BUDGET MEASURES ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LES MESURES BUDGÉTAIRES
Report continued from volume A.
1535
ORDERS OF THE DAY
BUDGET MEASURES ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LES MESURES BUDGÉTAIRES
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 160, An Act to amend certain Acts to provide for certain Measures referred to in the 1993 Budget and for other Measures referred to in the 1994 Budget and to make amendments to the Health Insurance Act respecting the Collection and Disclosure of Personal Information / Projet de loi 160, Loi modifiant des lois pour prévoir certaines mesures mentionnées dans le budget de 1993 et d'autres mesures mentionnées dans le budget de 1994 et modifiant la Loi sur l'assurance-santé en ce qui concerne la collecte et la divulgation de renseignements personnels.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): The honourable member for York Mills had the floor when this bill last was debated.
Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): As we adjourned the debate, I was speaking about the Highway 407 project and the very serious concerns I have about the mistake that this government has made in terms of how it has handled this contract.
To recall the circumstances under which 407 was contracted, the requests for tenders by consortia were solicited. Two large consortia were formed with the intention of raising the financing to build and maintain these roads, with the understanding that the winning consortium would have five years to build the road and then 30 years thereafter of operation, at the end of which time, the arrangement was, the winning consortium would turn over the road in good condition to the province.
The advantage of this technique would be that we would not burden the taxpayers with further debt. It is quite clear that the government from the very beginning knew perfectly well that it could raise the funds at a lower rate than any private consortium. It just is good sense, and anybody who knows anything about financing understands that.
However, the government elicited these very extensive tenders and the two consortia came forward with proposals, and then there was no public opening of the bids, as there had been in all the dealings that governments had been involved with since the early 1950s, and we were told that the winning consortium would not be financing the bid and that in fact the government would finance it. What this means is that the government will have to take on a further billion dollars' worth of debt. This government, in fact any future government, does not have the capacity to be borrowing these moneys, because it impacts our overall credit rating, because we are progressively becoming more and more indebted.
The Better Roads Coalition was most concerned about this change, which was a change which occurred in the last 36 hours before the bids were to be opened: the decision that it should be financed from within. I would like to read just part of a letter written by the Better Roads Coalition to the Minister of Transportation, dated May 25 of this year.
It reads in part: "As we have explained in a letter to Mr Guscott, the Better Roads Coalition has a major concern with the procedure used for the analysis of the competitive bids. In fact, sir, our concerns really follow two major areas.
"First, the public was advised that private financing was a major objective for this work. The question still remains, would there have been more competitive bidding if the engineering and construction industries had been aware that the government was going to do the financing?" I think that is a very valid point.
"Second, as we have said to Mr Guscott, the Ontario government and the construction industry over many years have established an open public system of tendering that has the confidence and respect of the people of Ontario. In fact, it has been followed by many jurisdictions not only in Canada but throughout the world. To throw this openness out to safeguard the competitiveness of the bidders in other business ventures, in our opinion, is not in the public interest. Public contracts are just that, 'public,' and the contractors are aware of this when they enter into this work."
"Therefore, Minister, the Better Roads Coalition, while congratulating your government for accelerating Highway 407, are, first, asking you to provide an analysis of the two competitive bids received for this work, and second, seeking your assurance that any future bidding procedure be implemented with the full knowledge that the bids will be made public." That is key to this whole process.
Not only have we endangered our credit in the international markets through this move, but we have also lost a golden opportunity to create a really viable industry based in Ontario which would be capable of going out on a world scale and bidding on complete proposals, including the financing, the design, the construction and the operation of roads. There is no way we can offer this today.
You only have to look to the US and look at such companies as Bechtel, which in fact would have liked to bid on this road but was turned away by the government with the suggestion that because it was an American-based organization it wouldn't be able to bid.
Having missed the opportunity to have a completely open bidding process on a world scale, we've also snatched away the ability to have a viable Ontario-based industry which has the experience to go on a worldwide scale and say, "This is what we can do: We can finance, we can design, we can construct and then we can operate." A terrible lost opportunity.
When we analyse this deal, the public has to ask, how can the government arrive at the decision of who the winning bidder would be without the knowledge that the two bids were apples and apples, not apples and oranges? I suspect, from the information I have managed to glean so far, that the two bids were completely dissimilar and should have been opened up after the government had made the decision that it wanted a particular type of construction, that it should have opened it up to all bidders to be able to go after that type of work.
In fact, we now believe that the winning consortium has been bidding on, substantially, a six-lane highway constructed out of concrete, whereas the losing consortium was bidding on a four-lane highway constructed from asphalt. I would question how the government compared the two proposals. I suspect -- and I have mentioned this to the deputy minister and he has partially confirmed this -- that they must have used a life-cycle approach.
Life-cycle costing depends on the assumptions which are fed in at the beginning to arrive at the variables you will measure it by, and we would very much like, in the public interest, to be able to see what the assumptions were in any life-cycle analysis.
I want to turn very quickly now to a few other matters. The government has failed, in bringing forward this massive omnibus bill which does many things other than just financing, which is what one would assume this bill should have been pure in -- they have brought forward a bill that has everything but the kitchen sink, but one thing that is missing is a piece of legislation which the government had promised to the truckers, that is, that the responsibility for axle-weight loading of any truck would be shared equally between the shipper and the trucking company.
The reason we need such legislation is because at the present moment, if a trucker gets a job to carry some merchandise somewhere in this province or outside of the province and goes to pick up the load and finds that the load is heavier and unequally distributed, the trucker faces a potential fine for unequal loading. However, the shipping company can in effect blackmail the trucker into taking the load, since it is a very competitive business, with merely the suggestion, "If you don't like this load, we'll send it with somebody else." A very reasonable solution to this is to share the responsibility equally between both the shipper and the trucking company, so that nobody has it in their best interest to unequally load the weight on the axles, which has the effect of damaging our roads when we have unequal axle-weight loading.
I have spoken to the Minister of Transportation and he agrees that this is desirable, and I have heard that the Liberals, in debate, have suggested that they support this too. Given the fact that there is unanimity between the parties, I believe it is important that we move forward with this legislation before the House rises.
Today, I have spoken to the minister about a way that technically we could get around the problems with respect to the House rules about bringing something in at this late date. It could be by way of an amendment to Bill 160, which I believe would be ruled out of order in committee. However, if the committee then sent forward a recommendation that the House be made aware of the unanimity, the House could, under the circumstances of unanimous consent, introduce an amendment to Bill 160 so we would have the ability to implement this before the House rises, and that would be good for the roads of Ontario, good for the taxpayers of Ontario, and would stop this blackmail that goes on at the present moment with the truckers.
Turning very quickly to the question of Highway 116 in the Ottawa area, there is an urgent need for the government to be moving ahead with this, and I would suggest that based on the debacle of Highway 407, we should be very conscious that the government has made a misstep and we should analyse what went wrong with the 407 bid and we should open it up to a very clear, open process so that the taxpayers know what is going and we can move forward in a timely fashion with roadbuilding in this province.
I have to get on the record, since we are speaking about the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp, the way in which the government has been misspending funds in the transportation field, and the perfect example is a report which was produced on behalf of the Ministry of Transportation. This was an unnecessary, untendered, unsolicited bid on the creation of a report with respect to bus transportation in this province. We now have a report that has cost the taxpayers some $200,000, which is highly abusive of the private sector.
When we see that we have a government where the Premier keeps on trotting around the province, and so does the Minister of Transportation, suggesting they want partnerships with the private sector -- well, I cannot conceive of the government getting too much cooperation from the private sector when they fund, with taxpayers' money, to the tune of $200,000, a former union leader to do a report which the Ministry of Transportation initially said was not necessary, would only duplicate information it already had, and in fact is some two years late and required input from the Ministry of Transportation in the end.
Three staffers from the Ministry of Transportation had to work with this outside consultant to be able to bring the report to fruition, and it is highly critical of the private sector with such statements in the text as, "The overwhelming evidence shows that the more the public officials deal with the business community, the more taxpayers suffer through graft, kickbacks, overruns, overcharges and poorer service and quality of work."
1550
I refute that categorically. There is ample evidence to suggest that privatization of many functions of government would in fact yield a much more efficient and cost-effective product to the people who count, the taxpayers, who are our customers. That is the bottom line.
The government has lost the view as to who is paying the bill. It is the taxpayer and we are here to protect the taxpayer, and spending $200,000 on this trashy report is insulting to the taxpayer. In fact, the motor coach association has asked for a retraction and an apology by the Ministry of Transportation. It hasn't been forthcoming so far. How can the minister seriously expect that they're going to get cooperation with the private sector?
Throughout the world socialist parties are reluctantly coming to the realization that they're going to have to encourage the private sector, but they haven't understood that it requires a fundamental change in their thinking. This is not just some words that they've got to change, it isn't the dialogue, it's the fundamental will to work with the private sector, and this report certainly doesn't do it.
In conclusion, we have a government that has created the Ontario Transportation Capital Corp, is misspending money, is missing opportunities and has it all wrong. This is a government that has always reviled the private sector and talked about corporate welfare bums. What did this government do? They closed the deal to sell GO rolling stock. Where did they close the deal? They went to Bermuda to do it. Why would you go to Bermuda to close the deal? Quite frankly, because there was tax evasion involved.
Here we have a government that is working in this way to deprive taxpayers of their due pound of flesh, you may say, and yet they continue to revile the private sector. The government has sold off rolling stock which the taxpayer paid for years ago; now they're not leasing it back, they're buying it back. They sold it and they're buying it back. A most peculiar transaction. One of the members of the consortium that bought it is one of the Canadian charter banks, but they're closing the deal in Bermuda.
This is a government that has not only lost sight of the best interests of the taxpayer, but they've even lost sight of what their philosophical roots are. They're working with offshore companies to deprive taxpayers of tax with every possible manipulation of the tax system. Who are the net losers? The taxpayers, of course.
That is why I will be voting against this bill, and while it's traditional for opposition members to criticize government, I would hope they might just do a little bit of contemplation as to what I've said, because these are the facts and these are the things they're doing to our economy which they could change.
We think it's probably another year before there's an election called, unfortunately; but, in the meantime, they're spending the taxpayers' money, they're losing opportunities and they've even lost sight of their own, albeit fuzzy, ideals.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?
Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): I must tell you, I find it a bit much to take a lecture from a Thatcherite on what democratic socialist principles are all about. The member is so contradictory --
Mr Turnbull: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I just would like to get clarification. Is it okay for me to maybe use in election literature the fact that I've been called a Thatcherite?
The Acting Speaker: It's not a point of order.
Mr Turnbull: Oh, I see.
Mr Sutherland: Let me say that the member, in his Thatcherite views as expressed, has also been very contradictory. At one point he's saying, "Oh, you've got to work with the private sector, you've got to work with the private sector," and of course when we do enter into one of the largest joint public-private partnerships probably anywhere in North America in terms of the consortium to build Highway 407, then of course, "Oh no, you didn't do that right."
"The reason you didn't do that right," according to the member, "is we're the only ones, we're the only experts who know how to deal with the private sector. Yes, we've got tons of experience with dealing with the private sector and it's all going to be in the open and up front."
We know, and it's been in the papers again lately, how his federal colleagues dealt with the private sector in terms of the Pearson Airport deal. That was all out in the open so the taxpayers could clearly see who was all involved and what kind of deal they were getting and what kind of response.
The track record of the Tory party just doesn't hold up that they are experts and they're the only ones who have this knowledge, this secret knowledge that only they possess in terms of having to work with the private sector.
This government is interested and is active in public-private partnerships that are creating jobs and that are going to expand Highway 407, which is going to help more economic activity in this province and make Ontario even more prosperous than it already is.
The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments? The honourable member for Durham-York.
Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): Thank you for recognizing me, Mr Speaker. I just wanted to comment briefly on what my friend and colleague from York Mills has said. I think he has missed the point. He talks about how bad the government is, and that's the role the opposition plays: "You're all bad, you're no good and you're not doing anything positive."
Some 20,000 jobs will be created because of the superb negotiations by this government on the 407 and he tells how bad that is: "You did it all wrong." It didn't take place 10 years ago. It didn't happen, though people thought about it, maybe.
We knew the Liberals were going to think about doing something with that. They thought, "Maybe we'll do it somewhere well beyond the year 2000, beyond the year 2005 or 2010." Yet we're going to do that before the turn of the century. That's the kind of $1-billion commitment that comes about by sitting down and having some good negotiations take place, some that are going to create jobs.
It's unfortunate that when you're in opposition you have to say, "Everything's bad, nothing's good." But for the subway lines that are in place, that are going to move forward, for all the jobs that are going to be created there, for the people of Musselman Lake who are going to get safe water because of the Ontario Clean Water Agency, or the sewer expansion up in Beaverton -- they don't talk about those good, positive, plus things that are out there because that's not the role of being in opposition.
The role of being in opposition is saying: "You're not doing anything for me. What have you done for me lately?" The fact is that there are a lot of good things happening out there: 20,000 jobs. "The 407's no good. You did it all wrong. You're going to get it completed a decade before we could possibly even have dreamt about it under the previous government, but you did it all wrong. We could have done it better."
I just wish that in the few minutes that he has to respond the member will lighten up the debate a little bit and talk about some of the good things about Ontario.
The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): The member's time has expired. Further questions or comments to the member for York Mills?
Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): After nine years in opposition, I can stand in my place today and say that there is a role for opposition. I am really encouraged that since we have been speaking on this bill now, I think, for three days, at different times, obviously the government is listening.
I spoke in questions and comments the other evening about the intangible properties section of this bill and in fact questioned even the legality of it because banks are legislated by the federal government and there was a big question about whether the provincial government even had jurisdiction in terms of property left with banks, namely, unclaimed accounts.
Now, today, that section has been removed. I feel very pleased, very encouraged. I had six weeks in government nine years ago and I've had nine years in opposition. There is a role for opposition, and I'm really motivated by the fact that it works.
Having said that, I hope that maybe before we get to third reading of this bill we can look at the government removing a penalty on sick people, because we still have part VIII, which deals with copayments for the accommodations for insured persons admitted to hospitals. Obviously "copayments," as I said the other evening, is another word for user fees. We should not penalize people who are ill; we should have a system where we all contribute, whether we're healthy or we fall by with sickness. So I hope they'll change that as well.
The final section that I thought was absolutely ludicrous, and I hope for some change in this, is where we grant commercial fishing licences to commercial fishermen and then charge them, according to this bill, on every fish that they take out in the form of royalties.
1600
Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): Very quickly, I can't understand some of the negative comments that came from the member for York Mills. I can't understand why he's not happy that thousands of people are going back to work, and they're doing it at a rapid rate. Thousands of people are going back to work. I can't understand why he's being critical of that.
I can't understand why you're being critical of the fact that when the 407 is finally going to be completed, thousands of people are going to be rushing off to work a lot quicker. Of course, when you talk about pollution and the number of cars that won't be idling, I can't understand why he talks negatively about the 407. I don't understand it. In one light, the Conservatives stand up and they talk about working in conjunction with the private sector; on the other hand, we've got 407, which is going to do just that, and you stand up and criticize it. I can't understand it.
I don't understand why you stand up in your place and criticize the subways, the thousands of jobs that are going to be created with the subways. I can't understand how you cannot realize how many people are at home, construction workers with their workboots on, pretty much, waiting for their foreman or their boss to phone them and say, "There's some work here."
I can't understand the criticism. I don't understand why, one day the Conservatives stand and they talk about one thing, and when the government reacts and when it does something, they stand up in a negative light. I don't understand it and I'm sure the member for York Mills will know darn well that his constituents probably don't understand it. Talk to those people with their workboots on.
The Acting Speaker: Now the member for York Mills has two minutes to respond.
Mr Turnbull: If the members had listened carefully, they would understand what I was saying. I was not trying to detract from getting these people back to work. The majority of the roads in this province were built by the PCs; they certainly weren't built by the Liberals.
The fact is that this deal was changed in the last 36 hours and there hasn't been any public scrutiny of the way it was changed. It was changed from being a deal which was to be financed in the outside markets by the consortium, which we applauded and would get people back to work, to putting debt on the government books, which we're saying is the wrong method. On the one hand, you've got it all wrong. We said this is a good idea, but at the last moment, you changed the deal.
To the member for Oxford, who talks about the Pearson Airport deal, it's very interesting, because some of the consortium members who won this deal are in the Pearson consortium deal. So if you want to talk about a deal, you'd better look at who the players are.
This deal was hatched up in secrecy. The public has never heard from the minister. When I have asked him if this was the best deal, the lowest bidder, he has never, ever answered that question, and that is the question that we're asking.
We are not taking away from the ideal of building roads; we need roads built. But the method which was originally brought in by this government -- to have private consortia building, financing and operating the roads -- was excellent. We applauded them for it. Now, when they have reneged on this deal, we castigate them for the fact that they have missed a golden opportunity.
I will once again remind you, the PCs built the majority of the roads in this province, the majority of the infrastructure.
The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. I am looking for someone who would like to take the floor on further debate.
Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I am pleased to join in the debate on this particular piece of legislation. I know there are a number of members who wish to take part in the debate, so I'm going to try to keep my comments as brief as possible.
What we're talking about here is a piece of legislation which is always referred to as an omnibus budget bill. I think a lot of people don't particularly recognize what an omnibus bill is, but it is a piece of legislation which implements a number of measures, many disparate. It causes a problem in the Legislature because we then are not focusing on one particular area.
The government is trying to ram through a number of measures without any one particular focus, so much of the debate may deal with matters around the Education Act, the Public Lands Act, the Retail Sales Tax Act, the Provincial Offences Act, the Corporations Information Act or the Co-operative Corporations Act. All of these different acts have been affected by the piece of legislation we are debating.
One of the things I've always found strange is that a government which should understand how this place works by now resorts, time and again, to omnibus pieces of legislation. I believe that it really takes away from the opportunity of the general public, through us as legislators, through our constituency offices, to direct attention to one particular area. I am very much opposed to these types of omnibus pieces of legislation. They underscore the fact of a government that can't order its own affairs, that is trying to put too much in the basket at once and provides a real barrier, a real burden to people's addressing particular concerns.
Just as an introduction, I have significant problems with the bill, not only in its substance but rather in the way it has been created, in the way it is being portrayed and in the way the government is trying to ram through not just a piece of legislation but rather one piece that contains many different and separate parts which will affect other people in different ways. That is not going to be fully appreciated in the way in which the government tries to address these issues.
For me, although there are many areas in the bill which I would like to speak to, there is one that is an issue that has been brought to me and my constituency almost on a daily basis. There is an amendment in this legislation to the Corporations Information Act, and the change that is contemplated is going to force all Ontario corporations to file annual returns. This is the companion piece to the recent regulation that corporations must pay $50 each year along with their information forms. When we cut through all of that, what we are looking at is a piece of legislation that is going to cost businesses, especially small businesses, $50 each and every year.
There is no question that as many businesses have struggled with the recession -- many have not succeeded but others have moved through these very difficult times -- every dollar does count. For the government during this time to demand $50 from each businees in this province is ludicrous. The government will say: "This is necessary for us to make certain that our records are updated, that our records reflect the current position of a company as to who the directors are, as to where the head office is, as to where one can get in touch with the operators of a company."
That's fine. I think records should be updated. But what the government hasn't said is that when they first introduced this initiative, if one wishes to call it that, they indicated that it was going to be a one-time action. In other words, they were going to deal with all of the corporations. They were going to say to all the companies: "Over the years the information about where you are and who you are may have changed. We want to update it, and the cost is going to be $50."
1610
I had some very large concerns about that, but I remember the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations stating that this was going to be a one-time, one-shot burden on businesses. I had some very strong concerns, but I was also listening very closely to what the minister was saying, that the cost to the companies was going to be a one-shot occasion.
The year had not passed before the government said, "Wait a minute, it's not going to be one time." All the companies now have updated their records. The ministry, the government, has an update on where the company is located, who runs the company, what their addresses are -- all of that is updated. Now the government says: "Well, even though you did that and even though that was our initial goal, we want that $50 from each company each year even if" -- and for the most part this will be the case -- "there has been no change in the head office, there's no change in the mailing address, there have been no changes in the directors and the officers. We just want the $50 each year from each company."
I have received an incredible amount of telephone calls and letters, primarily from small business, primarily from that group of people we all make speeches about. They're the ones that are able to create more new jobs in this province than any other sector. We all make speeches about that and I trust we all believe that deeply. But how do we repay that group, that sector that creates the good new jobs in this province? The government congratulates them by saying, "Penalty, $50; next year, penalty, $50; the following year, penalty, $50," each and every year, and not only the money but also the paperwork.
Can we understand the cynicism that some of the business community has with this government? They make the speeches that these new jobs are created by that entrepreneurial spirit, much of which is focused in the small business community, that they recognize where the demands are, recognize where the business interests are going to lead, that they are ready, willing and able to stand up and embrace the challenges and overcome the burdens and set the stage for not only continued job establishment but job growth, wealth creation. On the one hand, as they make speeches about that, extolling the virtues of the small business community, which should be done, they say in here: "Well, here's another $50 tab off your bottom line. Here is what we think of you." It's as if people are moving forward in the business sector and the government is holding them back.
I do not say that government does not have a right and a role and a responsibility in regulation to a degree; of course it does. But where a company has updated its files, where a company does have up-to-date information filed with the government, as most do, then why must it do this each and every year? Why can it not be just a responsibility on corporations that if there is a change in their ownership, if there is a change in their head office, if there is a change in their mailing address, if there is a change in their officers, then there is an obligation to inform the ministry? But no, the government wants it. It wants that $50 from each business whether there is a change or not.
I think that is wrong. I think it unduly and unfairly penalizes a sector which is doing and continuing to do a job in this province called creating new growth and jobs.
I am very, very critical not only of the legislation but of this piece in particular, because of the fact that I've received so many telephone calls, people are so concerned about this. Some might say, "Well, gee, $50 doesn't sound like much." Well, how wrong can one be? Fifty dollars to a small business which is struggling is a lot of money. That doesn't include the paperwork. It's an awfully big burden, and that is added on to other areas; it's not by itself but another addition.
We have to be very sensitive and recognize that the small business community, the business community in general, does not need a $50 charge where it is not warranted, does not need increased paperwork where no new information is being provided. That's what this does, and that's why I'm very upset with the government not recognizing how important that particular sector is in this province and how it has been struggling, how it has been overcoming the challenges and meeting the needs of and providing jobs for many people.
I am very concerned not only with the bill itself, with the omnibus nature of the bill, where it touches on so many different areas, but also specifically with this Corporations Information Act, which foists an obligation on businesses that they have already met.
What happens if they don't tell the government that there has been no change? They can lose their charter. The government can dissolve them. The government can say, "You're no longer in business." How ridiculous is that for a government to do? How silly. It's insane that they would do such a thing.
The fact of the matter is that what we have to be doing is exactly the opposite. We should be pushing and promoting and helping business do what it does best, and that is to grow and that is to create wealth and that is to create new jobs. It is to create and expand and it's to be flexible and recognize where the needs and the demands are going to be in the future.
We don't need this type of legislation, which indeed does not help business but hurts business. What we need is less government in many areas; this happens to be one in particular. This particular piece of legislation is absolutely unnecessary and that $50 annual charge for every business in this province is not warranted.
I am very much opposed to this. I am very much opposed to the obligation, the burden it puts on small business, and I'm very much opposed to the government not recognizing the true worth, the true commitment and the true effort that small business, business in general, has in this province in the creation of good-paying, long-term jobs.
The Acting Speaker: Now we have time for questions or comments to the member. The member for St Catharines-Brock.
Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): I have the privilege of sitting as the Chair for the standing committee on regulations and private bills, to which all the revivals of incorporation status have come. I can't tell you how many times on a weekly basis, when the House is in session, we deal with the revivals of corporations that have not kept their information up to date.
What the member from Mississauga at this point wishes to communicate is that somehow this is onerous. But I have to disagree with him most heartily, because I believe his information is wrong, massively wrong. I think he's communicating the wrong message to a lot of businesses out there and I think he should apologize to them, because he is encouraging those companies to be scofflaws, and that is inappropriate.
I would say that the issue really and truly is the fact that to maintain your legal status, to maintain your tax status, to have the protections of the law as an incorporated company is uppermost, and what the member for Mississauga is suggesting is that somehow it is inappropriate that a government should institute a fee so that companies comply.
Thousands of companies in this province have not complied. A recent issue of the Ontario Gazette lists thousands and thousands of companies which are at risk of losing their corporate status.
Some people have probably listened to the member from Mississauga and feel, "Well, this is just some minor thing we have to deal with." I'm sorry; it is not. I think you're wrong, very, very wrong.
1620
The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. Further questions or comments to the member for Mississauga North? Seeing none, the member for Mississauga North may reply.
Mr Offer: I would very much like to reply, because I think the member who just spoke is absolutely wrong. If she had listened to what I said -- maybe the microphone wasn't on, I don't know -- she would have recognized that there is a Corporations Information Act and that companies do fill those out.
Ms Haeck: And your comments encourage other people to ignore that.
The Acting Speaker: Order. One person speaking at a time.
Mr Offer: Indeed there is an obligation for corporations to indicate to the government when there is a change. Listen to this very carefully. There is an obligation on corporations to indicate to the government when there has been a change in their head office, their mailing address, their officers, their executives, their directors, and that has always been the case. But that isn't what this is. This particular piece of legislation is saying to all of those companies whose information with the government is up to date, hasn't been changed, that they are still going to have to pay $50 to the government.
You're going to have to, I say with respect, justify to all of the hundreds of thousands of corporations --
Ms Haeck: You are encouraging scofflaws, and that is unfair.
The Acting Speaker: Will the member for St Catharines-Brock come to order.
Mr Offer: -- in this province whose information with your own government is up to date, where the addresses are effective, where the head office is known, where the directors and their addresses are valid, where the president, directors and executors are in good standing, why those companies still have to pay the $50.
Do you know what the answer to that is? The answer is: grab. It's a revenue grab. That's all this is about. It would be well advised for the government to stand up and admit that this has nothing to do with information which has already been updated. It has everything to do with grabbing some dollars from the small business sector, and you should be ashamed.
The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. We would like now to move to further debate on this bill.
Mrs Dianne Cunningham (London North): Bill 160 does have some effect on the education system in the province of Ontario, and there are some concerns I would like to put on the record.
Part III states, "The amendments to the Education Act change its provisions governing the sharing of assessment for school purposes of publicly traded share capital corporations and non-share capital corporations in the public sector from a residential/farm assessment basis to an enrolment basis."
I'm finding the fact that this Bill 160 is under the Minister of Finance very interesting, because the last time we took a look at a form of pooling, it was under a Minister of Education bill. So I'm not quite certain where the management practices of this government lie, but my expectation around this one is that they did want to hide this very controversial issue and the explanation of the issue -- I underline the explanation of it -- and the implications of it in a Finance bill as opposed to discussing it in an Education bill and referring it to committee.
Of course our hope is that it will be referred to a committee so that the public school boards' association, the separate school boards' association and others that are interested can come to the committee and the minister can explain the implementation of this particular Education bill, found, of course, in a budget bill.
Prior to 1989, the separate boards did not have access to commercial and industrial assessments as a source of revenue. The separate system had to rely on provincial grants and residential property taxes. I think all of us are very interested in fair assessment and fair pooling of educational property tax dollars.
In 1989, Bill 64 passed, which provided for the sharing of commercial and industrial assessment between coterminous public and separate school boards based on the level of residential and farm assessment in the municipality. That was the first step towards the pooling that had been promised as a result of the passage of Bill 30, the extension of funding to the separate school boards.
Starting in January 1990, the pooling of commercial-industrial assessment is being phased in over a six-year period. The separate system will not have full access to the commercial-industrial assessments until 1995.
The separate school system was not satisfied with Bill 64. They wanted the pooled funds distributed on the basis of enrolment and not residential and farm assessment, and they wanted non-share capital corporations, which include church properties, in the pooling mix. Bill 27 subsequently dealt with the pooling of non-share capital corporations. This one, I believe, was probably about a year ago. Again it was an Education bill.
Bill 160, however, will amend the Education Act and five other statutes to change this method of apportionment over a three-year phase-in starting in 1996. The letter by the Minister of Education and Training indicating that this would happen went out to the school boards, I believe, in May, so there was some warning. There have been some responses to those letters. The new method will apportion the assessment between the boards on the basis of enrolment. There should be an opportunity, I feel, for all of us to understand just what "enrolment" means.
We've had a number of letters with concerns that of course we will pass on to the minister if he hasn't already got them. But I think what we're all complaining about in this regard is the fact that we haven't had an opportunity in committee, as we normally would, to get our questions responded to, nor have the institutions and the individuals and the school boards that we represent.
When fully implemented, this new formula will result in a loss of assessment to public boards of $160 million, which, because of compensating grant offsets provided through the general legislative grant system, will translate into a net loss of some $60 million. Others say $50 million. I'm not here to argue amounts of money. I am here to tell you that most school boards have a very long memory and that the extension of funding to the separate school system was not to be at any expense or cost to public school systems. We have always taken that into consideration. That's called fairness too, and if it were the other way around, I would be standing in this House and making this point.
I should add that on May 5 Mr Patrick Slack noted: "The OSSTA," the Ontario Separate School Trustees' Association, "welcomes the fact that beginning in 1996 the assessment of publicly traded corporations will be shared on a per-pupil basis by coterminous boards, and we believe this significant change denotes two intentions on the part of the government of Ontario. The first is that the individual student and the opportunities available to that student will be the focus of education finance reform, and the second, we believe, is that all schools, rural and urban, rich or poor, can look forward to the day when funds are distributed equitably." Certainly I support that statement.
