful arguments, but also to consider what the families have experienced. They come here today seeking justice. They are looking to you to help them find it. I look forward to the debate and will reserve some of my time for summary comments.

Mr David Winninger (London South): I'm pleased to rise today to join in the debate on this important matter. It's a long-standing principle of public policy that criminals not profit from their own wrongdoing. The purpose of this bill is a laudable one, and I hope that the questions I may raise around the effectiveness of the bill or the enforceability of the bill or the constitutionality of the bill do not mask my complete sympathy with the spirit of the bill.

No one can fail to sympathize with victims and their families. All fair and civilized human beings would express repugnance that any monetary gain should flow from violating the rights of others or from taking the lives of others.

I would remind the House that Bill 85, put forward by the member for Burlington South, is essentially identical to a bill James Renwick, a much respected member of this House, a member of the NDP, put forward in 1982, in 1983 and again in 1984, under a Conservative government. This private bill, to use Mr Renwick's words, was stimulated by the immunity to prosecution granted Cecil Kirby by Roy McMurtry, the former Conservative Attorney General, but also incidents involving Clifford Olson and others.

In fact, Mr Renwick's legislation, essentially framed in the same terms, flowed out of what's popularly known as the Son of Sam legislation in New York state back in 1977 to bar criminals profiting from the fruits of their crimes.

When Mr Renwick's bill was referred before the justice committee in 1983, Mr Sterling, then I believe parliamentary assistant to the Conservative Attorney General, now chair of the Conservative caucus, appeared to speak at the committee on behalf of the provincial secretariat for justice. This is what he had to say:

"I would like to mention Mr Renwick's comments about the passage of his bill, to which I have already indicated I find a lot of attraction. I have done some work in the past year on that matter, but quite frankly I have not been able to come up with a workable piece of legislation that actually addresses the problem in any real way. It is a difficult one to put into place at the provincial level because you are dealing with cross-border problems and all the rest of it.

"I am not trying to shove it off to the federal scene, but perhaps it should be included with your next item about pornography and what is or is not obscene within the definition included in the Criminal Code. The situation is that I have just not been able to come up with a practical or good model to put it in place in law. I agree with the idea, but I do not know how to do it, nor can anybody advise me."

That was the parliamentary assistant to the Attorney General in 1983.

In 1991, the New York law I mentioned, the Son of Sam legislation, was struck down by the US Supreme Court on the grounds that it violated freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press, vouchsafed under the first amendment. One might well question what might be its fate, if we don't take great care with this kind of legislation, if challenged under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We have to ask ourselves, will Bill 85 violate freedom of expression under the charter?

We also have to ask such essential questions as, would this legislation deter offenders from educating the public to avoid criminal conduct? Most people agree that it should not.

What about such books as Go Boy, which I believe won a Governor General's award, written by a criminal offender? Would this stifle that kind of important freedom of artistic expression? I don't know that. I'd be anxious to hear the views of the public on this.

We can't deal, for example, with contracts in other provinces, in the United States and elsewhere, so we're somewhat limited as a province in how we enforce such an act.

What about relatives, friends, witnesses and actual participants in crimes who aren't charged?

Independent authors: How do we deal with them and the fruits of crimes that they tend to capitalize on?

My colleagues are going to have other comments to make about the workability of this legislation and about alternatives such as amending the Criminal Code of Canada or uniform provincial laws. But I would say in conclusion that our government remains committed to the protection of society from serious offenders and to acknowledging and defending the rights of victims and we have proven our commitment and sympathy to victims with the reforms we have initiated already in the form of increased services for victims, expanding the victim/witness assistance program and removal of limitation periods for civil lawsuits, to name a few.

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): I want to speak in favour of this bill. I was recently elected, and one of the things I wanted to do was to introduce a bill much like this. The member for London North spoke about Jim Renwick, who was the member for Riverdale and who in fact I worked for when he was a member here. During that period of time, he introduced a bill much along the lines of the one introduced here. It's one of the things I wanted to do as part of my work and the member for Burlington South has beaten me to it.

I will support his bill, because I think it gets at a problem that I've seen exist in the criminal justice system as a lawyer practising in that system, that far too often it's a system that revolves around what the accused has done and what the rights of the accused are, and not very often does it revolve around the victims and the victims' families and the pain and suffering that is inflicted on them by the criminal actions, and not just by the criminal actions but by whatever benefit can be obtained by others by those actions, by the accused or the convicted person, who can publish memoirs or sell the story to shows like A Current Affair, for example, that thrive on further victimization.

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I think this bill or something like it, depending on what the government is prepared to do in terms of constitutionality -- and we can have arguments over that. I don't want to argue about that, because I think we can do it and I think the member for Burlington South is correct that we do have the jurisdiction to do this and it's the right thing to do.

I spent some time, along with the member for London North and the member for Burlington South, in the standing committee on administration of justice talking about victims' rights and victims' issues. We spent a lot of time in that committee. We haven't completed our report, but what we did was identify many areas which we believe need action to address the rights of victims in the system. I'm glad to see that some of the French family are here. We heard from other people who have been victimized by the criminal justice system, and their stories are sad and unfortunate ones.

It strikes me that one of our primary duties as legislators is to listen to stories of people who have been victimized by the very system and try to make changes to improve it. I think this is one area where we can have a real effect as legislators if we're prepared to work together. I don't believe this is a partisan issue. It should not be a partisan issue. The very fact that I, the member for Burlington South, and a previous member for Riverdale, Jim Renwick, were working on the same issue speaks to, I think, an all-party consensus that we can take some steps and move forward and help a group of people who have been somewhat forgotten in the criminal justice system: the victims, their families and friends.

I want to speak in support of this bill. I will vote for it and I urge the government to live up to the commitment that Jim Renwick started so many years ago -- 11, I guess -- and to live up to its party policy and move on this. I think it's, as someone has said, the right thing to do. I thank the member for Burlington South for bringing this forward and I hope I'll be able to work with him on the justice committee to get this bill passed and into law.

Interruption.

The Deputy Speaker: Before the members from York Mills starts, I'd just like to tell the members in the gallery that you're most welcome here, but you must refrain from applauding.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): I'm pleased to rise today in support of my colleague the member for Burlington South and his private member's bill. I'd like to say I wholeheartedly support the principle behind Bill 85 and applaud the efforts of my colleague in this area, which date back to 1989 and to two attempts to establish a bill of rights for victims of crime. The fist time it was thwarted by the Liberals and the second time by the NDP.

It is really offensive that criminals should profit financially for telling the stories of their heinous acts and fitting that this legislation would allow for those funds to be dedicated to pay for services for victims of crime.

I hope that the Attorney General, who I note is not present today, I regret, and this government will join our caucus and, I gather, the Liberals in support of the victims and their families. We must all work to eradicate violent crimes, but until that noble pursuit is realized this bill is a positive step which will entrench significant protection for victims of crime in Ontario.

It really is beyond belief that victims and their families can be made to suffer a second time as books, films and television programs force them to relive the ordeal. It is a sad comment on the human race that as long as human curiosity exists there will be a market eager for the sensational details of such horrific crimes.

We can't change human nature through legislation, but through this bill we can take an important step towards ensuring that those criminals do not profit financially from the pain and suffering they have inflicted. Let us take responsibility for victims of crime and vote in favour of this bill and its swift passage into law.

Ms Jenny Carter (Peterborough): I accept and endorse, as I believe does everyone here, the concern that has led the member for Burlington South to present this bill. I have two daughters and three granddaughters and I can at least begin to imagine the nightmare that some of you here today have undergone. Nina de Villiers's uncle is a constituent of mine and someone I know.

The idea that someone can become rich through telling about his or her own horrendous crimes is utterly repugnant. It seems sometimes that society is willing to spend limitless sums catching, trying and incarcerating a criminal who maybe becomes a burden on the taxpayer for life, while victims have been too often set aside and ignored.

However, we do need to look closely at what is being suggested here. In this society we value our democratic freedoms very highly and in real life things do not always come in neat, well-defined categories. We are all only too well aware of the kind of situation that my colleague had in mind when he drafted this bill, but not all cases are so clear. We do value free speech. We do value our right to know rather than to have reality censored. We do value the right of people who spend their time producing something that others wish to buy to be paid.

Too much public morality can damage freedom. Freedom, on the other hand, comes with a price. That price involves the right of individuals to act in ways which offend public opinion and often, indeed, public morality.

Sometimes people outgrow their criminal past. If this bill had passed into law as it now stands, Malcolm X would not have been able to profit from his autobiography, which includes reminiscences of an earlier life of crime.

Most of us would agree that Nelson Mandela was never a criminal in the real sense, but nevertheless he spent many years in a South African prison because technically he had been guilty of criminal activities. Should he not be able to profit from his memoirs, which are, after all, part of the history of his country?

What about environmentalists who have just incurred stiff prison sentences in British Columbia for acting on their own highest principles?

Evelyn Lau might not be able to profit from her bestseller Runaway, in which she tells the story of her life as a street kid and a prostitute, although it would be okay if she had made it all up.

Is violent material okay if it is fictitious? This bill would not prevent rock groups from profiting from lyrics about getting high and getting stoned, or movie directors from getting rich from invented stories about bank robbers, spies, drug addicts and murderers. In fact, stories based on real experiences are more likely than pot-boilers to have educational and artistic merit.

We censor our perception of the world we live in and our children's perception of it at our peril. In fact, some of our greatest literature and works of art have at one time or another been targeted by would-be censors. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn come to mind. Many nursery rhymes and fairy stories are violent. So, in part, is the Bible. History, alas, is violent, but we need to know it.

I know the member for Burlington South is not advocating censorship, but realistically, if people are going to spend their time writing, they need to be paid for it. To refuse to allow even reformed criminals to profit from reminiscences about their crime is to cut them off from employment that could well produce works of great social value while allowing them to support themselves. To limit profit would, in effect, limit freedom of expression. And how can we discriminate between the reformed and the unreformed criminal?

This legislation would possibly be regarded as unconstitutional because the wording is too broad to distinguish between the profit earned for reminiscences of educational and artistic merit and those which have no social value and merely exploit the sensational aspects of a criminal act.

The bill poses other constitutional problems in its lack of definition. Would a vaguely fictionalized account of criminal activities be exempted from the law? The Supreme Court ruled in the Zundel case in 1992 that any restricted content must be narrowly defined.

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To be effective, this bill needs to be more carefully worded to make it clear that it's directed only at preventing unjust enrichment from the sensationalist exploitation of crime. Ideally, it would be a federal bill or an amendment to the Criminal Code and be enforceable in all of Canada, but even a federal bill, precisely worded, would be difficult to enforce.

I hope the problems presented by this bill in its present form can be overcome, because I do agree with its general import.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): This is a piece of legislation proposed by the member for Burlington South that I wish I didn't have to speak on today because I wish it wasn't necessary to introduce it. But it obviously is, and it responds in a very meaningful way. Although there may be some in this House who are going to quibble about the details, and I think they can be sorted out very easily, it responds in a very positive way to the concern that I think the overwhelming majority of the public has about issues of crime, about issues of compensation of victims of crime, and about issues related to matters where those who have committed a criminal act can benefit from it in various ways.

Those of us in the opposition, including the leader of the Liberal Party, Lyn McLeod, Dianne Poole, my colleague the member for Eglinton, and myself, and members of the third party, have raised on numerous occasions issues related to crime, to the rights of victims, in general responding to what the public feels, and I think justifiably so, about the lack of adequate response to the crimes that are committed in our country, and of course we speak about our province.

The member for Burlington South has provided an opportunity for this House, albeit in only an hour today, to discuss these specific issues, but has also provided an opportunity for this to go to an appropriate committee to have input from the public and to make any modifications to this piece of legislation that are necessary to make it work. I think that is an opportunity that all of us in this House should most assuredly seize.

Society is repulsed by the fact that someone who has committed a crime can make a profit from that crime. We have seen so many examples of that on an international basis, and most recently we have had concerns expressed in the case of some very unfortunate murders that have taken place right here in our own province.

It goes along with another issue we have talked about, and all members of this House have been repulsed by this as well, and that is the issue of collector cards now being put out by an American company that glorify and feature in a very public way those who have been involved in crimes which have gained some international publicity. Again, all of us feel revolted by that particular initiative on the part of that company. It's important that we as elected representatives not only speak out about these matters but endeavour to put forward legislation which is going to deal with them in a meaningful way.

Too often, as I think all members recognize, the victims of crime in our society have not had the kind of attention we would like to see given to them. Very often the attention is to those who have committed the crime, ensuring that they are adequately represented in court, ensuring that they have a fair trial.

Well, there are people in the gallery today who have gone through a very difficult experience. I am from St Catharines, as members know, and Donna and Doug French have gone through what none of us would want to go through. They're sitting in the gallery today. They have been part of a community effort to heal the wounds that have resulted from the very tragic death of their daughter. On so many occasions they've been called to play this role and have of their own volition played this role. I am certain that just as I would prefer not to be speaking on this bill, Donna and Doug today would prefer not to have to be in this gallery. It is an event which has traumatized our community, our province, our country, and even those you talk to beyond our borders. It is the kind of issue that I think transcends partisan considerations. It is the kind of issue which certainly has the overwhelming support of the public in backing members of this assembly and other elected bodies to deal with it.

I can recall when the provincial budget was coming down in this House and we were preoccupied with it that day. Well, that day for the people of my community was an extremely sad day, as it was for members of the family and the many friends, the extended family now, of Kristen French, because that was the day it was announced that Kristen had been found. All of the important items that we had in this House, all of the tax measures, all of the expenditure measures, meant nothing to the people in our community compared to the outpouring of support and sympathy and sadness that we saw on that particular day in St Catharines.

It seems to me that we owe it to the victims of crime, that we owe it to those who have a sense of justice, to bring forward legislation which is going to prevent those who perpetrate crimes from benefiting in a financial sense from that.

I think we recognize as well that there's general support for providing the police forces of this province with the necessary resources to fight crime. There's a recognition that there are other causes of crime as well, but we cannot neglect the fact that we need those resources. The green ribbon team that was put together to deal with the Leslie Mahaffy murder and the Kristen French murder worked extremely hard and I'm sure would like to have had even more resources to deal with those particular crimes. We support them in those efforts, and I think we have to provide our police forces with those necessary resources.

It is one thing to pass a private member's bill, and I would think we would probably have general consensus today to pass the bill proposed by the member for Burlington South, but the real test will be what the government does with that bill; not the fact that we nod our heads in the House today or vote in the House today, but where it goes from here, where it goes from this initiative. I would certainly urge the government to move forward with the bill to ensure that it goes to the committee that the member asks it goes to, to ensure that it is moved along quickly so we can deal with this problem in an expeditious and meaningful manner, as we should.

There's a dissatisfaction out there in the public with the fact that people don't feel they can get to their legislators, that their legislators aren't always dealing with issues that they consider to be important. The public feels helpless because they, of their own volition, of their own initiative, cannot bring about those changes, so they look to us, who represent them in various legislative bodies, to ensure that we bring forward the necessary legislation and regulations to deal with the issues that they consider to be important.

Let's not quibble over the details. Let's not quibble over whether it's constitutional or unconstitutional at this point. Let's develop, let's work with this particular initiative to ensure that it will be constitutional, that it will pass the legal tests and it will achieve what the member for Burlington South and so many of us in this House have hoped it would achieve in the long run.

The member for Mississauga East, who is an independent member, doesn't get an opportunity to speak in this House ordinarily, and I am going to yield some of the time of the Liberal caucus to the member for Mississauga East so that he can participate in this debate as well. I do urge all members of this assembly, for the sake of the victims, for the sake of their families, for the sake of our society, to support this initiative, to work with the member for Burlington South and others to ensure that we deal in a meaningful fashion with this most important bill and with this most important general issue. We owe it to those in our society who have been the victims.

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Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): I didn't know the time was yielded yet. Like the previous speaker, I'm not pleased to have to participate in the debate because of the circumstances, but I did want to get on the record. I want first of all to thank the member for Burlington South for bringing this forward.

I'm pleased to speak here today. Yesterday, I introduced a petition with about 1,100 names on it. Those people asked me to speak on behalf of this bill and to support it.

There is no way that criminals should profit from criminal activity. Our task force has gone out across the province. We've heard from numerous people across this province, and they are fearful of what is happening. People out there are saying that this bill should be passed, and I would encourage all members to do that.

It's often been said that victims of crime are victimized twice, once by the criminal and once by the criminal justice system. To those members who say we should look at this as an issue of the Charter of Rights, I say let them decide. We're legislators. If the Charter of Rights and Freedoms strikes it down, so be it. Our job in here is to write legislation and to pass it, and I would encourage you all to do it.

I also believe we should introduce the Victims Bill of Rights Act again. Parts of this I believe are tied to that, as the member said. I also believe we should pass the former Bill 85, which dealt with registration of sexual offenders. I think that should be done.

I spoke about this issue to a group of students in a high school on Friday. I explained the bill to them and they all said to me: "Well, of course you're going to pass this. Why would anybody not want to pass it? Would you go to the Legislature and make sure the members all see that this bill should be passed?"

I say to the members on the opposite side, because I think there's agreement between the Liberals and our caucus, listen to the people. They want this passed. If it gets struck down as a result of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there's nothing we can do anything about it, but we in this Legislature get very few chances to make an impact and make a decision on our own for the betterment of this province, and I believe this is one chance to do it.

Part of my riding, as you know, dips into the Burlington area; of course we were touched by the tragedies there. If you don't believe in doing it for yourself, think of the victims and their families, because they are the ones who are going to suffer if this isn't passed.

If we pass this bill, I believe what will happen is that it will make criminals think twice about doing it. When somebody commits a crime, some of the violent, terrible crimes that have gone on, there is no way that person should profit. What this will do is allow that money to go to the victims.

I think there's agreement on all sides here, Liberals and Conservatives and NDP, that our victim services in this province are woefully inadequate. Similarly to what happens in the United States where they take some of the drug money and put it back into drug prevention, this will take some of the money that would go to the criminals and put it back for the victims. We in this province need to speak on behalf of the victims, for once. We have an opportunity to do that today, and I would encourage all members to do it.

Bill 85 proposes an alternative way of funding these victims' services. We all know we're broke: We don't have much money; there isn't too much money around for anything in this province. This would allow us a way of getting money to the victims. Hopefully, at the end of the day, it will prevent some of the repeats of what's happening, because the victims are going to be victimized twice, once as a result of the act and, secondly, by it being published.

There's not a heck of lot of time here today, but this proposed legislation, if passed with the support of this government -- and we need your support, I say to the members across -- will entrench a significant protection for the victims of crime in Ontario.

It won't be the end of it. It won't be the end of all the problems with victims, and hopefully the Victims Bill of Rights Act will be passed, but it will be a good first start and I'll be able to go back to the high school students who said to me, "Please pass this," and I'll be able to say to the 1,100 people who sent in the petition that indeed the people of this Legislature did listen.

I know you're all here to try to make an impact. I think this is one of the few opportunities to do that and I would encourage you to do it. This would represent an important turning point, I believe a very important turning point, for the rights of victims in the province of Ontario. I'm asking on behalf of the victims, on behalf of all the victims and their families, some of whom have the courage to come here today, please have the courage to support this piece of legislation. I believe if we do that, we in this Legislature will have made an impact and we will have done something progressive for the people of this province. To the members who may be thinking about it, I would encourage you strongly: Please consider this piece of legislation. I think it's a good one.

Again, on behalf of my caucus and the members of all the Legislature, I want to thank the member for Burlington South, who has brought this to the Legislature today. I will be supporting it and I hope everyone in the Legislature will.

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): It's a pleasure to stand in the House today and speak with respect to Bill 85, introduced by the member for Burlington South. I've got a little over three minutes left. I wish I had 30.

I can bring some unique perspective to this debate today, having been a police officer for over 20 years and having investigated numerous cases of assaults on people, crimes, bodily harm, not only in Canada but in Europe and also in the Middle East, so I can attest to the trauma that folks who have been subjected to this type of thing have gone through. Indeed, I have a great deal of empathy with those folks, having seen how it affects people over my police career.

I think we are elected to come to this House to serve the people. In my honest estimation, I think that although this legislation has some flaws in it -- personally, I wonder if it can survive a charter scrutiny; nevertheless, that's not for me to decide -- we, as elected members of this Legislature, have the onus put upon us by the electors to share their concerns and to do something about things that are wrong.

It's absolutely repugnant to me that anybody should benefit in the least possible way from crime. Therefore, I'm prepared to address those issues, hopefully as this bill goes forward, because we have to come to grips with this terrible problem in Ontario and perhaps across Canada. I remember how I felt, the repugnancy I felt, when there was some suggestion that Clifford Olson was somehow going to profit from those dreadful murders out in British Columbia.

Personally, I'm prepared and always have been, not only to go the extra mile to make this work, but to go the extra five miles to make this work, because I think we have that duty as elected members to represent the public and to get this thing right once and for all.

There will be some valleys and hills in this; I've no doubt about it. It will cause quite a lot of debate about whether it's right. New York's Son of Sam will be an issue there. The principle of victims suing the accused to collect funds held by the board is contrary to the way we do things now. Nevertheless, all these obstacles, I feel, can be overcome with the cooperation of every member in this House.

This isn't a partisan issue, and I refuse to take a partisan stance on that. I'm going to support the member's Bill 85.

Mr John Sola (Mississauga East): I would like to congratulate the member for Burlington South for his initiative, but also at the same time, I'd like to thank the member for St Catharines and the Liberal caucus --

The Deputy Speaker: Excuse me. You will have three minutes and 34 seconds, I believe, which is remaining. Would you please check the clock? Two minutes, 49 seconds for you, sir, the member for Mississauga East.

Interjection.

The Deputy Speaker: I had the feeling that it was agreed, but obviously it wasn't, and I will ask unanimous consent that the time given by the member for St Catharines be allocated to the member for Mississauga East. Agreed. The member for Mississauga East, you have two minutes and 49 seconds to make your presentation.

Mr Sola: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I'd like to congratulate the member for Burlington South for coming up with this initiative, and also the member for St Catharines and the Liberal caucus for giving me the opportunity to speak on this matter.

I must say, though, that I'm a little bit disturbed by the comments of the member for Peterborough. I hope I misunderstood what she said, because the way I understood her remarks was that artistic merit and profit were to be considered at the expense of the victim and family, and that I find unconscionable. I hope I misunderstood you, because I was trying to gather my thoughts for my few remarks.

The importance of Bill 85 is not in the detail; it's in the principle. I would suggest to anybody who has problems with it as it is written, let's iron out the details in committee. But I think the principle of the bill is what is most important.

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Since most of the ideas that I was going to say have been stated, I want to concentrate on another aspect of this bill, and that is that this bill may be the first step in changing our mindbent or our mindset about criminals, about the justice system, about the rights of criminals and the rights of victims and the family. That may be the biggest contribution that this bill will have both to this province and to this country.