In my private member's resolution, which received the support of the government this morning and of course of all the members, we also stated that the fiscal year from January to January is not helpful to the school boards. We've known this since the early 1970s. There have been people and groups and individuals and boards asking for that change, and today we all agreed that should happen.
If this bill were referred to committee, or at least severed and this piece referred to committee along with others, the government of the day would have the opportunity to implement a fiscal year for schools, meaning from the beginning of September until the end of August, which we all agreed to. If we're really looking at finance reform and we're doing it separately from the commission studying education in this arena today, I suppose there are a couple of other things we could do that we have full support for, if we're really looking for equitable funding and good management in our school systems.
I should also tell you that I'm quite aware that Mr Slack phoned us today and does support this as part of a Finance bill. I know that in his representation of the Ontario Separate School Trustees' Association he would want to see this move forward as quickly as possible. However, if we were dealing with something that was taking away $60 million from the separate school boards in this province, I suppose they would phone me and say, "Put it in committee." So I'm trying to be fair to everybody, and I think open consultation and opportunities for public input is probably the fair way for everybody.
1630
Mr Sutherland: Are you trying to be fair or are you trying to be like the Liberals?
Mrs Cunningham: Madam Speaker, I think the member for Oxford would like to speak. Would you like me to proceed?
Betty Moseley-Williams from the Nipissing District Roman Catholic Separate School Board is very concerned that the request we're making today in this presentation to you, Madam Speaker, and to the government, is an intent to slow things down and derail this proposal for the separate school boards. That's not the intent at all. I don't think it takes a lot of time to go into public hearings. Government members have had to do that, along with the rest of us, on many issues in the province. Quite frankly, I think this could be dealt with in a very quick way so all of us would understand the implications.
Moving forward with regard to the press release I was referring to from Mr Slack, they stated they were "pleased to hear that this step does not prejudice the government's intention to proceed with a comprehensive finance reform." In other words, this is a good step, but move forward with a comprehensive finance reform. It isn't comprehensive when we piecemeal it like this; however, the government has been delaying on their promise for finance reform since the day they were elected, so that's not news to anybody in this province.
We spoke with Mr Slack last week again and he really does want this to move forward. He also indicates that the pool, which is the amount of money we're talking about from the government, is still too small. We're not only looking at poor budgeting procedures within the government -- not only this government, former governments as well. Sometimes, when the Conservatives were in, they didn't get their grants out on time. There has to be a change so we can manage our school systems effectively and so that the taxpayers of this province have administrators and schools boards that can plan without all the last-minute changes and the changes to the tax notices that occur down the road.
The real losers when we can't plan carefully are the students. But we're in trouble in education in the province anyway, given the government's own statistics that about 53% of the employees in our school systems today are people who actually teach children; the other 40% are not in classrooms. That's a contentious argument which we would be happy to debate in any committee of this Legislature, given that those are the facts as presented by the province of Ontario's own figures.
The Ontario Public School Boards' Association fundamentally disagrees with this unless it is done in conjunction with a confederated school model. That's their position. They're taking a look and feel very seriously about sharing resources.
The minister himself, a couple of weeks ago, announced a task force here in Metropolitan Toronto between the seven Metro boards, the Catholic board, to take a look at the sharing of computer services, I think it was, certainly of the warehousing of supplies, and I can't remember the other one. But we know a consulting report that was made available to the public over a year ago said the Metropolitan Toronto school boards could save $55 million if they just shared administrative work in those areas I mentioned. There's lots of room for improvement in management within the school boards themselves.
When the budget was announced, the Ontario Public School Boards' Association made some pretty significant points. They stated that this was another shuffling of education dollars because there's no new money for education, and that's definitely fair. What we are doing is giving more money to the separate boards, which certainly is something we've promised, but there's no new money other than a change in the grant system. The public boards are still losing some $50 million to $60 million.
They also stated when the budget was announced that many public school boards had already experienced large and unexpected reductions in their grants this year due to new equalization factors used to update property values across the province. Many of the boards had already suffered somewhat because of these equalization factors. Yes, some did get increases. I don't think there can be a generality around why people got increases or decreases, but I think it should be taken into consideration that when you get decreases on top of decreased grants, we really are having a hard time working on behalf of students in our school system.
"This move" -- this is Bill 160 -- "is detrimental to public school boards and will erode a system that prides itself on being open to all students." When we see the equality of funding, we'll probably be looking for more equality of access. That is definitely a statement that has been made on behalf of parents across the province in the public meetings that I attend; just yesterday to a chamber of commerce here in Toronto.
"The provincial government broke its promise to consult with the school boards on this major policy shift," and that's not new for this government. For a government that said it represented the people and would listen to the people, it has probably done less consultation than any other government, certainly that I've worked with; that's only one, of course, the Liberals, but I was very much a part of the governments before I come to this House six years ago and on many occasions since the early 1970s sat on advisory committees to the government of the day. I wish that process would be used more openly before governments, any government, take action such as this. This is why we feel compelled to make these statements in the House today. Not only did they not consult; it'll cost, as I stated before, $60 million, and I wanted to put those remarks on the record.
With regard to the Essex county school board, who called us on this, this chairperson of that board agreed that "the public school boards cannot support this move unless it is being provided in conjunction with consolidated school boards." I think we're seeing a lot of support for the sharing and a moving in that direction across the province of Ontario.
I speak specifically with regard to my friend and colleague the member for Chatham-Kent. The Kent county school boards have probably done the best job, given that it's not one of the larger boards in the province, without any direction from the province, on its own, recognizing that it is responsible to the public it serves. Therefore, the public and separate school boards are working together. I've put those remarks on the record before, as has the member for Chatham-Kent. He probably thinks I say this because he's in the House today, but I have to say he's in the House a lot, so I wasn't really trying to appeal to him except to say that he should be proud of the school board he represents.
The London and Middlesex County Roman Catholic Separate School Board: "The board has attempted to measure the approximate effect of the change in the city of London once the new system is fully implemented in 1998, and the figures indicate that there will be $2.03 million in additional taxes to the separate school board in the city of London." Of course the question would be then, should the public school board expect any compensation in this regard? The way the legislation is now, and without the opportunity to ask the questions in committee, the question remains unanswered.
We did have a couple of letters that I thought would be worth reading into the record today. One was from the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Education and Training's school board, the Sault Ste Marie Board of Education. This letter is going to the executive director of the Ontario Public School Boards' Association, who did seek input after the letter of May 5 from the minister. They're sending it to Mr Benson, and they say:
"Attached for your information is a report provided to our board at a recent meeting indicating the effect on our board's taxes and grants of the sharing of assessment of publicly traded corporations on the basis of enrolment, as well as the total effect of the sharing of this assessment." This letter was written on May 26, 1994.
"While the ministry maintained our only loss would be $198,980, our position is that our loss is" -- and I think this is significant: it's about $1.2 million, though he uses more exact figures -- "...because the increased ceiling of $96 is provided to all boards, and in some years the funding for that amount was not added to the provincial allocation for education purposes.
"In these calculations the assumption has been made that the enrolment to be used for sharing purposes would be resident-internal and resident-external. It may be of interest to accumulate this type of information from all boards of education who are involved with the sharing of public corporation assessment."
This was sent from Mr Bert Campbell, who is the superintendent of business, who also responded this morning to our request for the year-end being August 31 for the fiscal year of school boards. We've had a lot of response. If you want good advice, you can get it just by asking and giving people lead time.
1640
Another concern -- there are many concerns like that of the Sault Ste Marie board where they differ in their opinion from the Ministry of Education's figures. This one's from the Hornepayne Board of Education. It's to the Minister of Education, dated June 2. It states:
"You recently announced that the government will be shortly introducing legislation to change the basis on which coterminous school boards will share certain types of assessment. It's our understanding that starting in 1996, this assessment will be shared on the basis of enrolment rather than on the percentage of residential farm assessments. This raises significant concerns for our board."
Can you imagine getting a letter on May 5 and having to respond in June?
"We are currently one of the few boards of education in the province whose coterminous board is an isolate board. The situation which exists is such that the mill rate set by our board is also the mill rate for those ratepayers who support the coterminous isolate board. Our current elementary enrolment is approximately 160" -- I found this interesting -- "while that of the coterminous isolate school board is around 70.
"Should the sharing of assessments change on the basis you propose, our board will lose a great deal of our current assessment. The result will be that our board's financial situation will decline dramatically. As we have less assessment to draw from, our mill rates will increase. Because our coterminous board is isolate, so will theirs."
It goes on to talk about ratepayers in the small northern community being "adversely affected financially by what you propose" and it goes on to talk about how the school and the children -- I love to see the words "children" and "students" in a letter. "Please consider very carefully all parties who will be impacted by this legislation."
Don't you really think, with letters such as I've just read, that it would have been so advantageous for the Minister of Education to consult with these school boards, to have public meetings in some way so they could put their concerns on the record? And don't you really think that maybe, because there is $60 million taken from the public boards to pool with the separate school boards on the basis of enrolment, this could have been explained to all of us so we could have been on the government's side, for a change, since we all voted for pooling?
I really think that in the last couple of weeks there have been significant losses in this Legislative Assembly because of the inability of the government to bring forth legislation, explain its position, get support ahead of time -- we saw it in this House this morning in a private member's bill -- just because of its hurry to please somebody and get nothing done. Now people are really upset. We probably are accused of stopping people from getting things done sometimes, but I wish we were never put in that position. With proper consultation before legislation such as this is introduced, we would not have been put in that position and therefore, some of the members in the House today wouldn't feel so put off because we're asking for something, for a change.
I've raised section 3 of Bill 160, a budget bill, including implications for education. I've put on the record our concerns with regard to the Education Act amendments. It's my hope that later in the day we'll be able to sever parts of this bill, put it in committee, have the questions answered, and have the public school boards and the separate school boards and individual boards bring their concerns to the minister and move forward.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you to the member for London North. Questions or comments?
Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): Unfortunately, I didn't have the opportunity to participate in the debate this morning. As to the comments about setting up another fiscal year -- a fiscal year for the province, a fiscal year for the municipality and a fiscal year for the school boards -- it would only lead into further chaos in our system of trying to manage both the property tax issue and the provincial tax issue and allowing the school boards to be more responsive to the students in our school system.
The member for London North is also correct about my school boards. I take extreme pleasure in praising my school boards and also the administrative body in my community for leadership. You're absolutely right: They didn't need provincial direction, they did it on their own. They did it on their own because they wanted to make sure they were getting the best value for their dollar, in municipal tax base and also provincial tax base.
The ones the suffer the most are the school boards, like mine, that have been very efficient. I've got directors, Earl Lozon and Bill Green, retiring from both school systems. They had the foresight of making sure they had value for the dollar in education. Unfortunately, some of the changes that are being made -- and I listened to the member opposite say some of those school boards will lose megadollars. They've also probably spent big dollars in this process.
I believe one thing that has to be done is that the GLGs have to be changed. Why does it only cost approximately $1,300, and I could be mistaken, in Kent county and up to $2,300 and higher -- I mean, we're the second-lowest in the province for educating our children, and I believe we come out with well-educated kids. But if you go to other communities, they go higher and higher. The inequities and the difference for our children are very important. We must straighten out that funding mechanism so our children can get the same value, because we all pay the same taxes.
To the member opposite, if your resolution this morning was that, I'll put on the record today, listening to the comments you've made, I would probably have voted against it. I believe what we've done is try to straighten out an inequity that was there. It's going to take a lot of work. You're not going to make Rome in a day. I believe that with the support of the directors in our school system we can accomplish whatever we need to to provide quality education.
Mr Sutherland: I know the member for London North has a very long record of being actively involved in educational issues from her time as a school board trustee. Listening to her speech, though, I'm still trying to figure out exactly where she stands on this issue. She said she wants to support equality and she said it wouldn't matter whether it was separate boards or public boards, if it was a different scenario, yet she says she's unsure about how it's going to be done.
We're talking about a small amount in terms of the overall percentage of assessment. It's going to wait until the current assessment process is finished in 1995 and then we're going to phase it in over a three-year period, from 1995 to 1998. It's not like we've said this today and it's going into place tomorrow. The school boards all across the province are being given a great deal of notice and it's still going to be phased in. We're talking about something over a four-year period.
I was trying to find out for sure where the member for London North stood on this issue. I think she supports it, but then she went on to other comments that she's not sure she supports this. And then she mentioned the issue of compensation for the public boards. One might want to put out the question: "If that's the case, we believe this is fair. Let's do it, but it's only fair if we compensate the public boards." Well, what about the separate schools for the last five or six years, while we've been implementing an older system of pooling? Should they not have the right to demand compensation if you're going to give it to public schools for this case?
That's the impression I was getting, both sides of the issue, and that's why I did make the heckle. I know it was inappropriate, but the member for London North has had Liberal-leaning tendencies in the past, and I've complimented her on those tendencies rather than the far right where her leader is taking them, but she was certainly sounding a lot like the Liberal Party of Ontario, trying to have it both ways at the same time.
The Acting Speaker: Are there any further questions or comments? Seeing none, the member for London North now has two minutes.
Mrs Cunningham: Madam Speaker, I've always told the member for Oxford -- and he gives me these wonderful opportunities -- that when he grows up he will be a Conservative. That's my statement publicly and every other way.
What can I say? He wants to know exactly where we stand. He knows it. We are in favour of pooling. Why are we upset? Because at the outset, when Bill 30, which provided the extension of funding to the separate boards, was passed by all three parties of the Legislative Assembly, we knew there would have to be some kind of catch-up for the separate boards at no cost to public school boards. All I'm trying to do is to have a memory for what was stated in the beginning. I'm sure the member for York-Mackenzie will remember that; he was involved as well. And I am absolutely certainly that the member for Oxford's former colleague Richard Johnston was behind it from the very beginning. He would be saying exactly what I'm saying today, that he supports pooling, as I do, so make it very clear. But there are ways of doing things, and one of them is to consult.
1650
A letter on May 5 which changes the way you expand this pooling to a definition of "enrolment" as opposed to the former definition is something that should be discussed in an education arena so we all understand it. That's all I'm saying today. I want to make it clear.
To the member for Chatham-Kent, I should tell him that if he didn't vote in favour of the resolution this morning he wouldn't have been supporting his own school board, which is in favour of it, so it's better to do your homework. I will tell you also that it was a unanimous vote and certainly your own government supported it today through the parliamentary assistant, and that parliamentary assistant spoke on behalf of the government today. The government supports this legislation. There was no one who didn't vote in favour of it in the House.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. The member's time has expired. I appreciate her contribution. Further debate on this bill?
Mr Charles Beer (York-Mackenzie): Before beginning, I thought, because the member for Oxford had on suspenders and a blue shirt, that he had perhaps already made that move. Maybe I'm mistaken and suspenders are now more of a people kind of thing.
I'm pleased to have an opportunity to speak on Bill 160 and, like the member for London North, I want to speak on part III, which is the section that deals with changes to the Education Act. I want to say at the beginning, just so the member from Chatham-Kent and the member for Oxford won't be confused, that the direction which the government is suggesting here is acceptable. I think this is seen as the next step that one would be taking in moving towards greater equity and that we all want to achieve that goal but that the question my colleague from London North raises on how we do that really does become critical.
I think the concern we've had on this side of the House regarding this issue is this: A while ago, over a year ago, it was expected that there would be an education funding reform bill before this House before we went into the next election. All of us, and let's say right up front, recognize, first, that it's a very difficult and contentious issue and, second, that no government, whether it's this one, the previous Liberal government or previous Conservative governments, can say, "We did everything that had to be done in order to ensure that there was full equity."
I think, and it was again noted by the member for London North, that we had begun some important steps. She referred in 1989 to the former Bill 64, which dealt in part with the issue and started a six-year program. The government is now proposing another approach that's going to focus on children.
I think where the problem arises and where there are concerns that are being expressed by public school boards is, what is this part of? Everyone knows we need fuller and more basic funding, so what gets left out there is a whole series of questions in terms of just where this is going. What will be the time frame? What kind of discussion will there be? Then that gets all coupled in with the business of omnibus bills.
We've had concerns on this side of the House with a number of omnibus bills, in some cases within one area. We've had some education omnibus bills where we've supported part of it and had reservations about others. It has been indicated by a number of speakers with respect to this bill, which has some 17 different parts, that there are sections that probably do have the full support of the House but others where even if they have support, there are some real questions and we haven't been able to have the kind of discussion we need to have.
I want to say to the government that I still think there is a place -- there's certainly a need but still a place -- for some broader discussion of what the basic principles are that would guide the government in terms of more fundamental educational financing reform.
We've had the Fair Tax Commission report. There was nothing said about that report in the budget and one isn't entirely clear whether what the government is saying is, "That's not on. We're not going to deal with that report in any substantive way," or whether there's some work going on in the backrooms around some of the elements in the report and perhaps they're going to see their way into some election platform later this year or next year.
We know that in the Ministry of Education there has been a special group meeting that was chaired by the parliamentary assistant, the member for Sault Ste Marie, on these issues. One has heard different stories about conclusions that they came to or different directions that they were proposing, but again we're not sure exactly what is there.
There's been a lot of work done on changes that we ought to bring to educational funding reform, and I think we're at a point where we really need to take that debate out to a larger section of the population. What I had hoped for when I saw the reference in the budget to the proposed change was that okay, good, this means there will be a bill.
We'll have something that we can go out with, not just to talk about that element, because I think a lot of the questions on how that would work can be answered, but we can go into the dollars and how those are going to be distributed, and if there are problems with certain boards, as can sometimes happen, the ministry can then look at that and deal with it.
More important, it would give us an opportunity, in terms of the public boards, the separate boards and other stakeholders, to say, okay, we've got this direction which is now moving on to funding by the number of pupils, so how do we handle the difficult issue, clearly, of those boards that have had for the most part, public a certain amount of money, the separate who have had less? How do we work out that phasing in to real equality and equity?
I believe, if we can have that discussion, that we're going to have support from all of the players. But clearly for many public boards there are still tremendous concerns around a number of the problems that they're facing in their own jurisdictions, and really saying, "Look, you can't just take even a small amount of money away from us now without it having an impact." How are we going to face that? What kinds of mechanisms can be put in place that will really mitigate against any major impact that that would have?
We've got another week here in the Legislature. I understand that we may get a day or two on this bill in committee, but again, with 17 parts, it's going to be very difficult to deal substantively with probably more than a couple of elements, and I think this is the part that is unsettling.
With the member for London North, when we look back at other bills that have come in on this subject, they have been brought in by the Minister of Education, and so we've been able to have a debate here in the House, to put questions, to go back and forth, and we're just not going to be able to do that here.
As with the member for London North, I have had letters, phone calls from both public and separate boards, with questions that I can't always answer in terms of how this would work. I think part of the process of dealing with that is then, as we debate a bill and when a bill is in committee, being able to go over that material and to get the kinds of answers that are required. At the end of the day, if they're not all answered, we still have to vote and the bill goes forward. But here, because we've got such a mix within the whole Budget Measures Act, we're not going to be able to deal with this in an appropriate fashion.
Reference has been made both by the member for London North and the member for Chatham-Kent about the debate we had this morning around the issue of the fiscal year. As the member for Chatham-Kent knows, the minister for whom he is parliamentary assistant as Minister of Education had indicated that he felt it would be good policy to move to a funding of school boards on the basis of the schools' fiscal year. We talked about that and some of the difficulties that are involved with it, but none the less there was the feeling in the House this morning, and indeed the vote recorded that, that this is something we ought to do because that will help in the planning and budgeting process of the boards.
Again, as an issue that one would like to discuss with the minister and while the bill is in committee, that is another part, albeit in the long term perhaps a small part, but an important part none the less in changing the funding system that we want to have.
1700
The other issue that I would want to raise with this is how we're going to tie together the royal commission report later this year and education funding reform. I think it is essential, when we get that royal commission report, part of which is going to deal with governance, to recognize that we can't separate out the issue of governance of the school system without looking at how we fund it, and that means in the current context that we look at the issue of funding reform.
I would say again to the Minister of Education that I believe we should have a white paper. I think there's enough material, and indeed I suspect there's a draft of that paper sitting in the Ministry of Education; it was simply decided not to go forward with it. But I think that paper should be put together, put out into the public domain, and that it go to the standing committee on social development so there can be broader discussion on the options that are in front of us. It is not going to be an easy matter to resolve.
On the question of equity, I think no one who looks at the current funding system can come to any other conclusion but that the separate system is facing an inequitable situation. We also recognize that when you're making changes, you've got to do it in a way to bring the greatest number of people along with you. For many public boards that see themselves losing dollars, how do we work at mitigating the impact of that and how do we make sure that we deal with legitimate questions that they may have?
The best place and the best way to do that is where we can have some broader discussion. But I think from the government's point of view, if this, in its mind, is sort of the end of what it's going to do around educational funding reform, it is really making a major mistake because, if we're looking at an election in the spring of next year, that's going to put off any further changes for quite some time in a way that I don't think is going to be of help. Not only are there a number of separate boards that are in deficit situations or close to it, but increasingly there are public boards that are in very difficult financial situations.
I think that's why we keep talking more today about assessment-poor and assessment-rich than we do about the separate versus public, because it's not that simple. I don't know that it ever has been. But I think it's important that we underline that this is not just an issue that may pit public board against separate board, but it raises real concerns around those who are assessment-poor, who just have a poor assessment base, versus a much smaller number of boards that have a greater availability of assessment.
That in itself also raises questions, because those who do have the larger assessment base are saying, "But look, is that the way we should be going?" whereas simply those boards that have a lot more property taxpayers or who have a richer assessment base should be funding it that way as opposed to the province trying to make sure there's a much more equitable playing field for everyone.
We also know that, apart from the question of assessment, we have boards in the larger urban centres -- I'm thinking particularly of the greater Toronto area, Ottawa-Carleton -- where there are particular problems that they face which may be different in degree and in kind than many others. I'm thinking here of issues around refugees, around English-as-a-second-language programs, a whole number of things where they just have greater expenditures.
Again, as the member for London North noted, one of the reasons in a number of board areas where, when you're trying to track the dollars, you find less money that appears to be directly in the classroom is that, because of a whole host of other kinds of socioeconomic problems, a lot of those boards in the larger urban centres, both public and separate, are having to face different kinds of social and health-related issues.
Indeed, I wasn't here earlier today, but I understand the Minister of Community and Social Services was talking about a nutrition program that the government is going to bring forward, which, in part at least, is recognition of that problem and that issue, that school boards simply don't have the wherewithal to try to deal with that as well.
Those are all the kinds of questions that come up in terms of how we handle the issue of educational funding reform. What is it that we want the education system to fund? Are we looking to see whether there are things that really the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Housing, the minister responsible for recreation ought to be doing that will take some pressure off the educational system? We haven't worked that one out. I don't know if we ever will, but again they're legitimate questions around where the dollar's going.
So often editorial writers like to note that we spend more money in Ontario on education than virtually any other area, but we have to recognize that a good part of those dollars are not necessarily being spent on education, but they still have to be spent for a variety of social and health issues. I think a lot of the boards are saying, "Look, if you want us to do that, then let's clarify the mandate and let's also make sure that the dollars are there."
The problems that I want to underline with the Education Act amendments in this Budget Measures Act go far beyond what is actually there. I think it would be very profitable for us to have discussion and to hear from the relevant players in the educational field, but where I think that, at the end of the day, there can be agreement in going forward is to really put to the government that we can't stop here and we really can't go farther unless we involve the other players in a transparent process.
What I worry about with this change is that there are a lot of questions, worries, concerns. When I go out and talk with trustees or directors of education and officials with different boards, it's: "What do you think is happening? Where are we going? Is something else going to be coming?" I think we know what the problems are. We don't need a lot more study. I think the studies are there. What's needed next is for the government to put what are the options into committee, where we can have the kinds of hearings that are required.
Really, I would have hoped to try to have a reform system in place before that next election and I'm concerned that we're not going to get there despite the assurances in the last year or so from both the present minister and the previous minister that we were going to see a number of things, whether a draft bill or a white paper, on education reform.
I'm going to close my remarks by just underlining again that I think we have some real problems with omnibus bills of this nature. They simply do not allow us as legislators to really discuss the issues in a meaningful way. More importantly, they don't allow us, even over a short period of time, to bring in some of the organizations and individuals who are most affected, where we can get questions on the public record and get specific answers.
I just think the educational community in this instance is feeling somewhat shortchanged by the nature of the debate and its inability to really participate. I think that's too bad, because this could have been a useful discussion and a very necessary one. We may get some opportunity in committee to do some of that, but it's pretty clear that the government, with the exception, I guess, of the Unclaimed Intangible Property Act part, is going to persist in having this passed as one, and we'll have to deal with that.
To the government, let's get on with real education funding reform and let's try to get started before the mandate of this government runs out, because I just am very concerned that we're going to see, over the next 18 months to two years, too many boards that are facing an extremely difficult financial situation, if not bankruptcy. That is a much bigger problem than certainly the amendments proposed in Bill 160 are going to deal with.
1710
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments to the member?
Mr Hope: To the member for York-Mackenzie, who I believe is very sincere in his comments around education and the socioeconomic issues that we're faced with in our community, I still have, to this day, a hard time. You talk to the general public about what a GLG stands for; they don't have a clue. It still puzzles my community why it costs more in other communities. We're the second-lowest in this province per capita, per pupil, and in my community they're asking, "Why should you pay more to other school boards who have been fiscally irresponsible, providing them with more money, while we've been fiscally responsible?"
Shared busing was new to some people. It was years ago that we established that in our community. It really puzzles me that when we have this broader discussion that everybody talks about -- I could be wrong with my numbers, but I believe about 85% goes into labour costs in the funding of school systems. It means 15% is used for other purposes. So why is there such an inconsistency from the lowest per capita, which is in my community, to the highest? I don't know if it's Metro or Ottawa or whoever is the highest. I believe that what we have to do is put a standardized fee in place which says it costs X amount of dollars to educate a child, and if you want to supersede that with extras, then there's a different way of getting revenues for that. It doesn't take a large, massive creative conversation to have it. That's very clear and direct.
The member talks about broader conversation out there about who gets what money. We must also remember that there are the Christian schools, people who pay property taxes that either go to the public or separate school and they have to pay the tuition fee; they have to pay for busing service for their children.
If we're talking about a broader conversation, it's not with this bill. The broader conversation has to take place with the wellbeing of our communities and the proper education of our children, whatever school system they provide. If we're to be open and honest with the taxpayers, what is the best value for our students?
The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments to the member? Seeing none, the member for York-Mackenzie may wish to reply.
Mr Beer: To the member for Chatham-Kent, it's one of the points that both the member for London North and I were making, which is that those are very legitimate questions. We have been saying over the last couple of years that we're going to move towards real educational funding reform. Apart from some questions around the specific in this bill, we're saying it would appear that we've missed a real opportunity in this legislative session, from 1990 to 1994, to deal with those fundamental questions.
I recognize that it may have been difficult for the minister to put together a draft bill. I know he could have put together a white paper that would have dealt with all the issues you pointed out. You begin with a very good point, which is, why should it cost X where I am and yet it's Y somewhere else?
There are some answers to some of those questions, but they're ones that really do need responding to. We haven't, as a legislative body, really sat down and had that kind of discussion, and I don't think it has to be a long one because I think the studies have been done. What we're after is then making the changes to the system so that to the greatest extent possible, it is equitable. That, we all recognize, isn't right now, not just between separate and public; there are a variety of other areas where there are inequities. But in order to do that, the government has to show some leadership in saying: "We believe that these are the two or three or four options. We want to deal with this. Get it to committee, bring it back and then as a Legislature we make those changes."
We could have and we ought to have done that prior to the next provincial election which, I'm assuming, will be in the spring. I don't see a recognition in the discussion to date that we're going to and I suspect this is the last thing we're going to see from the minister.
Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I'm pleased to rise on behalf of the people of Wellington this afternoon to provide a contribution with respect to second reading of Bill 160, which is before the House this afternoon. The Budget Measures Act is the short name of the bill put forward by the Minister of Finance which received first reading on May 18. This is an omnibus bill, as we've heard during the course of this debate, containing 18 different specific measures, amendments to various acts, some of them relating to Finance directly, some of them actually under the administration of other ministers.
It's a difficult bill for us to assess at this point, given that it's really only been on the Legislature's agenda for about a month now. Many of the constituents in our various communities who would want to make comments to us on this bill probably aren't able to do so at this time because they haven't had a change to properly assess it. That has come out in the education portion of this debate. Our member for London North and the member for York-Mackenzie have expressed that concern with respect to school boards, because there is a substantial change to education funding in this bill.
Many of us have indicated in the past, and I've been one of them, that we support in principle the change to education funding so that it's more equitable between public and separate boards, but we feel there should be more opportunity for discussion of this so that we do the right thing, the thing that's in the best interest of all the kids. With the way this is proceeding this quickly and in this format, as an omnibus bill with quite a significant number of major changes, we may not get the chance to properly assess all the changes the bill presents.
It's also introduced late in the sitting. We've seen a practice now by the government over the last number of years of endeavouring to put some of the most difficult and important bills right towards the end of the session so that we're debating these bills, in many cases, as we've been this week, by sitting till midnight. I don't think that's really in the best interests of this Legislature, certainly as members of the opposition, in being able to properly debate issues that are important to people by doing it in this way.