I think maybe we should start thinking of balancing rights with responsibilities. You know, this bill is very timely because I just went through today's daily papers, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Sun, which are the only ones I've got, and I was reading about the case of the father who went to protect his son when he found out that his son had been molested.

The most disturbing aspect of this case was when I read about the position of the crown attorney. The crown attorney in this case asked that the father, who was defending his son who had been sexually molested, get the same sentence that the offender had received, and that I find unconscionable. The further disturbing fact about this case is that the father, who was doing his duty in protecting his family, is sentenced to get counselling and is forced to pay for his incarceration while the offender gets it at taxpayers' expense.

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): I would like to offer my sincere congratulations to my colleague the member for Burlington South. For many years he has devoted much time and a tremendous amount of effort on behalf of the victims of crime. He introduced the private member's Bill 19, An Act to establish the Rights of Victims of Crime, and now we have here today private member's Bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime. He is to be congratulated for his dedicated efforts to help the individuals who have been impacted by tremendous changes in their lives.

As he has indicated, this bill does change, fortunately, the emphasis on crime in this province. It is time to start to focus on the rights of the victims of crime, victims who for so long have been totally ignored by the justice system. This bill would ensure that criminals do not profit or become millionaires through the sale of their recollections or for interviews or public appearances, but instead that the money would be paid to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and that that money would be used to assist the victims of crime.

As you know, there has been widespread and very strong community support for this legislation. Indeed, we have introduced petitions this week with thousands and thousands of signatures indicating support. Our PC caucus has a task force and we are hearing from people across this province that it is time to focus on the rights of the victims of crime.

I would encourage the government to support this legislation. I would say to those of you who have indicated this morning that you are not going to do so, your concerns can be addressed. I would remind you that if you take a look at the employment equity legislation, it is in conflict with the human rights legislation and you were able to get around that. I would remind you that this is not about censorship but it is about profiting from crime. If this government is truly committed to the principle of this bill, then all of your concerns can be dealt with.

It is time to remember that horrible crimes are being committed in this province. It is totally unacceptable to continue to celebrate and allow individuals to profit from such brutality. Yet, in the aftermath of these tragedies, at the present time we have one of the most horrific stories of criminal victimization of our time taking place and about to take place.

We know that murderers are going to become millionaires, many times over perhaps, through the sale of their recollections of their crimes. We cannot allow this to happen. We must listen to the citizens in Ontario who are asking us to lead, to pass legislation and to make laws that will protect the victims of crime.

I ask you today to support this legislation because this passage will represent an important turning point for the rights of the victims of crime in this province. I urge you to support its referral to the justice committee for public hearings, where your concerns can be dealt with and we can hear from the public. Please give the public an opportunity for input. We owe it to all the victims of crime and their families who have suffered so much.

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I'm pleased to rise for approximately a minute to add my support to this important private member's bill, Bill 85. I want to congratulate the member for Burlington South for bringing this forward. This bill builds upon the work that he has done over the last number of years.

The former member for Wellington, Jack Johnson, also did a private member's resolution, I recall, back in about 1988, which identified the problem of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board not having the resources to in any way adequately redress the victims of crime. He called upon the Liberal government of the day to do something about it. Nothing was done.

It's important that we do not glorify these heinous crimes that have been committed over the last number of years. I must be critical of the news media and certain book publishers who have taken steps to in a way glorify these crimes. It's absolutely appalling that this is done. This bill in an important way -- any of that money that is generated will in fact go back to the victims. I think it's a very, very important step that's been taken by this House and I hope all members will support it. I urge them to do so.

Mr Jackson: First of all, let me say that yesterday I had the opportunity to spend two and a half hours with the Attorney General of this province while we were in committee together. We sat together and we had an opportunity to talk about this bill.

I shared with the minister the personal letters, the concerns expressed, the pain and the misunderstanding the victims in this province have about our criminal justice system. The minister told me that in today's vote this was private members' hour, that the private members in her caucus would decide and that Mr Winninger, the member for London South, would carry the government's arguments for or against this bill.

I wish to thank all those members who spoke positively, who spoke with hope and, most importantly, who spoke with understanding about what this bill will really do. But I must respond to the comments of the member for London South, who apparently is carrying the government's arguments today.

I must say that no jurisdiction on the face of the earth prides freedom of speech more than the United States. The Supreme Court in the United States has tested the Son of Sam legislation that has permeated into several jurisdictions. Our charter will uphold this legislation if we tie it to sentencing.

I implore you and your government to consider the phrase, are criminals truly going to pay their debt to society -- to pay their debt to society -- while they're sentenced, while they're found criminally at fault? That is our system of justice and somehow we have lost our understanding that they must pay their debt to society.

We in the Conservative Party have said we want that expanded so that our justice system understands that they pay their debt to those families and those persons they victimized. That is what's at the core of this.

The member talked about a book that was published by a criminal. The member should know that the proceeds of that book were dedicated to advancing the cause of victims' rights in this country. That is what this is about: taking those revenues that your minister says she doesn't have to help victims in this province.

We have an opportunity today, in a non-partisan way, to build on this bill. I'm asking that it be referred to the standing committee on social development, because quite frankly the standing committee on administration of justice is backed up with a lot of legislation, including Bill 79, which suspends the civil rights of some citizens in this province who are law-abiding.

I'm asking that this bill be referred to the social development committee, wherein it has time so that we can deal with it, to bring the victims' families into committee and to hear from them at first hand, that all of us can hear from them, that we can turn a page in our criminal justice system here in Ontario and make it more sensitive and more responsive and to allow the victims to have more standing in the process. We use the victims to catch criminals, but then we abandon them as soon as the justice system takes over.

I implore all members to support this bill. We have a great opportunity today to demonstrate that we remember those who died violently, unnecessarily and tragically and that we are listening to those families who remain today as their sole voice. I ask you to remember the words of Priscilla de Villiers two months ago in this building, because she warned all of us. She said, "Believe me, everyone is a potential victim in this province."

The Deputy Speaker: The time for private members' business has expired.

MINING INDUSTRY

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): We will deal first with ballot item number 29 standing in the name of Mr Miclash. If any members are opposed to a vote on this ballot item, will they please rise.

Mr Miclash has moved private member's resolution 24. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the nays have it.

Call in the members, a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1203 to 1208.

The Deputy Speaker: Mr Miclash has moved private member's resolution number 24. All those in favour of the motion will please rise and remain standing.

Ayes

Arnott, Beer, Bradley, Brown, Caplan, Carr, Cousens, Curling, Elston, Eves, Fawcett, Grandmaître, Jackson, Johnson (Don Mills), Jordan, Kwinter, Mahoney, Miclash, Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound), Murphy, Offer, O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau), Poole, Runciman, Ruprecht, Sola, Sterling, Stockwell, Tilson, Turnbull, Villeneuve, Wilson (Simcoe West), Witmer.

The Deputy Speaker: All those opposed to the motion will please rise and remain standing.

Nays

Abel, Akande, Bisson, Carter, Cooper, Haeck, Hansen, Harrington, Hope, Huget, Jamison, Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings), Klopp, Lessard, Malkowski, Mammoliti, Marchese, Martin, Mathyssen, Mills, O'Connor, Rizzo, Sutherland, Wessenger, Wilson (Frontenac-Addington), Wilson (Kingston and The Islands), Winninger, Wiseman, Wood.

The Deputy Speaker: The ayes are 33; the nays are 29. I declare the motion carried.

PROCEEDS OF CRIME ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 SUR LES GAINS RÉALISÉS À LA SUITE D'UN ACTE CRIMINEL

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): We will now deal with ballot item number 30 standing in the name of Mr Jackson. If any members are opposed to a vote on this ballot item, will they please rise.

Mr Jackson has moved second reading of Bill 85, An Act to prevent unjust enrichment through the Proceeds of Crime. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Pursuant to standing order 94(k), the bill is referred to the committee of the whole House.

Hon Fred Wilson (Minister without Portfolio and Chief Government Whip): Mr Speaker, the standing committee on administration of justice.

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): Request that it be referred to the standing committee on social development.

Mr David Winninger (London South): It should go to justice.

Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): Justice has got more than it can handle.

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): They've got all the other bills. Why not? One more won't hurt them.

Mr Jackson: Mr Speaker, if this government's committed to referring it to the justice committee -- and it will die in the justice committee -- then we on this side of the House would be pleased to work on this bill in the justice committee. I support that motion.

The Deputy Speaker: Which committee?

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): Social development.

Interjection: Justice.

Mr Murphy: Justice is full.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. Mr Jackson, you mentioned the justice committee.

Mr Jackson: Mr Speaker, I have to ask your guidance in this matter. Which referral motion are you accepting, that of the government, which you recognized before I was on my feet, or my motion to refer it to the social development committee?

The Deputy Speaker: Make your motion.

Mr Jackson: My motion is that it go to the social development committee, which has the time to deal with this bill and it can become a law in the province of Ontario.

The Deputy Speaker: Shall this bill be referred to the social development committee? All those in favour of this question will please rise and remain standing. Thank you. Please take your seats. A majority of the House being in agreement with the request of the member, this bill stands referred to the social development committee.

All matters relating to private members' public business having been completed, I do now leave the chair and the House will resume at 1:30 of the clock this afternoon.

The House recessed from 1214 to 1330.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CANADIAN FOSTER FAMILY WEEK

Mrs Joan M. Fawcett (Northumberland): The Liberal caucus would like to join the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies in recognition of this week as Canadian Foster Family Week.

The goals of the week are to pay tribute to the work of foster families and to draw public awareness to the continuing need for foster families that provide a caring and stable environment for children in need of temporary care.

In Ontario, the children's aid societies provide substitute care to more than 20,000 children throughout any one year. This is made possible by the contribution of nearly 5,000 foster families in Ontario.

In my own riding of Northumberland, we have approximately 45 foster families that provide a safe and caring home to children in need. This week, at the Northumberland Mall, as I'm sure is happening right across the province, an awareness campaign is taking place to tell everyone of the rewards of being a foster parent.

Unfortunately, the need for foster families continues to rise. There is a critical need for all of us to do what we can to maintain and enhance Ontario's invaluable foster care system. Children are our most valuable resource and we cannot do enough to ensure their safety.

Please join me in congratulating all CAS agencies and foster families throughout the province in the work they have done and do to help protect our children. We hope that your campaign to recruit more foster families is a successful one.

TAXATION

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): The increase in level of new taxes since the NDP socialist government gained power has been well documented. Most people are aware that taxes have been raised by $3 billion a year since 1990, or $663 for the average family. What many people do not know is that the government is taking far more than that from the people of this province, but it is doing it quietly through user fees, rather than through direct taxes.

The police village of Priceville, with a population of fewer than 200 people, is a friendly community which cares about its people and which is proud of its appearance.

Like all socially conscious areas, it declared itself a Neighbourhood Watch community, where families look out for each other and put up signs to that effect.

However, as it turns out, this NDP socialist government, through the Ministry of Transportation, saw an opportunity to make a little money from the people of Priceville and charged them $160 for the privilege of erecting the signs.

Now Priceville wants to place flower boxes on the bridge railings to beautify the village and once again the ministry has demanded another $160 as an encroachment fee.

When a government sinks as low as to tax Neighbourhood Watch signs and village flower boxes, I feel that it has lost any remaining shred of common decency and has shown the true depth of its desperation.

THE NORWESTER

Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): I rise today to tell the members of the Legislature about the new independent community newspaper called the Norwester. The Norwester is published monthly by the Norwester Community Newspaper of Downsview-Weston, a non-profit corporation. It has a circulation of 4,000.

This newspaper serves the northwest area of North York, an area bounded by Highway 401 to the south, Islington Avenue to the west, Steeles Avenue to the north and Keele Street to the east. This includes my riding of Yorkview.

The purpose of the newspaper is threefold: first, it is to be the voice of the people in our community; second, it is to be the impetus for the social change that is so drastically needed in some areas; and thirdly and finally, the newspaper is here to tell the real story of our community.

I rise today to honour the individuals who have taken the time out of their busy schedules to do this task. I'd like to honour at this point the board members: Mohammed Abid, Gilford Allen, Michele Campanaro, Darlene Clarke, Marie Cemy, Tom Kear as chair, Warren Lee as treasurer, Shirley Sankar, Brent Mackinnon as secretary, Ruth Morris, Peggy Gemmell and of course Dan Hoddinott.

I think it's also very important to tell the members of this Legislature that for this community, Yorkview, this community newspaper will prove to be very positive in not only the near future, but let me tell you that this for me is very important.

JOBS ONTARIO COMMUNITY ACTION

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): Recently, I asked my staff to get detailed information on the government's much praised Jobs Ontario Community Action program. At the back of the government's fancy advertising brochure for this initiative, there's a 1-800 number to call for further information, just for the purpose that I asked my staff to use.

We called this number. Guess what they said? They said: "Sorry, but we can't help you. The ministry has never sent us any information. We are actually a small business hotline and the government just asked us whether they could use our number, but sorry, we can't help you."

What kind of help is this? You call the government's own 1-800 number and they don't have any information on a program that's supposed to bring back economic prosperity to Ontario.

I think this incident is symptomatic of the bureaucratic mess surrounding the Jobs Ontario initiative. There've been lots of fancy brochures and press releases. In fact, every Friday I get a ream, a stack of faxes on Jobs Ontario, but mostly it's just advertising and very few long-term jobs created.

No wonder the public has lost faith in the NDP government. How can the NDP government revitalize the economy if it can't even set up a 1-800 information line?

HIGHWAY SAFETY

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): It is absolutely shocking and totally incomprehensible that the Minister of Transportation has decided not to take any action whatsoever to put median barriers, even temporary barriers, along the Conestoga Parkway in Kitchener-Waterloo until 1996. This is absolutely unacceptable.

Indeed, the minister has never even been courteous enough to respond to my letter of July 19 inviting him to see first hand why this issue is of such importance to the people who use this highway.

Since 1990, this stretch of road has claimed seven lives. Even though a coroner's inquest in 1991 into the death of Laurie Brain recommended that barriers be installed, even though thousands and thousands of people have signed petitions started by the friends of Ryan Short and Derek Fiddler urging the minister to install barriers before one more person dies, even though municipal councils and the Waterloo County Board of Education have asked for the reallocation of the money intended for sound barriers to the immediate installation of barriers, this minister has not listened and has said no.

He says it is because of a shortage of money, and yet he has found $800,000 per kilometre of funds to install sound barriers, the same cost as that for median barriers.

Minister, where are your priorities? How many more people will die before 1996? I urge you to reconsider and take action now.

CREDIT UNIONS

Mrs Karen Haslam (Perth): Today is International Credit Union Day. The theme for today's celebrations is "The Power of Partnership." This is not just a slogan; it is an integral part of the credit union movement. By combining the resources and efforts of millions of people, credit unions help people work together to help each other.

Credit unions have earned their importance by providing the services its members need. Traditionally, they have kept flexible hours and serviced the small communities and remote areas where other institutions were unable or unwilling to meet the needs of the community.

Today, more than 42,000 institutions in 87 countries have a total membership of 89 million and assets of almost $500 billion. It is the largest self-help movement on earth. We can all be proud of the innovations introduced by Canadian credit unions: automatic banking machines, daily interest savings accounts, and of course weekly and biweekly mortgage repayment schedules.

The credit union movement has shown the remarkable potential of people working together in partnership, and I commend them on this today.

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PROCEEDS OF CRIME

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): In the House this morning, something happened that ordinarily doesn't happen, and that is that a piece of legislation proposed for the House has in fact received what was apparently unanimous consent of the House, hearing no words of dissent when the vote was taken.

Members expressed their revulsion at the thought that perpetrators of crime could profit, for instance, from selling their stories to the news media or in other places. The families and supporters of the victims of crime were present in our gallery today to view the debate, to listen to the various arguments put forward and to form an evaluation of this process in their own minds.

If our Legislature is truly to respond to what the average person is saying in this province, we will move forward with this bill. It is easy to give consent in private members' hour. It is easy to give consent to have the bill go to the social development committee.

I urge the government to move further, to ensure that this bill passes with any necessary modifications, and I urge the government to once again look at initiating legislation within the purview of the provincial Legislature to stop the collector cards which feature criminals from entering and being sold in this province. We have the opportunity. Let's move now.

ROYAL COMMISSION ON LEARNING

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): My statement is directed to the Minister of Education and Training. On Monday and Tuesday, October 18 and 19, I attended the Royal Commission on Learning public hearings in London. Since the commission was announced on May 4, I have heard many complaints from my constituents on the inefficiencies of this commission and I'd like to bring them to the attention of the minister.

Those who had requested to make a presentation in London were not notified of their time slot until a few days before, making it more difficult for them to rearrange their schedules. I requested an agenda for the two days so that I would know which of my constituents and which education organizations would be making a submission. My constituency office did not receive the agenda until Monday morning at 10 am, three hours before the hearings were to begin. Most presenters were only allowed 10 minutes -- totally unacceptable if people are really interested in listening.

We had numerous complaints about the behaviour of one of the commissioners and his questioning. According to many presenters, he was unprofessional and disrespectful during his questioning.

In London, the panel was divided into two panels consisting of only two commissioners. Presenters worked very hard to put together their best advice, their real concerns and their desire to be helpful on issues that are of real importance in education. Their presentations were worthy of the time, interest and questions of all commissioners.

We have had five major studies in education since 1986, with 44 councils in the Education and Training ministry alone. The Royal Commission on Learning will cost taxpayers $3 million and will not report until December 1994, just in time for the next provincial election. What a waste of time and money.

LANDFILL

Mr Donald Abel (Wentworth North): I have recently received several letters from the 10th Dundas Guiding Unit at Knox Presbyterian Church in Dundas. These guiders are working on their second-year "My Community Challenge" badge, and part of that challenge is to write a letter about an important community issue to people they feel can help. They decided to write to the Premier of Ontario, the Minister of Environment and Energy, and myself as their local MPP about a proposed 200-acre megadump in our community.

Assistant guide leader Allyson Wenzowski, the guiders from 10th Dundas and thousands of area residents are genuinely concerned about the devastating effect this megadump could have on our community.

Ten-year-old guider Jennifer Harmer wrote: "The junk will soak through the land.... It will be in our drinking water and we'll get sick." Jennifer's colleague Anne Michelle Skinner wrote, "I don't want to live in a place where the ground has been contaminated and has ruined a place where it was really beautiful." Elizabeth Young: "If this happens, Dundas, the beautiful valley will be destroyed." Amanda Cain: "Please don't destroy our land. The drinking water will make people very sick." Julia March, "I just don't want people to get sick." Candace Pellerin and Emma Doyle fear the toxic leachate will "poison the water," and I believe them to be correct. Finally, Jennifer Young wrote, "If a 10-year-old cares this much about the issue, imagine how much grown-ups care."

These young hearts are reaching out to us because they feel we can help. As Nicole Butler wrote in her letter: "Please save our town. We are desperate." I want to make it clear to everyone in this Legislature that Nicole Butler is absolutely correct. Thousands of people in Wentworth North are frightened and desperate.

ORAL QUESTIONS

CANCER TREATMENT

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): My question is to the Minister of Health. Last Monday, the Minister of Health told the media that she had authorized the recruitment of cancer specialists from outside of the country to deal with the shortage of trained specialists in Ontario. She said she'd done that a month ago, but today we learn that Immigration Canada is not aware of Ontario's need for radiation oncologists; it has not been contacted.

I'm asking the minister if she will tell us exactly what she did one month ago to ensure that the recruitment of radiation oncologists would start immediately.

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): I'm happy to say to the honourable member that when the decision was made that this was the policy we were going to follow, certainly the cancer treatment centres were aware of that and have begun to recruit specialists and Immigration Canada was advised that this was our policy. But let me say to the member that this is not a "We've opened the doors; come one, come all"; this is a very carefully managed employment of people to meet the needs of the existing cancer treatment centres. So the treatment centres will be interviewing and making offers of positions to experts and we will then be working with them and with Immigration Canada to ensure that those people are admitted to Canada for the purpose of filling those positions.

Mrs Sullivan: I remind the minister that she is the Minister of Health and she has responsibility to ensure that people have access to service in Ontario and that the equipment and people are in place to provide that service. She has admitted and we all know that there are not enough cancer specialists in Ontario at the current time. It's clear that her government's policies are causing the new specialists whom we have trained in Ontario to leave the province. It now appears that she herself has done nothing to recruit doctors from outside of the country to Ontario.

She could have called the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to tell it that she admits that there is a shortage and to ask it to review its applicant list of people who want to be licensed in particular specialty areas for practice in Ontario. She could have called Immigration Canada to tell it to put radiation oncologists on the list for designated occupations for entry to Ontario. She could have sent recruiters to medical job fairs in other countries. She could have contacted medical societies in other countries where there's a known supply of specialists to seek their support and cooperation in meeting our needs. She did not do any one of these things.

I am asking again, what, if anything, the Minister of Health has done to ensure that the shortage of radiation oncologists in Ontario does not continue.

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me point out to the member that a decision of this moment is an important decision, given our agreement with the Ontario Medical Association about the restriction on people entering this province to practise medicine. I can assure her and the House that that decision was not taken by me unilaterally or by the ministry without extensive discussion with the cancer treatment centres and the College of Physicians and Surgeons. So what she says I haven't done, I think reflects in fact the member's lack of familiarity with how in fact the system operates.

Having agreed that yes, in fact, we would admit out-of-country experts to meet these needs, the cancer treatment centres then begin the recruitment. It's they who will be employing these people. It will be the college that will be certifying that in fact the credentials are appropriate. What we did was write to Immigration Canada informing it of this change in policy and alerting it to the fact that there would be contracts offered and that we would be, as I said in answer to my first question, supporting the applications of people coming from overseas to fill these vacancies within Ontario.

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Mrs Sullivan: Immigration Canada is not aware of any connection and any request made by this ministry with respect to the request for entry and admission to Canada and to Ontario of radiation oncologists. They have not received any communication from this government today. Furthermore, the minister has said today that the only thing she has done was to advise the cancer centres that they are going to be allowed to recruit. There were other steps that she could have taken and I have indicated what some of those are.

People in Ontario expect to be able to get the care they need when they have cancer. Cancer will touch two out of three families in Ontario. They have an expectation that the care they require should be available to them when they need it. On Monday you said that you had started to recruit foreign doctors last month. People expect that when you say you started last month, you have done so, not tomorrow, not next week, not next year. When are you, yourself, as Minister of Health, going to start to take the steps so that we can ensure that the shortage of specialists we need in radiation oncology is dealt with as soon as possible?

Hon Mrs Grier: I'm sorry to keep having to disappoint the member but a month ago we indicated that yes, we were prepared to accept the recruitment of foreign graduates to fill the vacancies in our oncology program, because like the member, we believe that the people of Ontario have a need and have a right to cancer treatment and we are moving to make sure they get the help they need. So what we did was say to the treatment centres, "Yes, you can begin recruiting."

I'm again sorry to disappoint her, but I understand that the Ontario Cancer Treatment and Research Foundation is currently in the process of recruiting three specific individuals and that those candidates are now being assessed by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

I don't know who the member spoke to at Immigration Canada. I suspect the minister is on the campaign trail and may not have been there to read his correspondence and take the call, but I can assure her that Immigration Canada has been informed officially that this is now Ontario's policy, and that when contracts or positions are offered to foreign-trained radiation oncologists, the province of Ontario wishes Immigration Canada to allow them to enter the country.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: We have approximately just one third of the NDP caucus here, and this is happening time and time again in question period --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member does not have a point of order. He knows that full well. Could he please take his seat. The member for Scarborough-Agincourt.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Scarborough-Agincourt has the floor.

Mr Turnbull: You are being paid for a job and you're not turning up. They should dock your pay for that.

The Speaker: Would the member for York Mills please come to order so the member for Scarborough-Agincourt may place his question.

ACCOUNTING PRACTICES

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): My question is to the Minister of Finance. He will no doubt be aware that this morning the Provincial Auditor appeared before a committee and gave what can only be described as a damning report on the reporting of the finances of the province.

This was an issue that my leader, Lyn McLeod, raised at the very time you presented the budget. As a matter of fact, it was only three days after the 1992-93 budget was presented that she wrote a letter outlining the concerns to the Provincial Auditor.

This morning the Provincial Auditor indicated he had some severe reservations about the way the province's finances were reported. In his opinion, the deficit for the last three years has been systematically understated, and he told us this morning he came very close to not even giving the statement a qualified approval. In fact, he was close to not signing the financial statements.

My question to the Minister of Finance is this: Are you prepared now to acknowledge that the way the finances of the province are reported doesn't reflect the true deficit, and are you prepared now to undertake to report the finances in the future in the way the Provincial Auditor has requested?

Hon Floyd Laughren (Minister of Finance): Yes. I know that this question is more rhetorical than it might appear on the surface, because I know that the Provincial Auditor did share with the members of the standing committee on public accounts certain aspects of a letter that I wrote to him indicating that we certainly were prepared to move to what's known as the Public Sector Accounting and Auditing Board framework of reporting public finances.

So yes, we are prepared to change the way in which the financial statements are reported from the way that the previous government always reported them.

Mr Phillips: The auditor also pointed out that the taxpayers paid a penalty of at least $2 million, and he agreed with us that if you use a calculation of what the real cost was, it was at least $5 million. The taxpayers of this province paid, right down the drain, $5 million in an interest penalty as the result of this questionable accounting practice. The delay of the pension payments from January 1, 1993, to April 1, 1993, cost the taxpayers of this province $5 million. They got nothing for that other than a misstatement of the size of the deficit.

Can the Minister of Finance assure the House today that this practice will stop and that we will not see, this year, a similar waste of $5 million of the taxpayers' money?

Hon Mr Laughren: The member for ScarboroughAgincourt would have more credibility if he used the numbers that the Provincial Auditor used, of a $2-million extra cost rather than his number of $5 million.

There is no question that when we deferred the $528 million, I believe it was, for three months into both the public sector pension plan and the teachers' pension plan, which was to make up for a special unfunded liability of those plans, which certainly weren't created by us, what we said was that rather than reduce our expenditures on programs, rather than cutting health care and cutting education and cutting other social services to the tune of $500 million, we thought then, and I believe still, that it was a good investment to simply defer that $500 million for three months in order to protect those essential programs of this province.

Mr Phillips: That answer, with all due respect, is nonsense. What you did was you borrowed $500 million. You paid an enormous interest premium to do that. You could have borrowed that money for $5 million cheaper. It was a complete, total waste of money because Bob Rae wanted to report a deficit below $10 billion, and I stand by that statement: a complete, total waste of $5 million because the Premier wanted to report a deficit that was lower than the real number.

My question to you is this, Mr Treasurer: The Provincial Auditor has indicated concerns about your plan to sell $500 million worth of jails and courthouses and then lease them back and to ask the school boards to go out and borrow $600 million worth of money on your behalf and put it on their books instead of your books. There is no doubt that the deficit this year is understated versus what the Provincial Auditor believes it should be. Will you undertake to report to the Legislature what the real deficit will be in 1993-94, using what you've already agreed upon, which is the Provincial Auditor's recommendation? Will you undertake to report very quickly to the Legislature what the real deficit in the province will be this year?

Hon Mr Laughren: This is the first time that, on the record, the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, the Liberal Party's Finance critic, has said that our deficit last year should have been $500 million higher, and he would have supported that, presumably. That's what he's saying, that we should have let the deficit go $500 million higher than we allowed it to go. I think it's good to finally get the fiscal policy of the Liberal Party on the record in this assembly.

Finally, I would say to the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, if he wants an example of the way in which the books are being reported now compared to the way they were before, I want to say to him that they're identical. The year we formed the government we inherited a reported deficit of $3.029 billion. According to the auditor's numbers, the real deficit was $3.7 billion, an excess of $600 million over what you had reported, my friend. So don't talk to me about how we report the books. You were the masters at it.

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The Speaker (Hon David Warner): New question, third party.

Mr W. Donald Cousens (Markham): You've just watched the theatre of the absurd and a massive flight of fantasy, because what the Liberal fellow was asking is the same question.

We're talking about your tenure, three years during which time the auditor has had a chance to look at the books you've been working on. The auditor is saying that your so-called accounting methods are inappropriate and permissive, not exactly an endorsement. In fact, the Provincial Auditor is looking, for the first time in history, at probably not giving your books the big okay. You didn't receive the auditor's endorsement.

The removal of $528 million in that pension contribution is just another example the auditor has used of the way you are reporting to the people of the province of Ontario.

Since 1990, when you came to office, the Provincial Auditor has raised doubts concerning the integrity -- that's a key word for your government -- of your accounting process. Now you're removing large debt from government books to new crown agencies. Will you finally admit to this House that you have been cooking the books?

Hon Mr Laughren: The member for Markham uses very unfortunate and exaggerated language to make his point, I guess because he can't make it if he uses rational language.

I would say to the member for Markham that there's been zero attempt to disguise anything by this government. Let me read to you a short excerpt from the budget that we brought down in the spring, which is the subject of so much scorn from you.

We stated: "Borrowing requirements for 1993-94 are forecast to be approximately $11.4 billion. This is composed of $6.1 billion for funding the operating deficit, $3.1 billion for capital spending, $1.1 billion for alternate financing arrangements" -- that's what we're talking about with the capital corporations -- "and new loans and $1.1 billion for refinancing maturing debt," as it becomes due. There is the total number of the borrowing requirements for the province. There's no attempt, none at all.

What has happened is that the Provincial Auditor is saying he wants the province of Ontario to move to a new accounting framework that's being set up all across Canada for all of the provinces, and all of the provinces are now moving to what's called the Public Sector Accounting and Auditing Board framework. There's nothing unusual about that, and we have said yes, we will do that.

As to the qualified opinion, I would remind the member for Markham that the federal auditor, 10 times out of the last 12 years, has issued a qualified statement on the federal books.

Mr Cousens: You can read all you want. I'm reading the auditor. That's what we need him for. He says, "The practice of pre-flowing expenditures, particularly in the absence of a consistent pattern, can be viewed as an attempt to manage operating results." It's another way of saying "cooking the books." That's what we're concerned about.

He then concludes, "There's an inappropriate shift of expenditures between two fiscal years." You move $600 million because of the pension fund and then you move $800 million to your crown corporations; that is what we're concerned about.

What we're talking to you about is to see if you'll come clean and start adhering to some fundamental audit principles in the way you're going to report to the Legislature. You're establishing four new crown corporations. It was the subject of debate in the House yesterday and will be ongoing.

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

Mr Cousens: These corporations are a feeble attempt by your government to hide its real debt. They're arm's-length from the House; they're not accountable to the House. Would you not agree that by virtue of moving these assets, these moneys, from the provincial budget over to other sets of books, you are actually fudging the books?

Hon Mr Laughren: I thought that by reading what was in the budget this past spring, it would be clear to you that it was all laid out: Every single dollar of expenditures was laid out in the budget. Absolutely nothing was hidden from anybody who cared to read the deficit; absolutely nothing.

Interjection.

The Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West is out of order.

Hon Mr Laughren: As far as the capital corporations go, I would use one example, the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp, which is what we call an off-budget corporation. By setting it up as a capital corporation, it's going to allow us to attract private sector investment, to allow us to move much more quickly in building Highway 407 than would be the case if we were taking it entirely out of the consolidated revenue fund every year.

If you tell me that you want us to slow down the construction of Highway 407, with all the jobs that are intended, all the private sector investment that's going to mean, then stand in your place and say so. But I think that's the right way to move if we're going to have the kind of investment in infrastructure and job creation that this government believes in.

Mr Cousens: This Minister of Finance said the deficit was $9.2 billion; the auditor said it's $10.6, so you're seeing a difference. On the one hand, you're saying it's $9.2 billion or something, but we know about the $800 million that went into the corporations, we know of the other things that are happening. What we're seeing is a massive shift of moneys from the books of the province to other areas.

You have not pulled the wool over anyone's eyes. You haven't pulled the wool over the eyes of the taxpayers; they're mad and they know you for what you are. The auditor is on to you, and we're on to you. What I'm worried about is that the bond rating agency, Moody's --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, the member for Durham East.

Mr Cousens: The bond rating agencies have to look at you and the province of Ontario to find a place that's got integrity, has books that are accurate, that has hope for the future. What we're seeing with you is that there is no confidence in the way you are keeping the books. Ontario, being one of the largest borrowers in the world --

The Speaker: Would the member place his supplementary please.

Mr Cousens: I respect the Speaker more than you guys. What would you say to Moody's and the credit rating agencies about Ontario's situation right now? Are we safe, or are they looking at you and wondering just whether they should charge more or change our credit rating?

Hon Mr Laughren: I'll repeat, just for one --

Mr Cousens: Answer the question.

Hon Mr Laughren: I will, I will; give me time. The first sentence I read out previously was in the budget, this statement: "Borrowing requirements for 1993-94 are forecast to be approximately $11.4 billion." When the rating agencies look at the budget or look at our financial statements every year, they look at our borrowing requirements. They even add in the guarantees we have out there. For example, we guarantee the debt of Ontario Hydro. The bond rating agencies, don't just look at the budget; they look at Ontario Hydro, they lump it all together and say, "What are the total borrowing requirements for the province of Ontario?" They know full well exactly what our borrowing requirements are, and it's on that basis that they determine what our bond rating, our credit rating, should be.

I've met with the credit rating agencies more than once, and there is no problem with the way we report our books or they would let us know very quickly. They have no problem with it. All that's happening here, to put it in perspective, is that the auditor is asking us to report our financial statements in a way different from any government in this province, including what the old Tories ever did when they were in office. That's all that's happening. We're changing the accounting framework from the way it's been done in the past. That's all.

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WCB PREMIUMS

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): My question is for the Minister of Labour. Yesterday, the Workers' Compensation Board released its 1994 assessment rating. Over 27,000 businesses in Ontario will be hit with increases of more than 25% and 4,000 businesses will be burdened with WCB rate increases of more than 75%. Unbelievable. This will be the final straw for many businesses and employees in Ontario. As Minister of Labour, how can you condone these outrageous, job-killing rate increases?

Hon Bob Mackenzie (Minister of Labour): The member across the way should be aware that last year the board moved to a new classification system in order to make assessments more fair. Now assessments more closely relate to the actual risks associated with the workplace and the accidents in the workplace. This was done also, I might say, in consultation with the stakeholders across the province. Surely the member doesn't disagree with a fair assessment of the rates and the various classifications.

Mrs Witmer: This is not fair, and jobs will be lost. You know that last February the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade released a study which said that even a minimal increase in WCB rates would lead to job losses and in some cases would put companies out of business. We cannot afford to lose one more job in this province because of your government's mismanagement and its inability to control its spending. Will you today condemn the board's decision and assure the struggling businesses and the employees who will be impacted that they will not be faced with these disastrous, job-destroying increases?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I wonder whether at the same time the member across the way would stop calling for dealing with the unfunded liability. It's what she's really looking at.

In consulting with stakeholders to establish the 1994 assessment rates, the board tried to find a balance between addressing systemic financial challenges and not dramatically increasing the assessment rates through economic times.

In light of the continuing recession and the difficulty for employers to absorb large assessments in rate increases, the board decided to increase its rates by an average of only 3%. The 1994 average assessment rate is now $3.04, up from $2.95 in 1993. I think that increase achieves a balance that's needed in the tough economic times and against what's needed to pay the bills.

Mrs Witmer: I'm so glad you mentioned the unfunded liability, which is reaching almost the number of $12 billion. I want to tell you that the problem is not a revenue problem; it's the result of an expenditure problem which you don't want to recognize.

The answer is not going to be found in rate hikes of 25% or 75%. It can only be found by cutting costs, and this you refuse to do even though Manitoba and New Brunswick have done exactly that. They have cut their costs.

My colleague David Tilson has introduced a bill that will have a similar effect on Ontario's WCB. Will you support my colleague's bill to reduce costs, or do you want to continue to let the WCB spin further out of control, to the tune of $31.5 billion by the year 2014, as has been predicted by the Premier's Labour-Management Advisory Committee at a meeting on September 7? What is your choice? Will you cut costs?

Hon Mr Mackenzie: You cut costs by reducing accidents, and that has a tremendous effect on workers and their lives too. You don't do it by cutting the benefits to workers in this province of Ontario.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The honourable member for Halton Centre with her --

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order.

CANCER TREATMENT

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): My question is to the Minister of Health.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member for Etobicoke West remains out of order. If he and others would come to order, then the member for Halton Centre, who has been waiting patiently, will have an opportunity to place her question.

Mrs Sullivan: My question is to the Minister of Health. I would like to bring to the attention of the Minister of Health another situation involving bone marrow treatment at Princess Margaret Hospital.

On October 15, Gail Courneyea wrote to the Premier outlining her concerns --

Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South): When you run out of money, you'll have no money for benefits, Floyd.

The Speaker: Order. The member for Oakville South, come to order.

Interjection.

The Speaker: I know the member for Nickel Belt would not wish to contribute to the heckling or to spur it on.

Mrs Sullivan: Last October 15, Mrs Gail Courneyea wrote to the Premier outlining her concerns that her daughter's planned bone marrow transplant at the Princess Margaret Hospital would be delayed. I'm going to ask a page to take a letter to the minister.

Last spring, Minister, you will recall, during the social contract talks, you promised that access to health care would not be at all reduced by social contract cuts. The letter from Mrs Courneyea delineates that proposed reductions in services in the leukaemia and bone marrow units during December due to unpaid leaves under the social contract may affect the timely bone marrow transplant which her daughter is scheduled for.

We want to know what you are going to do to ensure that this woman, who is a candidate for bone marrow transplant, will in fact receive the timely treatment she needs at the Princess Margaret Hospital.

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): I think we've addressed this issue before in the House, and let me say again to the member that, yes, there is some scheduling that is happening at Princess Margaret with respect to their coverage during the Christmas to New Year season.

That is not unusual; it happens in all hospitals and is certainly happening there in an effort to make sure that they have the very intensive nursing that is required when bone marrow transplants occur. I have been assured by the hospital that they do not see this as in any way affecting both the urgency and the number of bone marrow transplants they are scheduled to perform this year.

Mrs Sullivan: Mrs Courneyea is a registered nurse. She's worked in the health care system for something over 20 years in critical care areas. She is working in those areas this day. She is deeply concerned for her daughter, because she has personally seen the direct impact from the lack of planning, the mismanagement surrounding the government cutbacks in the expenditure control plan and through the social contract.

She is deeply, deeply concerned, as you can imagine, that her daughter will be directly affected by those social contract cuts and will not be able to receive the treatment she needs. It is very clear from the planning at Princess Margaret that the normal schedule for closings in December, which we understand occur in many hospitals across the province, will in fact be increased this year directly as a result of the social contract.

A task force that my party is undertaking under the direction of our leader will go around the province to talk to patients and to health care professionals about where they see deficiencies in cancer care, and we hope to bring back recommendations that will be a contribution to the minister. But in the meantime I want to know what the minister is going to do to ensure that social contract cuts do not continue to threaten the delivery of any critical service, such as a bone marrow transplant.

Hon Mrs Grier: First of all, let me say to the member that I welcome the kind of initiative that she describes and I hope that as a result of that she will hear, as I have as I have attended round table discussions around cancer treatment and prevention and early detection around this province, that we have a first-class system.

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We have some gaps, we need a longer continuum and we need some work that makes sure that we increase the amount of prevention and early detection that occurs as we cope with what is a very large increase in the number of cancer patients and needs in this province.

But when she says that there is a lack of planning, I think that she undervalues the very exemplary work that is being done at Princess Margaret and our other treatment centres in dealing with the impact of the social contract and of flat-lining of budgets and in still performing, as I assured her in my answer to the first question, exactly the same number of bone marrow transplants this year as they did last year and ensuring, as they do as a first-class facility, that all patients who need treatment get that treatment.

That's the reality. I hope as the member talks to people within the system she will understand how proud we should all be of our system here in Ontario.

CASINO LEGISLATION

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. The minister will know that Bill 8 has been relatively stalled in committee of the whole for about two hours and 45 minutes dealing with what I and most members on this side of the House think is a very straightforward amendment put forward to section 6 of the bill by the member for Brampton North.

The amendment quite simply is to make sure that the operator of any casino in the province of Ontario is responsible for any loss or liability, as opposed to the province of Ontario and the taxpayers of Ontario. Why will you not accept that very simple amendment?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): I'm certainly aware that there was a long discussion on this issue last week. I also see the logic of the opposition's argument here, why they would like to see it enshrined in the legislation.

Applause.

Hon Ms Churley: Why, thank you. But I have to point out to the member that the problem is that the principle we've adopted for the pilot project is that the operator would be asked to take on any debt should one occur after the casino is opened so that the taxpayers won't be responsible, and that makes a lot of sense. The difficulty in enshrining it in the legislation at this point is that this is a pilot project. "Operator" isn't mentioned in any way in the bill.

Part of the RFP says very clearly that if for some reason the province is not satisfied with the performance of the operator, the province would buy that operator out and at that time would probably incur a debt. The idea would be to resell that to another operator probably, but not for sure. Because this is a pilot and because we're doing it this way this time means that we don't want to have that written in stone.

But I certainly commend the member for his interest in this subject, because of course we all want to make sure that down the road --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the minister conclude her response, please.

Hon Ms Churley: -- the taxpayers aren't stuck with a debt from the casino.

Mr Eves: Mr Speaker, through you to the minister, the members of the standing committee were somewhat confused, because on September 9 both your ADM, Mr Alfieri, and your deputy, Ms Wolfson, attended before the committee and gave two totally different answers to why you wouldn't accept this amendment.

Mr Alfieri's answer was because you didn't want to scare off future casino proponents. Ms Wolfson's answer, and I'm paraphrasing, was that the province may in the future want to enter into some other type of arrangement and thereby perhaps become responsible, and make the taxpayers of the province responsible, for future operating deficits and liabilities.

We would like to know and I'm sure the people of Ontario would like to know whether or not they will be asked to pick up the operating deficit or liability of not only this casino project but any other casino project in the future in the province of Ontario. Will they be asked to pick up that deficit or not? Yes or no.

Hon Ms Churley: No, Mr Speaker. Let me say again that I certainly understand and support the principle behind your amendment. But as I said before, this is a pilot project. This is one model. The government has not decided to proceed with any other casinos at this time, as you know, because this is one model among many possible models, including a government-owned and totally operated casino. That could happen down the road. That would involve a different kind of arrangement. We do not want to see that the taxpayers would be picking up any debt.

Let me also say that the province has decided at this time to go ahead with one casino. We had a very comprehensive study done on the possibility of other casinos down the road. We will be looking at that and responding to that study. But I'm sure it is all of our intentions to make sure -- I'm glad the Liberals and the Tories in particular, who have incurred billions of dollars of debt on different projects over the years, have finally seen the light and want to make sure that this doesn't happen to the taxpayers in the future.

The Speaker: New question, the member for Lincoln. I'm sorry. The Minister of Community and Social Services indicated that he wished to respond to a question asked earlier.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Hon Tony Silipo (Minister of Community and Social Services): Yesterday the member for Bruce asked me some questions with respect to the issue of welfare fraud in general, and specifically an investigation that he referred to that was under way by federal immigration authorities known as Also Known As. I undertook to come back to the House and to give him some more details.

He asked specifically in that question what cooperation we had provided to that project, how long I had known about the particular investigation and how the particular project dovetailed into projects that we have under way in relation to welfare fraud. I'd like to try to answer all three of those parts if I can.

First of all, I can tell him that the particular investigation has been centred essentially in the Metro area and has been centred essentially within the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, because the focus of the investigation has been with respect to general welfare assistance recipients and the issue of refugee claimants there.

Therefore, while we at the ministry level were not aware of the specific details, I can assure him that from the information I have garnered, I'm quite satisfied that there has been complete cooperation by the Metro authorities who, as he knows, deliver the program on our behalf in the Metropolitan Toronto area with respect to GWA, and that is happening. Although the particular investigation is winding down, the investigation, as I understand, is being expanded throughout the region so the issue is being pursued. I can assure him that that will happen.

Secondly, I can also assure the member that even though this was not an instance in which we at the ministry were aware of the specific instances, I've instructed my officials to ensure that we have a process in place that allows the minister and the ministry to be cognizant, in future situations and indeed other situations and other investigations that are taking place, of those specifics so that we have that information at our disposal.

Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): We know that in 1992, the then Minister of Community and Social Services had indicated a plan had been formulated in the ministry to hire up to 450 new people to pursue the issues of welfare fraud. I would like the minister to tell us exactly what has become of that plan to pursue welfare fraud and the hiring of those particular people to make sure that we as taxpayers are not being defrauded of millions and millions of dollars.

Hon Mr Silipo: I am happy for the supplementary and the opportunity to pursue that issue, because I think that as the member indicates, that is also an important issue that we have a clear responsibility on.

I can tell him that following the work my predecessor started on this issue that we have proceeded with and are continuing, in fact there have been a number of additional staff hired whose specific jobs have been to assist existing workers in reviewing eligibility of clients for social assistance.

I can tell him that there have been in fact in the range of a total of 450 new staff that are now in the system, to about a couple of hundred of those specifically dealing with reviews, and we are seeing some very real results which we want to continue to build upon.

I can tell him that just by way of one clear indication of the effect that is having, in the period between April 1992 and January 1993 of this year -- I won't provide all of the details about it -- the total dollar saving that has been identified for the 1992-93 fiscal year was over $5 million and for the 1993-94 fiscal year over $16 million. So I can tell the member that --

Mr Elston: And the losses?

Hon Mr Silipo: The losses? I don't know what losses he's referring to. It's very clear that the process that was put in place is working.

I can also tell the member, as he might recall, that during the expenditure control plan measures we undertook the enhanced verification of eligibility for social assistance was one of the measures we put a lot of attention on. That is now beginning to be put into effect and I expect we'll see even stronger indications of the ability for us to ensure that the integrity of the system is protected and that benefits are directed to those people who need them.