In my opinion, the worst aspect of this bill is the $50 corporate filing fee. I've been our small business advocate for our caucus for three years now, I suppose, and during the course of some extensive consultations that we undertook on behalf of our caucus through our Mike Harris task force on small business, we consistently heard from small business people that this $50 corporate filing fee was an extreme nuisance at the very best, and that at worst there were literally some businesses that could not afford to pay.
Interjection.
Mr Arnott: The member opposite is chirping something. I can't hear her exactly. But there are some that cannot afford to pay that $50, and haven't, as a result.
I have a letter here that I'd like to read, from a constituent who responded to the letter he received from the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations demanding the fee. He has written back a very strong letter to Carol Kirsh, who is the director of the companies branch. He says:
"First, I do not appreciate being threatened by a civil servant whose salary I pay." He indicates that the letter he received was rather threatening in tone. "To say that failing to fill out the forms can 'have serious consequences' in a first letter is totally inappropriate and out of line. I have never failed to fill out any piece of paper demanded of me by the government and I resent your treating me as if I were some kind of a deadbeat."
He goes on to say:
"What I really can't believe is your gall in telling me I have to pay money to fill out yet more government paperwork. I run a small business alone. I put in long hours both working and looking for new business. I have no staff and have to fill out government forms myself. When you add up all the time I spend filling out retail sales tax forms, employer health tax forms, provincial and federal income tax forms, income tax and CPP deduction forms, GST forms etc, etc, etc, I spend an awful lot of time each year working for you and your federal colleagues. It's bad enough that this produces no income, interferes with my ability to provide good service to my clients, cuts into the time I have to look for new business and takes away from the time I want to spend with my family, but to make me pay for the privilege is beyond belief. I also cannot see how paying this fee adds any value to society in general other than perhaps keeping a bunch of civil servants employed. It certainly does nothing to get us out of this recession or to deal with the numerous problems we have in this province."
It's signed by Peter R. Douglas, Douglas Human Resources Systems Inc of RR 1, Erin, in Wellington county. I think this letter speaks for itself but I just want to add to it. It indicates one single proprietor's frustration with government in general, government forms in particular, and in this case the $50 corporate filing fee, which I think we all understand in this House -- I know the government members understand this as well, although they haven't directly admitted it -- that it's just another tax grab, another opportunity for the government to take $50. It's actually, in a way, the corporate minimum tax they talked about at the last election, because it does affect every single corporation across the province, small and large. I think it's an unfair tax on small business.
One of my constituents who is a lawyer in Mount Forest, Gil Deverell, has been bringing forward an initiative to try to bring some accountability to this government. He's making a case, and he makes a point, that the government did not have the statutory basis to even collect the special filing fee that they started collecting, the $50 fee, in 1992, that they did it through regulation and that actually, according to the legislation, they didn't have the statutory authority to do it.
1720
He's taking the government to court to reclaim, I believe, $100 on behalf of one of his clients, because he feels that the government had no authority to collect that fee. I wish him well and I give him a lot of credit for what he is doing, as a citizen of this province, to keep the government accountable.
I have another letter I'd like to read, just parts of it, from another constituent of mine protesting this $50 corporate filing fee. It's from Pat Rafferty, who is an insurance broker in Fergus. He paid his $50 corporate filing fee, but he's also written the minister, and he said:
"I am returning your special notice...and the $50 fee under strong protest. I must conclude that this is nothing more than a blatant tax grab. The information on this corporation is consistently kept up to date and I have no objection to submitting more paperwork to your ministry. However, I strenuously object, given the heavy tax burden that your government is imposing on small business, combined with the absolute, total incompetence of your party's administration of government, to the additional $50 fee."
He goes on to say:
"There are no great mysteries as to what needs to be done in the public administration of this province. What is lacking is the political will to carry out some unsavoury and unpopular steps. Obviously, you and your colleagues in the NDP do not have the insight, the discipline nor the will to implement those obvious steps that need to be taken. Rather, you simply add to the burden of an already overtaxed small business segment of our society."
Signed, "Patrick Rafferty."
I feel this is another direct indication of the government's policies overall, and this in particular, the nuisance that it provides for small business and the insensitivity of the government towards the needs of small business, that are frankly hurting our ability to create jobs in this province because it's contributing directly to concerns about whether or not the government is going to be there to support small business. People see it as an obstacle to job creation.
That's really the key issue for me, as the small business advocate for our party and representing the small business people in Wellington country and their employees. They're absolutely opposed to this $50 corporate filing fee and, on that basis alone, I must indicate that I cannot support this bill.
But of course this bill is, as we said earlier, an omnibus bill which contains about 18 different provisions. Some aspects of the bill I support. I would give the government some measure of credit for the changes to the employer health tax that it announced in the budget, which was what we've been calling for since, I think, the Liberals introduced the employer health tax in 1989. We said it was a killer of jobs because it required businesses to pay the tax, irrespective of whether they were profitable or not; instead, just a direct tax on their payroll. We felt that would kill jobs over time.
I think that the government, with its change that it announced in the budget, indicating that there's not going to be employer health tax charged on new employees who are hired, indicates that it finally recognizes the employer health tax is a silent killer of jobs.
We would ask them to go further, and we've urged them to go further for quite a number of years, actually. We've suggested that businesses with payrolls of under $400,000 ought to be exempt, permanently, from the employer health tax. I would encourage the government to give consideration to that if we don't have an election this fall and they come forward with a spring budget. It would be in the public interest if they did that. Certainly I would think it would be in their own political interest if they did that too. But for me, it's more important to see good public policy and I would encourage them to at least review that option.
We have a number of other specific alternative policies that we put forward in our Common Sense Revolution and we continue to try to make people aware of that. I'm not going to go into detail with respect to all those provisions, but we do talk, very strongly and very succinctly, about eliminating the barriers to jobs creation. This $50 corporate filing fee, I would submit, is one of those barriers to job creation.
With the omnibus nature of the bill, we can support some aspects of the bill. Unfortunately, because of the way the government has done this, bringing in a whole raft of measures in one budget bill, means that I can't support this bill.
The bill should go to committee, hopefully over the summer months. I'm not sure how many days of public hearings the government is prepared to allow, but there should be considerable public hearings on some of the aspects of this bill.
Also, it has come up during the course of this debate that the government is reviewing its initial changes to the Unclaimed Intangible Property Act and perhaps there's some chance it will allow amendments or will bring forward some of its own amendments to redress some of the problems with that.
I would give the government some credit for some of the specific provisions in this bill, but I must say that, primarily because of the $50 corporate filing fee and the statutory basis that the government is seeking on this bill, I cannot support it.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments to the member?
Ms Haeck: I want to take this opportunity -- in fact, I thank the member for Wellington for this opportunity -- to expand on my earlier remarks relating to the $50 filing fee, because I have seen in this committee of which I am Chair that there are a lot of organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, which have not maintained their records with the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations. As a result, they are obligated by the incorporations act to go through a lengthy process, at some cost to them. I have been told by someone that it can be somewhere in the nature of $2,000 that this would cost an individual company to revive its incorporation.
I would actually put it to the member for Wellington, knowing the many thousands of corporations that at this juncture have not maintained proper files -- the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations has made extraordinary efforts to try to contact the incorporating members to ascertain correct addresses and information that they require -- how it is that he can stand in his place and make a statement that $50, in comparison to $2,000 or more, as well as opening itself up -- a corporation that does not maintain its proper information -- to a range of legal challenges and losing a range of tax provisions, tax benefits, is an extraordinary sum to provide that safety
measure.
As well, I think he is well aware that there are many companies in this province, as well as citizens, who make use of the files that the ministry compiles, and the $50 goes towards the computer maintenance of those files.
Mr Sutherland: I want to pick up on my colleague from St Catharines-Brock on the $50 filing fee. I think she made the point very well in response to the member in terms of looking at $50 compared to $2,000 to have your company revived by going through the process in terms of having it printed. That may or may not include your legal costs of having a lawyer make sure that process is done appropriately.
Let us be clear. It's very important that this information be up to date. The reason is, of course, that this is the protection for that company to ensure that no one else is using their name etc, the types of protections associated with incorporation.
I know the member for Wellington doesn't like history lessons here, but I do think we need to go through again what has occurred. There used to be a filing fee in the province of Ontario. That filing fee was in place, I believe, to about 1976. The Tories decided to take it off. If you look at from the time the filing fee came off to now, you will see a deterioration of the quality of the files, of having information up to date etc. In other words, what occurred was we had neglect, on behalf of the Tories, to keep the filing system and the filing information up to date over that period. For whatever reason, the Liberals somehow didn't address it either.
Here we are in the 1990s, in the worst recession, in a very difficult financial time. We see a problem. We want to try to fix that problem in terms of getting that information so that companies don't have to go through revival, so that their corporate name is protected, the important things that they originally had paid for, may have paid for under the Tory government, but could not be assured that their names were being protected in the way they had originally paid for. We had to do that in a difficult financial time.
I understand no one likes paying more money or more fees for anything, but because of neglect in the past, we're trying to solve the problem. There are costs associated with that and we're trying to recoup those costs in a very difficult economic time for government revenues.
The Acting Speaker: Any further questions or comments to the member for Wellington? Seeing none, the member for Wellington has two minutes to respond.
1730
Mr Arnott: I feel really good that the New Democrats are cleaning up the files. They've had four years now to do it and the files hopefully will be all cleaned up when the new government comes in. But I must also add that we have to recognize that for all the rhetoric in defence of the $50 corporate filing fee, the government does not have the statutory basis to be collecting this fee. They don't have the right to be collecting this fee. They've been collecting it for two years now and they've not had the statutory authority upon which to collect it.
The other point that has to be raised in response to the member for St Catharines-Brock and the member for Oxford is that they just assume that once the company has been dissolved they will automatically want it revived. If they couldn't afford the $50 corporate filing fee -- and I'm telling you, I've spoken to some small business people, single proprietors, who don't have $50. To both the members who responded, I dare say there was a time in your lives when you didn't have an extra $50 in your pocket. I know there were times in my life when I didn't have an extra $50 to give to the government. So for them to make those statements is extremely insensitive to poor business people who can't afford the $50. If they can't afford the $50, they won't be spending the $2,000 to reincorporate. So your argument with respect to what's going to happen to a lot of people I think is moot.
I also want to make one further point. You talk about the $50 corporate filing fee. You're saying, I assume, that it costs you $50 to maintain a file. If it costs you $50 to open an envelope and cash the cheque and stick the file into a filing cabinet, I would submit to you that you'd be better off contracting that out to the private sector, because the private sector could maintain a file for less than $50.
Ms Haeck: It doesn't do the job, Ted.
The Acting Speaker: Order. The member has the floor.
Mr Arnott: One final point, too. If we're talking about user fees, why not charge the user fee on the people who want the service, who ask for the information? Charge them, don't charge the small business people who have to furnish the information.
The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. Further debate on Bill 160?
Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): I particularly wanted to speak on Bill 160, because it's again an example of the kind of legislative package that causes me grave concern. While most people who watch these debates may not be interested in any particular piece of legislation, when you see a package of legislation like this which implements all the budget measures in an omnibus bill, I think it's our responsibility as legislators to try to alert the public to the provisions of this legislation. It's my hope that it will go to committee so that people can understand what exactly the government is attempting to do.
Anyone who read the name of this legislation would not understand what is contained in the package. I'm going to read you the name that's printed as the title of the bill: An Act to amend certain Acts to provide for certain Measures referred to in the 1993 Budget and for other Measures referred to in the 1994 Budget and to make amendments to the Health Insurance Act respecting the Collection and Disclosure of Personal Information.
When I saw the title of this act, I was concerned, because I believe that for people to understand and respect democracy, openness, clarity is extremely important. I'm concerned because this bill is not clear. People look at this and they have no idea of what it contains
A priority for me, for my caucus and for my leader in Ontario at this time is job creation. We know that job creation has been a theme of the Treasurer's budgets, the NDP budgets, for the last three years, and we know when we look at Bill 160, there's nothing in here that would suggest an economic strategy to revive the private sector and see job creation.
I'd like to share with you the comments of May 5 of the Scotiabank newsletter, what it had to say about the Ontario budget. Since Bill 160 implements the budget initiatives, I think it's most appropriate that this quote be on the record at this time. I'm not going to quote the whole bulletin, just take one portion out of it that deals with what the economic analysis of the Scotiabank says. I think it's very pertinent to our discussion of Bill 160. They say:
"Job creation has been the dominant theme of the last three Ontario budgets. The government estimates that its initiatives have created or supported an average of 145,000 jobs since 1991, yet Ontario has suffered a net loss of roughly 200,000 jobs over this period, the sharpest slide of any province."
That quote I think is extremely important because it attests to the concerns of the people of this province, and those concerns are not addressed in Bill 160.
Many of my constituents in the riding of Oriole have lost their jobs and many, many are concerned about whether their job is going to be impacted, whether they're going to have a job or whether they're going to find themselves out of work.
While we see that the economy of the province, hopefully, has turned the corner, while we see that we're starting to make some very slow progress in terms of economic recovery, the one thing we know is that this is effectively a jobless recovery. Those 200,000 jobs that Ontario has lost are reflected in the fact that there is an unprecedentedly high number of individuals, persons who are out of work, who do not have a job and who want to work. There are 650,000 people, many of them living in the riding of Oriole, all of them in the province of Ontario, without jobs, and Bill 160 does not give them any hope.
When I look at some of the specific provisions included in Bill 160, it really does make me wonder whether this government understands that the people of this province need a government that's going to lead us to economic prosperity by instilling confidence: confidence in the private sector to invest in Ontario, confidence in the private sector to stimulate the economy through its confidence, and confidence of the consumers who are going to purchase products and services in the province of Ontario.
What does this Budget Measures Act include? Changes to the Co-operative Corporations Act, changes to the Corporations Information Act -- and we've heard some debate, as we come out of this recession, about how very important it is to clean up our files and charge an annual fee of $50 to every corporation in the province.
Let me tell you something. It's my opinion that you could make that argument for a one-time $50 fee and a one-time requirement to send in data and information. In fact, when the NDP did that last year, the business community responded: They sent in their corporate updated information, they sent in their $50 filing fee. You know what? Nobody liked it, but they realized it was important for the records of the province to be updated. But everybody knows this $50 annual requirement to send in information even though no changes have occurred, and send your $50 cheque along with it, is not only a terrible burden and annoyance -- primarily an annoyance -- to the private sector in this province, but it is totally and completely unnecessary and seen by them as a tax grab. I have to tell you, I agree with them.
I don't believe businesses in this province should have to go to the effort of sending in each year their corporate director information if there has been no change. I think they should have an obligation if there have been changes to send in that information, and I believe that on a user-pay basis those files should be maintained. But I think this is a make-work project for bureaucrats. I don't believe that doing this every year on an ongoing and annual basis -- getting people to fill out forms, getting them to send in the forms, having an army of bureaucrats check the forms and throw out the ones where there's no change, and charge everybody $50 or $8 million -- is the way to do business in Ontario, and certainly it's a very bad example for the government to set. It's a bad signal and a bad message to send out to the private sector, particularly at this time when they are suffering and struggling with the results of the worst economic downturn and recession that this province has experienced in decades.
We've listened to the business community, we've heard what they had to say. We've heard them say that perhaps every five or 10 years it might be a reasonable request, but it certainly is not reasonable to demand this on an annual basis, and that's one of the provisions contained in Bill 160.
1740
Is that going to create jobs? I can tell you it's not going to create one job in the private sector. Is it going to kill jobs? It could well put some businesses out of business if their corporation is not registered and if they give up. We know it's not just the $50; it is the symbol. How many corporations are going to be deregistered? We heard from the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs that 80% have come in, but we know there are hundreds of thousands of small corporations in this province, and I would suggest to you that every initiative of the government should be focused on job creation in the private sector.
You should be doing nothing to create a barrier to that kind of private sector job creation. You should be doing nothing to add to the regulatory burden of the private sector. I'm proud to say that Lyn McLeod has announced that a Liberal government would repeal the $50 filing fee and would not require annual requirements. That is one of the reasons I feel that Bill 160 cannot be and will not be supported.
Let me tell you about another provision in the bill that I think is deserving of debate, I think is extremely important. Unfortunately, when it's put into a piece of legislation that has the Crown Timber Act amendments, the Game and Fish Act amendments, the Financial Administration Act, Labour Sponsored Venture Capital Corporations Act, Loan and Trust Corporations Act, home ownership act, Public Lands Act, Retail Sales Tax Act, Provincial Offences Act, Small Business Development Corporations Act, Unclaimed Intangible Property Act, the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union Pension Act, all of these acts, there are amendments to these acts contained in this legislation.
There are a couple here that I believe require full public debate, because many people have expressed concerns about the public policy direction or the public policy implication of some of the things contained in Bill 160, and people don't know about it. It's not in the title, and you haven't had the opportunity for that kind of discussion and debate, even though some of them may be worthy. It's my view, and I've said it before in this House, that if people are going to respect democracy, if they're going to respect legislation, if they're going to comply with legislation, they have to (1) know it's happening, (2) feel they've had an opportunity to participate, and (3) feel they have had their say and been listened to.
I know there are many differing views on the changes to the Education Act which are requiring the pooling of assessment among coterminous boards. There are many who support this and there are many who have some concerns about what the implications of this are going to be.
I think everyone believes we want to have the best educational outcomes for our children right across the province. I think everyone agrees that there must be as much funding equity as we can possibly achieve, given the wide variations and differences and the different needs across this province. But to include that kind of provision in an omnibus piece of legislation that doesn't even refer to it on the front cover, in a way which breeds cynicism and scepticism, in my view, avoids a debate that should be open, participatory and, hopefully, consensus building, so that people will respect the decisions as we move forward in these areas, which are often very sensitive.
There's another one I'd like to refer to, because while I share the objectives I have some concerns about how it's being implemented. The changes to the employer health tax sound very good. What it says is that businesses that increase their payroll will not have to see an increase in their employer health tax. The objective of that is to see new jobs created, but the concern I have is that we may not see jobs created as a result of payroll increases. There's no accountability in this legislation to tell people or let you know how many jobs are being created.
We know there's a figure that says for every $40,000 you take out of the economy in the form of taxation, fees and that sort of thing, you kills jobs. That's when I made the point about the $50 filing fee. That's about $8 million in total revenue that's going to be taken out of the economy. Using that projection, you can see that this filing fee will result potentially overall, in the macroeconomic environment of Ontario, in fewer jobs.
I guess you could argue the opposite, that with the employer health tax provisions of this legislation, in fact you're going to leave more money in the hands of corporations and therefore you will get net job increases. The point I would make on that is that because this is company-specific -- I'm sure they will be pleased to have the relief, and as I say, I'm generally supportive of the direction -- because this is a policy which has been brought forward to this House as a job creation initiative, I would like to know how we can be certain that jobs will be created as opposed to simply seeing wage increases. I know the difficulties in attempting to figure that out. I'm not suggesting that I want all kinds of additional red tape to do it, but while I support the policy objective of this initiative, I am concerned about how they're implementing the provision in order to achieve their objective.
That's a theme you've heard from me on numerous occasions as we have looked at policies of the NDP. I've stood here and I've said, "In principle, I quite like that policy; however, it's impossible to see it implemented," that the implementation is ideologically driven or it is inefficient or it just doesn't make sense. I've actually sometimes said that "what they're doing is just dumb."
In this one, and I know the officials are listening, I do have a real concern about the implications of how this is going to administratively produce stimulus for job creation in the private sector. So I'll be watching for that very carefully. Hopefully, we will see that it does work.
I was asked recently what advice I would give to the government.
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): Tell them to resign.
Mrs Caplan: My colleague says the best advice would be to ask them to resign. I think at this point that's not likely to happen. As a realistic optimist, I believe we have to deal with reality as it faces us.
We have given the government numerous advice over the last almost four years now. What bothers me is that daily I hear members from the government benches say, "Well, what would you do?" or "What advice would you give us?" I'm sad to report that we keep giving them advice and they keep refusing to take any of the good ideas or advice.
The frustration for me is that I believe the advice that's given in some of the very important policy work we've done -- I know the advice in the Liberal minority report that was given to the Treasurer before the budget was not listened to, or the Getting Ontario Working Again document, which has some very specific advice and initiatives to the province and to the provincial Treasurer, well-meaning, thoughtful; we worked very hard on these -- the province, the Treasurer, the Rae government seem to ignore.
That's sad, because I think the people of the province want legislators to be able to work together and to listen to each other. So as we debate legislation such as Bill 160, it's with sadness that I stand in this House and say that there are days in opposition when I'm just very frustrated because I suspect that no one is listening. Perhaps as I express that frustration, maybe there will be a time when they will be willing to listen, and hopefully that will be at committee.
I've actually found that frequently at committee members of the opposition have been able to put forward ideas and suggestions that have been listened to by the government. Whether they actually listen here during the debates in the House or not, I have to tell you I'm not optimistic about the fact that they do. But I've had some experience at committee which suggests to me that if this piece of legislation were fully debated and available for review at committee, we might be able to impress upon the government some of the public policy arguments that it should consider as we try to reverse the trend in Ontario, and that is of leading rather than following. Ontario has always been, for many decades, a leader in this country, and it has saddened me to see us following other provinces.
1750
It seems to me that we have a lot of work to do. It would be best if we could try and work together in the interests of the people of the province of Ontario. I'm not going to be supporting Bill 160, because I do not support the various specific taxation provisions. The advice of the Liberal minority report to the finance committee said, "Do not raise any taxes." While there is contained in here some minimal tax relief, overall we know that there's nothing in this legislation which really creates an environment for jobs to be created. There's no strategic plan or vision in this document that deals with the issue of fiscal policy.
There are a number of issues on which, if you required a vote in principle, particularly the $50 filing fee and the way the government is burdening small business and not allowing business to breathe and get on with doing what we all want it to do, which is job creation, in light of the policy direction of Bill 160, I'm going to have to vote in opposition to this legislation on behalf of my constituents in the riding of Oriole.
As I conclude this debate, I would urge the government again, and I said this before, when you bring in omnibus legislation, please try to make sure that omnibus legislation is either housekeeping or does not contain any significant public policy initiatives that would require a separate piece of legislation. Since that is contained in this, and we see some very significant policy initiatives buried inside Bill 160, I believe the public is not being well served by the way you have brought this legislation forward.
Thank you for allowing me to participate in this debate, Mr Speaker.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I thank the honourable member for Oriole for her presentation in the debate and invite any questions and/or comments. Seeing none, is there further debate?
Mr Tilson: It is a pleasure to participate in the debate with respect to Bill 160, which is the Budget Measures Act.
Bill 160, as has been said before, is an omnibus budget bill which gives many of us great concern because there are portions of the bill that I and the members of the Progressive Conservative Party support, yet we are opposed to most of the provisions. I can tell you that because of the fact that you have put these different bills into one bill, we will be opposing the bill as well.
This omnibus bill implements measures proposed in the 1994 budget, where the Treasurer of course said, "No new taxes," and deals with a number of other matters continuing from Bill 89, which arises out of the 1993 budget. Some of these matters go back over a year.
Bill 160 consists of 18 parts and amends 17 different statutes. It's interesting that today, as we debate Bill 160, this is the day in the province of Ontario that is tax freedom day. This is the day that we stop paying the government and whatever we keep now, up until this point, up until June 16, all of our money has been going to the province and the federal government and the municipal governments to pay our taxes. We've been working all this time, up until June 16, to pay the various governments.
This of course is based on the calculations of the Fraser Institute which bases its information on all I was going to say miserable, but all measurable taxes paid, from federal and provincial income taxes to municipal taxes, all taxes, and so these calculations aren't based strictly on provincial taxes; they're based on all taxes. But the province has played a major role in arriving at this specific date. As has been pointed out by the Fraser Institute, the situation would be dramatically worse if governments were not borrowing huge amounts of money to pay the interest on the debt that is accumulating.
All of this boils back to the tremendous debt that this government has incurred upon this province since it has taken office, and the deficit, according to the Treasurer, is $8.5 billion, although others calculate, with all the funny bookkeeping entries, that it's probably over $11 billion. The debt of the province is over $90 billion, an astounding amount of money, an astounding amount of interest that has to be paid. If we weren't paying that interest, it would probably be the end of July that tax freedom day were to take place.
I know that's not really a relevant issue with respect to this particular bill, but in a way it is, because it takes this bill, which is a tax bill, which is levying taxes on the province of Ontario to pay many of the things that we are obliged to pay, specifically the tremendous interest that we have to pay on the debt and the deficit.
The major provisions of the bill are a number of things, and many of them have been stated by different members in this place. I only intend to speak on a few of them, but there is the statutory basis for the annual corporate filing fee, and this is the fee of course that has created an amazing amount of controversy around this province. In fact, it all surfaced back in 1992. I remember asking the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations questions during estimates on this very topic. It started off as some sort of one-shot fee, and now of course it has developed into an annual fee of $50 for private enterprise and I think $25 for charitable organizations.
The second is essentially the topic of pooling, which is the change in the method of allocating education property taxes paid by public and private sector corporations between coterminous, public and separate boards, and that's of course a very controversial topic. The Conservative Party supports the principle of pooling, which is equity. I think we all believe that all of our students in this province should be treated equally and should receive the same amount of funding. This provision won't take place until 1996, and the problem of course is the public boards are living in absolute fear. They don't know where all this money that they have had, and which is going to go over to the separate system, where they're going to get the future funds, and that, in turn, will affect I suppose the general education of this province, and that's another topic that I'd like to spend some time on.
There's the provision for a one-year employer health tax holiday for new hires or people who are employed for the first time for a corporation. I intend to spend some time on that.
There are a number of other items which I will not discuss, because time doesn't permit it. One of course is the retail sales tax exemption for the delivery charges under the so-called dirt tax. We all remember, not this past budget but the budget of 1993, the headline, I think it was in the Toronto Sun, that said, "My Goodness, They're Even Taxing Dirt." And they are still taxing dirt. I think when the Treasurer first read his budget this year, we were all of the impression, "Oh, he's taking the tax off dirt," and he's not taking the tax off dirt; he's taking the tax off the delivery charges.
1800
I've spoken to a number of aggregate people and they tell me that the government has never really collected this tax anyway. The reason they haven't collected it is because they couldn't figure out how to administer it. The people in the treasury were simply going crazy trying to figure out how to administer it. So, because they can't administer it, they're taking it off.
It's not as if the Treasurer is trying to give a break to the aggregate industry or anyone who's involved in aggregates or dirt; it's simply because they couldn't figure out how to administer it. They didn't think it up before they taxed it in the first place.
There are a couple of other items with respect to implementing the terms of an agreement between OPSEU and the government on asset-splitting and contribution holidays and other matters involved in the creation of a new OPSEU pension plan. I won't have time to discuss that.
Dealing with a summary of the annual corporate filing fee -- and I can't believe that all members in this place haven't had someone in their constituency call up and say, "What in the world is going on with respect to this fee?" They simply don't understand it.
Part II of Bill 160 amends the Corporations Information Act. My friend from Wellington stood up just before me and talked about how there's a lawyer in his riding who is bringing action against the government with respect to the collection of the fee at the outset, the one-time shot. I expect, with due credit to him -- his name is Mr Guil Deverell -- that the reason he is acting for that individual is because they simply didn't have the authority. Of course, this bill will now give the authority to the government to correct it. I must say that the government was going on its merry way, charging a $50 fee it had legally no right to do.
In any event, part II of the Corporations Information Act is amended to require all corporations in Ontario to file an annual return. This same provision was included in Bill 29 and Bill 81.
The fee isn't specified in the bill, although we're all paying it now. We all know what it is: It's $50 for private corporations and $25 for charities -- if you can imagine, a $25 fee to charitable corporations, considering the wonderful work they do in this province. We're going to charge them a $25 annual fee.
There's no question that the regulations, which I doubt have even been written -- that's the usual in this place; you pass the bill first; then you enact a number of regulations which generally expand on the bill substantially -- will likely enable the $50 charge fee which has been imposed and collected for the last two years. The government is now passing a piece of legislation to legalize something it's been doing for the past two years.
There's no provision for the dedication of revenues from the fee to the ministry for use in improving services. The Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations -- during estimates and in this place, I've asked a number of questions; the member for Parry Sound has asked a number of questions -- says, "We're having this wonderful computer system."
We have a lot of chit-chat going on here, Mr Speaker. I know you're listening to me, but I doubt if they are.
The Speaker: Order.
Mr Tilson: There's no provision for the dedication of revenues from the fee to the ministry for use in improving services. I expect the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations has consistently stood in her place and said, "We're going to have computers and it's going to improve the system." I can tell you, it's a tax grab, and I'll be talking a little bit more about that later.
The Progressive Conservative Party has been consistently opposed to the filing fee in our questions in this House, in the Legislature, as well as in questions to the minister in committee, particularly the estimates and other places, as well as writing the minister. She has insisted on proceeding with this fee, notwithstanding I can't believe the overwhelming amount of letters and telephone calls that she personally has received saying that it doesn't make sense to put forward this fee.
The Education Act amendments: Currently, property taxes paid by publicly traded share capital corporations and non-share capital corporations in the public sector are divided between coterminous public and separate boards under a formula introduced during the Liberal regime in 1989. Under that 1989 formula, property taxes are allocated between the separate boards and the public boards on the same ratio as the division between the boards of residential and farm assessments. This funding system is in the final stages of a five-year phase-in.