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VIOLENCE

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): My question is for the Attorney General. Her colleague the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations has said she is simply helpless to keep serial killer trading cards from the hands of our children. She said that perhaps the Attorney General might be able to do something about it.

As the minister is aware, without government support there is virtually no chance for passage of my private member's bill, which I introduced three months ago, to prohibit the sale of violent crime cards to children. Since your colleague refuses to take responsibility, I ask you as Attorney General if you will take leadership to protect the children of this province.

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General): Both the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and I have made it very clear that there are real difficulties in what the member describes as simple processes. This is a federal matter. How can we find ways to translate our concern, which we all share, into a workable and useful way to try and block the sale of these items in our own province?

We have joined together, the minister and I, in terms of urging our federal colleagues to look at the law as it now exists and to see ways in which we can make the current Criminal Code, which contains a section called "Crime Comics," I believe, that relates to the making and the sale of periodicals, magazines, comics and cartoons that depict pictorially the commission of crimes and so on -- our advice and our request of the federal government has been that this section be expanded to include things like the cards. That then gives us the mechanism whereby we can enforce any prohibition against those.

The other issue is that the federal government governs importation. Where these items are not being made in Canada, and in general that's the case, the federal government is responsible for dealing with the issue at the border. But under the current law there is no mechanism whereby excise officers can stop that material from coming in.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the minister conclude her response, please.

Hon Mrs Boyd: We are prepared to work with our federal counterparts to see what can be done on that.

I would caution the member, as usual, that there will be great offence taken to this by civil libertarians who see this as a means of restricting freedom of expression and freedom of speech.

Ms Poole: Madam Minister, even civil libertarians have never said that we should not protect our children. If we can protect our children by saying that they cannot drink and that liquor cannot be sold to them, why can't we say provincially that we will not allow these serial killer trading cards to be sold to them?

I turn to another private member's bill, one that passed second reading this morning, to ensure that criminals will not profit from their crimes. We all recognize in this House that it is futile to advance a private member's bill during private members' hour if the government will not give its commitment to ensure the bill is passed and implemented. I would say that serial killer cards are a perfect example of how people are exploiting crime for profit.

Parents of young victims are justifiably outraged that criminals are profiting from the crimes that took their children's lives. Debbie Mahaffy, who has been leading the fight against these violence crimes, has said: "What's next? Gang rape cards?"

Minister, I ask you in all seriousness, will you and your government move expeditiously to support and ensure this bill is passed?

Hon Mrs Boyd: What happened in the House this morning indicates very clearly the concern that all members of the House have for the pain and the suffering and the sorrow that all of us in the community feel about the issues that are happening.

As Attorney General, I cannot support a bill which is not going to stand up constitutionally. My parliamentary assistant talked about the constitutional issues in the bill as it is formulated. What we have determined to do is to work with the member who brought the bill forward as we go through that second reading process to see if there are ways in which we can have the same end result without opening ourselves to a constitutional challenge of the magnitude that this would be.

TEACHERS' DISPUTE

Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): I have a question for the Minister of Education and Training. Yesterday the minister said, in talking to me: "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 had nothing to do with the social contract." This is with regard to the Lambton secondary strike -- your words.

I would like to read from Bill 48, subsection 24(5), and then my question will be very brief, one statement. "If a collective agreement has expired before June 14, 1993 and on that date the employees that were formerly bound by it are without a collective agreement" -- and this agreement was before that, Lambton secondary, August 1992 -- "the compensation of these employees is fixed at the amount they were receiving under the last collective agreement in force before June 14, 1993."

This is important for all the members in this House. Is this a legal document? Is this a bill of Parliament? Does this not in fact relate to this strike? Are you not going to use this in this dispute with Lambton? Are they part of the social contract legislation for the province?

Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): I think the point I made yesterday was that the time period that the collective agreement now being negotiated covers is previous to the social contract legislation or the date on which the social contract came into force. As a result, if the parties choose to negotiate a settlement at the bargaining table, they have much more flexibility than they do after the social contract legislation comes into effect. The member knows that, the teachers know that, the board knows that. It's up to the parties in Lambton whether they want to take advantage of that or not.

Mrs Cunningham: I will let the record speak for itself, because June 14, 1993, is the date in the social contract. If this is the ruling of the minister, all boards have free, open negotiations separate from the social contract. That is not what the public of Ontario was told.

We have a strike in Lambton secondary which is 28 days. We have another strike, in East Parry Sound elementary, which is now into its 11th day. There are threats of other strikes. The social contract does not allow for salary increases for teachers until March 31, 1996, unless the minister is saying he's going to disregard his own legislation. I think he said that today. I think it's very important for the boards to pay attention to this response.

My question therefore is this: In Lambton, the parents, the students, the teachers -- everyone -- are going to be meeting tonight and they will be proving that those children who are out of the classroom are in jeopardy. I can say to you now, Mr Minister, when are you going to show some leadership, given all the information you've got, and bring forth legislation so that the students can return to school?

Hon Mr Cooke: The whole purpose of the meeting that's been convened tonight by the Education Relations Commission is to put a series of questions to the board and the teachers, to listen to the public and to get that necessary input, as provided under Bill 100, because it's the responsibility of the Education Relations Commission to determine when there is jeopardy in a school system. I think the member should respect the law.

JOBS ONTARIO

Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): My question is to the Minister of Education and Training. It seems that the honourable Leader of the Opposition doesn't think this government's Jobs Ontario Training program is working.

We've all heard her complain and complain and complain, but without offering a viable alternative of her own. I can tell you that I've talked to plenty of people in the riding of Lincoln who don't agree with the Leader of the Opposition, people who have excellent things to say about Jobs Ontario Training.

Can the minister advise this House and my constituency if Jobs Ontario Training is indeed working for the people of Lincoln and Ontario?

Hon David S. Cooke (Minister of Education and Training): I can advise the member that province-wide the program has now created well over 30,000 jobs in the province of Ontario. I can also advise the member that province-wide the program has saved over $130 million in social assistance costs to the taxpayers of the province.

I'd certainly like to indicate to the member that in his area the Jobs Ontario Training program is working with Niagara College as the broker. My understanding is that there are 37 employers in Lincoln county and over 380 employers in the Niagara area participating, and already around 50 jobs have been created in small deals and there is one bigger deal that has created 85 jobs in the Lincoln county area alone.

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BRIDGE ACCIDENT

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): My question is to the Minister of Labour. As you know, on June 8, 1993, there was a tragic accident on the Skyway bridge in St Catharines that killed four men. The Ministry of Labour investigators' investigation was to be completed by the end of September, but it has been publicly stated that the report will not be completed until January or even as late as February.

I have information; I have learned that the inspector's report is indeed complete now and that it is being withheld by you and your officials. Apparently you are suppressing this report because it alleges negligence. We don't know who the negligence refers to because you won't share the information with us or with the public.

Minister, will you release this very important report immediately?

Hon Bob Mackenzie (Minister of Labour): I can tell the member that as soon as I am able to, I will release the report. They are in the process also of reassembling and rebuilding the platform, because there's some additional information still needed before the final decisions are made on the accident.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): In light of the fact that the families of the people who are directly involved -- in other words, the people who were tragically killed in this accident -- and their friends and fellow workers and everyone who's involved in this are eagerly awaiting the results of this investigation to determine exactly what happened and to perhaps ease their minds or at least confirm what their suspicions might be, would the minister not be prepared to give an undertaking to have this investigation and the final report speeded up so that we could have this before the projected time of February, particularly in light of the fact that it appears from the information that my colleague from Mississauga West has obtained that much of the report or almost all of the report is in fact done? It's sitting somewhere on a desk simply awaiting release by your ministry.

Hon Mr Mackenzie: I have no desire to hang on to the report beyond the time that's needed. What I hear from my health and safety people on the reassembly of the platform is what we're currently waiting on, and I will get the report out as quickly as I can.

TIRE RECYCLING

Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): To the Minister of Environment and Energy: Can you tell this House whether you consider the process of liquifying tires in order to break them down into their original components to be recycling or incineration?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy): I guess it relates to whether or not you burn them.

Mr Villeneuve: Tell the minister that Ripp Tire, which wants to set up a process of liquifying tires, is not incinerating tires. They will be producing back to the original: the carbon black, the metal and the fuels. Your ministry has had this for over a year now and it cannot decide whether this is recycling or incineration. Could you help me out, please?

Hon Mr Wildman: Probably not.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): New question, the member for --

Mr Villeneuve: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: This is an economic problem very important to the province of Ontario and to my riding. I ask for a late show.

Hon Mr Wildman: I'm happy to take the member's question on advisement and to respond to him later.

I just want to indicate to him that right now in Ontario, of the 10 million waste tires we produce each year, we're recycling about 40%. Next year, due to the efforts of the private sector and the ministry, we expect to be recycling and reusing 60% of the used tires in this province.

The Speaker: To the honourable member for S-D-G & East Grenville, indeed he has the opportunity, if he so chooses, to still ask for what is commonly known as the late show.

I had recognized earlier, before the clock ran out, the honourable member for St George-St David.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The question period, as you know, is supposed to go in rotation. Government members are allowed a question. It is our rotation.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. It's perhaps appropriate to at this point explain that the standing orders do provide a certain restriction for the Speaker in that they do prescribe a rotation, and I am aware of that. I looked and I allowed a number of seconds, waiting for a member on the government side to rise. I did not see anyone rise.

Mr Bisson: I was up next.

The Speaker: If the member for Cochrane South indeed did rise and he did not catch my eye, to him I apologize, but I had looked. I allowed some time. I could not see a government member on his or her feet. I then recognized in order of rotation the member for St George-St David.

Mr Bisson: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: There was at the time a point of order being raised in the House and that's why I wasn't quick getting to my feet at the time. The rules in here are that you must deal with a point of order as it's raised, and once the point of order was dealt with, I went to my feet.

The Speaker: To the member for Cochrane South, it perhaps isn't appropriate at this point in time to go through a discussion of the actual sequence of events, but I believe them to be as I had described them. It would be more appropriate for me to follow my original decision, which was to recognize the honourable member for St George-St David. Indeed, perhaps on the subsequent question period the honourable member for Cochrane South will find his name on the list.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): My question is to the Attorney General. As she will know, as the minister responsible for the special investigations unit, recently after 15 months' investigation the SIU finally cleared Constable David Nurse in Ottawa. It took 15 months for this investigation where any police force would have taken days, maybe weeks.

In fact, John Peterson, the president of the Ontario Police Association, is quoted as saying, "I find it appalling that a government agency could take 15 months." He goes on to say: "There were no new facts after the first week of the investigation. They had everything they needed." He said, "I have to believe politics are at the root of the delay."

My question for the Attorney General: Is anybody over there paying any attention to this special investigations unit and fixing it? Almost a year ago now, eight or nine months, we had a promise of legislation from the previous Attorney General. We have seen nothing from this current Attorney General.

When is she going to do something with the special investigations unit?

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General): The member is quite incorrect when he suggests that nothing is happening. In fact, the SIU was switched from the responsibility of the Solicitor General to the Attorney General's ministry in the last few months. The hiring of former Chief Harding from Halton has been completed. He will be coming on board in December as a very senior member of the team.

Five additional hirings will be announced very shortly, after a very extensive process which involved a search and over 500 candidates applying for the job. We have increased very substantially the assistance that the director of special investigations now has in order to complete these investigations.

That is not to say that the criticism of this particular investigation should not be made. The director himself has been very clear that there were unacceptable delays in the course of this investigation, some due to lack of resources on the part of the unit, some due to the inability of the unit to investigate because of the refusal of one of the participants to give information, some of it because the volumes are very thick of this investigation. There was a lot of fact evidence, three volumes that had to be looked at because legal advice had to be looked at in this case.

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So we have a very great obligation to improve the efficiency and we intend to. But I would remind the member that the police forces of this province very frequently take longer than 15 months and all of us in this House know of investigations that have gone on for months and months, to our dismay, and it is not our right as politicians to interfere with the course of investigations.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): I have a very urgent point of privilege, Mr Speaker. It involves the expenditure of many hundreds of thousands of dollars on a report for the Ministry of Correctional Services that demonstrates significant racism in the jails. The minister has not released that and he's denied me, as the critic for corrections --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member for Brampton South will know that he does not have a point of privilege, but certainly he has material for a subsequent question period, I'm sure.

ASSISTED HOUSING

Hon Evelyn Gigantes (Minister of Housing): Mr Speaker, on October 13 the leader of the third party asked a question of me concerning a property at 10 Ashdale in the city of Toronto. I promised him at that point that I would provide information both to him and to the members of the House --

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): That is not in order, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): No, there's nothing out of order.

Hon Ms Gigantes: -- and I'm pleased to table that information right now.

Mrs Marland: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: My understanding of the proceedings in this House is that when a minister has information that is as a result of a question by another member, that response is tabled during question period in order that the person who asked the original question has an opportunity to comment.

The Speaker: To the member for Mississauga South, indeed there are two separate processes. At any given time when the House is sitting a minister may table information with the table, and that's in fact what the Minister of Housing just did. On other occasions where ministers have made an undertaking to provide a response to the member in the House, then that is done and at that point the member involved has the opportunity for a supplementary. They're two different processes, and in this case the minister was simply tabling information and that's perfectly in order.

MEMBER'S PRIVILEGE

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: It's come to my attention that you have authored a letter dated October 14, 1993, where you have taken the liberty of indicating that you're sorry to intrude on the hectic life of members with an article about some Canadians recently assisting the people of Cuba. Then you go on to say, "From a recent visit, I can attest that the results of a devastating tropical storm, a drought and" -- now the key words -- "the US embargo have had a drastic effect on the daily lives of the 11 million people of this country."

I object very strongly to your speaking on my behalf as a member of this assembly and alleging that the problems that result in the country of Cuba are as a result of your perceived feelings about the US embargo there. You have no right, with respect, to speak for me or any other member of this Legislature on the letterhead of the Legislative Assembly, indicating that you have some questions about the validity of the US embargo of the country of Cuba.

I very respectfully would ask you to apologize to members of this assembly who may have been offended, as I am, by this letter. I would suggest that as a private member of this Legislature, which I understand you are, you are representing a constituency, you could write such a letter, but as Speaker you do not represent my thoughts on this issue and I am offended by this letter and I would hope that it would not happen again.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): To the honourable member for Willowdale: If indeed the letter which I wrote to him is one about which he takes offence, I indeed would apologize to the honourable member for Willowdale. He will note, and I think he did in his remarks, that I wrote to members of the Assembly and to no other individuals. But I appreciate the fact that he's drawn it to my attention and if indeed at a future date he wishes to discuss this at any greater length, I would be most pleased to entertain a meeting in my office. I appreciate what the member's done.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): On a point of order, Mr Speaker --

Hon Mike Farnan (Minister without Portfolio in Education and Training): Get out of the gutter.

Mr Harnick: Write it on his private letterhead.

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

Mr Stockwell: Yesterday the Solicitor General had a press conference revolving around the .38-calibre handgun and the fact that they're moving to a semi-automatic in the police forces across Ontario.

I believe my privileges as a member have been usurped, because considering that issue has been debated at great length in here and questions have been asked, it seems absolutely incredible to me that a member of the government, a minister, would make such an announcement outside of this House and then not have the guts to bring it in this House and make that announcement so we in the opposition would have the opportunity --

The Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West knows, first of all, that he has neither a point or order nor a point of privilege but indeed it's a difference of opinion. It sounds again as if it may be material for question period.

PETITIONS

ONTARIO LOTTERY CORP

Ms Dianne Poole (Eglinton): I have a petition addressed to the Legislative Assembly. It's fairly lengthy, and I know you've asked on previous occasions, Mr Speaker, for us to précis the petitions when they're this long. So I would just tell you that the petition concerns the Ontario Lottery Corp and the petitioners are very concerned about the intimidation of retailers and visiting retailers with the connections of their terminals if they carry certain material. They've asked for legislation to be introduced and I'll read this particular section verbatim:

"Therefore we, the undersigned, respectfully beg leave and petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"Consider, move and read a bill, An Act to amend the Ontario Lottery Corporation Act, as follows:

"Subject to the Competition Act, Ontario Lottery Corporation shall make such further reports to the minister as the minister may require from time to time, and where, in the course of determining whether a competitive product appears to offend any legislation or the Criminal Code of Canada, Ontario Lottery Corporation shall report the particulars of the competitive product and any allegation of the offence to the federal competitor authority or director thereof in place of contacting the distributors and retailers of the competitive product in order that the retailers' and distributors' market shall remain intact and no business interruption shall occur as a result of any investigation and until a determination has been made as to the legality of the competitive product."

MEMBER'S PRIVILEGE

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Mr Speaker, I rise again on a point of privilege. I just made the comments earlier about your letter of October 14, and I would like to ask the member for Cambridge, who told me I was getting out of the gutter in order to do that, to withdraw his remarks.

As a member of this Legislature, I felt strongly about what I said, and I said it with the utmost respect to your office. I don't think I should be subject to being told by the member for Cambridge that I was getting out of the gutter in order to state my rights as a member in this place.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): To the member for Willowdale, I did not hear the remarks to which he referred. Indeed, had I heard them, I would have said they were not parliamentary. But as is the custom, I would allow the honourable member for Cambridge, if he is so inclined, to withdraw the alleged remarks.

Hon Mike Farnan (Minister without Portfolio in Education and Training): Mr Speaker, it is absolutely correct that I find the member's approach totally disgusting. It's something I felt he could have dealt with in private with you out of respect for your office. I abhor the fact that he took this particular route in the House, and I stand by that statement.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND PROTECTION OF PRIVACY STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT DES LOIS RELATIVES À L'ACCÈS À L'INFORMATION ET LA PROTECTION DE LA VIE PRIVÉE

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

Bill 108, An Act to amend the Law related to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy / Projet de loi 108, Loi portant modification des lois relatives à l'accès à l'information et la protection de la vie privée.

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): This replaces the bill that was ruled out of order earlier in the week. I won't repeat it; it's simply replacing the bill that you ruled out of order.

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ORDERS OF THE DAY

PROVINCIAL OFFENCES STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1993 / LOI DE 1993 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE LES INFRACTIONS PROVINCIALES

Mrs Boyd moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 47, An Act to amend certain Acts in respect of the Administration of Justice / Projet de loi 47, Loi modifiant certaines lois en ce qui concerne l'administration de la justice.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): Mr Speaker, just before the parliamentary assistant starts with the bill, I believe we have agreement, so I'll seek unanimous consent for each of the three parties to split their opening statements; two people will speak for each party, and then we will rotate. Transportation and the Attorney General are going to start off for us, and then I believe the appropriate critics will follow for each of the opposition parties.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): So the opening time of 90 minutes allotted would be split equally for each of the two opposition parties after the opening statement by the parliamentary assistant and the Attorney General, who will split the time equally. And what about comments and questions?

Hon Mr Charlton: I think the agreement on time in the House included that if members have comments and questions for both speakers, they may do so.

The Speaker: Is that procedure agreed to?

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): Our party does not wish to split the opening remarks.

Hon Mr Charlton: I understood I had an agreement with your House leader this morning. You don't have to split; it's just that the agreement is there to do that if you wish.

The Speaker: Is the process agreed to? Agreed.

Hon Mr Charlton: It is my understanding that in our case the AG will lead off and the parliamentary assistant will follow.

The Speaker: The minister with her opening remarks.

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General): On June 9, 1993, this government introduced Bill 47, amendments to the Highway Traffic Act and the Provincial Offences Act, for first reading in this House. Our government is committed to making Ontario roads the safest in North America by the year 1998. We have introduced initiatives which will deal with aggressive, impaired and inexperienced drivers in the months to come.

The legislation before you today will allow for the use of photo radar technology to reduce speeding and to reduce pressures on courts and police so that resources can be focused on more serious charges. I will speak first to the provisions being proposed for the Provincial Offences Act which will enable new safety measures to be effected.

Backlogs and delays have become facts of life in our courts dealing with minor provincial offences. This is because of a dramatic increase in the volume of charges in our system and because requests for trial have increased, even when there is no real intent on the part of the accused to dispute the charge. As a result, valuable court and police officer time is wasted on minor charges where nothing is disputed and, in some cases, when the accused does not attend the hearing at all.

During the last fiscal year in Metro Toronto alone, defendants were not present for nearly 32,000 of the 201,000 requested trials under the Provincial Offences Act. This figure represents a 10% increase over the previous year.

The changes that we are proposing to the Provincial Offences Act focus on the following matters:

First appearance courts will be established in high-volume areas such as Metro Toronto and in all areas where the photo radar initiative will be piloted.

Defendants wishing to dispute a charge must appear in person in court in order to schedule a trial. At that first appearance, defendants will be able to plead guilty and make submissions to a justice of the peace concerning the penalty. Experienced police officers will also be available to discuss charges with defendants. We expect that when defendants are clear about the law and about how their cases will be judged under the law, this process will result in more guilty pleas. In other cases, charges may be withdrawn or reduced once the facts are clear. In some cases, trials will still need to occur, and those trials will be scheduled in as timely a fashion as possible.

Defendants who have received parking tickets will go through a similar process in some municipalities. We will be working in partnership with the municipalities on this initiative.

Defendants under the above process, who are convicted without a hearing if they do not appear for trials, will be convicted without a hearing if they do not appear for trials scheduled at their request. A failure to appear will be treated in the same way as failure to respond to the ticket. Those who were unable to attend through no fault of their own will be able to apply to the court to have the matter reopened and subsequently tried.

Police officers will no longer have to attend every trial to prove charges. Certified statements of police and other enforcement officers will be admissible at trial if defendants do not indicate that they require the officer to attend court. This process will save time and money for both the courts and the police.

Justices of the peace will now be able to hear all Provincial Offences Act matters involving young people except where a youth may be placed in custody as a result.

A formal order will no longer have to be issued by a justice of the peace to suspend drivers' licences for defaulted fines. Now court staff will be able to direct the Ministry of Transportation to enforce the court order, and documents will be permitted to be filed and signed electronically.

All of these measures are designed to improve court efficiency, to reduce errors and to provide cost savings.

I also wish to announce today the amendments to the fine-default collections process. We are expanding the use of licence suspensions to collect fines to include a longer list of offences. At present, suspensions only apply to moving violations under the Highway Traffic Act. Now this method will be used for collecting fines for driving without insurance and for the misuse of snowmobiles and road vehicles.

We also want to ensure that jail is not used to enforce a fine when people are unable to pay. This has been a serious problem in the past, and we believe it is possible to introduce a method of ensuring that this does not happen. This new bill ensures that no one will be jailed without a hearing where he or she can raise the issue of ability to pay. The bill also removes jail as an enforcement tool in cases of public drunkenness and illegal possession of liquor.

The measures I've outlined today, as well as the measures that my colleague the parliamentary assistant for the Minister of Transportation will outline, will ensure that our roads and our society are safer for all Ontarians.

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Mr George Dadamo (Windsor-Sandwich): As my colleague the Attorney General has just said, this government is committed to making Ontario's roads the safest in North America. Bill 47 is one of several pieces of legislation in the government's comprehensive plan to achieve that goal.

The human price of highway collisions, more than 1,000 lost and 90,000 people injured annually, is not acceptable in this caring society. Add to that the human cost, the social costs of health care, insurance rates, property damages and lost wages and you see the massive scope of the problem. Collisions on our roads cost Ontario more than $9 billion every year.

If 1,000 people every year die preventable deaths in Ontario, shouldn't the government say "Stop" now? If 90,000 people every year are injured the same preventable way, shouldn't Ontario find a way to stop it? If $9 billion is sucked out of our economy every year to pay for these needless casualties, isn't it time Ontario demands an end? Ontario doesn't have to accept the statistics and the trauma they represent.

Someone is killed every eight hours in Ontario in a vehicle collision. While I'm speaking to the House today, two people will be injured in collisions.

But these people are not killed and injured by bolts of lightning, by events beyond our control. Some 85%, 935 people with families, children and parents, are killed and injured because of driver error, drinking and driving, speeding and careless driving.

We can change driver behaviour and we have the means to change it now. That's why we support RIDE campaigns; that's why we promote seatbelt use; that's why we're testing chevron markers to educate drivers about safe stopping distances; that's why last April we announced a plan for graduated licensing of new drivers; and that's why in May we announced the integrated safety project.

The passage of Bill 47 will make possible some of the measures included in the integrated safety project. It allows for amendments to the Highway Traffic Act designed to make Ontario roads safer by reducing speeding and ensuring that drivers obey our traffic laws.

Our traditional enforcement techniques and our courts cannot solve the problems alone. The changes to the legislation introduced for second reading today give us new tools to ensure greater enforcement of our laws. And these measures do change driver behaviour; experience in other jurisdictions has shown they make a difference.

The changes to the Highway Traffic Act will allow for the use of photo-radar technology to reduce speeding. We do not introduce this technology lightly. In 1989 the state of Victoria, Australia, began using photo-radar. Since that year, the number of fatalities on its roads has been cut in half.

We know speeding is a major contributor to collisions that are likely to lead to severe injuries and fatalities. However, we also know that our traditional methods of enforcing speed limits only apprehend a small percentage of lawbreakers. Traditional radar enforcement compromises the safety of the public and the police, captures few offenders and is very expensive. Photo-radar technology, in contrast, is efficient, effective and safe. Drivers have a financial incentive to change their behaviour because they are more likely to be caught and convicted for speeding by photo-radar cameras. The amendments being introduced today make the owner of a vehicle liable for photo-radar speeding offences. If fines are not paid, we will not renew vehicle permits. Notices of offence for speeding vehicles captured by photo-radar will now be sent through the mail.

As well, the amendments allow drivers' licences to be suspended when fines for motor vehicle related convictions under the Liquor Licence Act, among others, go unpaid.

Other amendments to the Highway Traffic Act contained in Bill 47 prohibit interference with the operation of photo-radar. We will increase the penalty for dirtying or obstructing licence plates.

These measures offer significant improvements to both road safety and the delivery of justice and law enforcement. If we can prevent any one of the 1,100 deaths or 90,000 injuries on Ontario roads each year, we have a responsibility to deliver on those improvements. We have an obligation to act.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): I wish to thank the honourable parliamentary assistant. Comments or questions?

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Bill 47 is a very interesting bill. It contains an awful lot more than just some provisions dealing with photo-radar. It really deals with a whole code to revamp the way parking tickets are processed in the province of Ontario. It deals significantly with licence suspensions for non-payment of fines, and --

Interjection.

Mr Harnick: Oh, it's very interesting. What no one from the government side really wishes to allude to when they speak on behalf of their ministry is that this will permit the suspension of a licence because of non-payment of a fine under any act.

If you are in default and under any act, whether it's related to motor vehicles or auto insurance or something as distant as a veterinarian having his licence to practise veterinary medicine, if the Veterinarians Act says that someone who is in default of a fine can be suspended, then what this means is that they can have their licence suspended because it's under any act.

When I'm told that it's a matter of making roads safer and I see that if someone is a veterinarian, a lawyer, a doctor, a plumber, a pipefitter and they have a licence and under the act that licenses them to do their day-to-day work it says if they're under suspension they can't get that licence, it is very remote, very remote indeed, from the idea of driving an automobile. There are many provisions in this bill that are like that, and it goes much further than the surface.

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): I'd just like to say to the ministry that in some conversations I've had with some teachers in my community they expressed great appreciation to the Ministry of Transportation for starting to take initiatives to try to control the speeds that are on our highways.

As most of us know, when we're driving down a highway and we see a red-and-white or a white-and-blue, we always have a tendency to slow down so that the radar doesn't catch us. It's a clear identification. But what we're doing is just putting off another moment or another minute to an accident that may occur down the highway a little later.

I know a lot of us are geared by the clock. The old clock just tells us; even today in this Legislature, it tells me we have a few minutes to reply, and we have a few minutes to get to the next meeting and we could be running late. What it does is allow us to go beyond the speed limits that are there. I guess, as indicated in the statement, it says it's going to make us think about how fast we drive, the times we leave and all those other things that affect our society. It's going to make us have a second thought.

I agree, because I'm just like normal people. I do have a tendency to go over the speed limit every so often. I know it will be one that I'm not going to be pulled over for. I never know if the possibility of a bill is going to be in the mail that is unexpected. I know myself that I'm going to have to change my pattern of driving. With the meetings that we have and our schedules, it's going to make sure that I have to end a meeting at a certain time so I can be at the appropriate place at the right time.

So I think what the ministry is trying to do to correct our speeding initiatives is very important. We cannot put a police officer on every street to sit there with the radar and try to detect it. But I think the initiatives that we're trying to do make an awareness to the general public that there are speed limits that are posted. We may not agree with the speed limits that are there, but they're posted for the public safety.

I compliment them on their initiatives on the 401. I was wondering what all the white lines were until I understood what the explanation is about why all those white lines are there. So I'd like to say on behalf of the constituents that I represent, and some will be in disagreement with it, I compliment the ministry for its efforts in controlling speeding.

The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments? The member for Windsor-Sandwich and parliamentary assistant to the Ministry of Transportation has two minutes in response.

Mr Dadamo: I wanted to respond to a couple of things, one being the suspension aspect of photo-radar. We want to talk about the fact that if you aren't the one who is in the vehicle at the time that the infraction is made, for example, if the licence plate happens to be kind of dirty and the numbers aren't picked up by the photo-radar machine and you want to take it to the courts because you say, "It wasn't me in the vehicle," first of all, you are responsible for your car. That will not change. That aspect is very important. Whoever should drive your car, you should know, and where it is at all times, I would imagine.

If you're talking about professional persons who will say to you that they're in a hurry and they have to be at a certain location at a certain time, and I'm sure police officers get that all the time, the right won't be taken away that you can take it to court and you can fight it. That will not change. That's going to be in the law and you have every right to do that. I wanted to respond to that.

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The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The honourable member for Nepean.

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): Let me say there are a number of points that I wish to make, but I want to start out to say that I'm disappointed that the minister's not here. In fact I haven't seen him in quite a while; I don't know where he is.

I was trying to ask him some questions earlier this week about the ferry fees in eastern Ontario and I had to make a statement instead. I thought perhaps he might be here today to speak to this initiative of photo-radar and to what he calls a major safety initiative.

I will be putting forward the argument that this isn't a safety initiative at all but much more an initiative that seems to be coming out of the treasury. It's more revenue-related. I will be speaking to this at some length, but I want to say first of all that the member for Willowdale I think has done us a service by indicating that this bill touches on quite a few other things than just the photo-radar initiative.

There are a number of changes that are being made -- in fact the bill is entitled An Act to amend certain Acts in respect of the Administration of Justice. That's very, very broad. In fact there are some changes in here.

"Section 4 amends the Liquor Licence Act by providing that no person may be imprisoned for conviction of unlawful possession of liquor or being intoxicated in a public place."

Perhaps that's progress and perhaps that reflects a little bit our growing, perhaps more mature, attitude towards use and possibly abuse of liquor. So that's perhaps something that it's time to change. We don't have to throw people into jail for this.

In fact I understand this is a provision that affected negatively in particular native people, and perhaps that's something that really needs to be changed. I am simply raising this to indicate, as the member for Willowdale has done very eloquently, that there are other items in this bill that need to be addressed. My colleague the member for St George-St David will I think touch on some of these aspects.

There's one that changes the court procedures in the way you can appeal a traffic fine. Frankly, I'm just not qualified enough to say whether that's a measure that will improve the court procedures or not. I guess if it does it's probably good, because certainly our courts are plugged up and the delay in justice is a big problem in this province.

If we can find ways and means to speed up the court procedure and to find justice in the courts, I'd probably applaud this, although when I look at it from my lay perspective -- I'm not a lawyer; I'm not involved in the court system -- it sounds a little bit as though some rights are being taken away from individuals and there's more of an automatic conviction, as it were, without a real avenue to defend yourself properly in the courts. But perhaps I'm mistaken. There's not very much information, I must say, in the explanation of the bill with regard to this provision.

Frankly, I must say to the parliamentary assistant, since he's the only one left here now to defend the initiative of the government -- the Attorney General I guess has left and has other things to do and the Minister of Transportation is away himself. I understand he is even out of the country, I'm not quite sure on what mission.

The parliamentary assistant for the Minister of Transportation perhaps should take notice that we weren't really provided with very much background information on this bill. In fact, when this matter was introduced on first reading, it was already raised as a big complaint from both opposition critics and opposition parties that we hadn't received a proper compendium at the time and that we should.

There are three ministries that could have sent things over to really make the argument that this is a safety measure and not a tax grab, a revenue grab. Since I haven't seen very much in terms of really showing that safety can directly be improved by this measure, I have to assume, in view of the fact that there are a lot of arguments to be made, that this a revenue grab and not a safety measure.

Mr Turnbull: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Following the approximately one-third attendance of the NDP today, I don't believe we have a quorum in the House.

The Acting Speaker: Could the Clerk check to see if we have a quorum, please.

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

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is now present.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Nepean may resume his participation in the debate.

Mr Daigeler: The member for York Mills will make sure that we have the attention of enough members of the government in the House here on an item that is of significant importance. I'm trying to find out whether it's of importance to the Treasurer or of importance to the Minister of Transportation and the Minister of Health. Frankly, my suspicion, as I started to indicate, is that it is of more importance to the Treasurer than to anyone else.

Certainly if they go by the 100-kilometre speed limit, the photo-radar initiative -- and I'm basically going to concentrate on that aspect of the bill before us -- could produce a lot of money for the province. I stand to be corrected -- again this is some information that I would like to hear from the parliamentary assistant -- but some of the figures that I've heard are that it could be as high as $150 million that could be brought in through this initiative; probably not while it's an experiment, but once it would be in place as a permanent feature it could easily turn into a very significant revenue-producer for the province.

The way the finances are and the way the Premier's putting the pressure on the Treasurer, I can understand that he's looking for any kind of avenue to collect more revenue in the province. I see that same emphasis in many other aspects of what this government is doing.

As I said a bit earlier, I was talking this week about ferry fees in eastern Ontario. We have an initiative that is being put forward under the guise of fairness. In reality, there is no fairness at all. The Premier himself admitted when he was down there in eastern Ontario talking to the people who are affected by these fees that there was no study done at all on how this will impact on the economy of Wolfe Island, Amherst Island and so on, so the argument of fairness hasn't really been investigated at all. Here, in the measure before us, I'm not convinced that the argument of safety has been really convincingly been put forward.

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The argument, of course, that's been advanced or that the minister's trying to put forward makes the connection between speed and accidents in that the minister's saying, "If we can reduce the speed, then we should have fewer accidents, therefore fewer injuries, with all the associated costs in terms of the physical injury, in terms of psychological costs, but also financial costs, obviously, to OHIP."

If we can make that connection very convincingly, I'm willing to look at it. I think all members in the House are in favour of reducing injuries, and that's why the member for York Mills, the Conservative Transportation critic, and myself were very pleased to take part in the graduated licences hearings over the summer. We were all agreed that this is a measure that will improve the safety and will reduce the accident statistics in this province, because our younger drivers will have to take a longer time to train.

That's precisely the point: People who are experts in the field make the argument that it isn't really speed, but it's the training, it's the way people drive, which produces the accidents. I can tell you that I had in my office this week a real expert in driving, Gary Magwood from the Labatt's driver training program.

Mr Hope: What makes him an expert? Give me some criteria. You could say I am an expert.

Mr Daigeler: The member for Chatham-Kent's saying, "What makes Gary Magwood an expert?" He is recognized by a lot of people in this whole country as one of the top driving instructors and driving experts in this province. He's making the argument that what really reduces accidents is driver training and advanced driver training. To the credit of the government, I think it recognizes that itself, by the advanced driver training test it's trying to bring in with the new graduated licences initiative. So the government recognizes it on the one hand; with this initiative, however, it doesn't recognize it.

You see, when you look at the way we are driving, you begin to wonder whether the problem is the driver or the way we set our speeds. Let's not forget that the reason we did reduce the driving speed limit on our highways wasn't really related to safety at all. It was because of the Americans, and then we followed suit.

Mr Hope: Burning up more gas.

Mr Daigeler: Precisely, because we were burning too much gas. It was related to the oil crisis in the early 1970s. It was felt that if we reduced the speed, then we could reduce the consumption of gasoline. I think at the time this probably was a worthwhile argument. However, it clearly shows that when we reduced the speed limit on these highways, it wasn't related to safety, it was related to conserving energy. I think that's a valid argument in itself.

Since then, both in terms of the fuel efficiency of our cars and in terms of the improvement to the technology of our cars, the way we build them, they've become safer and they've become more energy-efficient. So I think one could ask whether it is time to review in fact the speed limit on our highways, in particular because most of the people are not following the speed limit the way it's been established.

I have received some statistics. The one I have in front of me is a little bit dated; it's from 1990. Perhaps the ministry has other statistics, and I'm quite open to receiving them if they can show that our people have changed their attitudes since 1990 and have become perhaps more observant of our regulations. But I have here in front of me a report, a traffic survey that was held for just half an hour on the 401. At the time 197 cars were patrolled, and out of these 197 cars 85% were going at a speed of around 120 or 117 kilometres.

One can say, and I guess that's what the government wants to say, is, "We have to bring in more police and we have to make sure that we catch more speeders." Now they're saying we have to put up photo-radar machines so that when we catch the speeders, and I guess put the fear of the law into them, they'll reduce their speed and go back to 100.

I think that when there's such a clear not following of the rules one has to ask, are the rules still appropriate? That's something one has to look into because, as I just said, we did have the higher speed limits in the 1970s, as late as the early 1970s. I think it was in 1974 or something that we changed the speed limit, and really it wasn't related to safety considerations; it was related to energy conservation.

Really, as Gary Magwood has said to me, the speed is a red herring. It's the way people drive, whether they have enough distance from the other car. For example, somebody mentioned --

Interjection.

Mr Daigeler: Yes, it was in fact the member for Chatham-Kent who said that the chevrons that are being painted on the 401 are a good idea, and I agree with him. My daughter just passed a driver's test, and I told her: "Look out for the other guy. You yourself have to drive carefully, but be prepared for the other guy, and keeping your distance is a very important dimension of driving safely."

Just to say speed is the problem is too simplistic. Frankly, it's an approach that fits in perhaps with the NDP government. If this initiative that's in front of us were the only instance of this, fine, I would say okay, perhaps I would believe them, but we have many other cases that have been brought forward by this government where what we see really is Big Brother government that wants to make sure we're all doing the right thing, we're all following the laws. And if you don't, then the big government, the Big Brother, the big NDP government will come in with a big stick and make sure you follow the rules.

I tell you, even though I didn't support it in the end, a lot of people felt like that when we passed the bicycle helmet legislation, for example. There are a lot of people out there in my riding and elsewhere who really felt that initiative in itself also was very much a government-driven, a big government, a Big Brother initiative. There is that feeling out there.

I see the Minister of Municipal Affairs sitting right there. I'm glad that he's here, because he will hear very clearly and directly from me that his initiative of Bill 77, which the other members in the House may not be familiar with, also is seen, certainly in my area, Nepean, and in other municipalities of the Ottawa-Carleton area, as Big Brother telling us how we should run our affairs.

Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): That is the way the population of Ottawa-Carleton wanted it. The people of Ottawa-Carleton wanted it. Listen to your constituents.

Mr Daigeler: I tell the Minister of Municipal Affairs that this is not the way we want to go. We want to rule ourselves. We don't want to be dictated to by Queen's Park. We don't want to be dictated to how we run our wards, how we set up and how we govern ourselves by the minister. We don't want to be dictated to by the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

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Hon Mr Philip: The wards were set up by the clerks. You don't even know what you are talking about. You are disagreeing with your own clerks.

Mr Daigeler: What I'm saying to the Minister of Municipal Affairs is that we have done very well looking after our own affairs. We are very satisfied with the way things are, and in fact many other municipalities could take a look at the way, for example, the city of Nepean is run and find a lot of efficiencies in its budgeting and in the way it distributes the revenues.

Hon Mr Philip: Yes. You pay for police and the others don't. That is fair, is it? Your taxpayers are paying more than his are.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Daigeler: This is a little bit beside the point, I understand, but I'm just using this --

Hon Mr Philip: You better talk to your taxpayers before you make announcements.

Mr Daigeler: Mr Speaker, do I have the floor?

The Acting Speaker: Order. I want to remind all members that the member for Nepean does indeed have the floor very legitimately, and other members will have the opportunity of replying and questioning.

Mr Daigeler: Since the Minister of Municipal Affairs keeps yelling across the floor and interrupting my presentation here in the House, I invite him to come to Nepean, if he has so much to say, and speak to the voters and the people of Nepean. He hasn't done so, so far. He has been invited and he has been asked to come to Nepean and speak and meet the public there. If he has so much to say and he can't keep quiet right now and must keep interrupting me, I invite him to come to Nepean and be present and speak to the people about Bill 77 in Nepean.

Mr Hope: Are you speaking on the bill?

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): It's Bill 47, not Bill 77.

Mr Daigeler: It is true that we're talking about Bill 47. I was making the point about Bill 77 because there too I see the same principles, the same approach at work that we have here with regard to photo-radar, and that approach is big government: "We know best. You don't really know what you're doing. You have to have somebody behind you who'll make sure you're doing the right thing."

Perhaps the intentions are honourable. You know, the minister has said and the parliamentary assistant has repeated, "We want to save lives; safety's our concern." I think that's an honourable intention. I don't have any difficulty with that. Frankly, like so often with many of the NDP ideas and policies, they're good ideas, they're good intentions, but when it comes to the implementation and to actually doing it, we see that what comes out of it is simply more bureaucracy, more enforcement. Instead of leaving some initiative still to the individual, the way we, as Liberals, would like to see happen, the government wants to come in here with more police, more supervision and more fine collection.

I want to say very clearly that we feel that this measure is primarily a revenue measure and not a safety measure, and I'm not the only one who feels like this. In fact, when this measure was first announced, there were several articles that were written across the province, and I have one in front of me here from the Sudbury Star. Here's what they said when this measure was first announced. They say this could be an administrative nightmare because they will have to collect so much money. "If you assume that nine out of every 10 cars is speeding, the camera could take nine out of every 10 cars' pictures." Just think of the revenue that's associated with this.

They're also quoting a police officer, and guess what the police officer said in this article in the Sudbury Star. This police officer is quoted as saying: "It will be a public relations nightmare for the police, because people don't like it. They have seen that government is on their back all the time already with taxes and everything. We know the reaction that's going to be shown on Monday."

All of this falls into the same boat. Here's government again trying to act in our best interests. People are saying, "You stay away from it; I'll look after my own interests." In particular, if it is shown that most of the people -- and as I have said, about 85% were not following this particular route.

Mr Hope: They probably know where the radar's been set.

Mr Daigeler: There's also -- the member for Chatham-Kent is making perhaps a good point. I'm not quite sure whether I fully understood what he was yelling across the floor but I think he said we don't know where the police will set the cutoff, as it were, whether in fact they're going to set the machine at 100 kilometres, the way I guess it's supposed to be, or whether they're going to set it at 110 or 120. And that's the big question. Are they going to set it at 100 kilometres and if you're over by one kilometre or two you're going to get that big ticket and that big fine? Nobody knows. We don't know.

Mr Hope: What's the law?

Mr Daigeler: The law obviously is 100 kilometres.

Mr Hope: That's right. That's what you should be driving.

Mr Daigeler: So is it going to be 101, 102 or 100? If it is 100 kilometres, I can certainly tell --

Mr Hope: It is 100. That is the law.

The Acting Speaker: Order, please. I would remind the member to address the Chair, and interjections are definitely out of order. You will have the opportunity later to participate.

Mr Daigeler: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, because you're quite right. One does get interrupted quite often and gets carried away with all the interruptions that are coming from the other side of the House. I will make an effort to address you, Mr Speaker, because I am sure you are interested in how this affects especially the driving on the 401 because I think you drive there probably often enough. I'm not sure whether you would look forward to seeing all these fancy gizmos there on the 401 that perhaps might trap you. The member for Willowdale says that this could possibly even lead to the withdrawal of licences. I don't know how that would affect you, Mr Speaker, but I hope not too forcefully because you have done a good job in the chair.

I should also say that the North Bay Nugget is another newspaper that was writing about this initiative when it was first introduced. Here's what the North Bay Nugget said, and I'm quoting: "So you were under the impression that George Orwell's book 1984 was fiction and could and would never happen. Well, you'd better start thinking it over.

"What else would you call the Ontario government's plan to use radar-directed cameras beginning next year? In a few years, Big Brother -- " -- that's not me talking here, that's the North Bay Nugget -- "or Candid Camera, if you will -- will be all over the highways in Ontario." Further on in this article they say, "We don't condone speeding on highways or city streets, but this plan is going too far."

I think that is the point that I'm trying to make here, that this initiative may be well-intentioned, but it is going too far and it is going to bring in too much revenue for the government.

I should also say that I've received some letters on this initiative. This one here in particular is from a Mr Eli Marder from Toronto, and here's what he has to say. First of all, he says that usually he's one of the silent masses of our province of Ontario but he feels compelled at this time to make his opinion known, and he's writing with regard to Bill 47.

Here's what he says: "I feel very strongly that the new photo radar is the wrong way to go. It doesn't ticket the driver," and that's a point that I haven't come to; I will be coming to it very shortly, "but rather the registered owner of the vehicle, which makes this type of ticket less a punishment for breaking the law and more a way of generating revenue." In brackets he says, "Just what we need, another hidden tax.

"In a sense, this would be like throwing the owner of a handgun in jail because the gun used to hold up a store belonged to him, even though it couldn't be proven that the owner of the gun was at the scene of the crime at the time."