Part III of Bill 160, which is before us today, will amend the Education Act and five other statutes to change this method of apportionment over a three-year phase-in starting in 1996. This government's going to be gone by the time this whole issue will come to a head, as will a lot of other issues in this government. The NDP will be gone. They'll be history before this and other provisions will come into effect.
Mr Sutherland: Starting to get arrogant over there.
Mr Tilson: Well, I'm sorry, but just look at the facts and you're history.
The new method will apportion the assessment between the boards on the basis of enrolment. Enrolment is to be defined in regulations to the act but will likely not make allowance for such things as continuing education programs, and that's very important. Continuing education is an important aspect of our educational system and yet it is doubtful that allowance will be made for that.
When fully implemented, the new formula will result in a loss of assessment to the public boards of $160 million which, because of compensating grant offsets provided, will translate into a net loss of $60 million. That gives a lot of concern to the public school boards as to where they're going to find this money. They're operating on a system now -- and I know the government members will stand up and talk about how the public school system is wasting funds and they're doing a bad job, but the fact of the matter is, there's going to be a whole pile of money that they have had and, because of this principle, they won't have. That's got to have an effect on the quality of education. Metro boards, of course, which are in a negative grant position, won't receive any compensatory offset if the current conditions persist.
The second issue I wanted to spend some time on is the employer health tax, which I believe was Bill 110, which we have debated and I think passed in this Legislature. We support this principle because certainly it's a small step in the right direction. I think it's a direction that shows that the principle of this system of funding health isn't working and the employer health tax is not a solution to solving our health crisis in this province.
Part V of Bill 160 implements the 1994 budget proposal, and that means there will be a one-year employer health tax holiday for new hires and for startups. The tax is calculated, as has been said in the House, on the total payroll as opposed to the number of employees. The exemption will also affect pay increases. However, given the low level of wage settlements, this is not considered to be a significant factor; in other words, it's smoke and mirrors. It's just a suggestion by the Treasurer that there's going to be a great increase in jobs as a result of this measure, and I can tell you that anyone who looks to the wage settlements that are going on in this province and the number of new employees who are going on in this province -- this isn't going to really help.
This measure of the Treasurer of the NDP government will cost $200 million in fiscal 1994-95 and $295 million in a full year. The government -- and I don't know where they get these calculations; I honestly don't. They say this measure will create an additional 12,000 jobs. Well, good luck. I look forward to seeing the stats at the end as to whether or not this specific provision with respect to the employer health tax will create 12,000 jobs. It really amazes me how they can come up with these calculations.
I could spend a considerable amount of time on the rest of the provisions but time precludes me from doing that. With respect to the corporation filing program -- and that's the one that I must say many members of this place have the greatest aversity to -- a question was to put to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations back on June 8 by the member for Parry Sound and it had to deal with a speech that was made in the first debate, I suppose, of a forthcoming election, whenever that will be, between the leaders of the three parties.
1810
Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): September 10.
Mr Tilson: Well, who knows? But this was a debate sponsored by the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and Premier Rae at that time stated that "The corporate filing fee is a responsible user fee concept and that this charge is in line with what it costs to provide the service." The fee is $50 for profit corporations and $25 for non-profit corporations, for charities.
This was a question that was asked of Mr Daniels, an assistant deputy minister, during the estimates committee on November 3, 1992. That's how long this has been going on. He was asked the question as to how much this levy actually costs the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations to administer this service. This is what Mr Daniels said. He was asked this exact question and he revealed that the corporate filing fee would generate an income to the province of some $10 million a year and that the cost to the ministry to file these fees and send them out was $2 million a year.
Therefore the province, the Treasurer, has just got a profit from the small business people in this province, from the charities, of $8 million. So, some justification. All you've done is simply make a profit of $8 million on the backs of the small businesses and people who are trying to make a living in this province, as well as the charities of this province who are doing wonderful things, and you have the gall to charge an annual fee of $25 a year. All of this is going to make a profit to you, for many of your goofy programs, of $8 million a year.
All of that is simply not satisfactory. I have received a considerable number of telephone calls, as have many of you, telephone calls and letters on this very subject, simply trying to find out more information.
Mr Mammoliti: How many?
Mr Tilson: I can tell you, loads. I haven't counted them. The member asked how many, and I bet he's had as many as, if not more than, I have, in his riding. If he sits there and says he has had none, well, I question what he's doing.
I will tell you that there are corporations in this province, private corporations that simply, because of the recession, because of bad times, are letting their corporations sit. They are not making any revenue. They're sitting waiting for better times. Or they are barely moving; they are barely surviving. Yet those corporations are going to have to pay a $50-a-year annual filing fee. It doesn't make an iota of sense.
Mr Deverell has been mentioned, that he has commenced a lawsuit, and I suppose it's going to continue because this has been going on for two years. This whole process has been going on for two years, of collecting $25 from charity corporations and $50 from small corporations, and he is proceeding with his lawsuit. I don't know what the effect is going to be.
One of the letters that I received is dated almost a year ago. It came from an individual in Caledon. He wrote a letter to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and he said -- I'd like to read portions of it because it really will express in a concise form as to what my concern is.
"On behalf of my company I recently remitted to your ministry a form 1 special filing along with the $50 filing fee, as newly compelled by the Corporations Information Act. I am writing to you now to strenuously object to this legislation and these new requirements for the following reasons." And he gives four of them.
The first one is: "Since there have been no changes in my corporate public record, there is no need to update the computer database or to make work in this manner." He's saying there's no changes, and the information that is there doesn't need to be changed, and yet he's going to have to pay $50 to tell the government that there's been no change.
Secondly, he says that, "Since the reason given for the accurate maintenance of your database is so that it may be 'searched by...businesses, consumers, investors, lawyers, the media and many government agencies,'" he says -- and this has been said by the member for Wellington and other members in their debate in this House -- "I feel the costs of providing such information should be borne by those who benefit from the access. The costs should not now be put on my corporation since I am not entitled to a share of the fees charged to those accessing the information." He's not entitled to any portion of the $8-million profit that you people are going to be receiving. He says that anyone who wants this information, why shouldn't they have to pay the fee? If it's calculated to a certain amount, why shouldn't those people who want the information have to pay the fee? Why should he have to pay the fee? It is not benefiting him one iota.
If you're talking about a user fee, as the Premier's talked about, the user fee is being charged to the person who owns the corporation, not to the people who are seeking the information. I don't understand it, nor does he.
Thirdly, he says: "Since the $50 now remitted to you can no longer be spent on such things as office supplies, capital equipment or salaries, those who otherwise would have received the moneys are now suffering that loss. Business closures, layoffs, deferred hiring and a general slowdown in business activity are the cumulative effect and logical consequence of this and other such legislation."
Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): Of 50 bucks?
Mr Tilson: I don't imagine that there are going to be statistics, in answer to the Minister of Environment and Energy, that say that this specific tax of $50 is going to lay people off or to close businesses down, but if you add this to all the other taxes and all the wonderful fees that you're charging in this province, that cumulative effect that I spoke of about today being tax freedom day is the thing that's driving people under, that's driving people to move to other countries, to other jurisdictions and is causing the unemployment in this province. It's those cumulative effects that are causing the problem in this province.
Hon Mr Wildman: If you count in our health insurance, we've got lower taxes than they have in the United States.
Mr Tilson: Oh, give me a break. The taxes in this province are worse than in any other jurisdiction in North America.
Interjections.
Mr Tilson: Fourthly --
Interjections.
The Speaker: Order. The member for Dufferin-Peel has the floor.
Mr Tilson: Fourthly, he says: "I genuinely feel that this measure is nothing short of legalized extortion. If I wish to stay in business in Ontario, I must pay up. It may not be as brutal as 'knee-capping,' but it is every bit as immoral. The philosophy which permits such laws to" --
Interjection.
Mr Tilson: Well, this is from a letter from my constituent and I have every right to read it, and you just sit in your place and be quiet.
He says, "The philosophy which permits such laws to come into existence is further diminishing the already low esteem earned by politicians and governments." And that's the sort of thing. You know why people don't trust you? Because you put something like this forward saying that it is trying to cost for the user fees that the Premier says and in fact it's to make a profit of $8 million.
Hon Mr Wildman: Profit?
Mr Tilson: A profit. That's what your assistant deputy minister said during estimates.
There is another letter that I received from Shelburne, another municipality in my riding, in which he wanted to express his concerns. He had received the quote of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations where she justified doing this strange thing, and he says, "These could be easily updated by putting on the records the information from my yearly corporation tax returns, which I make." He says: "Why do you have to do it this way? Why do you have to charge someone 50 bucks, or 25 bucks if you're a charity, to do it? Aren't there other ways? I mean, we're sending all kinds of forms off to you people on a continuous basis. Why do we have to have another form and pay another fee? Why do you have to do that?" It's a good observation. He, as well, can't understand why he's being charged a fee.
1820
I had another letter with respect to this which I'd like to read, and these are just a sample of some of the letters that I've received. The writer is from Caledon, and she says:
"Another tax to businesses in our province. Your latest hidden tax, in the form of a 'special notice' to ensure that...basic information is accurate, is outrageous.
"The new $50 tax on all businesses and a $25 tax on not-for-profit organizations is totally unacceptable.
"How much more do you think the business community can withstand before you have complete collapse? And charging charities as well -- one can only cringe at your rationale.
"Was it too much to ask your department to request this information from other departments where the information is already on file annually?"
She's saying the same thing as the last person. In other words, you've already got this information on all your fancy computers that you've got over there, and yet you're buying another fancy computer and you're going to charge people $50 or $25, depending on where you are.
She finishes off and says, "What are the costs of collecting this" -- well, we now know that it's roughly $10 million and the actual costs are only $2 million, so the profit is $8 million -- "new tax -- including the costs of documentation, the billing and enforcement of delinquent businesses, the bilingual Helpline and the staff? Is there a net gain expected?" Yes. To the writer of this letter, it's an $8-million profit. So that's what she says.
Another letter came from Hospice Caledon: "As treasurer of Hospice Caledon, a non-profit agency, I want to express our outrage at your ministry suddenly inflicting this new hidden tax on all businesses and non-profit organizations.
"Corporate public records are available from other offices within the provincial ministries."
So they're all saying the same thing: "You've already got the information; why are you ripping us off for another $25 to $50?"
The treasurer of Hospice Caledon says: "Corporate public records are available from other offices within the provincial ministries. The responsibility of reporting this basic corporate information to your ministry should not be a financial burden to charities and other organizations.
"If, in fact, your ministry requires the information directly, rather than requesting it internally, you could request the information. But instead, you have chosen to impose a hidden tax in the guise of completing corporate records."
Have you ever seen these records? You know, it's a very simple document, and yet it's going to cost $50 -- $50. It doesn't make any sense.
"And, to top it off," the treasurer of Hospice Caledon says, "you have inflicted your hidden tax on 'non-profit' organizations who are struggling to meet the needs in their community...." And I can tell you, she is right. Everyone who's involved with a charity knows how tough it is to raise funds to do the wonderful things that they're doing in our respective communities, and you have the gall to charge these people $25 annually.
She says, "And, to top it off, you have inflicted your hidden tax on 'non-profit' organizations who are struggling to meet the needs in their community, so that more services are not required by your government departments, causing further costs to the taxpayers." That expresses that concern.
My time has expired. I would have liked to have spent much more time with respect to the topic of pooling, which is a very controversial issue on the troublesome issue of providing education in this province. I too hope that this subject, the subject of pooling, and some of the other matters that are being raised in this bill will be sent to a committee because I think that we need to hear from the public. We need to hear from all sides on this issue and not simply ram this omnibus bill with a whole slew of issues through this House in the way it's being done.
The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Dufferin-Peel for his contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments.
Mr Callahan: I've listened intently to this. I think a revelation was made in the House the other day -- I think it was in response to a question -- that all of the civil service was asked to look at innovative ways of grabbing revenue.
I happened to be out at an MTHA house the other night on Dundas Street: 5005 Dundas Street in Etobicoke. These people have had a raise in their hydro. They've had a five-year raise in their rates. I looked at one of the financial statements of one of these seniors. There's no way they can pay it. This is supposed to be rent-geared-to-income. So in this voracious attempt to try to plug the hole of all of the moneys that have gone out in wacko schemes, they are in fact hurting seniors. They're hurting programs that were supposed to help these people.
They figure that all seniors are rich cats. Well, there was an executive from the seniors' association who said something like 65% of the seniors in this province make under $10,000. That's the poverty line. Six per cent make over $30,000. If this government really feels concerned about seniors who are on a fixed income, then they should stop trying to find ways, or leaving it to the civil service to find ways, to simply come up with money without determining whether or not it's fair.
I also tell you the health employer tax that you people have now reduced to one person -- the Attorney General's present in the House -- you're going to find that somebody's going to challenge that because you don't have the constitutional authority under the BNA act to tax indirectly. You can tax directly but not indirectly. Somebody is going to challenge that, and all of this money you thought you had, you won't have.
The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments. Seeing none, the honourable member for Dufferin-Peel has up to two minutes for his reply.
Mr Tilson: I guess all I can respond to the member from Brampton is that I emphasize that today is tax freedom day. All I know is that the people in this province have seen all the taxes they want. Taxes and fees. There's just no justification for some of the things that are being put forward in this bill. The province is in dire straits, and yes, you can't accept all the blame for that but you can accept a lot of the blame. You can accept a lot of the blame through this bill, Bill 160.
I don't think, whether we're talking about the issue with respect to the corporate filing fees or the whole topic of pooling, which we need to discuss -- we need to hear some statistics. The only place that we can do that -- we can't do it in this place. The whole topic of pooling, for example, we need to go to committee. I hope that this bill will go to committee and we can hear from the public and we can hear some statistics on the effects of pooling on our educational system, whether it be the separate system or the public system. We need to have that information to properly understand how Bill 160, on that topic alone, is going to affect our educational system. It cries out for public consultation.
The consultation that has gone on to date is inadequate, and I encourage -- this bill is certainly going to carry on second reading, because you have the votes for that -- all members of this place, before it goes any further, to go to committee, where we can hear from members of the public to talk on particularly those two items that I spent my time on: the corporate filing fee -- and I can guarantee you, there'll be all kinds of people who will want to committee and talk about that -- and, more importantly, the issue with respect to pooling in education. You need to provide statistics, and you haven't done that to date.
The Speaker: Is there further debate? If not, the honourable member for Oxford has an opportunity to conclude.
Mr Sutherland: I just want to make a few remarks to say that we did have a very comprehensive debate on many of the topics raised. The bill does have quite a few things in it. It has a lot of good job creation initiatives in it in terms of access to capital.
One point I just want to clarify. The member for Etobicoke West is not here, but I did commit to him what, in this debate, I would try and clarify with him, and that was regarding the change in this bill regarding delivery charges on sand and gravel and dirt. The reason we're making the change, despite what the member for Dufferin-Peel said in his comments, is because there was a bit of an unfairness. If you own a sand and gravel pit, if you own the aggregate and you deliver it, you have to pay the sales tax if you charge for the delivery of that. If you're an individual contractor just doing delivery, you don't have to charge the sales tax. That was creating a lot of unfairness out there between companies that actually own sand and gravel and had been delivering it and those that were only contracting, particularly with respect to contracts with municipalities. That is the rationale on why we changed that.
If you go and buy a piece of furniture from a furniture shop and they deliver it and they charge you a delivery charge, they have to assess the sales tax. But if someone else comes and picks it up as a contractor just to deliver it, they don't have to pay the sales tax.
I think we've had a very good and lengthy debate. I appreciate the members' comments. As I say, I think there are a lot of good things in this bill that will help create jobs and continue the economic prosperity that is growing in Ontario.
The Speaker: The member for Oxford, in the absence of the Minister of Finance, has moved second reading of Bill 160. 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 ayes have it.
Call in the members; a 30-minute bell.
The division bells rang from 1829 to 1835.
The Speaker: Would all members please take their seats.
Mr Sutherland, in the absence of Mr Laughren, has moved second reading of Bill 160.
All those in favour of the motion will please rise one by one.
Ayes
Boyd, Carter, Charlton, Churley, Duignan, Farnan, Fletcher, Frankford, Gigantes, Haeck, Haslam, Hope, Jamison, Kormos, Lankin, Lessard, MacKinnon, Malkowski, Mammoliti, Marchese, Mathyssen, Mills, Morrow, O'Connor, Perruzza, Philip (Etobicoke-Rexdale), Pilkey, Pouliot, Sutherland, Waters, Wessenger, White, Wildman, Wilson (Frontenac-Addington), Wilson (Kingston and The Islands), Winninger, Wood.
The Speaker: All those opposed to Mr Sutherland's motion will please rise one by one.
Nays
Arnott, Beer, Bradley, Callahan, Caplan, Curling, Eddy, Elston, Eves, Harnick, Henderson, Johnson (Don Mills), Jordan, McLean, Sterling, Tilson, Turnbull.
The Speaker: The ayes being 37 and the nays 17, I declare the motion carried.
Shall the bill be ordered for third reading? Committee of the whole? The question is whether the bill shall be ordered to the finance committee. There are 12; so ordered. The bill is ordered to the finance committee.
MEMBER'S COMMENTS
Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Earlier today the member for Downsview indicated to this House and questioned some statements that the member for Nipissing, the leader of our party, made earlier. He said, if I'm not mistaken, that the member for Nipissing had said that children in this province were starving. I believe that is his word. I would like to inform the House, having Instant Hansard in my hand, that that is an untruthful and incorrect statement, and before I read what the leader said, I will give the member for Downsview the opportunity to retract an incorrect statement.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): To the member for Parry Sound, first, I appreciate the fact that he withdrew the unparliamentary remarks. The member for Downsview rose on a point of order, which I addressed and informed him that he did not have a point of order. The member for Parry Sound has raised the matter and, as is our custom, the member for Downsview has an opportunity to correct the record, if he feels that he wishes to do so.
Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): What I will do is I will go get Instant Hansard and I will read both for the Speaker and for all of the caucus members of the Progressive Conservative Party just what the leader of the --
The Speaker: No. Would the member for Downsview please take his seat.
Mr Perruzza: -- to starve for the last four years. He crossed the line.
The Speaker: I caution the member to please take his seat. Orders of the day.
Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): You lied. You lied. You lied.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Order.
Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): What a way to get out of House duty.
Mr Murray J. Elston (Bruce): Don't throw him out. It is more punishment to make him stay.
The Speaker: It may be greater punishment to stay, I realize, but the member for York Mills has used unparliamentary language, and I would ask that he now withdraw the unparliamentary words.
Mr Turnbull: I suppose what we're talking about here is, as Winston Churchill said, a terminological inexactitude. The member across the floor doesn't have the guts to retract something --
The Speaker: Order. The member for York Mills, it's very simple and straightforward. I asked the member to simply withdraw the unparliamentary remarks. I ask him to now withdraw.
Mr Turnbull: I certainly wish that the member for Downsview will withdraw -- of course I will withdraw. Mr Speaker, it's not --
The Speaker: Will the member take his seat, please. Orders of the day.
Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): Before I call the next order, there are a number of things that the House leaders have discussed that we should get on to the record so that there are no mishaps in terms of process for the rest of this evening.
Firstly, I'll be calling the 40th order. The House leaders have agreed, so we seek the consent of the House to ensure that if the second reading debate on Bill 163 should be completed this evening, we will deem that a division has occurred and the vote will be deferred until Monday after routine proceedings.
Secondly, the Conservative Party, the third party, wishes to split their opening remarks for two critics, so that will be 45 minutes each, one now and one later.
Thirdly, in order to accommodate members' presence here, the Minister of Municipal Affairs will lead off the debate, we will skip the Liberal caucus and go directly to the first of the opening remarks from the Conservative caucus because the member has to leave, and then the rotation will come to the Liberals for their opening remarks before it returns here.
The Speaker: Agreed? Agreed.
Mr Eves: On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: I'm sure the member for Downsview would like to correct the record. I happen to have Instant Hansard, and in fact the member for Nipissing said, and I quote --
The Speaker: The member for Parry Sound, no. This matter has been dealt with. Would the member please take his seat.
Mr Eves: "There's no excuse for the fact that thousands of children in this province have been going to school hungry because some members of your government" --
The Speaker: I ask the House leader of the third party to take his seat.
Mr Eves: That doesn't say starve. Withdraw.
Mr Perruzza: Why don't you read the entire thing?
The Speaker: Would the member for Downsview please come to order. The matter has been dealt with.
PLANNING AND MUNICIPAL STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE L'AMÉNAGEMENT DU TERRITOIRE ET LES MUNICIPALITÉS
Mr Philip moved second reading of the following bill:
Bill 163, An Act to revise the Ontario Planning and Development Act and the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, to amend the Planning Act and the Municipal Act and to amend other statutes relating to planning and municipal matters / Projet de loi 163, Loi révisant la Loi sur la planification et l'aménagement du territoire de l'Ontario, la Loi sur les conflits d'intérêts municipaux, et modifiant la Loi sur l'aménagement du territoire et la Loi sur les municipalités et modifiant d'autres lois touchant des questions relatives à l'aménagement et aux municipalités.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Does the minister have any opening remarks?
Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): I rise to present for second reading Bill 163, the Planning and Municipal Statute Law Amendment Act, an act to amend the Planning Act, to revise the Ontario Planning and Development Act and the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, to amend the Municipal Act and other complementary legislation.
The proposed revisions and amendments contained in this legislation represent fundamental reform to the current land use planning process. As Jim Rusk of the Globe and Mail put it, this is the first major reworking of the planning system since the Second World War.
Our objective in putting forth these reforms is to create a planning system that meets the needs of the community, the economy and the environment. This will benefit everyone in Ontario.
The proposed legislative changes are one part of the package of reforms. This package also contains administrative changes and a set of policy statements that clearly state provincial expectations for planning.
The four main features or underlying themes of this package we have proposed are streamlining the development process so that jobs can be created; providing stronger protection for the environment; giving more responsibility to municipalities and planning boards for the development process; and making local government more accountable.
The reforms we are proposing are long overdue. John Sewell, in his Commission on Planning and Development Reform, found the province's land use system is cumbersome and complicated. In addition, people across the province told him that the development decisions take far too long.
We cannot continue to support a costly and inefficient land use planning system. The impact of the delayed decisions costs millions of dollars in delayed economic activity and potential employment.
I'm also pleased to say that stakeholder groups have agreed to help us work out practical details of implementing our new land use planning system.
Provincial facilitator Dale Martin is heading up a 12-member task force of municipal leaders, developers, builders and environmental groups, who will help ensure there is a smooth transition to the new planning system across the province. The task force will also advise on education and training requirements for people who will be involved in the planning system.
The reform package we've introduced has received support from a wide variety of interests and I'll quote only a few:
Mabel Dougherty, president of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, said:
"We are pleased to see the emphasis the government has placed on streamlining the planning process and clarifying the roles and the division of responsibility between the province and municipalities. The government has indicated that it recognizes the diversity of municipal interests and conditions across Ontario and has made a commitment to speak through a comprehensive set of policy statements when addressing land use matters."
Ron Clark, senior planning consultant for Essiambre, Philips and Desjardins Associates Ltd in Ottawa, was quoted on CBC Radio as saying: "We are optimistic that some of the changes that the government is proposing will have some positive benefits on the industry at large." I've spoken to many in the development industry and indeed the trade union movement that is involved in that industry who have similar sentiments.
Kathy Cooper, whom most of you in this Legislature will know, researcher with the Canadian Environmental Law Association, said in a news release:
"We're in the cheering section on this one. The provincial government has a responsibility for protecting the public interest and the environment. The establishment of a comprehensive set of provincial land use policies is a long overdue step towards the exercise of that responsibility."
Last but certainly not least, the Toronto Star said in an editorial, "The NDP deserves credit for moving to implement the Sewell commission's sensible suggestions."
The changes that we have proposed to the Planning Act include a number of measures to facilitate the decision-making process. Under the new legislation municipal and provincial decision-makers will make decisions within specified time frames.
1850
In the official plan amendment process, for example, there used to be no limit to the time an applicant could be caught up in the planning system. In the new system, the approval authority will have five months at most to make its decision. After that, the matter may be appealed to the Ontario Municipal Board.
The role of the Ontario Municipal Board is also fundamental to a streamlined planning system. In the current system, the OMB must resolve disputes over minor variances, things such as porch construction and changes inside yards. Under the proposed legislation amendments, the decision of the municipal council on minor variances will be final. This means that the OMB will be able to concentrate its attention and resources on larger issues.
The OMB will also have expanded powers to dismiss appeals without a hearing where concerns are without planning merit. The system will favour cooperative resolution of disputes so that local councils will be able to resolve them before they enter the system and create delays that are in no one's best interests.
The new Ontario Planning and Development Act which we have proposed will provide for a much more effective provincial planning tool. It will also shorten the process for creating and amending provincial plans, such as the parkway belt west plan. The current process for amending such plans is extremely costly and lengthy. The shortened process will still allow ample opportunity for public input while protecting the areas of provincial interest.
I'm proud to say that in addition to the legislative changes we have proposed, we have already made significant progress in streamlining the planning system by implementing a number of administrative changes within the ministry. For example, we have taken concerted action to reduce planning application backlogs.
As lead planning ministry, our ministry, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, has begun to take a stronger role as an adviser and provider of information on planning matters. This approach makes it possible for critical issues and potential disputes to be addressed before the application is made rather than have us second-guessing the municipalities at a later stage.
We are also testing various ways to circulate applications among different review agencies for comment in a much more efficient way. We call this the one-window approach under the current system. For example, 80% of the applications received by the ministry for official plan amendments were sent to as many as 18 ministries for review. This will be reduced significantly under our proposals, and to speed up the process of amendments to the parkway belt west plan, we have established a pool of hearing officers who will be available on short notice to conduct hearings on proposed amendments to the plan. These are just some of the ways we've already begun to make the planning system in this province more user-friendly and more efficient. There are others, of course, at various stages of testing or implementation.
In addition to the inefficiencies in the current planning system, there is also the fear that it simply does not have the teeth to protect the environment. I am pleased to say that environmentally sound development will be promoted through the planning reforms we are proposing. This will happen by means of amendments to the Planning Act, the Ontario Planning and Development Act and the Municipal Act. For example, municipalities will have permissive power to control site alterations, even when there is no specific development application.
Provincial environmental priorities have also been clearly articulated in the comprehensive set of policy statements that I mentioned earlier. They protect water quality and quantity, they preclude development in wetlands and in extremely sensitive natural heritage features and permit a limited amount of development in other natural heritage areas. The policy statements have been released and will come into effect when the legislation is proclaimed. Proposed amendments to the Planning Act will require that planning decisions are consistent with these policy statements.
We are also proposing to give municipalities greater control of the development process. One of the main reasons Ontario's planning process has become so complex and time-consuming is that different levels of government have approval powers over plans and developments.
We believe that the proposed legislative amendments giving municipalities greater control over the development process will address this problem. By defining more clearly the role of regional municipalities and approving development applications, for example, we hope that the legislation will help to avoid some of the unnecessary duplication.
We believe that Ontario municipalities have the capabilities and the strengths to plan well. While the government is taking a leadership role in establishing planning policies for the province, we also believe that these policies can best be interpreted by those who are affected by them: the people who live in the cities, towns and rural areas of Ontario.
In this context, our provincial government will set broad policy direction, municipal governments will make development decisions and the Ontario Municipal Board will adjudicate any disputes.
With greater responsibility and flexibility in planning delegated to local government, it is essential that local accountability also be strengthened. The package of reforms called Open Local Government will ensure that the new municipal planning powers are exercised in an open and accountable way. This will be done through legislative changes regarding open meetings, conflict of interest and disposal of property.
Our goal is to enhance the confidence of local residents in the integrity of the local government by making the operation of local government more transparent.
The proposed legislative amendments require that all municipal meetings be open to the public. Closed meetings will only be tolerated to discuss such concerns as personnel matters, security of property and litigation. This particular provision applies to municipal councils and most local boards. School boards, library boards and police services boards are not covered by this provision because they already have their own legislation setting out the requirements for open meetings. In a sense, what we're doing in this is catching up at the municipal level.
In addition, we have introduced new rules concerning conflict of interest, with additional disclosure requirements. This provision will apply to all members of municipal councils, school boards, police villages and public utilities commissions.
The purpose of conflict-of-interest legislation since it was first introduced in 1972 has been to allow more people to get involved in local government as elected officials. It gives them a mechanism to withdraw from debate and decision-making about issues in which they have a personal financial interest.
A new enforcement process has also been introduced through a local government disclosure commissioner. This should remove the financial burden of enforcement from an individual.
We have listened to local government officials in the design of this package. Some of the aspects of the original draft legislation which would have provided an unnecessary intrusion into the privacy of local representatives have been removed from the final package. Our disclosure requirements are simple and easy to follow for elected representatives and the public alike. They are no more onerous than the requirements for ourselves as MPPs.
To ensure that disposal of property is done fairly and openly, a set procedure that municipalities must follow has been set out in the legislation. When wanting to dispose of property, councils and local boards must publicly declare the land is surplus at an open meeting, they must obtain a fair market appraisal and, finally, they must provide a notice of the sale. These rules are to be set out in the procedural bylaws of the municipality.
We have taken care to provide for more public access to the public process. Provision has been made to allow more direct appeals on development applications and to separate the public meeting on municipal official plans from the adoption of the plan in 30 days.