This is Mr Eli Marder. He does point out a very important second deficiency in this bill and that's the fact that it isn't going to be the driver who's going to receive the ticket; it's going to be the owner of the car. I think that is a measure that probably irks people the most, that they are going to be fully responsible for whatever error the driver of the car may have committed.

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Frankly, there's a sense of fairness among our people out there, and they say that if you do something, you suffer the consequences. But being responsible for somebody else's actions, being responsible for how somebody else drives: People feel that's going too far. That's no longer due process. I think in this country we don't operate that way.

Apparently there was a time when something like that happened. I'm told that up to 1959 it was possible to send out tickets to the owners of vehicles and not the drivers. The government at the time was the old Tories. I don't know whether after the election on Monday there are going to be any traditional Tories left or whether they're all going to be Reform. Anyway, in 1959 I think those were the old Tories, and may I say -- perhaps I shouldn't -- those were the good Tories, the ones who have apparently now gone by the wayside and are going to be taken over by the Reform Party. We'll see whether the provincial Conservative Party is also going to adopt the Reform platform or whether it's going to stay with the Bill Davis-Leslie Frost-middle-of-the-road type of position. It's going to be very interesting to observe.

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): Frank Miller finally won the leadership.

Mr Daigeler: My colleague from St George-St David just said, "Frank Miller finally won the leadership." Well, I think with Mike Harris he already had won the leadership, because I think they're very, very close cousins in their philosophical right-wing orientation.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that in 1959 a Conservative government at the time made the right decision. They outlawed that and in fact they said: "This is no longer possible. You have to charge the driver and not the owner of the car." So really what the NDP is doing is they're going back to something that was kicked out more than 30 years ago and they're really entering into -- I don't want to say "a police state," because I think that's going too far -- a way of running our affairs, enforcing our laws, that really the normal and ordinary person here simply finds exaggerated.

They say to charge the owner of the car, who may not have been there at all, and let him or her carry the responsibility for what may have been a traffic offence is just unfair; it's not the right thing; it's not how we want to run this province. That's what the people say, and they have a sense of fairness.

On top of it, you can say of course you are probably going to get that ticket only three or four weeks after the event, so how is the owner of the car going to know exactly who drove the car three or four weeks before? You have to start logging now exactly who did what, when, where. It just sums up to making things a lot more cumbersome and a lot more bureaucratic and a lot more revenue-producing.

Another point I think that is made about using the photo-radar by the people who have come to me, and it wasn't only Gary Magwood, there were others who have come to see me from the national motorists' association and who are making a very good point, is that because there will no longer be a direct contact between the police and the driver, we will no longer be able to detect not just the speeding infraction but perhaps some of the other problems the driver has. In fact, somewhere in the material I've read in preparation for my speech this afternoon it showed that more than half of the people who were stopped for speeding had other problems and in fact they were under suspended licences. So the police, when they were stopping the drivers, were in fact doing a great service to all of us because they were finding people who were breaking the laws in other ways. They may have been, for example, intoxicated.

I think that's a very important consideration that is being made by, for example, the national motorists' association, that through the direct contact between the police and the speeding driver, if they have to give him or her a ticket, they also can check his driver's licence and they can check the car and make sure everything else is in order. With this photo-radar, with this automatic gizmo there, we're losing that very important dimension of safety on our roads and making sure we keep those off the road who are not supposed to be there.

Frankly, I must say I was surprised when I read that there were so many people who were driving even though they were under suspension. Again, through the hearings this summer with the graduated licences, I heard that a lot of the serious accidents are actually caused by drivers who are under suspension, who are not even supposed to be there.

The more, I think, we can catch drivers who are under suspension, the better. However, with photo-radar this will no longer be possible at all because you're going to get the ticket and there won't be any personal contact. The only personal contact is when you get the thing in the mail, a nice little picture, and it won't show who the driver was but it will show the licence plate. That's the contact that's going to be there, so there will be no checking at all as to whether you are in fact the proper owner of the vehicle and whether there were any other problems that you had at the time of driving.

One other element that really is being put forward is the price of these units. How effective can they really be in terms of protecting safety for the people of this province when each unit costs about $80,000? We may be able to put them up in a few places at that kind of cost, but unless my warning comes true, which is that they're going to be a top revenue producer and we're going to use that revenue in order to buy more machines and therefore create more revenue, I don't think there are going to be too many around in this province. Therefore, obviously, we're not going to do very much, simply from a statistics point of view, with regard to safety.

I have very grave doubts that this measure really will achieve what the parliamentary assistant has said it will. He said it's going to be a safety measure; it's going to make our roads safer. When I saw that this measure was actually prepared not by the Ministry of Transportation -- when I looked at the package that was handed out, I think it was in May, where all the so-called safety measures were presented by the government, I saw that this measure with regard to photo-radar was prepared by the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. They had the responsibility for this initiative. It wasn't the Ministry of Transportation; it was a working group in the Ministry of the Solicitor General. I have to ask myself why that was, and if there's a good reason, again, I'm prepared to listen to it.

As I said at the beginning, we didn't get very much background from the ministry, and in some of the comments the parliamentary assistant will make later on perhaps he can address this. I just want to say that the fact this was prepared by the Solicitor General and not the Minister of Transportation again increases my suspicion about this measure being a revenue grab and not a safety measure.

With these comments, I will leave some time for my colleague the member for St George-St David, who will talk about some of the other measures that are in this bill. I look forward to further debate about this matter. Also, on some of the questions I've raised, I look forward to some response from the parliamentary assistant. Perhaps in committee we can hear more details from the government about why it thinks this is a safety measure and not a tax grab.

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The Acting Speaker: As originally agreed, the two lead participants for the official opposition may divide the time, so the member for St George-St David has some 50 minutes left.

Mr Murphy: I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this bill and to some of its aspects. It has been, as my colleague stated, sold as a photo-radar bill, although there is much more than that in this bill: It amends the Highway Traffic Act, the Provincial Offences Act, the Liquor Licence Act, the Game and Fish Act. I think that's probably about it.

There are some provisions which I think are heading in the right direction and others that I have real concern about. One issue I do support in principle in terms of what this is trying to do, and that is the section dealing with what happens with people who are fined and then are unable to pay their fine. As I think I've said before in this House, I have on occasion acted, prior to being elected to this assembly, as a part-time assistant crown attorney and have seen people who have come before the court and indicated at the time of sentencing that they were unable to pay the fine.

In some real instances, that results in one of two things happening: either a suspended sentence, in some cases, with probationary terms; or in others, it can mean that people spend some time in jail because they didn't have the money. That strikes me that there is a certain imbalance in the way our system operates for people who don't have a lot of money.

I asked an order paper question of the Solicitor General, the Minister of Correctional Services, about the number of people who are in our provincial institutions because of inability to pay fines; essentially, those who default on a fine. It numbers in the thousands. When we think about the amount we spend on justice in our society, especially in relation to how much we spend on justice after the fact, once a crime has occurred, versus how much we spend on prevention, it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a lot of money putting people in jail when the only reason they're in there is because they can't afford a fine.

It strikes me as setting up, to a certain extent, a two-tiered system of justice, and I have a problem with that. A provision that looks at and gives another opportunity to people who have been unable to pay a fine before they may get sentenced to jail is a good thing and a thing that's heading in the right direction.

Whether this in its particulars will serve that purpose effectively, I'm not quite sure. One of the things I can think of, for example, is that there's often a circumstance where the homeless and others may have been fined. I can think of public drunkenness being a fine offence, although this may change some of that, or vagrancy or other things which can lead to altercations that can result in an imposition of a fine, either arising out of a Criminal Code or other statute. Often these people will not have an address, and the way in which this hearing related to the default is going to be triggered requires the mailing of a summons to an address for service purposes, especially if there's an inability to attend at a hearing. I can think of a number of people who, as a result of their homeless state, being in a shelter or some other kind of service to the homeless, may have a problem receiving that notice. That's something we can look at in committee, can look at further.

I'm not saying I've read this entirely right, and perhaps the ministry officials or the Attorney General can point me in the right direction. But I think this is an attempt to do something which I support at least in principle, because it is something that I was concerned about, and my order paper question -- which I put to I believe the Minister of Correctional Services, but I'll have to check that -- was getting at this concern and this problem.

I am concerned, like the member for Willowdale, with the provision in what will be subsection 69(2) related to the powers of the justice of the peace in terms of being able to take away a "permit, licence, registration or privilege...under any act." I have two concerns. One of them is how broad the scope of that provision is. It's incredibly broad, and I think that's not its intent. I think I know what they're trying to get at. They're trying to administer the system of justice in a way that makes it both effective and, importantly, efficient, but I think this overreaches that.

I also have another concern that, frankly, relates to what justices of the peace do, to what we ask of them in the system and their role, related to how much training they actually get. I think it's clear that justices of the peace can have a large role both in quasi-criminal areas like this one and fully criminal areas. For example, in the laying of private information, they can lay that information or have it be laid before them so that a process can be issued with respect to criminal proceedings. Frankly, we have both per diem and salaried justices of the peace who I do not think have had sufficient training to be able to deal with those problems.

I could think, for example, of the series of charges that were initially laid against certain federal politicians before a justice of the peace by a disgruntled individual. There's something that needs to be looked at. I'm concerned about giving justices of the peace as much power as this provision seems to be able to provide to them without ensuring that we have adequate training and an adequate opportunity to look at what justices of the peace are doing.

I have, as well, some concerns about what this bill actually is going to do. I think it's interesting to look at what will be now subsection 207(7) of the Highway Traffic Act. This is what happens if you're convicted of a moving violation under the Highway Traffic Act. It says, "An owner of a motor vehicle convicted of an offence under section 128" of the Highway Traffic Act, which is essentially the speeding section, "on the basis of evidence acquired through the use of a photo-radar system is not liable to imprisonment or a driver's licence suspension as a result of that conviction or as a result of default in payment of a fine resulting from that conviction."

What we end up with is a paper tiger, because what you're saying is: "You can speed. We'll have the photo-radar there. It will take the picture. If you get convicted, you'll have to pay the fine, but you won't, as a result of that, be liable to a driver's licence suspension or imprisonment or any of the other normal things that would have come from a conviction if you were pulled over by the police."

What we really end up with because of this provision is a sort of tollgating for speeding, because you'll be able to speed, as long as you can pay the fine. That's my concern about how this bill is drafted.

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Mr Mills: It will get monotonous after a bit.

Mr Murphy: Of course, the member for Durham East has always made his valuable and loud interjections and I always appreciate them, but some of that very experience in other jurisdictions where they've tried this -- in British Columbia, for example, they had that very conclusion: "New Radar No Break for Drivers." What they were seeing was that people were continuing to speed; they just pay the fine. That is a concern to me.

I had some indication that perhaps there might be amendments to deal with this provision, that you were going to provide further sanctions to owners of the vehicle for speeding with respect to a photo-radar offence notice.

That, however, raises a different problem for me, which I think is a constitutional one under the charter. It strikes me that you're going to result in the taking away of a driver's licence as a result of a reverse-onus provision, in effect, because what you're requiring is that notice gets mailed to the owner of the car, and that owner then is required, in order to defend himself or herself, to go to the court and prove they were not the driver. That, in essence, goes against some of the very fundamental tenets of our justice system. The question then becomes, how do you balance the penalty for a reverse onus against how much you're taking away from what we believe is fundamental, as a group, to the justice system?

If you start moving towards taking away licences in a reverse-onus context, you're going to run into trouble with the charter. I don't know whether there has been a legal opinion. I know there have been some challenges to similar provisions in other jurisdictions, with what I believe to be mixed success; successful in one case and not in another. I would appreciate hearing from the parliamentary assistant about what legal opinions they have on this point and how far they believe they can go.

But as it stands now, that provision is the provision that leads me to the conclusion that what we do have here is an act that's primarily focused on the raising of revenue. I heard the Minister of Transportation in the House say speed kills, and I agree with that. I have no problem with that proposition, and I don't think anybody in this House or anybody in the province would disagree with the proposition, except maybe Nigel Mansell or someone like that, but I think they would too.

Here's the issue: The question really is, how do you effectively deal with the issue so that you get people to slow down? My concern is that the experience with this has been not that people slow down but that they just pay the fine, especially in the context of subsection 207(7), as proposed in the bill, because there is only a financial consequence to the owner and no other.

The way it's worded is important because it separates out, in an odd sort of way, a driver who isn't an owner. A driver who isn't an owner, as far as I can read this, can be subject to a driver's licence suspension as a result of the conviction and imprisonment or suspension as a result of default in payment. That's an odd dichotomy, it seems to me. I'm not exactly sure what the justification for that split is, and I hope to hear from the parliamentary assistant on that. I'm sure he has an answer, or at least I hope he does.

I know the member for Durham East is going to speak. I always appreciate, as I said, his interjections, and I hope he will elucidate all of us on that, because he always is a fount of a certain amount of knowledge anyway. I know when he was an alderman in my home town of Barrie we --

Mr Mills: Did I represent you?

Mr Murphy: You didn't represent me, member for Durham East, because I didn't live in your ward, to be honest. He represented my home town, though, and I certainly remember. In fact, if I remember correctly, I even protested against him when they tore down the old city hall in my home town. But that's another and different time.

Mr Daigeler: You mean he was tearing down heritage properties?

Mr Murphy: Heritage property; it's true. It was a shame.

Mr Mills: I voted against it.

Mr Murphy: I hear the member saying he voted against it, and I'm certainly happy he did.

Mr Daigeler: Let's check the record.

Mr Murphy: Well, I doubt they have records for then. But they have a beautiful metal arch now for the old city hall, which I would say doesn't quite give it the historic elements that the actual building itself would have, although driving under it is quite a thrill.

The Acting Speaker: I want to remind the honourable member that we are dealing with second reading of Bill 47.

Mr Murphy: I was, because as you will hear, Mr Speaker, just at the end I referred to driving, and I was coming back to that, because I was driving under the arch within the limits posted.

I am concerned too about the extent to which there will be administrative errors in the system. I suppose that's inherent in the photo-radar system in any event. Because of the fact that you're taking a shot of a licence, you're going to have a number of licences where you'll get a number wrong, a number changed, and as a result you will have an influx of people into the system who may clog up the system a bit because of that administrative error.

As a quirk and a related point, I took a quick look, and I may be wrong, but I doublechecked how much the fine was for obstructing your licence. At least in the last version of the Highway Traffic Act I looked at, the fine is somewhere between $20 and $50. That concerns me because what that means is someone can come along -- and I know somewhere there are these radar foils which have been available out west. They were being sold for a small sum.

Out in British Columbia the fine was $35, compared to the speeding ticket, so people were buying them up like the proverbial hot cakes because it was much cheaper than the speeding fine, and as well didn't come with any of the other difficulties that a speeding fine can come with. I hope there'll be some looking at the comparison between the fine for obstructing your licence plate and the fine for speeding.

I'd also like to turn to the issue of what else we really should have in here. Mr Speaker, you will recall a tragic accident in Caledon recently where a number of young people were killed. Two factors were involved in that: One was speed and one, it is alleged, was alcohol. How big a role is difficult to say, but one of the most disturbing figures I've seen in a long time, and I may not have it entirely accurate, is the figure that the number one killer of our youth between 16 and 19 years of age is highway traffic accidents. That's an awful carnage, and we, as legislators, have a real obligation to do what we can to reduce that in every way we can.

My colleague the member for Mississauga North has introduced an amendment to the Highway Traffic Act which I hope the government will consider -- easily done in the context of an omnibus bill -- because there is currently a loophole in the Highway Traffic Act related to alcohol consumption. As we all recognize, if we drive a car with greater than the legal limit of alcohol in our body, we will on conviction have our licence suspended for at least a year. This applies to a person of whatever age.

Of course, we are aware that the drinking age in the province is 19. However, if a person under the age of 19 breaks that law, in other words, has alcohol in his or her body and is driving a vehicle, there is no driving penalty. My friend from Mississauga North has proposed an amendment to impose a penalty on conviction of a person under the legal age for drinking and driving a car. It's a fairly simple amendment and I hope the government will consider that.

I think the combination of alcohol and speed is by far the deadliest combination. As my father used to say, once you get above in his time about 60 miles an hour, you're no longer steering the car, you're aiming it. I think that's quite true. Back in those days I can remember those 400-horsepower cars going about 90 miles an hour down Highway 400.

When you think about the split-second judgements you have to make at that speed and the degree to which even the smallest amount of alcohol can affect your judgement as to timing and as to what you should do in a dangerous situation, it strikes me that a zero-tolerance attitude, especially within our young group, is highly appropriate. I know the graduated licensing idea is moving towards that and I think, in principle, that is a good thing. This is another provision that I think should be added to assist us in trying to reduce that very horrible carnage and waste of potential and opportunity in our youth who are killed in car accidents.

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Let me say I think that I should give some credit where credit is due. I think moving forward on the concept of reducing speeding is a good thing and I think we all support that idea in principle. As I said, I think this unfortunately isn't going to have that effect. It may be that there are changes we can make in committee, and there probably can be, that will improve it, but as it stands now I don't think it does. I think that we have a bill that is going to provide an opportunity for speeders to continue to speed. There are two reasons for that.

One of them I pointed out, of course, was the fact that the way it's written now it's really just a tollgate, much like what's going to happen on Highway 407 at some point. You just pay your $75 or $100, whatever the fine is, and then you'll continue speeding, because there is no real sanction other than the payment of fines. That of course concerns me.

The other one relates to the Provincial Offences Act and some of the particulars in there. I think probably we can go through that more appropriately in committee and I hope to be able to participate in that. I don't need to go into that in detail on second reading in debating the principle of the bill.

I do think that we do need to look at things that improve the justice system, that make it more accessible. I know from experience that highway traffic courts are a clogged mess in this province, that it's a bit of a flip of a coin as to whether justice frankly is even served in terms of policing what happens on our highways. Whether the police officer shows up is often a questionable assumption, or whether the accused will show up, but then the police officer has to show up because the accused doesn't. Oftentimes the accused and the police officer show up but no paper record shows up.

So there is a system that is expensive to administer. It's expensive for the individuals who are involved because they have to take days off work to come to the system and someone isn't there. I have concerns about that, because it's a system that ends up spending money in a way that provides justice to those who can have access to legal aid and justice to those who can afford to have a lawyer, and as we all know, especially me, having practised law for a period of time before coming here, lawyers are expensive. So there's a vast and frankly growing middle class --

Mr Mills: You bet. I defend myself.

Mr Murphy: I just heard the member for Durham East say he defends himself. Of course the saying is --

Mr Harnick: No, he probably does better.

Mr Murphy: He probably does better, but isn't the saying that a client who has himself for a lawyer has a fool for a client? But of course I wouldn't say that about the member for Durham East.

But I do think there is a concern about middle-class access to justice in this province, because I think we're moving towards a system where it is too expensive for people to resolve their disputes through the justice system, because we are ever increasing the hoops through which people have to go in both the civil and criminal system. We are increasing the safeguards, increasing the steps, increasing the paperwork. Lawyers, like everyone else, are having to respond to the pressures of the time and increase their fees. It could cost thousands of dollars to defend yourself on a simple speeding violation if you were paying by fee, and this is a very difficult thing for most people to afford.

I provided advice to people who came to me and said, "We have a problem. It's not a significant amount of money. It'll have some impact on me," if it was a criminal circumstance. I would ask, "How much can you afford?" Oftentimes I would have to say: "It would cost you more than you can pay. You'll be better off if you settle." Sometimes, frankly, it meant that people pled guilty and paid a fine who were not guilty of what happened because it was easier, because it was cheaper.

That concerns me as a lawyer and as a legislator, because that is not the kind of justice system we want to have. I think that of things that we can do to change that system, to make it better, to make it more accessible, one of the things that we should look at -- I know there are concerns about the constitutionality of it, but I think it is worthwhile looking at alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, because we can resolve certain disputes outside the expensive legal processes in a way that may have quicker justice, more effective justice and, more importantly, cheap -- or should I say more appropriately "inexpensive"? -- justice. Often when people talk about the justice system, they don't factor in the cost of achieving justice when they talk about it in the abstract, but in the real world of the justice system, the cost is often the most important consideration.

I know I've ranged somewhat far afield, but I am coming back to this bill, although it does provide the opportunity for a fair amount of range, because it even amends, as I said, the Game and Fish Act and the Liquor Licence Act. I just want to talk briefly about that. I do think the amendment to the Liquor Licence Act is a good one. That goes back to the comments I made about who we put in jail in our system.

We just don't have, it seems to me, a system that can any more accommodate, if it ever could have or should have, putting people in jail for what are, frankly, what the Americans call misdemeanours, which is a term we don't have but which I think captures the spirit of these kinds of offences. They are things that we want to regulate as a society, but we don't really want to have a criminal sanction or that kind of aura around what they do. So we should keep it out of the jail system.

The jails are for, and should be for, that criminal sanction, that aura of criminality, where we want to tell people, "This is wrong." The jails are for those things we want to tell people they should not do in a significant and real way. This is really a regulatory idea, like public consumption of alcohol or misuse of alcohol in certain circumstances. So I think taking imprisonment out of the realm of punishment for those kinds of offences is a good thing to do.

As for the Game and Fish Act, frankly, I have to admit I'm not sufficiently familiar with it to know whether this is a good thing or not. I bow to others who have a higher and better knowledge. I'm sure the member for Durham East will speak to that, because I know how keenly interested in it his constituents are, at least in the north end.

I am a bit concerned about how this bill is going to impact on the owner-versus-driver question. I did hear the Minister of Transportation -- or, sorry, the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Transportation. I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe the shuffle is coming; I don't know.

Mr Daigeler: The minister keeps away.

Mr Murphy: Yes, at least we have you here, which is a virtue almost worthy of elevation.

There is a distinction between an owner and a driver. What is happening under this bill, of course, is the licence plate is something that is attached to an owner and not a driver. So what will happen is the offence notice gets sent off and you have a certain time period within which to respond. If you fail to respond, a conviction is registered. Upon becoming aware, you have a certain time to then respond, and I can think of certain things within at least the realm of experience that I'm aware of, of a number of people, for example, who go south for a period of time in the winter but who leave their cars with family members and others. There are some people in my riding who do that -- in fact some family members who do that.

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What often happens is those family members aren't resident with the people whose car it is, and what could happen, and it concerns me, is that the offence notice gets sent, the conviction gets registered, and then upon the return, there's a fair amount of burden suddenly placed on the owner of the car who's not the driver to go through a lot of hoops to maybe overturn the conviction.

What I'm hoping the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Transportation can assure me or can advise me or can look into and report back on, perhaps in the committee process, is whether there is a way that would make it easier in this system. I can think, for example, whether there is a provision for perhaps, instead of "I'm going to dispute the notice" and requiring a trial, some kind of affidavit in a short form way be filed by an owner saying, under oath, in essence, "I wasn't the driver; I wasn't aware; you shouldn't convict me," to save the requirement to go back, to go in front of a justice, to have the trial and go through the hoops, especially in circumstances where they may not be aware.