1900
The legislation before you to reform Ontario's land use planning system and to ensure open, transparent government is the culmination of more than three years' work by hundreds of dedicated people. I would like to thank in particular John Sewell and his task force members Toby Vigod and George Penfold for the intelligence, compassion, long hours and hard work that they put into their commission report. The people of the province owe them a debt of gratitude.
I also want to thank the conflict-of-interest consultation committee and the provincial-municipal working group for their work on the open local government reform package. Furthermore, I want to thank all the individuals and groups who participated in the extensive consultations that were undertaken over the past few years.
Finally, I want to thank the staff of my ministry, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, for their diligence in moving forward on our new vision of planning and reform in Ontario. This is the third ministry I've been associated with, and I have been constantly impressed by their professionalism, by their dedication and the amount of time they are willing to spend on what they very strongly believe is the most significant reform we have had in Municipal Affairs in many, many years.
I'll be happy to participate in this debate as it moves along. We have developed in this legislation a consensus. There are very few pieces of legislation that can get the support of the environmental movement, the development movement, the municipalities and the provincial government, as well as, of course, ratepayers' groups and various citizen groups.
I think that accomplishment is something for which John Sewell and his commission deserve an awful lot of credit. The kind of flexibility, the kinds of changes we have made as a result of the hearings and as a result of further input I think show that we have listened to the public of Ontario, we've listened to the various interests and we have a package that is supported by all of the stakeholders.
I would urge members of all parties to join all of those stakeholders in supporting what I think is very, very important legislation in the reforms we are presenting today.
The Speaker: I thank the minister for his introductory remarks and invite any questions and/or comments.
Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): I certainly want to compliment the Minister of Municipal Affairs.
Interjection.
Mr Hayes: They don't want me to say how nice you are, Ed. He actually is a very nice fellow.
I'd like to point out that the remarks the minister has made certainly clear the air and remove a lot of barriers from local municipalities, developers, ratepayers. It certainly brings me back to when I was in municipal politics. I wish we'd had the kind of legislation the minister's talking about today, especially with the open local government. He also mentioned going through so many different ministries, if someone wanted to rezone a piece of property, wanted to develop a piece of property, the frustrations they'd go through and the money they had to spend to get there -- and sometimes not get there; after going through five or six ministries, to find out that their project didn't qualify or meet the criteria.
That's simply due to the fact that often in the past ministries didn't have the kinds of policies that are needed. Sometimes after you met certain criteria, they'd come back to you and say, "You've got to meet some more conditions." This piece of legislation will certainly take some of those barriers away.
I too would like to compliment the staff of Municipal Affairs, who have certainly worked very hard and diligently on getting this forward at the request of the Minister of Municipal Affairs. Once again, I'd like to compliment the minister and all the people who have been responsible for putting this piece of legislation together.
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): I certainly agree with the minister that this is very important legislation. Indeed, it's several pieces of legislation, really, because it's an omnibus bill.
There's certainly no doubt that people have been wanting changes and wanting the act streamlined and speeded up. I just found out today that the township of Metcalfe, which passed an official plan October 2, 1989, received partial approval on January 3, 1993. That's a rural township with one small hamlet not wishing to have development. There have been some problems there, and it really should never go on that long. I certainly have experience with applications for subdivision, and the time has been interminably long to get final approval.
To get OMB hearings, I believe, has been the main delay. It's had a very adverse effect on development in Ontario and it's indeed a shame, to the point where there have been developments lost. There have been developers who came forward, even industrial developers, who gave up and said, "It's not worth the long battle, the cost, and it's just out of the question," and walked away from what could have been very important developments.
Although we disagree with the minister on some very basic ingredients of some of the act, we realize the importance of getting on with some streamlining and speeding up of processes.
Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): I wish to add my congratulations to the minister, along with my friend from the opposition and of course my friend from western Ontario.
These are very important developments in our province. This is a process which has taken a long time to get to. It is a reflection of an open and thorough process, a thorough commission, substantive reports, substantive adoptions, substantive consultations at this point, and of course I imagine this summer we will have some consultations, some open hearings in regard to this legislation.
We're coming to the end of a lengthy and very thorough and important process, one which makes the planning process accessible and understandable to the people of Ontario and makes it a comprehensible and understandable, accessible process, something which in the past has not been the case. People have felt stymied time and time again. They don't know where we as a government are: What is the provincial interest in planning? How do we interrelate? This bill will make provincial interest comprehensible understandable and accessible to the people of Ontario. It will reinforce the principles of integrity and openness in local government. These are important and essential issues that our minister has put forth in a cogent way. It is worthwhile for all of us to examine this legislation, to look at its merits and also to express our concerns about what has happened in the past and what we want to see in the future with this legislation.
I think this is a historic day, to open up the second reading debate and of course the hearings that will occur over the summer. I look forward to hearing those comments and to the minister's continuing participation.
1910
Mr Larry O'Connor (Durham-York): I appreciate the opportunity to comment briefly on my friend and colleague the Minister of Municipal Affairs. As we went into this process of taking a look at the Planning Act and Mr Sewell took it across the province and was trying to reach consensus, I have to tell you that quite honestly there were times when it was a little bit rocky.
I represent rural Ontario, and there were some statements made that really did get the dander up out there in the rural parts, that that's the end of all septic beds and everything else, and it was rather confusing and a little bit exciting and it was an interesting road, but the further we walked down that road and we started talking to people, the more the consensus came about.
On June 2 this year, I had the opportunity to bring in the Premier and the Minister of Agriculture, and it pulled a lot of the rural folks from my area -- folks involved with agriculture, a couple of municipal people, one of the mayors and one of the regional chairs were there -- and one of the things they talked about was the need for changes to the Planning Act. They're going to be excited to know that we're actually moving down that road. It was a little bit exciting at times when we first started going down that road.
One thing that really does add to the cost of development is when things get needlessly sent for referral to the board, and the costs add up and then of course, for the person who ultimately ends up buying something down the road, that's where the costs end up being. It's needless.
Having some clear, concise roles and rules is going to be really good, and people are going to look forward to that and they're going to be glad that, "Here are the rules and here's what you've got to play by." People are going to be more comfortable with it.
We're just about to put the final touches on the official plan for York region, and the regional chair there is looking forward to knowing that this is how the rules are going, that this is how you have to play, and for the folks out there who have concerns about development to know that there are some set-in-stone guidelines, so I appreciate the opportunity the minister has put before us in debating this and going out to hearings.
The Speaker: The Minister of Municipal Affairs has up to two minutes for his reply.
Hon Mr Philip: I thank the members for their rather constructive statements. In reverse order, the member for Durham-York talked about the need for flexibility and the fact that John Sewell and his commission did listen to the diversity of Ontario.
When I saw the first report, having been elected in 1975 when I was director of leadership training for the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, I was quite concerned and have continued to have a concern about the differences between rural areas and urban areas, and indeed the differences between north and south and east and west in this province, and the changes that we've seen, not just in the second report of Sewell but also in the changes that we've made and that are supported by John Sewell, having had a further consultation.
The member for Durham Centre talks about the need for having clear divisions of powers, and indeed in talking to AMO, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, it saw this as a key to the success of this, that people are tired of falling over one level of government over another, and indeed over ministries. I'd like to say a little bit more about how we're streamlining that process later on perhaps.
My honourable critic from the Liberal Party talked about the tremendous length of time it takes for a municipality, and the frustration when they want to develop an official plan and it takes so much time to do that.
What this legislation is doing and what we're moving our troops, our tremendously talented staff people into doing, is that this will release them to work in a facilitator role and assist municipalities to develop their official plans, rather than second-guess them here in Queen's Park.
The member for Essex-Kent has talked about how streamlining will be passed on to the consumer and I agree. I have such admiration for him that I hope he will speak again so that I can say a few of the nice things about him and his work and his assistance to me in developing this legislation.
Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): I welcome the opportunity to comment on Bill 163, the Planning and Municipal Statute Law Amendment Act. We've looked at and I've reviewed the legislation totally, through 101 pages. There are many things in that legislation that are good. There are many things in there that the local municipalities have been looking for, not knowing fully how they're probably going to be implemented yet, but there are many flaws in it.
There's an article in the paper that I saw in the Municipal World. It says: "New Planning for Ontario is Flawed, says Makuch. 'A major goal of planning is to encourage economic growth and the creation of prosperity in our society,' said Stan Makuch. 'What the Sewell commission's final report does in fact is to restrict, control and limit this wealth creation and growth.'"
Makuch, a Toronto-based lawyer with the firm of Borden and Elliot, and George Penfold, one of the commissioners for the Commission on Planning and Development Reform in Ontario, were addressing a workshop in 1993 at the annual conference of the Association of Municipal Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario. According to Makuch, the commission's final report does not address the most serious issues facing Ontario and the economy.
While Penfold agreed that an economic development strategy is necessary for the province, he did not believe that it belongs in the Planning Act. He goes on and says, "New Planning for Ontario has failed to recognize the limits to planning and the need for innovation and flexibility."
That member is in the same law firm as one of the commissioners who was involved in the very issue of travelling the province.
The minister's rush to judgement with this extremely complex and seriously flawed piece of legislation, in the minds of many, has left the membership of AMO, ROMA and NOMA, as well as me, wondering why you are pushing forward so quickly and not giving these organizations adequate time to properly review and respond to the many concerns and reservations they have with your tilted vision of how planning should work in Ontario.
Just what is the minister's hidden agenda? What is the minister trying to hide in this complex and convoluted 101-page omnibus bill?
The government's Minister of Municipal Affairs we believe has fumbled the process right from the beginning, because this government wasted more than $2 million and allowed the Sewell commission to wander around the province for two years reviewing the planning and development process.
When they left and in the first month or two were travelling this province, they were not really sure what a septic system was. They were not really sure what rural Ontario was all about. When you send three people from the city to do a review of planning in Ontario, it certainly left a lot to be desired.
Then you imposed an unrealistic deadline on the municipalities and you demanded that they respond to your policy statements and consultation paper within 90 days. Now you have rushed Bill 163 for second reading -- it was just introduced in the Legislature last month on May 18 -- so you can send it out. We want it to go to public hearings for the summer and we want those people to have some input, those very people who should have had input before the 90 days were up.
I've said it before, Minister, and I'll say it again, the direction in your agenda clearly shows that your ministry has very little regard for the concerns of Ontario municipalities and the people who reside within them.
You have an obligation to step back and let these organizations, such as ROMA, AMO and NOMA, have some say. NOMA is the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association, for some of those people who don't know, AMO is the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and ROMA is the Rural Ontario Municipal Association. They needed the appropriate time to review this very complex piece of legislation, which they didn't.
You refuse to do that. You resist giving us any breathing space. You really should delay the public hearings for some period of time, but apparently you have no regard or respect for the democratic process and we're now forced to deal with this massive and complex bill today without adequate time to give it the in-depth scrutiny that it deserves.
With respect to Bill 163, the Planning and Municipal Statute Law Amendment Act, the government's amendments are based on the final recommendations of the Commission on Planning and Development Reform which were announced on June 6, 1991, by the then Minister of Municipal Affairs, Dave Cooke. John Sewell, the former mayor of Toronto, was appointed as chairman; George Penfold and Toby Vigod were appointed as commissioners.
The Sewell commission's mandate was to restore confidence in the integrity of the planning process, make the system more efficient, protect the environment, reduce red tape and clearly define municipal and provincial powers.
The NDP was reacting to the scandals which erupted in the 1980s during the great land boom in Ontario. Premier Rae, then Leader of the Opposition, attacked the corruption and conflict of interest between private developers and local municipal councils. The planning process was singled out by the NDP as a major cause.
1920
It should be noted that the Sewell commission itself was attacked on many fronts. Many people, myself included, believed that the Sewell commission simply could not recognize that the rural communities of Ontario have concerns that are distinct from those of urban Ontario. The Sewell commission could not see the importance of government policies taking these differences into account. The Sewell commission and this Minister of Municipal Affairs have failed to come to grips with the differing economic and social problems of rural and urban Ontario, especially with the issues of planning, resource development and the environment.
Sewell put forward 98 recommendations to address the above concerns after extensive public consultation. The commission identified several areas of concern, including too much red tape -- we agree with that -- delays in hearings and decision-making, lack of environmental protection, and too much complexity.
AMO established five principles in the first submission to the Sewell commission which it used as guiding principles for assessing the commission's proposals: accountability, increased municipal decision-making authority, limitations on appeal and review, sufficient public consultation and timely decision-making.
Did the Sewell commission live up to these five principles? I would suggest not. AMO continued to have many concerns with the implications of the recommendations for planning in Ontario and, in particular, the erosion of municipal decision-making that the recommendations collectively suggested.
AMO believed that the significant concerns and positions put forward in response to the commission's draft report were not adequately addressed. In many cases, AMO disagreed with the commission's rationale for its decision to take positions contrary to those supported by AMO and the municipalities.
AMO, a non-profit organization with a membership of approximately 700 of Ontario's 830 municipal governments, believed that the provincial government wanted to wipe out local decision-making authority and accountability; that the provincial government wanted further slowdowns in the planning process; and that the provincial government wanted significant additional financial resources, without a clear idea of the benefits and improvements which would derive from this investment.
I agree with AMO's main areas of concern, which are related to provincial policies that still continue to contain too much detail and go far beyond areas of provincial interest.
I believe my colleague and the former PC caucus critic for Municipal Affairs, Mr Bill Murdoch, the MPP for Grey-Owen Sound, said it best when he called the draft report of the Sewell commission a complete waste of time and taxpayers' money and will spell the ruin of rural Ontario. He said the entire exercise was a farce that could only be seen as an excuse to give John Sewell something to do.
Mr Murdoch said it appeared that the government wanted us to believe it was giving municipalities the responsibility for our own planning, but this was not really the case. The government wanted to issue its rigid orders and local councils will have to roll up their sleeves and do its dirty work.
The Sewell commission recommended the government and a provincially appointed planning commission develop a set of land policy statements. We were concerned that this committee would be stacked with special interest groups that would write the rules, with little or no input from municipal officials.
Clearly, this government did not want to recognize that local politicians were elected to represent the people. I believe that if members of special interest groups feel so strongly about the planning process, they should seek elected office, rather than trying to ram their views through in a less democratic process.
But AMO and members of my party were not the only ones with concerns about the Sewell commission's recommendations. Reaction from interest groups:
The Ontario Home Builders' Association said it feared that restrictions on the development of farm land could affect the cost of houses for consumers. OHBA president Phil McColeman questioned where the industry would be allowed to build new dwellings. Such terms as "compact" and "significant" are not defined in the report. Severe limitations would be placed upon urban and rural building.
Rural counties with agricultural properties within their boundaries objected to the proposal to ban or severely restrict land severances. As many farmers cannot make a living off the land, especially in the case of the tender-fruit farmers of the Niagara Peninsula, they see selling off portions of their land for development as a viable economic alternative to farming.
The minister mentioned in his remarks about Kathy Cooper of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. She agrees with the report in principle but worries that the government may not commit to legislating the changes. So he said yes, clearly she was in the cheering section, but he didn't read the rest of it, that she was concerned with regard to the legislative changes.
The Ontario Real Estate Association stated that the Sewell commission may achieve the exact opposite to what it has set out to accomplish. It recognizes that urban intensification can result in more efficient use of infrastructure, but points out that it can also lead to crowding, increasing crime and intensified pollution. As well, OREA pointed out that individual property rights are diminished as a result of the commission.
Then we look at the Ontario Public School Boards' Association. They argue that school boards should be able to prevent new development from proceeding if school facilities are not available. The commission rejected these submissions.
Morley Kells of UDI said of Sewell's support for intensification: "That's well and good, but nothing else out there supports intensification. There needs to be a lot more done by the provincial government and municipalities before intensification has any chance of being a reality."
In December 1993, the Minister of Municipal Affairs announced the government's response to the commission's work and published several proposed policy statements for a 90-day consultation period. On May 18, 1994, the government introduced Bill 163, the Planning and Municipal Statute Law Amendment Act. The municipal conflict-of-interest legislation was also an integral part of the NDP's approach to land reform policy. In 1991, the municipal conflict-of-interest consultation committee was struck to review existing legislation about open meetings, conflict of interest and disclosure.
The government responded to the committee with its own proposals for reform entitled Open Local Government in December 1991. A municipal-provincial working group was then set up to study the issues and to write proposals. The group reported to the government in 1993. The Minister of Municipal Affairs stated that the new legislation reflected a "fundamentally different vision of how planning should work."
The minister also stated that the reform package was based on three fundamental principles: Municipalities will be given greater control over the development process; environmental, social, cultural and economic values will be enshrined in the legislation; and red tape will be cut to help facilitate job creation in the construction industry.
Bill 163 is an omnibus bill composed of five parts. This includes amending and repeal provisions to existing statutes and two schedules setting out the provisions of two revised acts.
Part I: The Ontario Planning and Development Act, 1990, is repealed and replaced with a new one entitled the Ontario Planning and Development Act, 1994. The new act contains 14 schedules designed to simplify and streamline the planning and the amendment process.
The Parkway Belt Planning and Development Act is repealed as well, but the parkway belt west plan is continued under the new Planning Act.
The government expects that this new planning act will be much more streamlined. The former act required the minister to create advisory committees but did not require public consultations. The new legislation makes public consultations mandatory and eliminates the committee system. I want to read that again. The new legislation makes public consultations mandatory and eliminates the committee system.
The government also believes the new act will be easier to amend, less costly and less time-consuming. The minister is authorized to approve amendments to the plan, instead of the Lieutenant Governor in Council after receiving a ministerial recommendation. It's the minister now who does it, not the Lieutenant Governor in Council.
1930
Other aspects of the new act are similar to the old one, including the provision that zoning bylaws and the official plan must conform with provincial development plans. The development plan will also prevail over any official plans and zoning bylaws which are not in conformity.
The new act offers the possibility of financial assistance to municipalities or planning boards to assist in the implementation of a provincial development plan.
Part II: This part of the bill replaces the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act of 1990 with the Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act of 1994. There are 24 sections in this legislation. Many of the old provisions of the bill are carried over into the new legislation.
However, there are several important additions.
Elected local government officials must disclose assets, liabilities and sources of income.
There are new procedures for the disclosure of pecuniary interests by all local government representatives.
There is also the requirement to limit the receipt of, and requiring disclosure of, gifts and benefits received by members.
The use of confidential information will be restricted and a public register of all disclosures should be maintained.
A provincial disclosure of interest commissioner will be appointed and the office will have the power to investigate allegations.
Elected officials must list the existence of assets and liabilities but not their values. These lists must be updated yearly and they must be open to the public.
Part III: The Planning Act amendments are included here. The amendments are aimed at streamlining the planning system and giving more local control over the development process. Environmental protection is a major element in this amendment package.
The planning reform amendments cover a wide range of NDP social, economic and environmental goals at the local level, including provisions dealing with health, education, cultural and recreational facilities, employment opportunities and the appropriate location of growth and development.
It should be noted that a major thrust of the act is the requirement that all planning decisions under the legislation "shall be consistent with" the provincial policy statements. That is what we want to know, what those provincial policy statements are going to be.
Municipal planning authorities will be created to draft an official plan for the areas which do not have one. Members will be appointed by the council of each local municipality. Councils of two or more municipalities in one or more counties will be able to set up planning authorities.
All regions, metropolitan/district municipalities, prescribed counties, separated municipalities, cities in territorial districts and planning boards must prepare an official plan.
All municipal plans must conform to the provincial regulations and environmental principles. We want to know what those provincial policy statements are and what the regulations and the environmental principles are, because those are the main things of this streamlining process the government's in.
Streamlining provisions include the following:
Deadlines have been incorporated for decision-makers reviewing planning and development applications and modifying the referral system for official plans/amendments to the Ontario Municipal Board.
An appeal system will be established for subdivision and consent approvals with the OMB.
Approval authorities will be able to refuse incomplete applications and return them without further consideration.
Approval authorities will have the right to refuse referral requests, and the OMB can dismiss referral requests or appeals without hearings.
The OMB will not be responsible for appeals of minor variance decisions. Municipal councils will have the final say on minor variances and their applications.
Mediation and conciliation will be added as a provision to reduce the number of planning disputes going to the OMB.
We talk about those minor variances. There's something a little more to that, because I believe there's a little thing called an environmental impact study that's probably going to be part of this environmental statement that's going to be made. If you want a minor variance or you want to put a verandah on your property, you will probably have to have a consultant or somebody do an environmental impact study for you.
Part IV: This portion of the bill contains amendments to the Municipal Act to create more open local government.
All meetings of local councils and most local boards will be open, with a limited number of exceptions. In camera meetings will be allowed only to discuss the security of property, property acquisition, personnel matters, litigation and to receive genuine legal advice. That's very little different from what we've had in the past; I think it's pretty well much the same.
Procedural bylaws for the holding of public meetings will be mandatory for all councils and most boards.
Procedural bylaws will also be necessary for the disposal of real estate. Minimum standards for the disposal of municipal real property must also be met. School boards are not included in these provisions. I often wonder what's going to be in this Planning Act with regard to locating septic systems for school boards in rural Ontario, which mostly have been cut off, that I know of.
Municipalities must maintain an inventory of properties, they must declare land surpluses and appraisals must be obtained. I can tell you that in some of the municipalities I'm familiar with there are all kinds of surplus lands, all kinds of parks that have been established when they give the 5% to establish a subdivision, all kinds of properties. Are all the municipalities now going to have to go and have an appraisal obtained on all this land that is declared surplus?
Discretionary powers will be given to municipalities to regulate site alterations through bylaws. Municipalities will then have the power to prohibit or regulate dumping, grading or fill removal.
Private municipal acts regulating the dumping of fill will be repealed, and the bylaws under these acts will be allowed to stand if they are consistent with the new provisions. A lot of the municipalities already have those bylaws in place now. They control what is going in and what landfill and topsoil are being removed. They are now being controlled by bylaws.
Part V: This part of the bill is made up of consequential amendments to a number of acts to make them consistent with the changes made to the Planning Act, the Municipal Act and the Ontario Planning and Development Act.
The Ontario Municipal Board Act is also amended in this section in order to streamline the procedures. The board will be able to dismiss a matter if no response is received to a request for more information or if the prescribed fee has not been paid.
The requirement that a board member must get authorization from the OMB chair to hear an appeal is now removed.
One member of the board will constitute a quorum.
New sections have been added to recognize service of notices by fax and the holding of hearings by telephone and other electronic methods.
The chairman will no longer have to be present at hearings. Individual board members will be allowed to continue hearings after the expiration of appointments until a decision has been made.
My party has been highly critical of the legislation because the requirement that all municipalities create an official plan in accordance with the province's new principles is a form of top-down development which ignores local concerns.
As well, the planning reform would add further downloading burdens. Not only will new official plans have to be created in some cases where there are no plans, but municipalities will be required to do more technical studies and get more information from bureaucrats. Today that process is painfully slow; in the future it will be even slower.
Communities in rural Ontario are also concerned about the legislation's land severance provisions and the principle that first-class farm land should be preserved. I really don't see a policy in Bill 163 that lays down a criterion that tells you how you can apply for a land severance. It doesn't tell me other than that it says, "First-class land shall be preserved." In rural Ontario, are we going to be able to have five or six severances off one farm if it's class 4 or 5 land? They're not saying you can't do that. But they're putting a great emphasis on the environmental considerations, and if you get a severance today, I presume it will be a condition that you have to do an environmental impact study to determine the feasibility, to determine the availability of water, to determine whether it's environmentally feasible to have that severance or to build that home on that property.
1940
The government's original aim of encouraging economic growth and jobs I believe has been shunted aside. Some elements of the legislation, such as streamlining the planning and development processes, are laudable goals. The Common Sense Revolution has made the elimination of red tape a major priority.
Hon Mr Philip: Cutting 20% of agricultural grants is really going to help the farmer.
Mr McLean: That's how misinformed the Minister of Municipal Affairs is. He indicates we're going to cut out 20% of all farm grants. It's unfortunate that he hasn't read the document. Our leader has made it abundantly clear that there's no cut in any agricultural policies in this province. That's been abundantly clear and yet they continue to say, "They're cutting them by 20%."
Hon Mr Philip: Where does it say that?
Mr McLean: I'll tell you, when people want to mislead other people, they can do it quite easily. But I wouldn't want to do that, because I can hear others here who want to do it and are more familiar with how to do it than I.
I want to tell you about the interest group reaction. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has offered its tentative support for some of the proposals, including more open local government, streamlining, and environmental protection. As the minister said earlier, that was what Mabel Dougherty was pleased to hear was going to happen.
However, AMO says the changes contained in the Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act are unclear. Other aspects of the legislation are vague. In his opening remarks, the minister didn't say Mabel Dougherty said that. It's funny that he wouldn't tell us the whole story, but we happen to have it.
AMO's previous response to the Sewell commission recommendations, which are nearly identical to the government's own proposals, was far more critical. AMO cited several problems, including the lack of cost-benefit analysis, the imposition of environmental impact studies on individual land severances, and the lack of financial assistance for municipalities to develop official plans.
What is the minister saying and what help has he given to the local municipalities on those very issues? Who is going to pay for that environmental impact study? Nobody ever said who's going to pay for it, but we all know who will pay for it. It will be the individual who applies for the severance who's going to be paying for it.
AMO warns that the clause "shall be consistent with" included in subsection 6(5) in order to make municipalities conform with policy statements remains highly problematic, because AMO is concerned that municipalities will not have the flexibility to do their own local type of planning. That's what they're telling us, yet the minister is indicating that's what they will get. AMO's first reaction was that they were happy because they thought they were going to get more local planning.
AMO is also concerned that the entire legislative package is based on policy statements which may end up being too restrictive. AMO wants those policy statements on housing, the environment and social policy to be guidelines only, not regulations.
If there are these regulations, why don't we have a look at them before it goes to committee? Why don't we have these regulations in committee when those people come to make their presentations known so they know what the environmental impact study is going to do and know what it's going to cost, roughly? Let's have the consultants, let's have the legal people there to tell us what this cost is going to be.
AMO fears that the ministry will regard the statements as virtual planning and development prescriptions. That's what they're saying.
The minister denies it is onerous to require that members of municipal councils, school boards, public utility commissions and police villages file, within 60 days of being elected or appointed, a detailed financial information statement containing a disclosure of assets, liabilities, sources of income and financial interests of the individual, the individual's spouse or minor children, as well as companies controlled by any of them.
When we look at small-town Ontario and some of the small municipalities, I have a feeling that this is going to discourage a lot of candidates from running for municipal council.
He claims he is not bringing the whip down harder on elected municipal officials than on members elected to the provincial Legislature. That's what the minister believes, but I beg to differ, because the minister fails to recognize that the elected municipal officials work only part-time. I also understand that directors and first directors of community economic development corporations shall file written disclosures with the clerk of the municipality appointing them. If you have an economic development commission in a city or a large municipality, those individuals who are appointed -- not elected, but are appointed -- are going to have to file within 60 days of being elected or appointed that complete financial information statement.
A lot of business people in the community I represent, especially in the city of Orillia with the development commission, I'm not so sure they're going to want to be appointed to that development commission if they have to disclose in complete detail all their assets and liabilities and sources of income and financial interests. Why should they? They're there to serve the people. They're there volunteering their time to help the community. Yet this minister thinks they should file within 60 days full financial reports.
If this isn't a double standard, then I'd like the minister to try to justify this policy and explain the thinking process that led to its creation.
The Greater Toronto Home Builders' Association and the Urban Development Institute responded to the government's New Approach to Land Use Planning proposals by pointing out that streamlining will not be achieved and that municipalities will not have greater control over the development process. That's not what I wanted to hear, that's not what Mabel Dougherty wanted to hear, but this is what the Greater Toronto Home Builders' Association is saying it's hearing.
The Ontario Chamber of Commerce has also come out against the proposals, arguing that they will have a negative impact on the cost of housing and non-residential development. The chamber believes the reforms could make Ontario less competitive compared to other jurisdictions, which will hinder job creation. Do we really need that in these economic times in this province, another detriment to job creation?
It should be noted that Metro Toronto will be left out of the new planning process. The minister said he was forced to exempt Metro because of the unresolved controversy over who should govern the area: Metro region or the five cities and borough of East York. It was only a year ago that we went through a process in Simcoe county called a restructuring where the minister indicated that we were going to save in that county $1.3 million because it was going to cost them less.
Well, there's not one politician in that county today who can tell me there's ever been a saving of any degree, and most of them will tell me that the cost has been substantial. Not only that, but many of those municipalities tell me, and would tell the minister if they had the chance, that they don't like the process they're in. They don't like the 12% increase in taxes they were given in Rama township, which is now part of Ramara. The township of Matchedash did not like the 17% to 20% increase it got in taxes. And this is the very same minister who stood up in this Legislature and said, "You're going to save $1.3 million." You tell it to the people in those municipalities. You tell the people who voted 80% to 95% against restructuring that they should be happy with what they got. I'm here to tell you, they're not happy.
1950
Several Metro councillors asserted that the NDP government was retaliating for the council's refusal to build four subway lines. I remember the member for Yorkview was today up questioning the minister about when they are going to build the subway lines for Metro Toronto. The government was supposed to give Metro the orders and Metro was supposed to just jump and then say, "Well, how high do we have to jump?" It was interesting to see the member indicate his support for the four subway lines.
The impact of Bill 163 is difficult to measure because of the sheer complexity of the reforms. They are major. Although the government maintains that it is increasing the amount of municipal input and control of the planning and development process -- yes, they are increasing it all right, and they're increasing it such that the local municipalities are not going to be very happy with it -- the legislation will instead create a top-down reform process because of the inclusion of the "shall be consistent with" clause and the frequent use of the term "will."