I'm wondering if the parliamentary assistant could look into that and perhaps talk with his equivalent with the Attorney General and see if there is some way we can streamline that process so there's less of a burden on the owner in circumstances like that. I think, frankly, it could make the system more efficient because you could even do it by standard form, I would expect, with going to a notary public, a lawyer or commissioner, in certain circumstances. They could go and sign a piece of paper that says, "I wasn't the driver." That gets filed and that takes care of it.

Then you place the onus back on the prosecutor to decide whether he wants to bother to take that person to court because he doesn't believe the circumstances. I think that is more appropriate a burden, that the state should bear that burden as opposed to the driver.

I don't see that in there. I may be wrong, but I've read through it and I don't see that kind of opportunity here. There are similar kinds of opportunities. Section 205.13 provides for the filing of an affidavit upon becoming aware in order to overturn the conviction, but the result is straight back into a trial.

I think there should be an opportunity there to move straight to a not-guilty fining, and it might even be something you then extend not just once a conviction is registered but before a conviction is registered, so as soon as the offence notice is received, an owner is given an opportunity to say, "I'm not the driver," in a fairly summary way and save the state, the driver or the owner the cost of appearing and all the unnecessary paperwork of going through a trial. I think that would be both more efficient and more effective, and I hope the government will consider that.

There are other particulars in the bill. I think we can deal with a substantial number of those in committee, and I hope we get that opportunity. I do appreciate the opportunity to speak to this bill, and I look forward to the contributions of others, and of course particularly the contribution of the member for Durham East.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): We now have time for questions and/or comments.

Mr Mills: I listened to the speech from the member for Nepean with bated breath and I can tell you that he said that he would need some convictions and some evidence to change his mind to support photo-radar, and -- and he will be familiar with this -- like St Paul on the road to Damascus, I will attempt to convert him through my contributions later on.

The member spoke briefly of the effect of the fuel embargo on the United States, which caused them to lower the speed limit and he said that was because of the fuel shortage, and it was, but the effect that he didn't touch on was the dramatic reduction in accidents and, moreover, the dramatic reduction in fatal accidents on all the roads across the United States. That had such a profound effect on the legislators of the United States that when the fuel shortages ended and the embargo ended and gas flowed freely in that country, a lot of jurisdictions thought twice about, "Should we increase the speed limit or should we keep it as it is in view of the dramatic savings of lives?"

Of course, we know, and the member for Nepean knows, that the overall thing with the Americans is driving their cars at great speeds and we know that the commonsense thought on saving lives was overruled by the fact that the Americans love cars, they love going at high speeds, and that ruled the day through the automobile associations and all those lobbies that took place.

But I welcome the opportunity later on to convert the member to seeing it our way.

Mr Hope: I have a few comments, and one is about the issue about the owner of the car taking responsibility for it. If your daughter or son or somebody else has the vehicle and they get in an auto accident, it's your insurance rates that go up, even though you weren't the driver of the car. You're still affected and I don't see the member opposite talking about the insurance industry.

Unlike the member for Nepean, also to move back into the memory banks and the archives a bit, when they did a driver's test -- because the driver test says, "When you were driving down the 401, what is the speed limit?" It was a multiple-choice question. "Is it 90, is it 100, is it 110 and is it 120?" If you answered 110 you were wrong, if you answered 120 you were wrong and if you answered 90 you were wrong. The speed limit is 100. That's what you're supposed to be driving.

When he talks about the police officers pulling over people, how many police officers really like to get out on the 401? I drive it quite often and let me tell you, if you think I'm a bad driver, there's a lot of them out there who are just -- I'd be afraid to open up the door just to check on a speeder.

What this also does is allows people, the officers, more time to focus. You mention the issue about drunk drivers. It gives them an opportunity to examine and focus their energy on drunk drivers who are on the highway and are going all over. It also gives them an opportunity to pay attention to the communities they represent, and "community" has a wide definition for police officers, to focus on other safety elements.

This issue is very important. What we're trying to do is make people more aware that the speed limit, when posted, is that speed limit. It's not 110. We all know, and a lot of people know, that radars are probably focused at 117 kilometres or 120 kilometres and then it's the judgement of the officer what he wants to do. What this does is put an emphasis back on getting controls of the speed limits that are there.

You say it's a tax grab. Let me tell you, if you break any other rules or laws that are in there, you're going to pay a fine. That's exactly what this is. So don't drive over the speed limit and don't worry about any of the issues that you raise for it, about the courts and paying the fines.

Mr Harnick: It's very interesting that the Attorney General said that the purpose of this legislation was very much directed at -- and she said three things. She said it's directed at improving court efficiency, it's directed at reducing errors and it's directed at cost savings. As well, it's directed to the goal of this government, which, in many respects and in many pieces of legislation, has been to make our highways safer. All of those are very laudable goals that no one in this Legislature would deny.

What you've got to strike in dealing with a piece of legislation such as photo-radar is, what is the proper balance here? Can we have a system where we start to turn our back on all of the basic rights and freedoms of a person who has not yet been convicted, an innocent person who must be proved guilty?

What we are doing with this piece of legislation is saying in many respects: "Let's set up a camera at the side of the road and let's not any longer have use for any witnesses coming to court to prove the offence against the accused person. Let's just take a picture. We don't need to establish the scene. We don't need to establish that the picture is a reasonable likelihood. All we have to do is show up and file a certificate. We don't need human beings to come and give evidence any more. All we have to do is take a picture and file a certificate and then everything kicks in and we don't need human beings to prove these offences any more." People are going to be guilty without all of the provisions and all of the safety outlets that they should have to protect them. That's the danger with this piece of legislation.

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Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): I'd like to comment briefly on a couple of the points that were raised in this debate. The member for Chatham-Kent and the member for Durham tried to bring this back to what it is. There are really a couple of issues here that we have to deal with.

The first one obviously is speed and highway safety. I think the members took the political road rather than talking about the actual problems we have on some of our highways in terms of speed. We know that speed kills. One of the things we need to do is find a way to enhance highway safety along the highways in the province, especially along highways like Highway 400, Highway 401 and others; it's really the big problem.

I speak from a bit of a different perspective. I come from northern Ontario where we don't have highways like Highway 400, and I'll tell you, for a lot of people who travel into a city like Toronto or Hamilton and other places and see those highways, they're pretty intimidating because people do not follow the speed limit. If the speed limit is posted at 100, the average could be as much as 120 or 130. If you're not too used to going on to a road like that, coming in from outside, it can be a pretty intimidating thing and could be very dangerous.

Another thing on this is that we have to take a look at it from a health care perspective as well. Health care is something that costs us dollars; health care is something we pay for as citizens of the province through our tax dollars. One of the things we have to look at is not only pumping in money to make people better once they become injured but actually trying to prevent injuries. One of the things this bill will do is that highway accidents will go down. We know, from experience in other jurisdictions where photo-radar has been initiated, that it has saved people's lives. If this legislation saves the life of one Ontarian, I think we in this assembly can stand proud today and say this is legislation that goes a long way to addressing those questions.

Another thing is the question of police officers. In talking to police officers up in Matheson, Iroquois Falls and Timmins, they sometimes come to this debate a little worried, but once they understand it they say, "Yes, this will allow us to do our job better and focus on things other than giving people speeding tickets, to work on issues that have to do with our communities."

The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. We now have two minutes for the member for St George-St David to respond. The member for Nepean would like to take that opportunity.

Mr Daigeler: I guess we could split the two minutes, but I will take the two minutes.

What this boils down to, I think, is that we're all interested in safer roads; we don't want to make an argument about that. But we're saying that putting more police on the road, putting more enforcement and so on, is not the solution to the problem, especially if it's a very thinly disguised revenue grab.

The member for Cochrane South said himself just a few minutes ago that most people don't drive 100 kilometres. The member for Chatham-Kent said the speed limit is 100. Of course it is, but 85% of people don't follow that rule. What does that say to us? Most people don't drive 140; most people don't drive 150. They do drive around 115, 120, where the speed limit used to be, so perhaps we should take a look at whether it is something we ought to get back to.

The member for Durham East made a good argument, and I'm prepared to listen to his reasoning and be converted, as he mentioned the figures from the States, if in fact the reduction in fatalities was directly related to the reduction in speed.

But there's also the improvement to the technology of our cars and the way we have improved the safety construction of our cars, and I think that may have had an impact on the fatalities as well. But I'm prepared to look at that and see what the correlation is between what happened in the States, and in Canada as well, when we reduced the speed limit and the fatalities on the road.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you to the member for his participation. Are there any other members who wish to participate in the debate?

Mr Turnbull: I would indicate that we will go along with the government's suggestion that a 90-minute opener will be split between myself and my colleague the member for Willowdale.

I'll start off by saying that any method by which we can cut down the carnage on our roads, quite clearly we must seriously look at. During my remarks, I will try to present some of the positive and negative aspects of this bill and some of the concerns that have been expressed to me by various people.

I am somewhat disappointed, given the fact that I have asked questions in this House on several occasions. Recently I asked the Solicitor General for some comments on this bill and he said that most properly should be addressed to the Minister of Transportation. The Minister of Transportation consistently gives us answers which really aren't answers. We find we get a great barrage of verbiage, but we don't get any intelligent answer to our questions.

Mr Harnick: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: We don't appear to have a quorum.

The Acting Speaker: I will ask the clerk to 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.

Senior Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals: A quorum is now present.

The Acting Speaker: Pursuant to standing order 34(a), the member for S-D-G & East Grenville has given notice of his dissatisfaction with the answer to his question given by the Minister of Environment and Energy concerning tire recycling. This matter will be debated today at 6 pm.

The member for York Mills has the floor.

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Mr Turnbull: The point I was just about to make was that the Minister of Transportation is awfully good at going out and giving the good-news announcements in press conferences outside of this assembly but is consistent in not answering questions respecting very important aspects of safety and also doesn't show up at committee meetings which are handling legislation of which he as minister has passage.

I would not want for one minute to take anything away from my colleague Mr Dadamo, who most ably represented the Ministry of Transportation in the graduated licences hearing, but the minister never showed up at all in those hearings, and once again we find that the government is bringing forward legislation while the minister isn't even in the country. Yet his colleague the Solicitor General has indicated in the past that he feels questions are more appropriately put to the minister. I just want to put that on the record.

As I've said, I will be speaking along the lines that I will point out some of the concerns that we have for this bill, but I think there are some meritorious points to it and I will also discuss those.

The main concern that has been expressed by the speakers already and by many of the people who have come to me as our Transportation critic is that they feel that this is another revenue grab by this government. Some of the changes to the court administration which are being carried through this bill may have some merit. They will be discussed in more detail by my colleague Mr Harnick, but there are quite a few aspects of those changes which we do have some concerns about and feel that they should be more appropriately brought in a separate bill.

The government has demonstrated habitually that it has a penchant for bringing forward bills with names that, quite frankly, a saint couldn't object to the bill when you read the title of the bill. Yet when you delve into the guts of the bill, you find there's embedded in the bill some very obnoxious and often totally unrelated aspects to legislation which have no relationship to the subject bill.

I will give you a perfect example of that. When the government brought forward Bill 29, an act to remove the commercial concentration tax, which the Conservative Party had all along urged the government to do -- this was a tax that was brought in by the previous Liberal government, and of course the NDP in opposition had said they would remove it but it took them some two and a half years to do this.

But, lo and behold, once we got that bill, with this very innocuous sounding name -- I mean, nobody could object to it -- we found that there were some very negative impacts in the bill for pharmacists. What did pharmacists have to do with the bill to remove the commercial concentration tax? Under massive assault from our party and from outside interests, the government finally agreed to split the bill.

My point in raising this is that probably there are aspects in this bill which should more appropriately be handled in a separate bill.

There is another example that I will cite, and that is Bill 17, which is currently before the House. The expressed purpose by the government is that it should be for job creation and infrastructure renewal, yet indeed we are seeing more and more that this is a bill which is going to hide debt and it's going to hide civil servants so the government can claim that it has been more fiscally responsible. By highlighting this issue, I think we have identified that the government won't be able to get away with it. Certainly the bond-rating agencies have indicated that they are not fooled by this trick. Neither is the Provincial Auditor.

For example, in Bill 17 there are some aspects which relate to this bill, and I will point to the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp. Clause 47(3)(d) provides for regulations "respecting photographic and electronic evidence in respect of non-payment of tolls." I would suspect that probably should be more appropriately handled in this bill.

Subsection 47(4) provides that such regulations "may provide that photographic or electronic evidence of non-payment of a toll is proof in the absence of evidence to the contrary of the non-payment of the toll." Let's not forget that if it hadn't been for the efforts of the Better Roads Coalition of Ontario, Bill 17 as originally envisaged would have allowed for tolls on any road the government designated in this province. We have finally got the government to put a clause in this bill to guarantee that it will only be on new roads. Certainly these announcements are in stark contrast to the intentions which were announced by the Premier.

The government says that the motivation for Bill 47 is enhanced safety. That is the rationale the government is giving out. There are an awful lot of critics who are suggesting that this is a tax grab.

The PC Party has certainly been very active in supporting initiatives which enhance safety, and in this respect my personal commitment has been well demonstrated. The members of the House will know that, more than anybody else in this chamber in any party, I have been the one who for the last two years has been moving to get the government to act on legislation to allow for graduated licences.

Over two years ago I asked for that; we've just had some committee hearings. I asked over a year ago for a standing order 125 consideration in the name of the PCs to examine graduated licences. I was constantly blocked by the government, where it kept on saying: "Don't worry. We'll have that in a couple of weeks." I was put off consistently, and I will swear to this on a stack of bibles; I was always blocked in this way. But we didn't get it. We finally got it through committee this summer, and yet we don't have the legislation.

I suspect that's because graduated licences are truly just a safety bill, there's no revenue generation potential in it, whereas we see that in this bill, photo-radar, there is a massive amount of revenue generation. In fact this was introduced to the House only a few months ago, and already we're seeing second reading of the bill. I believe the government is going to push this very hard. The revenue generation from this is quite significant.

But let's talk about other safety initiatives that we have supported. You will recall that my colleague Dianne Cunningham brought forward a private member's bill, which I'm delighted to say has been passed, allowing for safety helmets for bike riders. I think this is something which will indeed pan out over the years to have been a bold initiative.

It's something that not everybody agreed with. There were some suggestions that perhaps there was an infringement on people's civil rights, and there was a lot of unhappiness. Fortunately, we got the government to go along with this, and we now have a bicycle helmet law which will come into force some time next year and which I believe will save lives, particularly of children; indeed, not just save lives but reduce the cost to the government of head injuries, which is a very serious cost to the government each year.

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As responsible opposition members, we do believe we must submit concerns to scrutiny, and that is why I will be pushing very hard to ensure that this bill is referred to a standing committee for complete scrutiny by the public and where we will receive submissions as to the legality and the enforceability of this type of evidence and the reliability of the equipment.

The suspicion that this is a revenue grab has been fuelled by the fact that in the legislation we see that there's going to be a safety strip on a new driver's licence and this is going to allow instant payment of fines, by the transgressors on the roadside, to police officers. This very definitely indicates that the government is very eager to get the money as quickly as possible.

I want to point out that in June 1992, by a vote of 74 to 1, the New Jersey assembly voted to ban the use of photo-radar. The concern that was brought forward was the old story of Big Brother, that the police know your movements and the police know where you've travelled. That was of concern to the legislators in the New Jersey assembly.

The New Jersey scheme was virtually identical to ours in that a photograph of the driver and the licence number would be issued by mail with a summons to the registered owner of the vehicle. We're seeing very much a depersonalization of the law. It may curb some speeding, but the result of this is going to be that we're not going to have that one-on-one contact with a police officer where a police officer may detect that somebody is drunk or under the influence of drugs, and that has very serious implications for the safety of this province.

We don't have any real information at this moment as to what equipment the government is going to go forward with. We know that the RCMP has tested the Multanova, Gastometer, PR100 and the Traffipax systems, and they do not meet RCMP standards. So I think we have to call into question what the government is doing when tests by the RCMP have been a failure.

There is also the concern of the lack of deterrent effect that we experience where a photograph is taken of the person and the summons arrives three or four or five weeks later. It's very difficult for the person to relate to where they were at that time and there isn't the impact of a police officer stopping the driver and saying, "You are driving at the speed which is beyond the speed limit; this is dangerous," and then relating it to their state of mind and their activities at that time, be it that they're running late for an appointment or whatever it is, because there is an impact of teaching when an officer pulls somebody over in that way.

There is very much the concern that has been expressed by rental car agencies, and the national motorists' association, the Ontario chapter, are opposed to photo-radar as nothing more than a revenue-generating scheme. They believe there are potential charter challenges and they believe that there are some mistakes being made by the government in introducing this type of technology rather than trying to have police contact with the citizens immediately so that we can have the deterrent effect.

There have been some legal questions which have been addressed in the legislation where the Ontario government has tried to draft the legislation based on the experience of British Columbia and Alberta, and that is certainly a step in the right direction.

I would like to quote Peter Rothe, who is a leading traffic safety academic. He views electronic surveillance as "scary," with implications that go far beyond the basic issue of whether it reduces crashes. "Because you're guilty until you're proven innocent, electronic surveillance takes no account of the circumstances, and it could be the first step towards privatization of policing."

In California and Arizona, photo-radar is in fact being provided to private operators who receive a percentage of the take to monitor and send out these summonses, and while I'm a great fan of privatization of a lot of things, I think we're going in the wrong direction if we end up privatizing the police forces, because I think it will become purely a commercial endeavour, and in the end justice will not be well served, and I don't think that will help safety. That must be the overriding concern.

The present machines are being staffed by an officer who attends the photo-radar, but they can be unattended. If they're unattended, where do we have the deterrent value? The deterrent value, as I've spoken about before, comes when a policeman stops you and you can relate the actions you've just been involved in to the stop by the police officer.

Often, I believe, we will receive summonses weeks later. Of great concern is the fact that the owner is liable. There are some administrations in the US which allow for an affidavit to be filed by the owner of a vehicle which will allow them to make an affidavit as to who was driving the vehicle at that time. In those circumstances, that individual can be charged. I think that would be a step in the right direction.

The deterrent effect that we have, to a great extent, apart from the police officer stopping us, is the loss of points. There's no loss of points associated with getting a ticket through photo-radar. So the experience in BC is that the renters of BMWs and Mercedes virtually never pay the ticket -- they just flout it -- whereas very much the law-abiding citizens who own their own cars tend to pay the ticket.

The concern of the rental companies or automobile agencies is the fact that they are actually earning today revenues which are probably significantly less than they were earning five years ago. But let us say it's the same amount of revenue. Costs have gone up in that time. Rental agencies are being squeezed. At the present moment, if somebody has rented a car and a parking ticket is sent to the owner of that vehicle, the car rental agencies end up having to pay that ticket, because usually the person is outside of the country or they've gone and they refuse to accept the ticket.

The credit card companies, to a great extent, refuse to accept a charge at a later date against the renter of the car for a subsequent ticket which was a result of parking on a day that it was rented. So we have the same concern here, that the car rental agencies will not be able to retrieve that money from the perpetrator of speeding, and therefore it will either further diminish their bottom line to the extent that we may have bankruptcies -- because, remember, these people are earning in the best case the same amount as they were earning five years ago -- or they will pass it on to the consumer by way of broader costs right across the board.

The implications for that are quite serious for tourism, because already Canada, and in particular Ontario, are very high-cost places to take a vacation. Certainly, the cost of automobile rental in Ontario and in Canada generally is significantly higher than in the US. Anybody who has gone to the US will know that to be a fact. So that is a concern.

There are solutions to this, which I would offer to the government. If the government were to amend this legislation, which I hope it does in committee, to allow that a form be filled out on behalf of the government, supervised by the car rental agency, which would authorize the renter of the car on a given day to accept responsibility for parking tickets and for speeding tickets, this would ease the burden on our car rental agencies and, I have to tell you, you would get your legislation through somewhat easier. At the same time, it would benefit tourism, because the people who don't speed would not be paying the cost averaged across all the vehicles. There's a real concern and a practical way in which you can address this problem.

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The question of owner liability is also of course extended to owners of fleet vehicles and delivery trucks. I don't think it's as difficult for the owner of those vehicles to be able to identify who the perpetrator of speeding is. But the concern is that the owner of a vehicle is unnecessarily going to be taxed. You don't harm a very affluent person. You will do harm --

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I would like to ask you if you could see whether there's a quorum.

The Acting Speaker: Please determine if there is a quorum present.

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

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

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

The Acting Speaker: The member for York Mills may resume his debate.

Mr Turnbull: Turning to the experience of BC, I'd like to quote a few aspects seen through the eyes of an RCMP officer who was directly involved with their test program.

They were using the Multanova equipment, which is Swiss-made, and the force found that it didn't meet its criteria for radar cameras and was frequently in need of costly repairs.

They had mixed feelings about the project but supported the safety aspect. However, they regretted the loss of one-on-one contact with drivers.

The deterrent effect was witnessed to some extent, perhaps because of the existence of signs, and they believed that the signs caused people to slow down in areas where the machines weren't placed, particularly useful on notorious roads.

But as I mentioned before, the enforcement was a problem. Leased BMWs and Mercedes -- remember, this is the RCMP saying this -- never paid tickets. Only rule-respecting, law-abiding citizens won't dispute tickets and will pay.

Let's talk about some of the things the proponents of photo-radar are saying, because I want this to be a fair discourse on the situation.

There's a great feeling that anything to reduce speed will enhance road safety. Photo-radar has been used for many, many years in Europe, over 30 years, and in the US for many years. I will tell you just an amusing story on the question of photo-radar in Europe.

In Switzerland for many years they have had strobe lights. They hide the units in the hedgerows and the strobe light goes off at night as you drive by. People in rural areas where these have been placed, less law-abiding people, have taken to having a sledgehammer with them in their trunk. When they see a flash going off in the middle of the night as they're driving down the road, they are wont to back up and smash the equipment in the hope that their record of speeding will actually be expunged. I certainly hope that doesn't happen here.

Some studies have demonstrated that the system does reduce speed, and I've alluded to the fact that signs are rather an important aspect of this.

The coroner's jury in Caledon recently endorsed the photo-radar as a concept for Ontario. This system has been used in Calgary and Edmonton, and following an assessment project in BC in March 1990-91, the police are looking for ways to implement the system on a full-time basis in BC.

It will perhaps bring relief to the police, and certainly the police do need some relief. The concern is that the revenues that are being generated from this -- and I will return to this point on several occasions. If you are going to do this, you should dedicate the revenues to road safety through the police department so that we have more road patrols, because we have a terrible situation with policing in rural Ontario where there simply are not enough police. There are areas of the province, Madam Speaker, as you've heard in many questions in this House, where in fact for several hours per night there are no police available for many, many miles around. It may be the next jurisdiction over that will provide the police, if they eventually get there, because they're so understaffed.

The Acting Speaker: Order. There are quite a few conversations going on. I would like to be able to hear the member who has the floor.