Many of the government's goals are contradictory. On one hand the legislation is aimed at job creation in the private sector; on the other hand it is putting potentially more regulatory burdens in place. Regional governments will have extra powers to oversee and coordinate planning. Individual cities and towns will have less say in the planning and development process.
Although the PC Party supports the idea of more open government, there are still several questions about the proposed disclosure to the interest commissioner. We do not know how much power this commissioner will have and there are no details about the size of the staff. I'm not so sure, but I even read somewhere that there's going to be a deputy commissioner somewhere along the line.
The emphasis on environmental principles is another concern -- a major one. No cost-benefit analysis has been done on the potential extra costs the reforms could have on private sector development. That is a major issue.
Hon Mr Philip: Have you done a cost-benefit analysis of what it costs now with your bungled system?
Mr McLean: The minister has no idea what the environmental cost is going to be to any major development. He has not told us what the principles are. He has not told us what the regulations are. He has not told us what the guidelines are. He will not give the municipalities, AMO and ROMA and NOMA, the opportunity to have input. He gave them a 90-day deadline, and they are not very happy about this. Intensification is also expensive --
Hon Mr Philip: That's a lie; that's an absolute lie.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Order, please. The Minister of Municipal Affairs, please.
Hon Mr Philip: I withdraw the remark. I suggest he might like to talk to AMO, though, and he'd change his mind.
Mr McLean: I'm glad to see that the minister has cooled off a little bit. He should maybe have another look and read those 100 pages of Bill 163 so he'd maybe have a little better idea of what's in them than what he thinks is in them.
But I'm telling you, the intensification is also expensive and hard to implement through the planning process for private developers. Now, I said that before because I want to try to get the point across that the private developers are not all too enthused about what they're looking at in this process.
There is no strategy for job creation linked to the land development reforms. No rationalization has taken place to sort out the dual approval system created by the Planning Act and the Environmental Assessment Act. I just said, and what I want to repeat is, there's no place to sort out the dual approval for the system created by the Planning Act and the Environmental Assessment Act.
I want the minister to lay on the table before this goes to committee the regulations and what individuals have to do to be able to further a development and to get approvals for development. I would like to have some details with regard to the environmental assessment study, with regard to severances, with regard to minor variances.
I also would like to have a review of the plans laid out with regard to the inspections of septic tank systems. My understanding is it's every five years, and I would like to have from the minister a clarification of what process these people would have to go through when they do their environmental study to get approval. Is part of that environmental study, then, that five years down the road you have to have another evaluation? Do you have to have it inspected? I would like to know what the approximate cost of that inspection is going to be. People out there would like to have an idea. Not only now -- they're paying to get severances, and I can tell you that the problem is not a small one, the minor variance situation and the severances.
I'd like the minister to try and set a policy. I don't know how he can do it. When I've met with municipal officials, some will say, "We want severances, we want this, we want that." You've got another group that says, "We don't want any severances." How are you going to determine it? Are you going to determine it by class of land? Are you going to determine it by putting it back to the local municipality and say, "You set your guidelines and your policies of how you want to handle severances and minor variances in your municipality"? Are you going to say, "We are going to make the policy statements, we're going to make the environmental statements and this is the way it's going to be"? Or are you going to leave it vague and nobody really knows where they're at?
It's got to be one way or the other, Mr Minister. I say to you, before we go to public hearings, we want to have those regulations. We want to know what people are going to have to do in order to get subdivisions approved and proceeded with. You're saying: "We want to bring this process to a conclusion quicker. We want to get the hearings over. We want to say to you, regional government, you do the planning. You tell, in your municipality, how you're going to handle the extension of a subdivision bordering the city of Barrie," which has doubled in 10 years, almost. Are you going to give that county the approvals for around that city to say, "This is where the development's going to be"? Or, are you going to say to the city, "You have some say in what's going to happen in the township of Vespra or the township of Oro"? What are you going to do with that? There's got to be some policy laid out of how that municipality, that county, handles it.
The local municipalities have an official plan. The county is going to have an official plan. The local municipalities' official plans are going to have to coincide with the upper tier, because my understanding is that the upper tier is going to be the final say. In essence, what is the point of a local municipality having an official plan if they're going to have to go by what the upper-tier official plan is? In essence, what you're looking at is a form of regional government which is going to do away with the lower tier.
Mr White: No.
Mr McLean: Well, it may happen. That's what I want to find out in committee, what's going to happen. What I'm saying to you, Minister, is we would be pleased if you would provide the regulations on how these things are going to happen, in committee, because nobody has defined for me how you're going to deal with severances in rural Ontario. It is a major problem and it's going to get bigger.
What are we going to do with regard to estate lots? Is that going to be all part of the planning process in that municipality? You see, if you give the local municipality the authority to put on their own official plan "approved by the ministry with certain conditions," then they can do that. I'm wondering if you are going to allow that to happen. I think the policy statements that you have will be important.
I urge the minister to give a great emphasis on dealing with NOMA, ROMA and AMO. Give them the appropriate time to review it. This is a complex bill --
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. The honourable member for Yorkview, questions or comments.
2000
Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): Mr Speaker, I want you to check in your drawers there to see whether or not you have any pills that might say "a dose of reality." If you do, Mr Speaker, I'd ask you to send a page, perhaps, to bring one of those pills to the member for Simcoe East and perhaps to taste a little bit of the dose of reality.
The reality, to the member for Simcoe East very directly, is that when the Conservatives were the government, everybody was talking about -- and I mean everybody was talking about -- more local, open government. And what happened? Nothing; absolutely nothing, not even an attempt to bring in a piece of legislation that would allow the grass-roots people to have input and to open up the municipal government -- absolutely nothing.
Reality again, and a dose of reality to the Liberals, is that when they were the government everybody at the grass-roots level was talking about the dose of reality, and that was that the Liberals did not want to do anything about open government -- nothing; absolutely nothing.
A dose of reality very directly again to the member who's speaking from Simcoe East is that this minister is quite prepared to put a package together that's going to go to committee, that's going to open up the local government, that's going to allow the grass-roots level and the members in this place to talk a little bit about what changes need to be made.
A little bit of reality from the member when he stands up and talks and criticizes -- at least the minister has got some guts. At least he's able to stand up here in the Legislature, announce some changes, take it to committee and talk about it. Let's see you in committee and see exactly what recommendations you'd like to propose.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): It is a useful exercise to be dealing with this legislation and I think it's timely to do so. I worry about some of the planning that has taken place. Some of it's been very good in some communities; some of it has been less than good.
As I go from St Catharines to Toronto, I look at a lot of the former agricultural land which used to be very attractive to a lot of people. One of the things that was attractive about the Niagara Peninsula was the amount of rural land that was there. When I look at some of the developments that have taken place, which are there largely to service people who work in Metropolitan Toronto -- in other words, the urban growth that has taken place within some of the smaller rural-type municipalities in our area is really there to service people who have no real connection with those communities.
What happens is, when that development takes place, it places an onus on the local municipality to provide schools, for instance -- and we've had some announcements of schools lately as a result of these developments -- and of course they have to provide sewers and water and the other services that are there. Many people believe, particularly at the municipal level, that all of this development is automatically good for the municipality, that it increases the amount of taxes that they can have at the local level -- the assessment.
Dr Joseph Kushner of Brock University, an economist, has produced a paper which indeed indicates that those benefits aren't nearly so great as many people believe them to be.
In the brief two minutes that I have in response I want to indicate my support for the discussion of these planning matters. The fact is that Mr Sewell has put out a choice of options; he has chosen his and we'll eventually choose ours.
Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): I'm very pleased to compliment the member for Simcoe East on his fine speech this evening. It was filled with common sense as to what this government should be doing to change this bill so it reflects the reality of rural Ontario.
I want to add something to what the member said. He talked about how, if the conflict-of-interest legislation as it affects municipal officials, elected municipal councillors, is not amended substantially, we're going to lose a lot of good people who have served previously, who want to serve in the future, but will not consent to run if they have to disclose all their financial holdings, particularly in rural Ontario.
I say to the minister, last night I was at the village of Arthur council, my home-town council. Two out of five members of the council I've known all my life, since I was a child, who are absolutely fine, upstanding people -- there would never, ever be any problem in terms of ethics on that council -- two of those people have told me privately that if this goes through as it is, they're not going to run again. They want to serve, they want to continue serving, and we need to keep them on that council if the people in the village of Arthur want them there. They gave me a resolution that they wanted me to bring to this debate and I'm going to read it to the minister:
"Be it resolved that Arthur village council strongly opposes Bill 163, Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act. In small rural communities a pecuniary interest already is closely monitored by the public and other council members. The general public has nothing to gain by the disclosure of assets and liabilities of part-time rural municipal councillors."
Mr Mammoliti: What are they afraid of, Ted?
Mr Arnott: Please listen.
"Having to disclose these assets and liabilities could only act as a deterrent for strong representation on municipal councils in rural Ontario. This would be a loss to the general public.
"Arthur village council feel that once again the provincial government has lost the reality of rural Ontario."
I believe very strongly and agree with everything that's said in this resolution. I would suggest to the minister that he has to amend this bill such that the small rural municipalities are exempted from the impact of the --
Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): No.
Mr Arnott: Yes, indeed. Otherwise you're going to lose hundreds and hundreds of fine representatives on local council if you don't do that, and I urge the minister to do so.
The Acting Speaker: One final participant. The honourable Minister of Municipal Affairs.
Hon Mr Philip: I thank the member for his comments. His first comment is that somehow there should be more consultation and more studies. I think he's trying to be a Liberal or something or other and have more studies.
The fact is that the Sewell commission consulted widely for two years. We sent out some 28,000 documents, had 66 stakeholder meetings and we received 600 written submissions.
Mr David Johnson (Don Mills): But do they agree with it? None of them agree with it.
Hon Mr Philip: If there is any comment that I have received consistently, at ROMA, at NOMA or at AMO, it was that the Sewell commission listened, it made changes and it was sensitive to the needs of various types of communities across the province.
The kind of stereotyping the member has done on the commission I think is shameful, to say that they are three city slickers. George Penfold has been and is a highly respected professor of rural planning at Guelph university for many years, and to say that he doesn't understand and doesn't have sensitivity to the rural community is simply a sham. It's the kind of hatemongering, the kind of divisiveness this party, the Conservative Party, is trying to put, saying that somehow the rural municipalities should be fearful of the urban municipalities.
In terms of AMO, let me say that the Association of Municipalities of Ontario stated that it fully supports having a set of provincial statements and generally agrees with the province's new approach. He can try and distort that any way he wants, but in fact the people at AMO will find that his distortions are clearly unacceptable to them and unacceptable to the kinds of things they've been saying.
With regard to the development industry, let me just say that Castle Point is one of the prominent developers. Indeed, the member is in the gallery. He's here supporting this legislation, because he knows it streamlines the kind of development he is doing in great cities like Markham in the greater Metro Toronto area.
Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: I'm asking your direction in this regard. When a minister presents a bill to the House, as the Minister of Municipal Affairs did, and a speech is made by a member of the Legislature who's not a minister, and questions and comments are limited to four rounds, I'm asking you whether or not our rules provide that the minister himself can rise on questions and comments and actually have an opportunity to present the final address to the jury. To me, that seems to be unfair.
I haven't checked them, but I'm sure the rules are meant to allow discussion by members of the Legislature in terms of a bill that's been introduced by the minister which he is trying to present, to give us the opportunity to present the views of our constituents in a full fashion. I ask, Mr Speaker, whether there is anything, either in the rules themselves or in the traditions of this House, that would allow the minister to have that opportunity when it deprives one of us in the Legislature of having an opportunity to comment on the speech of the persons in the House.
The Acting Speaker: I think the member brings an interesting point. I don't believe it's a point of order. However, it's an interesting point.
All members are allowed to comment on the participation of another member. Whether they be a minister or otherwise, all members are allowed.
We have now reached the termination of questions and/or comments. The honourable member for Simcoe East has two minutes in response.
Mr McLean: I thought the democratic process allowed for people in this Legislature, whether in opposition or in government, to make comments on legislation that is brought before this House. I find it difficult that the minister would find that anybody should say anything detrimental to a piece of legislation he's brought in -- I find it unacceptable that a minister should condemn another member in this Legislature for not agreeing with everything that he thinks and everything that he says. It's totally unacceptable for the minister to say what he said to me as a member in this House when I'm presenting views of people and my constituents, who have asked me to come here to do that.
2010
I want to thank the member for Wellington with regard to the remarks that he has made here. I want to also thank the member for St Catharines, who has left, for his remarks. I want to say to the member for Yorkview, who talks about a dose of reality, I think he is really still spinning his tires. He should be ashamed to rise in this Legislature and condemn another member for getting up and talking about reality. I can say to you, sir, your conscience should be bothering you.
I want to say the minister that for me to come in here and to present the views of the people I have talked to across this province, because I totally don't agree with what you think, then that's acceptable. I believe that we as opposition members of this House -- and the democratic process is taking place -- are doing what we think is right, because you can say anything you like and leave out other sentences that you may.
But you know, I noticed here today, when we're dealing with other pieces of legislation, every member from the government side got up and condemned every member on this side of the House for what they had to say because they did not agree with what you think. Who do you think you are anyway? There are other people in this province besides you.
Mr Mammoliti: On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: Can I have unanimous consent for a two-minute rebuttal from the minister, please?
The Acting Speaker: Do we have unanimous consent? No, we don't. Further debate? The honourable member for Essex-Kent.
Mr Hayes: Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Interjections.
Mr Hayes: I'm sorry.
The Acting Speaker: Order, please. It's my understanding from the clerk that we do not have the approval of the government to participate. We are now in rotation to the official opposition.
Hon Mr Philip: Mr Speaker, the agreement was that the official opposition would have its usual full allotment. Then it would go back to the Conservative Party, then to the New Democratic Party, at which time Mr Hayes will have his opportunity to speak. That was the agreement. I welcome the comments of the official opposition.
The Acting Speaker: I appreciate the minister's interjection. The honourable member for Brant-Haldimand.
Mr Eddy: I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the bill, which I knew I would get at some time this evening and it was no rush. We're out of rotation somewhat simply because I relinquished to the member for Simcoe East, who must get home to Simcoe county to a very important meeting, I understand. So he is on his way.
I'm not surprised at the discussion that's being elicited on the planning process, having spent many long evenings involved in the planning process with the public and developers and municipal people trying to solve -- indeed, I would have to say that I think the planning process has occupied the greatest percentage of municipal councillors' time and energy over the years, more than probably any other process. But that's the nature of it and of course, as we have seen, planning matters and the planning process are certainly controversial at times. I've been happy on many occasions to be in the middle of the controversy and other times not quite so happy.
We are discussing tonight Bill 163, An Act to revise the Ontario Planning and Development Act and the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, to amend the Planning Act and the Municipal Act and to amend other statutes related to planning and municipal matters. A very long title because it deals with many, many subjects, and I've noted on many occasions where the members of the opposition would say it's another omnibus bill. There are too many things included and we should have separate bills. I think we should stop complaining, because we seem to get more of them the more we complain. This seems to be the granddaddy of them all, because it does indeed contain so many different subjects.
I'm going to speak for a short time because, as you know, we don't have the amount of time allotted to us as I understand was the custom in this House prior to changes by the present government, when indeed members could speak to bills at somewhat more length as they decided. However, we learn to live with the rules that are before us of whatever institution or body we're part of.
I'd like to proceed with some brief remarks about the proposals, because there is a great deal of concern. I, like other members who have spoken, really look forward to the hearings on the bill because I think we'll have some excellent suggestions and presentations by citizens and people who are concerned and interested certainly in this matter.
The bill does include many matters, and one is the revisions to the Ontario Planning and Development Act. But before going to that, I did have a suggestion about the title, because the bill is to enact the Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act, 1994, and I would really think that should be in the title because it's so very important. I realize it is replacing the old Municipal Conflict of Interest Act.
The first part, then, is the Ontario Planning and Development Act, 1994, and I note the elimination of the municipal advisory committees. I don't know the reason for that entirely, but I would think that it would be a good idea to have the possibility and make them optional, if the minister would consider that. But I'll wait till there are hearings to see if anybody really does push for that.
The next part is the Local Government Disclosure of Interest Act, 1994, and I'm advised there by the father, if I may say, of the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, Michael Smithers, who chaired the first committee that resulted in the first act, I believe in 1972 I think the minister said, which was amended some 10 years later with improvements.
I think the title is much better, but it should, he advises, include "pecuniary interest"; that wherever the word "interest" appears, "pecuniary interest" should be included, and that would be in the title as well, because if there is a court case and there is a problem with the act, I understand that the judge will go to the title to take meaning and interpretation. So that's a minor thing, and it's a suggestion of course.
As was mentioned by one of the speakers, we should have an estimated cost of the commissioner's office or department. That is something of course that's very much needed but will have probably a substantial cost to it.
The disclosure of financial interest part of the bill is, as has been said, a great concern for municipal politicians from smaller areas. There's no doubt about it. I'm very pleased to see and I appreciate the staff allowing me to have a copy of the proposed form 1, disclosure of financial interests. I note that it's somewhat based on the MPPs' disclosure of financial interest forms but has been modified considerably, and I appreciate to the extent that it is, that it does not include amounts. It's very, very helpful to have a look at that and to see the change.
However, we agree that there should be an exemption for the smaller municipalities, if that could be considered, of, say, municipalities under 5,000. The reason for that is that people in the smaller municipalities are known to a great degree, if not completely, by all other members and know their financial interests to a great degree.
2020
The difference that I see between the local councillors' disclosure of interest form and the MPPs' is that ours goes to a commissioner and remains private. For the members of a local council, it will go to the clerk or the secretary of a board and be available to the general public. Now that's a big difference.
I've never had a problem personally with things like that, because I always find if people want to know what you own, there are ways of finding that out and people do know one way or another. But it is a great concern, I assure you, and I would hope that consideration could be given to members of municipal councils from smaller municipalities.
I imagine that we'll hear a great deal of that. I don't know what the schedule of hearings is and where the meetings will be held, but I do hope that people across Ontario are given the opportunity to speak to the many parts of the bill.
Now we get on to the bill itself or the policy statements, and they're not statements of course, they're policy directives.
Many people over the years in Ontario have called for a provincial official plan, primarily I think with the view of preserving prime agricultural land. Many people are as concerned as most of the good farmers in the province are that indeed class 1 and class 2 lands be preserved for agriculture for the future use of growing foods for all citizens. That's a primary concern I know of many farmers, of many rural councils and many, many others.
The problem of course is that municipalities, because they're required to finance so many services, are required to raise taxes. Some municipalities are in a position where development automatically comes; no effort whatsoever. There's all kinds of industrial-commercial development.
I think of the township of North Dumfries, which is in the northern part of my riding and the southern municipality in the county of Waterloo, which has an industrial assessment of 52%; very high, very fortunate. As a consequence, it's much easier to keep taxes at the same level than it is in many other municipalities that are struggling to get commercial-industrial assessment to somewhat offset the farm and residential assessment. So certainly, as we all know, municipalities vary from place to place.
The Comprehensive Set of Policy Statements is most interesting and will certainly have a great deal of discussion. There's no doubt about that.
The first, "A," is "Natural Heritage, Environmental Protection and Hazard Policies," and the goal is "To protect the quality and integrity of ecosystems, including air, water, land and biota; and where quality and integrity have been diminished, to encourage restoration or remediation to healthy conditions." That's certainly going to be very complex to most people reading it. There's no doubt about that.
Goal 2 is, "To ensure that wetlands are identified and adequately protected through the land use planning process and to achieve no loss of provincially significant wetlands." That's provincially, and there are many that are designated.
Goal 3 is, "To ensure that development is not permitted in areas where site conditions or location may pose a danger to public safety or public health or result in property damage; and to encourage a coordinated approach to the use of land and the management of water in areas subject to flooding in order to minimize social disruption." Most interesting.
I had a comment on that from a group who said as follows:
"Section 20, subsection 3.2 of Bill 163 amends section 34 of the Planning Act, which used to cover land that is subject to flooding or land with steep slopes, or that is rocky, low-lying, marshy or unstable. It is now expanded enormously and reads:
"'for prohibiting the erecting, locating or using of all or any class or classes of buildings or structures within any defined area or areas,
"'i. that is a significant wildlife habitat, wetland, woodland, ravine, valley or area of natural and scientific interest,
"'ii. that is a significant corridor or shoreline of a lake, river of stream, or
"'iii. that is a significant natural corridor....'"
This particular report goes on to state:
"Ownership of land used to carry an inherent marketplace value. Not so any more, with the power hidden in an act which is betrayal for free enterprisers, who have tried to bargain on a level playing field with a government that doesn't recognize the territory."
The concern here is that the bill will allow municipalities to grab land with no compensation because it makes it unusable. That is a concern in many local municipalities, including some of my own, so that is a matter that has to be looked at.
The problem here is, because the act states that the planning decisions of municipalities must be consistent with these policy statements, it doesn't leave any leeway, any recognition, I don't believe, of local conditions and the need to vary the rule somewhat in certain locations. As we well know, there are lands in every municipality -- there are lands adjoining, for instance, prime agricultural lands that can be used for other purposes and certainly don't affect some types of agriculture.
"B. Economic, Community Development, and Infrastructure Policies: To manage growth and change to foster communities that are socially, economically, environmentally and culturally healthy and that make efficient use of land, new and existing infrastructure and public services and facilities." Of course, the services required certainly vary from one municipality to another.
"C. Housing Policies: To provide opportunities in each municipality for the creation of housing that is affordable, accessible, adequate and appropriate to the full range of present and expected households in the housing market area."
Of course, this again is a subject that's very controversial, and I would just point out that it's another concern for many municipalities that feel that they do have adequate low-income housing, and maybe that can be proven, and don't wish to follow all of the rules and certainly the rules that will be contained in this particular policy.
"D. Agricultural Land Policies: To protect prime agricultural areas for long-term agricultural use." A very, very important policy statement and one that I expect we'll find that many farmers who are farming prime agricultural land will agree with.
Certainly in this province we've seen a great deal, and indeed in some areas too much, of prime agricultural land go under asphalt and be built on. It's lost for ever, and it's unfortunate when you consider the amount of land in Ontario that is not usable for agriculture of any kind, even for growing Christmas trees, when it comes right down to it.
I'm so encouraged. I well remember, in discussing development issues and being at planning meetings where applications were discussed on land in my own municipality where prime agricultural land was affected, people saying, "The last thing we need to do for the next generation is to destroy good agricultural land." So that part is very important.
2030
"E. Conservation policies: To encourage energy conservation, water conservation, and the reduction, reuse and recycling of waste." Certainly it's something every citizen needs to be interested in and needs to be agreeing with and furthering.
So those are the policies, very briefly, which are going to direct -- and I think that's the problem -- planning boards and municipal councils to follow in the future, so the act is not a devolution of power in any sense of the word. It is, of course, a downloading of costs. That has been going on, and of course some of that's been going on because municipalities have requested that they have the right to approve official plans of area and constituent municipalities and to plan area-wide. It is a much greater cost.
I absolutely disagree with the requirement for two-tier planning. I believe one of the problems in our society is that there is, by far, too much overlapping between the various levels of government, Canadian and provincial governments, provincial and municipal, upper-tier and lower-tier.
I was pleased to see that the disentanglement process between the ministry and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario was proceeding at one time and it looked as if there would be some clear-cut decisions to have some services strictly municipal and some provincial and indeed financing on the same basis. I think it's a goal we need to work with and we should be working towards it, and it is very important.
The problem with two-tier planning is, of course, that you have local levels of government fighting and disagreeing with each other. I would not require the upper-tier regional, district, Metro and county governments to have a land use official plan. They should have policy plans or policy statements -- and of course we're talking about provincial policy statements now -- upper-tier policies that the local municipalities would follow and protect the transmission corridors, transportation routes and the other things the upper tiers are involved in.
I feel very strongly that local municipalities should be given their choice. They should be allowed to be in the planning process and have official plans, and I know they are now and it's optional and will continue to be. If they wish to relinquish that to the upper tier, which has happened in many cases -- Huron county is an example where it's one-tier planning at the upper tier, and it's working, it seems to me, and it's a good example to follow; unless there's someone here who knows different, that's the way it appears to be. You don't then have planning at the lower tier and at the upper tier at cross-purposes and at a substantially greater cost.
I think single-tier planning has been working. I don't know of major problems in the region of Peel or the region of York, which have been two of the fastest-growing areas in this province -- a tremendous amount of development. I realize the hard services are at the upper tier, supplied by the regions, and the planning is at the lower tier. I expect the upper tiers have had and taken every right to have input into the planning process, as any other body would, and indeed they may have policy statements.
I think it's a better way. What we're looking at is local planning, and it should be local. Decisions should be made locally as much as possible. I realize there has to be provincial input and there has to be upper-tier input and that has to be protected in a right, and of course it is a right, and the way that right is preserved is simply through appeal to the OMB. That's a cumbersome system and I doubt if we want to see that continued.
But if upper-tier municipalities have the right to approve lower-tier official plans, they can have their policies incorporated and use the terminology they wish. The province is now saying local planning decisions "shall be consistent with" the policies of the upper tier.
I don't think that's the way to go; there should be some leeway. We need to look at a simplified system with the rights of all bodies, including the conservation authorities and indeed the Niagara Escarpment Commission, in planning decisions. I don't think we should continue to have so many different bodies making decisions in the planning process and I feel that's what it is. We need to simplify it and go further. Of course, there are some simplifications here.
I feel that the province is establishing all the rules -- maybe that's too harsh -- all the important rules, let me put it that way, that the municipalities will have to follow in the planning process. The municipalities will have to provide the infrastructure to deal with these. It's very like, in my opinion, the administration of general welfare assistance in the province where there is a General Welfare Assistance Act passed by the province: The regulations are by the province, all the rules, the rates to be paid, and the local municipalities then make the payments.
Some municipalities prefer to have it that way. They say, "It's local and we want to keep it local," and that's fine. But the bodies rendering the services, it would seem to me, must have some of the say and must be able to react to the problems they face. During the recession, it's been stated many times -- I don't know for sure but I read continuously -- that there's considerable welfare fraud. What's happened is that the province has faced up to that by appointing welfare investigators to go over the case load. I've always contended that if the intake workers at the upper-tier level were given the tools to work with, the problem wouldn't be as extensive as it is perceived and may be proven to be by the results of the investigators who have been appointed -- the fraud squad, as I've got noted here.
The new Planning Act means that the province makes the rules and tells the municipalities, which of course are elected levels of government, to follow them.
There is a better way than forcing the upper tiers to all have official plans even though their constituents and local municipalities have had official plans for many years, many municipalities going back to 1949. Indeed it was the lower tiers that really got started in planning, led the way is the way I would say it, and no upper tiers were in planning at all. However, through the years, as regional governments were established, it was decided in some cases that the planning would be at the upper tier. That's worked in some, as I've stated. The county of Oxford, I believe, is another example where planning is all at the upper tier. It's working.
2040
It's not working as well in the regional municipality of Haldimand-Norfolk. I think there it's a matter of size, that it's so much larger, it's stretched out, and of course there's such a diversity from east to west between the old county of Haldimand and the old county of Norfolk, which were forced together into the regional municipality. There are some particular problems there. Indeed in that case the regional municipality has looked at the matter and there's been a devolution of some of the planning process to the local level.
We're all agreed, of course, that there need to be changes in the planning process. I'm told that the waiting time for a planning approval has grown on average from 17 months to 27 months, and that's certainly a bad trend and one that needs to and should be reversed. We need to support efforts that will reverse that and improve the situation.
There is a particular concern by someone who has written to me about the provincial policies and the statement that local municipalities, when making planning decisions, shall make planning decisions that "shall be consistent with" the provincial policies. The statement is as follows:
"The proposal to elevate provincial policy statements from the level of guidance to that of governance" is one that is considered to be "unworkable, unfair and abhorrent.
"Policies are not and should not be drafted in the same way that statutes are drafted. To be effective as policies they must be expressed in more embracing language than in statutory enactments.
"It is one thing to have a system of policies designed uniformly to screen out proposals, as is done, for example, in screening criteria for environmental selection processes. It is quite another thing to have some policies designed to screen out proposals and other policies designed to include in proposals, as is the case with the policy framework proposed. That hybrid system can work, I think, if the policies are used as guidelines but cannot if they are tantamount to legislation." For these reasons, the writer considers the proposal to be unworkable.
"The policies are settled and their application is detailed without the sanction and beyond the scrutiny of due process. Such matters as mapping that may irretrievably prejudice an owner's rights" -- and I've certainly experienced that in connection with mapping under the conservation authority; one in particular affected many properties -- "and the policies themselves, are not subject to appeal, nor are their implications subject to scrutiny in the context of a hearing where full submissions and cross-examination may test the hypothesis. People's rights may be procedurally and substantively affected and that would be unfair without giving them a meaningful right to be heard." I do agree with that and I would expect other members might.
"In our long-established and successful system of governing land use, the role of government is to promulgate policies and provide a fair and impartial decision-making process on appeal so that decisions are made based on an honest and impartial assessment of the merits of matters, subject to scrutiny, rather than on political or ideological considerations. The role of the private sector is to create and produce land developments within the procedural rules and the substantive policies established by the government.