Mr Turnbull: Thank you, Madam Speaker. If you used the revenue that was generated and said, "We're going to give it to the police forces," not instead of the money you're giving them now but in addition to the money you're giving them now, I think we could solve some of the very serious policing problems in this province.

It can't be used as a replacement for conventional policing. There are lots of studies in the US and Europe and, in Canada, in Alberta that conclude that photo-radar has merits. It positively identifies speeding vehicles. There can be no doubt about it. You cannot get the wrong vehicle, because you have a licence plate and you know that car did it. The concern is that we address it to the actual person who sped and as a result of that have demerit points assessed against the driver, because there is the real deterrent: Mo matter how affluent the person is, he or she is hurt by demerit points, but you only hurt the less well-heeled with a fine.

What I'm saying is that we must find a way of getting to the driver of the vehicle, not the owner. I've offered a concrete solution on how you can do it: If I remember correctly, it's in Pasadena where they allow, at court, an affidavit to be filed about who the driver was on a particular day.

We're saying that those funds you generate should be dedicated to the police, and as well as that, you should have points assessed against the driver. If the driver cannot remember or does not care to file an affidavit about who was driving, then he or she will bear the responsibility. I think these would make the legislation more palatable, and certainly it would take the sting out of any argument that this is another revenue grab by the government if those funds were dedicated to the police as additional revenue.

Another positive effect of this particular system is that it is a low-powered microwave signal and the effect is that it cannot be detected by radar detectors; as a matter of fact, radar detectors are detecting it at the same second that the radar is locking into them. That is a very positive step.

It eliminates in some cases hazardous exposure to high-speed chases, which can ensue from the present system of roadside surveillance where the police cruiser takes off after them. I think we have to consider that in the sense that we should be eliminating a lot of the high-speed chases that occur now. Most of them don't occur because of speeding; most of them occur for other reasons, but that isn't to say that they are not sometimes initiated because of speeding. But do we want to eliminate all high-speed chases? There may be circumstances where we need to be able to get people.

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The deterrent effect mainly kicks in where we are very, very clear and bold about advertising that photo-radar is in effect. I suspect the actions of the Ministry of Transportation down in eastern Ontario, where it has posted large signs with, if you wish, a menu of speeds over the allowable limit and the fine, have had some effect. Unfortunately, I would suggest that it hasn't all been positive, because now drivers are tending to select the price on the menu that they can afford to speed at. I'm not sure that was particularly the desired effect.

The Acting Speaker: There are quite a few conversations going on. The member does have the floor and we would like to hear.

Mr Turnbull: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Let's just talk for a moment about the experience of Calgary officers in using these cameras. They've said that it can generate between 85 and 100 summonses a day, as compared with 50 with the old version of a police officer stopping the people. It leads us to believe that this is a significant revenue grab.

I've already spoken about the concerns for car leasing companies. During a question in the House to the Solicitor General on the implications of photo-radar and rental agencies, Mr Christopherson said:

"This question would more rightfully belong to the Minister of Transportation, but he's not in the House, so I'll attempt to deal with it in the same fashion that one now deals with parking tickets, wherein people who own the cars are responsible for those tickets, not the people who are driving them."

I've already spoken about the very negative implications for tourism. We cannot take that risk, that we lose any more tourism. We need the money here in Ontario. The only thing that has kept Ontario going in the last couple of years has been our exports, because our exports have been doing reasonably well. Consumer confidence isn't here, and unfortunately not only is consumer confidence not here but we have erected a lot of barriers to tourism, financial barriers: barriers that, if we were to take them down, I believe the net effect would be that Ontario would be wealthier, because we've got to welcome tourists.

It is one of the major industries of the world and it's an industry where Ontario doesn't need to take any back seat because we have such magnificent scenery and wonderful facilities. But we are quite simply pricing ourselves out of the market.

There is the administrative burden that we've talked about for car rental agencies, but I suspect they would willingly take on a greater administrative burden if indeed they didn't have to bear the cost of those fines, and not only the fines, as I said, for speeding but also the fines for parking. I've offered a practical solution as to how that could be done.

Brian Eddy, a lawyer representing six car rental companies that have been stung by owner liability, notes that police don't go after drivers; they're just concerned about money.

We've spoken quite a bit about the fact that we believe this is just another tax grab. There's been an incredibly long list of tax grabs against Ontario motorists. We know that car insurance premiums have gone up as a result of new retail sales taxes that have been levied for the first time on them. We know that provincial fee increases have put the cost of driving up quite significantly and in many cases beyond the reach of some Ontario households. The NDP's new 5% retail sales tax on automobile insurance has increased the average driver's premium by 17%. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, that equates to between $150 and $200 a year.

Interjection.

Mr Turnbull: My friends across the floor, that is a serious assault against the citizens of Ontario, and once again, invariably, it is the poorest people in society who bear the burden unfairly.

Effective on July 1, 1993, drivers had an 8% sales tax applied to warranty work on parts and labour, and also we've had a tax on parking at commercial and municipal garages. You remember we mentioned about taking away the commercial concentration tax, that tax where somehow the NDP had mysteriously put in something which was going to negatively affect pharmacists, had nothing to do with commercial concentration tax, but at the same time, what they did was they put a tax on to parking lots, once again an assault on the viability of our downtown cores and on tourism.

The effects are everywhere. We have seen in the newspapers within the last couple of days that as a result of the NDP's actions in the last three years, the average Ontario family is paying some $650 more per year in taxes and fees, not a very good state of affairs when you consider that we were already quite heavily taxed by the Liberals.

I don't absolve my own party from any fault. Successively, government after government has levied more and more taxes on people, and the result is we are now one of the highest-taxed places in Canada. In some areas, we are the most heavily-taxed administration in the whole of North America, and that is a very sobering thought.

We know that the switch to five-year licence fees was to grab cash up front instead of a two-year licence fee. That's pretty unfair to a senior who anticipates they're only going to be driving for another two or three years, but they're grabbing that money now.

Of course we also find that the licence-issuing officers who are going to sell those licences are going to be stuck with a period of approximately two years where the switchover occurs where there will be virtually no revenue coming in to those licence-issuing officers because we've already gone to a five-year licence fee, and guess what? By some strange coincidence, that window when we won't be getting any more licence fees is when the next government takes over. Don't you find that just passing strange?

Hon Mr Charlton: I thought it was brilliant.

Mr Turnbull: I notice that the government House leader says he thinks it's brilliant. I guess you would if you are of the ilk that you feel that grabbing more and more revenue and bleeding future governments is smart. If you think that is what a government should be doing, then I guess this was brilliant. You're quite right. But there are very serious implications for the taxpayers because future governments won't have that revenue stream which would normally be anticipated.

We know there has been assaults on the taxpayer in every area. The list is getting as long as my arm of the ways in which this government has found to get revenue in not necessarily tax revenue ways, but fees and increases and jiggering the books. We are fed up with it.

I've spoken in positive terms about what graduated licences can do and about some of the aspects of photo-radar, and I have offered, I believe, very concrete suggestions as to how you can improve this bill, but on the revenue generation side, which we believe in our party is the primary motivation for this bill, there can be no excuse. You are taking money that you shouldn't be taking. The problem is not revenue in this province; the problem is expenditures, and the expenditures have gone up exponentially since you have taken power.

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I want to touch briefly on some litigation that occurred in Alberta in 1991, Regina v Chow, an Alberta case at trial on a charge of speeding. The judge refused to admit into evidence a photograph generated by Multanova radar camera and dismissed the charge. The crown's appeal was, however, allowed on the grounds that the disputed evidence was not the photograph itself but the mechanical recording on the photograph of the vehicle's speed as measured by the radar device, and it was found that that would be receivable if the surrounding circumstances indicated that it is accurate and trustworthy.

In another case, also in Alberta, Regina v Hedayat in 1991, it was held that the accused owner of the vehicle, the driver of which was speeding, who received a notice 25 days after the alleged offence and was unable to recall or reconstruct facts surrounding the alleged offence because of the lapse of time and was concerned about the reliability of the Multanova device, successfully argued that the circumstances amounted to an abuse of process and proceedings were stayed. So there are some very serious legal concerns about this equipment.

I want to return very quickly just to emphasize the Pasadena experience, because I think it is something that the government can learn from. At trial, if the driver is not the owner, the owner is requested to identify the driver under oath, a citation is then issued to the driver within 30 days and the authorities suspend the vehicle owner's licence indefinitely if the summons is ignored.

In this way you would be able to actually attach demerit points to the system and, in so doing, you would bring back that which is lacking in this legislation, and that is a disincentive to speed.

The public outcry in Peroria, Arizona, led to the voters passing a referendum that forced the Phoenix suburb to stop using photo-radar.

I would like to mention once again the national motorists' association in the US and Canada, the Ontario chapter. They have stated that photo-radar is repugnant and has three significant flaws: Drunks or impaired drivers remain on the road because the police are not stopping the drivers of speeding vehicles; vehicle owners are presumed guilty and must prove their innocence; and technical errors may not be challenged since the driver will not be able to recall the circumstances later.

I think those are some pretty serious reasons for us to at least think very hard as to whether we're doing the right thing.

The Attorney General's statement that minor motor vehicle offences are diverting court and police resources is indeed correct. I think we should seriously find ways in which to help the police so that those resources are handled in the best way, but it should not be at the expense of the presumption of innocence.

As the system exists, if the police officer involved fails to appear, the charge will be withdrawn and this leads to people requesting trials in the full knowledge that they're not going to go, but just in the hope that the police will not show up so that they might be able to get off.

Just think about that: the fact that there are sufficient people around the province who know the system well enough that they say, "Ah, the policeman's probably not going to show up at the trial, so I will apply for a hearing," thus blocking up the court system, "and I will take the risk that the policeman won't show up and thus I will get off." That's not addressing the questions of speeding that we should be addressing.

The changes that are being suggested will have some positive results, but if you ask for a hearing under this proposed legislation, you will have to attend a pre-hearing. Let us say I was travelling from here to North Bay and I, for some reason, attracted a ticket in Parry Sound. That would mean I would have to travel up to Parry Sound in order to attend the pre-hearing. That adds an extra amount of aggravation to people's lives. I suspect the reason for that is because they're hoping that people will elect not to go that route. That could have some serious implications for the passage of justice.

The backlog in courts is certainly a serious question but I don't think that we're addressing it in a reasonable way. Another concern that I have is the fact that, at that pre-trial hearing that I referred to, a police officer will attend and virtually acts as duty counsel. It's clearly in the best interests of the police officer to get a conviction; I don't think that they can act as a neutral party. So I think that we should bear that in mind.

Bill 47 changes the pre-trial screening process, as I've explained, with this first court appearance. The defendants must file notice of intention to appear at the court and ex parte trials will be eliminated because defendants who fail to appear will be convicted without a hearing with the option to reopen -- a default conviction can actually be challenged if you can demonstrate a good reason why you could not appear.

The police officer will be no longer required to appear at trials for motor vehicle offences since an officer's certificate of offence or certificate of parking infraction will be admissible as evidence at trial, except where the defendant has indicated his intention to challenge the officer's evidence. In that case the officer must appear. I think on the face of this, this seems reasonable, other than the concern about the preliminary hearing.

Court officials will be able to direct the Ministry of Transportation to suspend drivers' licences for default fines rather than requiring a formal order from the justice of the peace. I would suspect that my colleague will be commenting on that in some detail.

I support any attempts to increase the safety in this province, but I'm most concerned about this bill because I do believe that it is primarily a revenue generator and there is nothing that the government has done so far to indicate that I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, they can easily demonstrate that by saying, "Okay, we're going to dedicate all of that revenue as additional funds to the police." They can eliminate such things as this pre-trial screening process, which is certainly worrisome when you consider that the police officer will attend virtually as duty counsel. We must have complete scrutiny of this bill in the committee and we must look at ways of ensuring that the driver of the vehicle not only is the one who is found guilty as opposed to the owner of the vehicle, and I've explained how that can be done, but actually receives demerit points so that there is truly a deterrent effect for all drivers, not just those people who are basically law-abiding citizens or those people who are somewhat impoverished.

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The Acting Speaker: Before I call on further speakers, I wish to inform the House that the late show will not be proceeding today.

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: If you look at the rules, I think a late show cannot be eliminated without unanimous consent. The rules provide that it go on as long as a member provides the table officers with the proper information and so on.

The Acting Speaker: To answer the member, the member who had requested the late show has now declined that, and things are proceeding in order.

Further speakers?

Mr Harnick: My understanding is that we are splitting the time, so I believe I have some 38 minutes left, not the two minutes that are showing on the clock.

Mr Callahan: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I don't wish to interfere with the time of the member for Willowdale, but it had been agreed that there would be questions and comments. You did not ask for questions and comments.

Mr Harnick: At the end of the 90 minutes.

Mr Callahan: Is that right? Oh, all right; fair enough.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Willowdale is in order. Please proceed.

Mr Harnick: This is a very interesting bill, and it's not quite the benign bill that my friends on the government side make it out to be. It's a very important bill and it contains many, many changes to some very important statutes that are used every day by the people in Ontario: the Provincial Offences Act, for one; the Highway Traffic Act for another.

I'm going to start by discussing the issue of photo-radar, because that's primarily the interest that people have in this bill. There is no question that the Attorney General stood in her place today and indicated that the purpose for this aspect of the bill is to make our roads safer. The real issue we have to deal with is whether photo-radar in fact makes our roads safer. I think it may do that to a very small degree, but there are ways that this piece of legislation can be made much better if road safety is the real purpose of the bill.

There's just no question that when we get involved in any issues dealing with speed and speed limit enforcement on our highways, the one constant feature in speed enforcement is that wherever you're going to give out tickets because people are going in excess of the speed limit, you're going to have people who will challenge those allegations. If they give out tickets, there are people who are going to challenge that summons.

Mr Hope: I'd sooner pay the 160 bucks than --

Mr Harnick: I know the member across the way, if he gets a ticket, would just go and pay it whether he's guilty or not. In this province, if someone is charged with an offence --

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. There are too many conversations going on at this time. We do need to be able to hear the member who has the floor.

Mr Harnick: If people are charged with an offence in this province, whether the members on the other side like it or not, we do have civil rights: We do have the right to plead not guilty; we do have the right to go to court and we do have the right to challenge the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that we have committed the offence. Some people on the other side may believe that; most probably don't.

Nevertheless, the very essence of charging people by taking a photograph of their licence plate and determining that they're going too fast will provoke people to plead not guilty and challenge those allegations. As a result of that, certain things are going to happen. There are going to be certain arguments that people are going to make about photo-radar.

They're going to say, "Photo-radar is an invasion of my privacy." I don't think that allegation will be sustainable, quite simply because highways are public places; the use of an automobile is not specifically a private right. I don't personally think that's going to be a sustainable argument.

But there are other arguments. For instance, what about the idea of two cars travelling down a highway beside one another, or one car slightly behind the other, and the photograph is taken of the licence plate. There's approximately a one- or two-second delay in the mechanism that permits the photograph of the next vehicle to be taken. In other words, what happens is that some people will be photographed and some people will not be photographed. Is it fair that two people who might be speeding at the same time and in the same place will not be treated in the same manner? That's a very interesting argument. I don't know what the answer is.

Another thing we talk about is the very idea of being charged with an offence -- and it may well be that the Minister of Transportation will implement this system -- without the necessity of an officer being present while the equipment is taking the photograph. One of the things that someone is entitled to do, if they wish to challenge the fact that they've been charged, is to hope that the prosecution will come and put in a case that is going to tell the court what the true depiction of the scene is. If we can just do this by filing a photograph, an accused person has lost the right to challenge the veracity of the scene, and that bothers me. It bothers me because what we are essentially doing is automating the way evidence is given in a courtroom.

Everything will be done by photograph and the photograph will be deemed to speak for itself. Everything will be done by certificate. If a certificate exists, if a certificate is filed, the certificate will be deemed to be evidence, and one who wishes to go to court because they honestly believe they have not committed an offence will have to be able to understand this complicated piece of legislation and will have to be able to understand how to force the level of proof to be beyond that of what a certificate says.

You can't cross-examine a certificate, but are people going to realize that they have to challenge the certificate before they can really effectively challenge the evidence that will be levelled against them in a court? I don't think they will know to do that.

Nevertheless, there are ways this particular piece of legislation can be improved. I've done some research and I've looked at a model statute that deals with this, but just before I get into that, let me tell you one of the really nasty aspects about this piece of legislation. One of the really nasty aspects is that if I lend my car to someone and that person, while driving my car, has my licence plate photographed, I become responsible for paying the fine. Granted, I can't go to jail as the owner, I can't be suspended as the owner and I don't lose any points as the owner, but I become responsible for paying what could be a significant fine. That particular aspect is something that very much concerns me.

Mr David Winninger (London South): You'd also be liable in the event of an accident.

Mr Harnick: My friend says I would be liable in the event that there's an accident, and he's quite right, but number one, I have insurance to protect me against that if I lend my car because insurance is mandatory in the province of Ontario. My friend the member for London South knows that and he knows that when he shouts things like that across the floor he's misleading.

1750

The other thing that my friend from London South knows full well is that in a car accident situation, we are talking about a civil action, and the Highway Traffic Act makes an owner liable in civil court. What we are talking about when we deal with photo-radar is a quasi-criminal offence, an offence contrary to the Highway Traffic Act, an offence against the crown, so that my friend knows quite well when he shouts out things like that, he's doing it to mislead his colleagues, and I tell you, his colleagues are very easy to mislead.

Mr Winninger: On a point of privilege, Madam Speaker: I believe that the member for Willowdale used the word "misleading." I would suggest he withdraw that remark.

The Acting Speaker: I would ask the member --

Mr Harnick: I will withdraw that. In fact, I will replace that word with "confuse." My friend is trying to confuse his own colleagues on his side of the House, and he knows how easy it is to do that.

Nevertheless, getting back to this, the part of the bill that I find so nasty is the idea that the owner becomes responsible for the driver. I tell you that when the owner is sitting at home and someone else is speeding in his car, the moment that they're speeding, a photograph is taken. But that individual who is driving the car does not know that there is speed enforcement out there asking him or telling him or warning him to slow down. So what does he do? He continues to speed. He continues to speed, and nothing has deterred him at the moment that he's committing the offence.

It's not like seeing a police car at the side of the road. You see the police car and you slow down. But that's not what happens here. That person continues to break the law and that person continues to make our roads unsafe. The purpose of this legislation is to make our roads safer.

There is more that we can do with this piece of legislation to accomplish that. Let me tell you what that is. The research that I have done looking at various jurisdictions, including Alberta, British Columbia, Maryland and New Jersey, indicates that the technology exists to permit photo-radar to take a photograph not just of the front or the rear licence plate of the vehicle, but also of the driver. If we are able to take a photograph of the driver, then we have a fighting chance to deter the driver, because the driver will know that he will be responsible for paying the fine.

The next question is, how do you do that? How do you do that? How do you expand the scope of this piece of legislation to make it so that the driver, the person who is committing the crime and making the roads unsafe -- how do you get to the driver? Well, it's very, very simple. It's very simple.

Mr Hope: There you go. You ask your buddy to pay a hundred bucks.

The Acting Speaker: Order. The members will have a chance to respond.

Mr Harnick: Mr Hope, who is shouting at me -- if you would listen to me, you would understand. The idea is not simply to convict the owner. The idea is to deter the driver, the very person who is committing the offence. I know there are people in this Legislature who say: "Well, don't do that because that might be difficult. It might be difficult to convict the person who really commits the offence. The easy way is, let's lump it all on the driver." Well, you don't have to do that.

What we can do with this piece of legislation is, yes, we can charge the driver. But what we can do is, through the driver, we can identify the operator of the vehicle, so that the driver's defence will be to identify the operator of the vehicle in the photograph and to provide the police with the name and the address and the telephone number of that identified driver. If we were able to do this, we would have a bill that I would say is fair.

Mr Hope: These lawyers --

Mr Harnick: Mr Hope keeps shouting across the floor about lawyers. I don't know what this has to do with lawyers. What it has to do with --

The Acting Speaker: Members will have an opportunity to respond to the speaker. Will you go ahead, the member for Willowdale.

Mr Harnick: One of the problems with a piece of legislation like this is that car rental companies are constantly renting cars to individuals who are charged with certain violations, parking offences, and then the rental operator ends up having to pay those fines.

If the rental operator is hung out to dry on the basis of the way this piece of legislation looks, when he rents a car to somebody and when that individual speeds -- because there are no deterrents against that individual speeding -- the rental operator, as owner of the car, becomes liable to pay the fine. The renter isn't deterred. He speeds, and there is nothing to deter him, nothing to make him go slower. Accordingly, the rental operator ends up paying the fine.

But if this law was to be changed -- and the technology exists, because it's happening in other jurisdictions -- and if it was to state that a photograph of the driver be taken, if the owner of the vehicle is a rental company, the owner of the vehicle can then identify the driver. The owner of the vehicle, being the rental company, can go ahead and say, "The driver is Mr So-and-so or Mrs So-and-so. The driver lives at such-and-such a place. The driver's licence number is such-and-such," and they can then identify the actual person who commits the crime.

Isn't that what making the roads safer is all about? Don't convict a person who wasn't behind the wheel, because you're not slowing that person down. You want to slow down the people who commit the offences, and that's the way this piece of legislation should read.

We should be doing everything we possibly can to identify the owner of that vehicle and then proceed by levying charges against the driver, based on information obtained from the owner. If the owner does not wish to go ahead and identify the driver, then the owner would become liable to pay the fine.

Number one, that would be to me a much more fair and equitable system, and, number two, it would fall within the criteria of what the Attorney General says should be done, and that is make the roads safer. We must be in a position to deter the actual driver who is speeding, not someone who's loaned the vehicle to someone else and is otherwise a law-abiding individual.

The other aspect of this is, if this legislation was to read the way I have suggested, then the argument that all this is just a tax grab is no longer valid. The argument that all this is just a tax grab goes out the window if those changes are made in this piece of legislation.

I think this can be made a much better bill. It can accomplish exactly what the Attorney General and the Minister of Transportation want to accomplish and it can destroy the argument that all this is is a tax grab. If this bill is left the way it is now, it really is a tax grab. All it is is a way to get money into the provincial coffers. It is not, in reality, deterring drivers who speed and drivers who are breaking the law.

If you want to do that, then direct this piece of legislation against the driver. Photograph the driver. I don't believe, as I said in my initial remarks, that is an invasion of anyone's privacy. Drivers are driving on public highways. Public highways and public safety negate the argument that people's privacy rights are invaded. I don't believe that would be a sustainable argument.

But what I do believe is that if we direct this against the operator, then we are actually deterring speeding drivers and we are actually making the highways safer. That's what this piece of legislation is all about. That's why I, quite frankly, think that the thrust of this is all wrong. The thrust of this is to go against an owner of a vehicle and not an operator.

Madam Speaker, it's now 6 of the clock, and I would move adjournment of the House.

The Acting Speaker: It being 6 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 on Tuesday, October 26.

The House adjourned at 1802.

October 21, 1993

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