"To have the government actually mandate its policies as laws would be to move into a system of top-down control by the state." One of the previous speakers did mention this important matter. "That would mean that the private sector would be unable to exercise its traditional creative function or to respond to the demands of the people. That type of statist approach is," in the writer's view, "abhorrent and destructive."
For these reasons, it is his view that the proposal requiring that the decisions "shall be consistent with" provincial policy statements is inappropriate and that the requirements should be rather that decisions "shall not be inconsistent with" or, the one I would prefer, "shall be consistent with the intent of" the policy statements. That of course gives some flexibility, a very important flexibility that I would think would be used with good intent in many instances and indeed facilitate good planning.
We have many examples of good planning across this province. On the other hand, we have many examples, as been stated, of some not-so-good planning. In fact, I know of a city which has systemically, through the planning process, changed a fine residential street adjoining the downtown into commercial offices. Then there are now two large shopping malls on the outskirts of that city, and the area between, which was a provincial highway, now a connecting link, is filled with small shops and fast food outlets and has in effect become the main street.
What's happened to the downtown? It's pretty bad. If it weren't for one larger store right in the centre, a new one, an Eaton's shopping centre, there wouldn't be anything in the downtown core, and it is a medium-sized city. Most unfortunate.
The other thing that bothers me when we talk about the example of bad planning is the amount of strip development. It's interesting to see, as you travel across the province from one county and/or region to another, the differences in the planning process and in the policies that are being followed, because you certainly notice a difference in the number of single-lot severances that have been created. Strip development, I think it's called, is so noticeable in others, and then you'll drive into another area where the planning has been much different. I believe the member opposite knows of areas I'm talking about, and it has caused me great concern.
I'm very pleased to see that the Planning Act is being reviewed, that we are looking at some steps to change the process. It's needed. Most people want changes. Certainly they want the process speeded up. There isn't anybody who says it shouldn't be speeded up, no doubt about it.
But I do dwell on and promote this point that with the municipalities that are planning authorities, to make sure we give them some leeway and that the policies aren't so strict that there is no, or very little, local decision-making. It's very important if we're going to continue with local democratic government and with the feeling that when councils meet they can have some effect on the decisions they're going to make.
The other point that is causing some concern to people I've talked to about the Planning Act and the new rules and regulations is the matter of the committee of adjustment appeals. We have here a writer who "condemns the proposal to take away the right to appeal committee of adjustment minor variance decisions to the OMB."
I realize minor variances -- and the terminology is probably part of the problem -- aren't all minor. In fact, many of them are major. I believe the minister previously mentioned about very minor things such as an addition to a lean-to garage or something, that sort of thing, and that's quite a different situation. Surely we could look at that and have minor minor and medium-sized variances, some terminology that would differentiate between variances that members should have the opportunity to go on to appeal if they felt very strongly about it, and this particular letter will give you an idea why the writer feels so strongly about minor variances continuing to be appealable to the OMB.
2050
"People care profoundly about their homes, their businesses and their rights to make alterations to their properties, or oppose what they fear might be damaging alterations by others. Committees of adjustment normally hear applications over a 10- to 20-minute period and do not permit the leading of evidence or cross-examination and so forth. The committee of adjustment hearing is not a hearing in a judicial sense.
"People therefore rely on the fair, impartial and full hearing that is available to them at the OMB on appeal. They may not always agree with the result but the objectivity, impartiality and fairness of the OMB appeal is a fundamental right that is critically important to the parties involved, and essential to the functioning of the system.
"Committees of adjustment are appointed by municipal councils, subject to reappointment by councils and are often not unresponsive to the reality of political pressures.
"That elected municipal councils should hear appeals from their own appointed committees of adjustment on minor variance matters is an astonishing proposition.
"In order to conduct a hearing as that term is used in law, all members of council would be required to sit through the entire hearing, each of which, on average, would take half a day to a day or more. No member could leave or return because he or she would then miss some of the evidence and be disentitled to decide." We've had that sitting through planning applications -- many municipal people. "Instead of acting as a legislative body, they would find themselves acting as a judicial body having to address the rules of evidence, examination in chief, cross-examination, the evidentiary value of exhibits and so forth.
"In the city of Toronto, there are in the order of 200 committee of adjustment appeals each year. It is inconceivable that council could conduct proper hearings for all or even a minor percentage of these appeals." I can agree with that.
"It is simply not appropriate for elected municipal councils which are legislative bodies to act in a judicial manner.
"Further, it is not possible for municipal councils to conduct a hearing function in light of the limited time available to them to do so. They ought to be spending their scarce time on broader legislative issues rather than on what are often disputes between neighbours." Of course, that's true.
"It is not fair to the parties involved to have their appeals of minor variances from bylaws adjudicated by the very council that is responsible for the passage of the bylaw and by elected politicians, who, let us acknowledge realities, must respond to votes....
"With appeals on consent issues going to the OMB and appeals on minor variance issues going to the elected council, inconsistent results would emerge from the same proposal.
"Council as a legislative body passes laws, much like the Legislature of the province. The OMB adjudicates appeals from decisions relating to those laws, much as the courts adjudicate appeals from provincial legislation. People would find it astonishing that appeals from court decisions concerning provincial legislation should be heard by the Legislature. That is equally so with appeals from zoning adjudications being heard by councils.
"Our system provides for impartial appeals in the context of full and fair hearings from decisions relating to minor variances. The system is efficient and, with mediation and case management, becoming more so. It avoid litigation, systemic congestion, bribery and corruption. These benefits and values would be at risk if appeals were directed to politically elected councils.
"The OMB assesses issues of substantive impact and applies the tests set out in the act. It is shielded from the heat of political passions and pressures....
"Your objective in taking away the right to appeal to the OMB is to streamline and speed up the process." I realize that. "Your proposal is based on what appears to be advice from the commission" -- that's the Sewell commission -- "that 28% of OMB appeals involve minor variances. It is my understanding, based on advice from officials at the OMB, that that information is not correct. I am told that the commission was advised that only 18% of OMB files involved minor variance appeals and that those appeals take only approximately 6% of the board's hearing time." I know that's still considerable time, but it's small in comparison to the other time.
"As an alternative to making an application for approval of a minor variance, a proponent can apply for a rezoning. Rezoning applications are much more expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome to process than minor variance applications but they do have the right of appeal to the OMB. If that right is removed with respect to minor variances, that would inevitably generate a major increase in rezoning applications and appeals. The result would be counterproductive.
"The law of unintended consequences would indicate that, rather than promoting streamlining, it would lead to anti-streamlining. It would generate more work and more power for lawyers and lobbyists. It would consume far more OMB time than is presently used with minor variance appeals." So I hope that it can be considered a change.
"Many people would be profoundly unhappy at what is essentially a pre-emptive seizure of rights under the guise of a procedural improvement. They would want to keep their right to have decisions made about matters important to them in the context of an impartial hearing where the merits are fairly weighed, rather than in a political forum where the heaviest clout prevails."
For those of you who have served on municipal councils, I believe you know what that means. Those are two important suggestions that should be considered. I expect we'll be hearing considerably more about them.
Coming back to other amendments of the Planning Act -- there are many of them -- the minister stated there hadn't been a major change in the Planning Act since the 1940s. There was a new Planning Act in 1983, and there were many changes in the Planning Act at that time but perhaps not wholesale changes.
One of the major changes in that particular act, of course, was the elimination of joint planning committees between municipalities. They were considered unwieldy, they were considered not reporting to the councils, and it was decided that a much better system was to make the local councils responsible for making planning decisions. In most cases, the councils became the planning boards. Many continued planning advisory committees, which reported to the council, but it seemed to have been a much better system when the joint planning areas were eliminated. However, they did serve a real purpose in the smaller municipalities before upper-tier planning came in vogue.
I see there is provision for establishing joint planning boards, but it's left to municipalities to make that decision if they wish to cooperate. When you look at the map of Ontario, you can well see why that should be a possibility, because in the case of many of the upper-tier municipalities the regions and the counties are so large or elongated -- I think of Hastings, over 100 miles from north to south -- that many municipalities find they have more in common with municipalities adjoining them and indeed would prefer to have a joint planning board with an adjoining municipality because of growth and development that is common to them both, rather than going the other route and being centralized in a county or regional structure.
I think that's another reason why it's better, rather than force counties to have official plans, to request them, perhaps even require them to look at the matter of policies that they then could provide to their local municipalities for inclusion in their local plans.
2100
The advantage is that if the requirements of the upper tiers regarding transmission corridors and transportation routes are included in local plans, then there isn't the need to fight a battle every time the upper tier wants to do something. We have to remember that in many cases the upper-tier municipalities provide the water and sewer services, which really does facilitate and allow development to take place in many areas that it would not.
As we were saying, there has been a great deal of change in the province of Ontario. We've certainly had a tremendous amount of development in three decades and it's to our detriment, because it wasn't planned.
I've often heard it said that the QEW from Hamilton to Niagara Falls was built in the wrong place, that it should never have been built on the plain below the escarpment, that it should have been built up on top of the escarpment where the land isn't quite as conducive to growing the tender fruit crops to the extent that the other area is.
The problem of saving land for agriculture, for food production -- we should be saying that -- is that most agricultural products are at a low price, some even below the cost of production. So the agricultural industry needs support. It needs help and it's very important. It's going to be very important to this province.
What is it? The land that we have in southern Ontario will grow more crops, I believe, than any other land in Canada. We can grow such a variety of crops it's just unbelievable. Because of our heat units in the south and the Great Lakes making our climate so temperate, we can grow crops that are not grown to any extent anywhere else in Canada.
Although I believe that the policies that are being foisted on the municipalities, and they are being directed that they follow them, are not flexible enough, I realize that we have to have some very strict rules in some areas, and one is the preservation of prime agricultural land classes 1 and 2. As I said before, I'm continually encouraged by the number of farmers who are full-time farmers, farming for the future and producing the food for all of us who want it that way. They know the importance of it and they say it has to be saved. Many other areas are not conducive to growing crops to economic advantage and that is quite a different thing.
The member for Simcoe East went into great detail and mentioned many of the provisions of the Municipal Act that are being changed, and there are a great number. However, I'm not going to go over them in detail because I think that municipalities and others, developers -- "others" will be citizens -- will have the opportunity, I hope, many of them or most of them, to make a presentation to the committee on the bill and to give their suggestions.
I appeal to the ministry to listen to those and to make it possible for local municipalities to feel that they are still in charge of their destiny, that they are making the important decisions within parameters of what they would like to be like and what they see as their future.
I met with the representatives of the township of Norfolk the other day, as was mentioned in the House, to discuss their concerns about the Planning Act.
One of the problems at the present time is that most of us are still talking about the Sewell commission report. That was the main event; that's what we know most about. There are some differences between the Sewell commission report and the bill that's before us. We need to know what they are and see whether we agree with them now or not. It's a very important issue and it certainly affects the future of our province. We still are very important agriculturally in the world. We can grow many varied crops, as I said, and we must be in a position to do that. I think the majority of our citizens know that and want that to continue. So the Planning Act will proceed and we'll have an opportunity to speak to it.
There was another section that I wanted to just briefly comment on. That was the matter of the closed meetings. Open meetings and legislation requiring open meetings is nothing new, because the present Municipal Act states that the council must have open meetings, that all councils have to have open meetings. There is no requirement that committees, including committee of the whole, be open. That's unfortunate.
I'm glad to see that change, because citizens need to feel they are involved in their local governments, their provincial governments, and they have the right to attend and hear the debate and the reasoning, the rationale for decisions that are made that affect their daily lives in the communities in which they live. I'm very pleased to see that the exceptions or the reasons that councils can meet in camera are set out in detail. I think that's good and I did approve of them.
The one question I have about that particular item, however, is that any vote taken shall be in open meeting. I have a problem with that. I guess it needs to be explained, and maybe there is an explanation, but I think it's a detail that we need to have. If you have the vote in open meeting, what are you voting on? You would have to have, it seems to me, the details of the question.
The system that's been followed in many municipalities is that you go into committee of the whole, sometimes in camera, and it has to be specified that it's in camera, on a certain matter. The matter is specified -- personnel matters, for instance -- and a decision is made. The system I've seen followed is that they make a decision and the members there agree on a certain matter and there's nothing written. That's not a very good system, because the official who must carry out the direction doesn't really have anything to produce to say, "This is what's decided and this is what they told me."
Some councils will pass a motion and it's approved and then when the committee of the whole rises and meets in council, there would be a report that the report of the committee of the whole be adopted, and there's a vote. There's no report and there's no report given; there's no report written. So how does that fit together? I'm not entirely clear on it. Perhaps that's something that should be discussed because, as I said, it's important to have open meetings. I know most councils follow that, although there are examples from time to time of councils that meet in camera because they want to discuss matters in camera without people hearing about it. It's not an acceptable situation any more, because the citizens have a right. They're the ones who are paying for the service, the operation of the municipal council, and they have a right to hear the debate and the rationale. I really do support that. It's time it was.
2110
I think there was a great deal of fear by municipal councils of what might really be brought out and the rules there would be, but if they're following the present Municipal Act, councils don't really at the present time have the right to have in camera meetings of council. They do of committee of the whole. That situation is going to be much improved, and I do appreciate the opportunity for that to happen.
The member for Simcoe East was very adamant that any regulations should be produced and in our hands before the hearings take place so they can be debated or commented on as well. That's one of the things I find disturbing. That's not a new situation where acts are prepared and the regulations come later. The reason for that of course is that many times they're very involved and it takes a long time to prepare them.
It is a shortcoming if regulations are not available to know exactly what is meant, because many times things are going to be in regulations, and of course people tend to be suspicious if it's, "That matter will be dealt with and all that detail will be supplied in the regulations." Immediately, people suspect the worst. I don't know what kind of detail will be in the regulations in this case, but that's certainly placed with many bills. So I think we need to look at that and get on with the hearings. As I said, I hope we have the opportunity to have hearings across the province.
As was mentioned, one of the problems here is that we really haven't had a great deal of time to look at the act itself, to take the time to read this in detail, and then to take the time to try to compare it with the Sewell commission report recommendations hasn't really been possible for many members. At least I found it very difficult because of the very busy session and the number of committee meetings and the number of bills that are coming forward.
That's an awfully important part of it, and I would hope the ministry is open to amendments that are submitted in good faith with good reasons for why they should be changed. As I said, I hadn't really thought about the minor variance situation to the extent that I should have until I read that letter and the details about that. That's a very, very important matter to somebody.
I've been very concerned over the years with decisions of the OMB, because having been an elected municipal official with what was considered a good official plan, I've run into the problem on several occasions where the OMB would come in, hear an appeal on a severance application that had been turned down, in a prime agricultural area that's in contravention of the official plan, and approve. I have several examples.
What happens is, when you have that in a rural area, here, here, and over there, then other people get the idea, "If that person can have a severance, so can I." Not always. I could never understand why the OMB did not follow the provisions of local official plans more closely than had been my experience over a number of years. It was very disturbing.
I really appreciate the fact that I was really too busy to ever attend an OMB hearing, because I'm sure that it would have caused some problems for me, as well as for the presiding officer. There's no doubt about it. I just could never understand it.
I know it's a judicial exercise. It's like a court dealing with it, and perhaps they would hear evidence, but in many cases the reason the local committee of adjustment turned down the particular application was proven to be right in the long run. That has to do with it not being for the purpose that was stated and that type of thing, but I suppose that's a judgement call.
So planning has gotten to be a very, very contentious process locally. It's gotten to be a very expensive process. I often think, how are we expecting municipal governments to continue to come in with zero increase in mill rates -- and I do, as a local taxpayer -- provide the services that we feel we need and indeed we should have and are getting, with changes in requirements, and certainly the devolution of the planning process -- not the powers, because I don't think we are devolving planning powers to municipal governments, but the planning process is going to increase.
If we require every county in this province to have an official plan, that's going to be a cost. I see the county of Middlesex has just recently decided to have a planning department and that's going to be a cost, of course, and that's their decision. The county of Middlesex does have a policy plan and now the township of Metcalfe has its official plan partially approved. All local municipalities have official plans and have had for many years, going way back, long before many of the municipalities that are now constituent municipalities in regional municipalities across this province have had them. So it's a great concern.
Municipal councillors are struggling and working very hard to do things better, and I admire them for that, because they see it happening all over, to provide the same services or the same services in a different manner at the same or a lower cost, yet they're faced with this. I know most of the regions have official plans, and their lower-tier municipalities, the area municipalities, so they've got that in place, but for those that don't it is going to be a cost. I see the two regions that did not have official plans, both York and Peel, are proceeding. Perhaps they had planning departments before; I'm not familiar with that but they may have had. The minister is nodding that they really did have. Perhaps they were even working on official plans, so that's a different matter. I really feel very strongly that we should not force two-tier planning, that it should be done in some other way.
The other thing I feel very strongly about is the viewpoint of a municipality -- I'd better not mention a name because it doesn't come to me at this particular time -- in a region saying that it should have subdivision approval powers and some of the other powers. The example they gave was that if the city of London -- and it's a very large city now, as we know, and I guess it applies to all the separated cities -- in time may have the power of approval of subdivisions and some of the other things, why can't cities like Mississauga and Burlington and a great many others through the GTA or across the province? I support that.
I think we need to look at the simplest, least costly way to provide the planning process. All municipalities are involved in planning, and we need to streamline it. Over the years, millions and millions of dollars have been spent on the planning process. A lot of citizens really resent that sort of thing because there's nothing tangible. I suppose they resent it even more when they see something develop or take place that they had fought against and it is successful.
2120
I know official plans need to be flexible, and they are, but really there have been a lot of mistakes made, haven't there? I often think of the OMB and its decision in Burlington, where the city of Burlington decided a few years ago that it would provide service in a sequential manner in area after area, going from the QEW north to Highway 5, and there would be some areas in the north part of Burlington that would not be serviced or developed for maybe a decade or so.
I well remember there was an OMB hearing for an area quite some distance from the developed and serviced area. The development was approved by the OMB, and the council of the city of Burlington was ordered to provide the services forthwith to that area. That's not local decision-making and it's not elected decision-making; it's decision-making by an independent body that for some reason or other decides to go against the will of the municipality, which was doing it primarily for economical purposes. It was economics that had forced them, and they had dealt with this and they said: "This is how we're going to develop. The entire city of Burlington isn't going to develop in one year, and we're not going to develop the remote areas until we're prepared to service it, and that's going to be done over a number of years."
It seems to me that's good planning. On the other hand, we have decisions made on major, major commercial developments that really spell the death of the central cities, and that's one that's beyond me. It'll have to be dealt with by the planners of those municipalities.
I do see such a tremendous difference in the province of Ontario, though, where you have the regional municipalities, most of which were established in areas that are going to be completely and fully developed within the foreseeable future. That certainly has happened. Growth was so fast, and regional government was established as an upper-tier urban form of government to provide for and handle that development.
Now we have a case, of course, where there's at least one regional municipality where it was expected there would be a great deal of growth and development, and that hasn't happened. While we won't use the term "rebellion," there's a great deal of antagonism towards the regional government. The people want that changed, and the ministry is looking into that. I'm hoping that I can attend some hearings on that when the hearing dates are established this summer to see what the best form of local government -- I remember someone saying: "Let's look at the area. What is the best form of government?"
I think the days have changed when two-tier governments were an absolute must, and I don't know that we really should be forcing areas to stay in two-tier governments if they fully realize what they're facing and the services they must provide and the decisions they will have to make as single-tier municipalities.
Of course, we do have lots of examples of single-tier municipalities that are operating very successfully. We have a number of separated cities still. We do have two examples in the province of Ontario of what are called single-tier regional municipalities. The two examples that were given were the city of Thunder Bay, where two cities and several townships were amalgamated, and the town of Timmins, where several municipalities were amalgamated, and the term was used that they're single-tier regional governments, so to speak. I don't know whether the term rings true. Then of course, there's the unicity form of government.
I'd better get back to the subject at hand. I'm pleased to have this opportunity --
Interjections.
Mr Eddy: I'm doing all right?
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): You're doing well. Good job.
Mr Eddy: -- on Bill 163, which contains so many important matters to the municipal governments across this province of Ontario. I really invite and hope that the municipal councils will look at this in detail, that the municipal associations will get responses to us, because I don't believe they've had the opportunity maybe to deal with the bill itself and the recommendations in it, the actual changes, to the degree that they wish to. They perhaps haven't had the time, but in preparing for presentations to the committee -- I certainly hope to sit in on some of the meetings of the committee to hear and/or read the presentations and hear what's being recommended, because this is a very important bill to the citizens of the province of Ontario, the developers, businessmen, municipal councillors and I guess just about everyone, because this is a big change. Changes are coming, there are going to be changes, and we're going to be living with a new set of rules in the planning area that will affect us. So, please, let's hear what you have to say about it. I'm anxious to, because I have some strong views on it.
I feel very strongly that we're not giving as much power to the municipalities as we should be, that in many cases we're increasing their costs, and I think many municipal councils are going to be very unhappy with some of the recommendations here. But I also realize it's up to them to come to grips with it and make their presentations so that we all have the advantage of hearing what they think about it and what changes they would like to see, if any.
Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I do appreciate everyone staying awake for this presentation.
The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): I thank the member for Brant-Haldimand for his contribution. Are there questions or comments by the members?
Mr White: I want to compliment my colleague for his excellent remarks. As always, he's generous and complete in his description.
I would like to comment a little bit about the issue of flexibility in plans, because certainly what we're talking about here is a situation where people who want to develop their properties, municipalities that want to plan for their futures, will have an opportunity to do so, will have clear guidelines set up in the province which enable them to take power for themselves. This is empowering legislation, legislation which allows people to make decisions in their lives and in their communities.
Mr Stockwell: What are you talking about?
Mr White: We're talking about a situation where developers will know what the rules are. The rules will be up front. They won't have to continue to appeal to Queen's Park for what the answers are. They will have the opportunity to know what they are beforehand, to look up what the guidelines are, how they develop their properties, how municipalities move forward. They'll be able to do that in a way that they have never been before.
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): What is an OP?
Mr Stockwell: Tell me what an OP amendment is.
Mr White: In the past, they had to beg Big Brother at Queen's Park, Big Brother Tory. Now they will have the opportunity of knowing what the guidelines are. Whether it's the wetlands policies, the GTA policies, they'll be able to know what they are, and they will have flexibility within that broad parameter.
I think those are issues my friend was able to highlight. They are things which make municipal government easier, because those people at the municipal level will be able to say: "Where are we going? What is our official plan? How did it have to be consistent with the province and with our upper-tier municipality's?" Those certainly make the issues in front of us, in front of development, easier. It makes jobs easier to create, developments easier to put into place, when they know where they're going and how to do it, with those broad parameters.
Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I feel quite honoured to address my good friend from Brant-Haldimand. If there is anyone who understands the municipalities and the power they can handle and the services they need, it is my colleague from Brant-Haldimand.
I hope the government is listening -- somehow I have a feeling that it was tonight -- to what he was saying about the empowering of municipalities. As he pointed out, it is not a matter of empowering municipalities that this report has reflected, it's a downloading on to the municipalities, and we must be extremely careful. Governments from above all the time seem to hand down these responsibilities without any kind of financial support, and then the blame can be laid on the municipalities. So, as he pointed out, we must be careful how we define "empowering" in this respect. As you know, his history and his experience in the municipal sphere should be listened to very attentively and carefully.
2130
Quite a few of the members here -- and I see the Minister of Municipal Affairs -- understand the issue. Although he has worked very closely with Mr Sewell, and I myself know the kind of work he has done --
Mr Mammoliti: Alvin, why did you stand up? Is there a reason why you're standing up?
The Acting Speaker: Order. Please allow the member to continue.
Mr Curling: To the member over there, if you want a special briefing from me, you may come later on. But you should go over the Hansard from my colleague. You would learn a tremendous amount. I want to commend him for the excellent presentation he has given. I look forward to you looking at those recommendations and adhere to them.
Mr David Johnson: It's a little hard to one-up on that one, but I would like to say to the member for Brant-Haldimand that he did bring a lot of light on to this topic. I see the minister over there listening intently. The minister has indicated to us that everybody is content with this, that there's been consultation, years and years of consultation, and that all the municipalities are in agreement and everybody's in agreement. I wish it were so.
The member for Brant-Haldimand in his speech was pointing out some of the pitfalls; for example, this issue of "have regard for" and "be consistent with." Up to this point in time, in the municipalities' official plans the wording was that they would have to "have regard for" the policies of the province of Ontario. The member for Brant-Haldimand has brought that forward. That's a big difference from what is being recommended here tonight: "shall be consistent with." That removes all the flexibility for the municipalities across the province.
I can tell you, there are many different circumstances in the province of Ontario. If the minister and the government are of the opinion that the wording that is introduced in this bill tonight is going to promote economic development in Ontario, you've got another think coming. This whole bill was put forward years ago because of concern for the environment, which is commendable. We have no problem with that; the member has no problem with that. But let's not confuse that with a bill that's going to encourage economic development in the province of Ontario -- absolutely not. The words "shall be consistent with" are going to scuttle development in the province, particularly in the rural areas. The member for Brant-Haldimand knows that well and he's pointed that out.
Mr Hayes: I will compliment the member from the opposition on the remarks he made. I don't agree with everything he has said, but he certainly has done something the Conservative Party didn't do: Both opposition parties were invited to come to a briefing by staff in Municipal Affairs, and the member from the Liberal Party at least showed up. It shows that that briefing did some good and he got some good information out of that.
The member talked about exempting the small municipalities, those with less than 5,000 population. What that would mean is that approximately 600 municipalities, or roughly three quarters of them, would be exempted from this bill, and we don't see any reason why a smaller municipality, because they have fewer residents, should not have open local government or should not have to meet the conflict-of-interest rules.
Comments were also made that there's nothing in this bill that will create economic development. There certainly is.
I'd like to quote a letter from one of the developers, Mario Romano, president of Castle Point Development Corp. I don't have time to read it all. He's in the gallery here today. He said, "I might also take this opportunity...in particular, the provincial facilitator's office, which has been vital to us in resolving and averting possible problems."
However, they had fears like others did about the New Democratic Party. They say, "You have done more for our industry, the efficiency of the marketplace, than any previous government." I think that's pretty good. It says it's working.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Brant-Haldimand has two minutes to respond.
Mr Eddy: I appreciate the comments made by the members for Durham Centre, Etobicoke West, Don Mills and the parliamentary assistant. But I want to make it absolutely clear that I do have some concerns about the bill, and certainly my constituents do. I'm hearing from them. They want it simplified. They are afraid of the additional costs, and that applies to some areas more than others. But mainly it's the concern that there isn't the flexibility that there should be, that the policies that have been developed, as the letter said, without a lot of consultation -- they may be based on other papers, but without a lot of consultation -- are there, they're the law, they're like statutes and they must be followed, and that's causing a great deal of concern.
But I'm hoping that during the hearings, hearing presentations and the fact that there may be amendments even by the government, we can get on with a new planning process in Ontario that will facilitate planning and facilitate important decisions in our local communities for development where there should be development.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The member for Dufferin-Peel.
Mr Tilson: I'd like to make a few comments with respect to this bill. I had two speakers go ahead of me, aside from the minister, the member for Brant-Haldimand and the member for Simcoe East, the critics for the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party.
The biggest problem many of the opposition members have in this place is the shortness of time to properly review exactly what this bill is saying. I've had discussions with municipalities in my constituency, with AMO -- my staff called AMO today -- and they said they really haven't had an adequate time to properly review it.
I know this bill will be going to committee and we'll spend some time in committee hearing delegations from municipalities and education people on all kinds of issues, but I can only say it's regrettable that we're allowed such a short time to prepare. This is another one of the many bills crammed into this short space before we rise for the summer.
This bill did receive first reading by the minister on May 19th of this year, and these amendments, as we know and as the minister has said, are based on the final recommendations of the Commission on Planning and Development Reform which was announced on June 6, 1991, by the member for Windsor-Riverside when he was Minister of Municipal Affairs.
Mr Sewell, the former mayor of Toronto, was appointed the chairman. Mr Penfold and Toby Vigod were appointed as commissioners. The purpose of this commission was to restore confidence in the integrity of the planning process and to make the system more efficient and to protect the environment, reduce red tape and clearly define municipal and provincial affairs.
I don't think it's met this mandate, I don't think it's met this attempt. We have already heard from a number of municipal people. Mayor McCallion has indicated what her thoughts are, and a number of others, and there will be more as more people have an opportunity to review exactly what this bill says.
2140
Mr Sewell and his commission put forward 98 recommendations to address these concerns. They had public consultations. I know they met in my constituency of Dufferin-Peel, they went all over this province, and they put forward 98 recommendations to address these concerns. The commission identified several areas of concern, including too much red tape, delays in hearings, decision-making, lack of environmental protection and too much complexity.
There is going to be criticism that this legislation is creating yet another bureaucracy and another set of delays and another set of complexities. It's already been said that municipalities will need more and more consultants to assist them with this process.
Mr Callahan: Jobs Ontario.
Mr Tilson: The member says, "Jobs Ontario," but the fact of the matter is, more and more consultants will be needed by the municipalities. The municipalities won't be able to afford these consultants, and guess what? Guess who's going to have to pay for that? The property taxpayer.
It's a prime example of a problem the province hasn't been able to resolve. It's passed it on to the municipalities and the municipalities are going to have to pay for it. It's going to be a very expensive process to the municipalities, and when it's revealed I think we'll be shocked.
In December 1993 the minister announced the government's response to the commission's work and published a number of policy statements, and of course there's been some history since then in terms of where we've gone.
The bill is really an omnibus bill, and I don't intend to spend my time -- because I don't have it, quite frankly -- on all the issues. It's quite a complicated bill. I don't know how many members over there have read it, but it's a very complicated bill, at least I find it a complicated bill.
The bill has five parts. The Ontario Planning and Development Act, 1990, is repealed and is replaced with a new one called the Ontario Planning and Development Act, 1994.
Part II replaces the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. This is the part that I would recommend anyone who is running for municipal office should have a long, hard look at and realize what you're getting into. You're about to embark on a municipal career, hopefully get elected in the fall, and you'd better know what this means because it means you're going to have to have more disclosures than the people in this Legislature --
Mr Callahan: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I think this is a very important issue we're discussing. We're sitting here till midnight to deal with these matters, yet the government has not maintained, as is its obligation, a quorum.
The Acting Speaker: Will the clerk please determine if a quorum is present.
Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Committees: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Dufferin-Peel has the floor.
Mr Tilson: The second part, as I indicated, replaces the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act and has a whole new set of sections. There's going to be 24 sections. I recommend that all those who are seeking municipal office read those because it's going to have a major effect on your careers.
For example, each person elected to local government must disclose assets, liabilities, and sources of income. There are new procedures for disclosure of pecuniary interest by all local government representatives and so on. The time that's allowed -- I don't have the time to go into great details, but there's going to be major criticism about that.
Part III deals with planning amendments, and these amendments are intended to streamline the planning process.
Part IV contains amendments to the Municipal Act to create more open local government.
Part V is made up of amendments to a number of pieces of legislation to make them consistent with the Planning Act, the Municipal Act and the Ontario Planning and Development Act.
Those are the five sections, very complicated. It will require a great deal of time, by the committee, to review all these sections and to determine whether the legislation is correct.
I have had an opportunity to discuss this bill with a number of people, notwithstanding the short time we were allowed to prepare. One of the groups that has expressed a major concern is the Greater Toronto Home Builders' Association, and I know we're going to be hearing more from them. They have prepared an excellent paper. If any of you have an opportunity to obtain it, I'd recommend that you do that, because it is quite critical of this bill. I'd like to review some of the things said in this paper.
"The reform package has four main impacts.
"1. Applications must be processed and responses made quickly or not at all. The amendments to the Planning Act set up a quick-march system of the frames for processing applications....
"2. The provincial policy statements will in fact govern decisions."
When you start talking about more open government, yes, the municipalities will be providing the service, but it's going to be based on provincial policies. In other words, the province will not be paying for this, this will be paid for by the municipalities; the cost of administering the whole planning system will be paid for by the municipalities based on statements that have been implemented by the provincial government. Once again it's an example of Big Brother coming in with the big stick and hitting the municipalities.
"3. Environmental considerations and procedures are integrated into the decision-making process under the Planning Act. Planning and development decisions will be based on ecosystem planning considerations."
I have been told that one of the concerns is that if you want a severance, you're going to have to have an environmental assessment, whether you're an individual or whether you're a corporation. The problem is that the little guy is going to be once again hit by this, because who can afford all these consulting fees, these requirements that are going to be put on by the municipality?
The fourth of the four impact items from the reform package is: "Elimination of minor variance appeals to the OMB means either full-scale hearings will be conducted at the municipal level or minor variances will be processed to rezoning applications with appeals to the OMB."
The problem with that is that traditionally the OMB has acted as a judicial body and has made many decisions, good decisions; for example, the issue of variances. Often variance decisions are made by municipal governments and are then appealed to the OMB, and the municipal government may have made a decision based on political reasons. The OMB has been an unbiased body and has made good decisions, and there are a lot of people afraid. They value their property rights, and to make decisions on their property rights on political as opposed to judicial reasoning simply is giving a lot of people many concerns.
The new legislation, the new act, requires planning decisions to be consistent with policy statements issued by the minister. So I repeat, when you say you're going to be having open government, it's not quite the case. It's based on provincial principles.
The minister, when he introduced the package, said in his statement, "Municipalities will be given greater control of the development process." Well, there's at least one mayor from a fairly large municipality, Mrs McCallion, who has made a statement that's been reported in the press, and she said quite frankly that she doesn't agree with that. In addressing the Urban Development Institute national conference on June 2, she said the government "was imposing policies from above, leaving municipalities with sometimes difficult and expensive dregs of implementation.
"Policymaking moves up the ladder to the ministerial level. Implementation responsibility moves down the level to the municipal level. The significant policymaking role of planning, whereby the structure and character of communities is determined, moves from the grass roots to the ivory tower. Microplanning moves down to the local level. The idea is that by making planning policy top-down and planning implementation bottom-up, abuses will be eliminated and approvals will be accelerated."
2150
I understand what the government's trying to do. They're trying to reduce delays. But at all expense? Because it's going to cost more. It's going to cost more to the municipalities. Regional municipalities, except Metro, will approve official plans. Cabinet can prescribe the contents of the official plans, but the act requires official plans to be directed primarily to the management of "physical change and the effects on the social, economic and natural environment." That's reference to clause 16(a) of the act. As well, the processes and materials developed for environmental assessment may be used in preparing official plans.
One of the concerns of course that has been put forward by some of the municipalities that have had an opportunity to review it is that some of the smaller municipalities simply can't afford to do municipal plans. Where are they going to get the funds for that? Where are they going to get the money for that? Because it's going to be mandated that they do it. There's only one answer: That's from the property taxpayer.
Other municipalities that have official plans -- and they've gone through very expensive processes to get that far -- may, as a result of this legislation, have to review their official plans, may have to redo many of their official plans. That too will result in a major expense to the municipalities. So this planning process that this government is trying to improve is being proved on the backs of the property taxpayer. That is one of the major concerns, I think, that is going to come forward as the hearings are revealed.
The act mandates a management manual, breach of which could be fatal. Action time frames are stipulated for all parties involved in processing planning applications. It will be very difficult -- and this is one of the concerns that has been expressed -- for example, to meet the 15-day time frame. Holidays, spring break, Easter, pre- and post-election periods pose serious problems to the municipalities.
Municipalities may, as a matter of prudence, simply manage approvals in order to avoid having to give notices and so forth during such times, and this would cause processing delays. You can see from the start the fear of bureaucratic quagmires, which municipalities are revealing themselves. The municipalities have a great deal of worry.
One of the other concerns that's been expressed by many -- UDI sent out a newsletter some time ago expressing its concerns on the fear of the property owner; it gave the example with respect to the wetlands discussions -- basically the fear is that these provisions will sacrifice the rights of the public on the altar of expediency. In other words, that's what the government is trying to do. They're trying to make the process expedient but at all costs.
It's not going to be a cost to the provincial government. The whole expense and the whole philosophy of this government has been to pass the buck to other things in the same way it has with corporations, where it has created these new corporations to own the debt of this province and thereby really mislead the public of this province with respect to where we stand on our provincial debt. This will be another example. This whole process of debt that could result in this process will now be passed on to the municipalities.
The time frames are very tight for the private sector. Objectors lose their rights to appeal if they do not object within the mandated time frames, which are generally 30 days from the time of the mailing. Again, it's not just the issue of municipalities that are afraid of this, but the private individuals as well.
With respect to zoning bylaws, municipalities will have a new environmental zoning bylaw and that sounds interesting, except you wonder what the effect of it is going to be. For example, they include the power to prevent any construction whatsoever on land that is -- and I'm referring to section 34 of the bill -- "hazardous, subject to erosion or to natural or artificial perils." They may pass zoning bylaws prohibiting any use whatsoever of land or use or construction of buildings on lands that are contaminated, on groundwater recharge areas, headwater areas or areas which contain sensitive aquifers.
This of course leads me to the best part of the bill, because my time is fast disappearing, the subject of the goals. The new act charges a number of other statutes with respect to the Municipal Act allowing bylaws to prevent the placing of fill on alterations or grade.
The town of Caledon just passed a private bill with respect to that. I'd be interested in looking forward and hearing more from the committee work as to whether it will affect that piece of legislation. They also put forward a number of goals with respect to natural heritage, environment, protection and hazard policies. The heritage committee in Caledon has expressed some concerns that perhaps the definitions with respect to heritage haven't been properly defined.
Goal number 2 is one that I simply can't miss. These are policies that are being put forward by the province which the municipalities will be obliged to follow. Goal number 2 says, "To ensure that wetlands are identified and adequately protected through the land use planning process and to achieve no loss of provincially significant wetlands."
Do you know what I think of when I read that policy? Some co-op down on Toronto Islands called Flying Toad which is being built on wetlands. In fact, there's a protective wall around this area to stop the water from coming in. All of the buildings are going to be built on stilts.
This would contravene goal number 2 of this legislation, and yet I think it was Bill 61 that says: "No, you don't have to worry about any laws, any municipal bylaws or provincial laws. That's the way they can do it. You can do anything you want with respect to Toronto Islands." But the development that's being planned for Toronto Islands already violates goal number 2.
Then there's another goal which I simply can't miss, and that has to do with agricultural land policies. For example, they say, "The goal of this policy is to protect prime agricultural areas for long-term agricultural use."
I must say, as the critic for the Ministry of Environment who has been watching the IWA create three sites on prime agricultural land in the greater Toronto area -- specifically, I know, for example, that the superdump that's being built in Bolton is being built on prime 1 agricultural land. That site would not pass the test being put forward by the Minister of Municipal Affairs to protect prime agricultural areas for long-term agricultural use.
What gall to put the people of Caledon and of Vaughan and of York through all the absolute hell that they've gone through with respect to these three superdumps. You've ruined many of their lives. You know these three superdumps are going to simply ruin their lives, they're going to ruin the area. Worst of all, they're going to ruin prime agricultural land, and you have the absolute nerve to put in your bill a goal that says that you're going to protect prime agricultural areas for long-term use.
A lot is going to be heard. I can guarantee you, Mr Minister, that the representatives from those three areas, the ratepayers' groups, will be coming to the public hearings. You better listen to them and you better have a good answer as to why in the world you're putting dumps on prime agricultural lands and you have the gall to put this provision in this bill to say that you're trying to protect prime agricultural areas for long-term agriculture use, because you're not, and you know you're not, with your waste management program.
Hon Mr Philip: You cut 20% off the agricultural budget.
Mr Tilson: Listen, give me a break here. You're putting dumps on prime 1 agricultural lands. You know it and you're violating the bill which you're put forward in this House, and there's no excuse for that.
You're no better than the Liberals when they tried to put a dump in Whitevale without an environmental assessment. Can you ever forget Bob Rae standing at Whitevale and saying, "There's not going to be a dump"? He's the guy that called the former Premier of this province a you-know-what, yet you're worse than any of them for putting this policy forward. You're going to put a dump on prime agricultural lands and you have the gall to come here and say you're trying to protect the farm lands in this province.
Mr Mammoliti: No, he's worse.
The Acting Speaker: There will be a chance for every member to comment. The member from Dufferin-Peel has the floor.
2200
Interjection.
Mr Tilson: No, no, I won't.
Madam Speaker, thank you for bringing some order to this place. It's difficult sometimes to stand up and -- I would like to carry on with one other subject. I've got a very few brief moments left. That has to do with minor variances.
I have been referring to a paper that has been prepared by the Greater Toronto Home Builders' Association. I'm sure they will make it available to any member. I admire them for moving so fast, considering the fast process of how this bill is moving. With respect to minor variances, they say:
"In a direct attack on the rights of property owners, both for those for and for those against development, the act takes away their ability to appeal minor variance decisions to the OMB. Because of that right to appeal to the OMB, applicants and objectors do not assist on the full hearing they are entitled to by the Statutory Powers Procedure Act at the committee of adjustment level. The new act allows council to make minor variance decisions. If it does so, it may have to conduct full and proper hearings for each application, and council's decision will be final."
In other words, the whole process has become political. The whole process will not be based on sound judicial decisions but will become political. I can tell you, when the property owners discover that, they simply won't stand for it. People, as I have said, care profoundly about their homes. I'm sure the members up here who are busy making remarks care profoundly about their homes and their businesses and their right to make alterations to their properties or oppose what they fear might be damaging alterations by others.
Committees of adjustment generally hear applications over a 10- to 20-minute period -- for any of you who have been on one of those, and I expect many of you haven't, that's about how long it takes -- and normally do not permit the leading of evidence or cross-examination. Committee hearings are not hearings in a judicial sense. If decisions haven't gone the way they wanted, either for or against, people have the right to rely on the fair, impartial and full hearing available to them at the Ontario Municipal Board on appeal.
Our system, like any other system, sometimes produces wrong and hurtful decisions. What makes them tolerable is that the process is fair and impartial. I must say, I question whether the procedure that is being created by this government will be fair and impartial. I submit that it won't, because in order to conduct a hearing, as the term is used in law, all members of council -- and again all those of you who are running for office, listen to this because you're going to have a whole slew of new burdens put upon you -- in order to conduct a hearing as to how the term is used in law, all members of the council would be required to sit through the entire hearing.
The hearing would consist of examination in chief, cross-examination, submission of evidence from expert witnesses, including planners, traffic consultants, architects, urban design consultants and so forth. Each hearing would, on the average, take a day and a half or more. Those of you who are seeking municipal office -- and I've heard stories that some of you in the government will be seeking municipal office in the fall -- remember that you're now becoming a judicial body and you're going to have to spend a day and a half on many of these decisions.
Some hearings have taken in excess of a week. I remind members of this place and any councillor who wishes to seek office, no councillor would be able to leave or return during the hearing because he or she would then miss some of the evidence and be disqualified from deciding. Instead of acting as a legislative body, council would find itself acting as a judicial body having to address the rules of evidence, examination in chief, cross-examination, the evidentiary value of exhibits and testimony and so forth.
Municipal councillors are going to have to become very qualified in this area of the law. I suspect many of them will have to take courses and training, because with due respect, I question whether many of them will be able to do it.
The city of Toronto has over 1,000 minor variance applications in a normal year. That's another problem, because council, with all the work it does in the municipal field, simply does not have the time to conduct such hearings. It must spend its scarce time on broader legislative issues.
Remember that many of the councils in the province of Ontario are part-time positions. They're not full-time positions like many of the councils in Toronto. They're part-time positions. They have other jobs. They're simply not going to have the time or the ability to do what this legislation is asking to be done.
The parties involved may be content to have their appeals on minor variances from bylaws reviewed and adjudicated by the very council that passed the bylaw, and elected politicians who let us know must respond to votes. That's the problem. The persons who pass the bylaws are then going to be making the final decisions on these things without any appeal. It's like judge and jury, and it's all over.
The right to appeal to the OMB is gone for ever. I submit that our present system is an impartial system. It allows the right to appeal to the OMB, and that is for ever gone. The OMB assesses issues of substantive impact and applies the tests set out in the act. It's shielded from the heat of political passions, as we see in this place, and pressures, and I think generally speaking the OMB does fine work.
There have been other concerns put forward with respect to this legislation. The whole Sewell commission was referred to as being for the big city and doesn't consider the differences out in the countryside, in the rural areas. I think you're going to find a lot of concerns about that.
School boards, which are continually trying to plan for accommodation, are concerned. They are submitting already that they don't have the right to participate in expansion with respect to development. They're responsible for building schools and for providing the education. There doesn't seem to be any process that enables the school boards to become part of the process with respect to development.
That's another matter that I hope the government will consider with its amendments, that is, to enable school boards to talk about the availability of school accommodation and the adequacy of school sites. That has been a concern that has existed. Many of you who have been on municipal councils and school boards realize that, and this act seems to have failed to deal with that.
My time has expired. I look forward to hearing many of the delegations that will be coming to the committee, hearing their concerns. I hope this government and the minister will listen to their concerns. There are going to be many, many controversial issues, and I hope he will be prepared to make substantial amendments to this piece of legislation.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments to the member?
Mr Hayes: I'd like to thank the member for Dufferin-Peel for his participation. I only have time to touch on a couple of points, especially the one dealing with minor variances. I'd like to tell the member that a minor variance is just that: a minor variance. We think these are issues that municipal councils should properly deal with. They deal with a large number of other complex issues. I'm sure they can handle these.
This would enable the OMB to concentrate on more significant planning developments like the official plans. Besides that, for the member's information, if the member is concerned about the workload on the municipal councils, the decisions certainly could be delegated to a committee of adjustment.
There's another issue here when you talk about environmental assessment. The bill does not create any additional requirement for environmental assessments. I'd like to just make that very clear.
The other area here is, the member gets up and talks about the burden we're putting on local municipalities and the costs and all these kinds of things. At one time he seems to be trying to defend the local politician, and then at the next breath, he gets up in this House and says that minor variances should go to the OMB and they shouldn't be dealt with by the local politicians because local politicians play games. I think that is really an insult to local politicians in this province.
In the other area about the cost, there's been a lot of duplication in planning between the province and the municipality. This piece of legislation would certainly streamline the process and it wouldn't cost a lot more money like the member tries to indicate.
2210
Mr Callahan: I'd like to address, in the few minutes I have, the question of the minor variance. The member for Essex-Kent says a minor variance is exactly what it says: a minor variance.
I'm not sure whether he came from municipal council to this august building, but I spent 16 years on city council and I can tell you as a matter of practicality we had numerous applications that were made to the committee of adjustment which were nowhere near minor variances. They were attempts to rezone through the process of the minor variance through the particular body.
What happened was that the council would get these decisions back and would say clearly, each member of council would say, "This is not a minor variance." So we would move to appeal it to the Ontario Municipal Board.
What this government is doing now by the implementation of this act -- I hope the minister is listening, because I think it's very important -- is that it's now going to permit and encourage people who wish to rezone lands, rather than going through the normal process, which requires accountability and information to the public, is going to allow them to get it through the minor variance provision.
The net result of that will be that he will have taken away from the municipal councils a right which was given to them to protect the interests of the community by ensuring that the process was not abused and that minor variances which did not constitute exactly what it says, a minor variance -- a minor variance, as you know, is normally that if a bylaw requires a setback or a side yard of two feet and you're two inches or three inches short, you can go the minor variance route. My experience has been that often minor variances were used to rezone properties without all the protections that were built in for the purposes of rezoning.
The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments? The member for Etobicoke West.
Mr White: Oh, come on, he wasn't here. You can't respond to a member when you weren't here.
Mr Tilson: He was watching on TV.
The Acting Speaker: Does the member for Etobicoke West wish to comment?
Mr Stockwell: Yes, but Madam Speaker, I hadn't said a word and already the cackles were rising.
Interjections.
Mr David Winninger (London South): You were never better.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr Tilson: Give him another minute. He hasn't even said anything and he's only got a minute left.
The Acting Speaker: If the member would like to comment, please go ahead.
Interjections.
Mr Stockwell: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Mr Tilson: You guys won't even let him hiccup.
Mr Stockwell: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It's also --
Mr Callahan: I think the clock should be set back.
Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: The member lost about 40 seconds without saying a word. I move unanimous consent that he be given back his full two minutes.
The Acting Speaker: The member from Etobicoke, please continue.
Mr Stockwell: Continue? I was just going to take my two minutes to comment on the member for Dufferin-Peel. He brings to this a very historical view because he was a member of council in Orangeville, and he offers, with respect to the minor variance issue and some of the other issues that come before council, the need of councils to pass bylaws and then rule on minor variances to those bylaws.
It has long been an interesting conundrum that local councils are in when they are asked to rule on decisions they have made with respect to minor variances. It's something that probably could have been examined a little more closely by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, something that I think a few councils would like some clarification on because there is, in my opinion, sometimes a conflict when dealing with the same issue that you've passed specific bylaw regulations on.
Ms Haeck: I want to point out to the member for Dufferin-Peel that there are a lot of my constituents who are involved with ratepayers' groups who are exceedingly anxious for the open-government legislation. They have been monitoring what has been going on in their respective city halls. They are very much concerned about the process by which decisions are made. They're wondering about influences. They have concerns about having public meetings and being fully apprised and fully involved in those decisions.
The open-government legislation that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and his ministry staff have put together meets the concerns of my residents admirably. In speaking on their behalf this evening, I have to say that it's about time. It's taken far too long to get to this juncture, and I think that with the questions that are happening at local councils, it's exceedingly important that these regulations are in place.
I also wanted to briefly address the issue of agricultural lands. I have an organization in my riding called the Preservation of Agricultural Lands Society that commends this government heartily for two programs that we have brought into place: the Niagara tender fruit lands program, and then also the Sewell legislation, because it will protect specialty crop lands that are in the shadow of urban development.
I hope that the member for Dufferin-Peel, when he looks at his own document, the supposedly Common Sense Revolution, which turns around and cuts 20% out of ministries like the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, like the Ministry of Municipal Affairs -- we would have none of these programs and my constituents would be sorely disappointed that they would not have access to these programs.
The Speaker: The member's time has expired. The honourable member for Dufferin-Peel has up to two minutes for his reply.
Mr Tilson: Most of the comments had to do with the issue of minor variance. There are many things in this bill that we can talk about, but I can tell you that those municipalities that have spoken to me have indicated that they're not satisfied with the whole process of the minor variance stopping with the municipal council and that they believe what is going to happen is that people will lose confidence in that system.
Instead of making an application for a minor variance, what they will do is apply for rezoning, and these applications cost more, take longer, are more time-consuming, are more cumbersome than the minor variance applications, but the best part of it all is they have the right to appeal to the OMB.
That's very important to people. That lack of political influence that has so often happened with respect to municipalities. Removing the right for minor variance applications will simply increase zoning applications, rezoning applications and appeals, and I would suggest that the result of that will be counterproductive.
Some people will simply take the position that a council is a legislative body, enacts laws, as does the Legislature. The OMB adjudicates appeals from decisions relating to these laws. Much of the courts adjudicate appeals from provincial legislation. So I can say that appellants would be as uncomfortable to have their appeals from court decisions concerning provincial legislation decided by the Legislature. That's like this place passing a law and saying: "Okay. We're going to have a committee that's going to decide whether that law has been complied with." In other words, to do away with appeals to the courts. The same feeling is going to develop with respect to minor variances and municipalities, so to the minister, I would suggest you reconsider that proposal.
2220
The Speaker: Is there further debate?
Mr Hayes: I'm proud to participate in this debate about the proposed package of legislative amendments and policy statements to reform land use planning in Ontario. As parliamentary assistant for Municipal Affairs, I feel very strongly about these reforms and the benefits they will have for Ontarians everywhere.
Some people can't understand why this is an important topic. It is of interest only to people over at city hall or in the development industry, they say. I say they are wrong. Land use planning directly affects the lives of everyone in our community: farmers, home owners, cottagers, builders, local government people and those concerned with preserving the environment.
It affects jobs, and it affects spending. Land use planning determines how many sites will be developed for residential, commercial or industrial uses. In fact, it determines whether new construction can happen in our communities at all.
It also affects how land is developed, whether agricultural land will stay in farming and whether significant natural features like river valleys will be preserved. This is no abstract topic reserved for those who make a living at it. It should be of interest to us all, because it affects us all.
I'd like to limit my remarks to three aspects of the proposed reform package: environmental protection, municipal empowerment in the planning system and open, local government. As the representative of a rural riding, I'd like to focus my thoughts on what planning reform will mean for rural Ontario.
When we introduced Bill 163 on May 18, we were particularly pleased with the level of support offered by our stakeholders. We were able to announce that representatives of the development industry, environmental groups and Ontario municipalities would come together on an advisory task force chaired by our provincial facilitator and help us with the practical aspects of implementation.
The following day on CBC's Radio Noon program in Ottawa, the chairperson of the rural section of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario said: "Basically, we're quite pleased with the document as it was presented yesterday by the minister. I think I was most pleased by the facts in the first part of the presentation, where Mr Philip acknowledged that good planning can best be accomplished by the people affected by it -- so that's the local level of government. We're quite pleased to see that." That was the chair of the rural section of AMO.
In rural communities, some people feel that Queen's Park has meddled too much, putting a stop to even small building projects on agricultural land. Others feel that government has been too lax, permitting too much prime farm land to disappear. Our reform package will put to rest concerns such as these. They will create a much stronger planning system where policy will guide decisions rather than the whims of bureaucrats, local politicians or builders and developers.
For example, we believe that the new planning system can meet both economic and environmental goals, that there does not need to be a tradeoff between jobs and the environment. The way we're going to protect the environment in the new system is through a series of clear, broad policy statements. One of the most important legislative changes in the package is a requirement to make local plans consistent with these policy statements.
The statements set out where development can be permitted or prohibited in such areas as woodlands, valley corridors, water systems, habitat areas and wetlands. It also takes into account economic goals, as well as housing, conservation and aggregate policies. Perhaps most importantly for rural communities, it also sets out policies for developing agricultural land. But this government was careful to avoid the trap of protecting farms without protecting farmers. Generally, the agricultural land policy reserves prime agricultural land for farming, but it does give local communities faced with growth pressures or opportunities the ability to develop some agricultural land.
This doesn't mean that every acre of farm land will be protected. What it does mean is that municipalities must demonstrate the need for building on farm land through their official plans and take measures to use existing infrastructure where possible.
In tandem with a policy-led planning system is the willingness to give municipalities a greater say on how their communities should be developed. Under current legislation, the province basically has planning authority. This means the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and other ministries have developed the sizeable bureaucracies necessary to approve and enforce municipal plans.
We disagree with this approach to planning. It makes for bad decisions. Civil servants at Queen's Park do not understand the planning priorities of our communities, rural and urban -- not all of them.
What we are doing is to assign specific roles and responsibilities to the province and municipalities. The province will be responsible for setting policy. The municipalities will be able to approve development without provincial approval once official plans are in place. We believe that this will have a big impact on rural economies. Townships and counties, for example, will be able to approve a wide range of activities in agricultural areas such as farm vacation facilities.
With the current difficulties facing agriculture, I know there are many activities that farmers wish to pursue but are now blocked by current planning requirements. We believe that as long as property owners are abiding by provincial policy and local official plans, there should be greater flexibility at a local level to approve new uses. This is what our reform package will do. Although we are giving local councils greater development authority, we also want to avoid the potential conflicts that such additional powers may bring.
I'd like to talk for a moment about the part of the bill intended to make local governments more open and accountable to the people they serve. This is very important in view of the new responsibilities they will take on in the area of land use planning.
As the minister has said, the legislation covers three main areas with respect to open local government. First, it tightens the rules about when municipal council meetings can be closed to the public. All meetings will have to be open unless certain issues, such as buying property, personnel matters or court actions, are being discussed. All voting and decision-making will have to take place in the open. This change responds to concerns raised frequently by members of the public and the media, in both rural and urban Ontario, about the public's ability to scrutinize the municipal decision-making process.
Second, the new legislation requires municipalities to adopt strict rules on how they dispose of surplus municipal property.
Third, it updates the law on conflict of interest. The new rules clarify and simplify what is now a complicated area of law.
As a former municipal politician myself, I can tell you that the old rules inhibited local politicians from taking part in important council business simply because they weren't sure if they were in danger of breaking the law. By clarifying the rules, the legislation will allow councillors to take part more fully in the affairs of their municipality without fear of breaking the law accidentally.
One major change that has attracted a lot of interest among local politicians is the requirement that local elected officials disclose certain personal financial information. They'll have to do this once a year, and the information they disclose will be available to the public.
There are a couple of points that need to be made about this new requirement: First, it is very similar to, and no more onerous than, the disclosure requirements that apply to all of us here in this provincial Legislature. Second, while they will have to report the sources of income and their interest in real property, businesses and certain stocks and bonds, they won't have to provide any dollar amounts. They won't have to say how much they earn or how much their assets are worth, nor will they have to provide a detailed list of clients or suppliers if they are in business.
A politician who makes a living as a farmer, for example, would have to declare only that the income came from farming. There would be no need to list major buyers or the volume of his or her business with them.
This annual disclosure exercise will not only increase public trust in elected representatives, it will also remind the elected representatives themselves of the need to be mindful of possible conflicts and help them to avoid inadvertently doing anything illegal.
2230
The new laws on local government openness were developed after a thorough consultation process. That process began in 1990 when a committee representing municipal, school board and public interests was formed to study the municipal conflict-of-interest legislation. The committee held 24 meetings and heard input from municipal councillors, school board trustees and members of the public before making recommendations to the government.
Taking those recommendations into account, the government prepared draft legislation, which was circulated for comment. More than 500 responses were received. The government reviewed the draft legislation with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, taking into account the public response before developing the new legislation.
This package of reforms is an ambitious undertaking that basically turns around decades of legislation practices which have built up a system which is backlogged and adversarial and still does not adequately preserve natural features. Our planning reform package takes a huge step to building a new planning system which is cooperative and efficient while protecting the environment.
I was very pleased to partake in the discussions and also to be able to work in implementing this piece of legislation. As I said earlier, from my own municipal background, this is really long overdue. I think it certainly clears the air when we talk about planning and it clears the air when we talk about conflict of interest and it takes away a lot of the guessing that municipal politicians have to take, and not only the municipal politicians, but the ratepayers and the developers and planners. So I'm very pleased and I'm looking forward to comments on this bill.
The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Essex-Kent for his contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments.
Mr White: I'd like to compliment my colleague the member for Essex-Kent on his excellent remarks. I think my friend indicates how well this ministry has responded to the needs of rural Ontario. Of course, it should be noted that he was formerly the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.
My friend has sat on council in a rural area and he knows the problems of planning in an area like that. I think he also is emblematic in his presentation of how important it is to have sympathy for rural issues and of how rural politicians, rural councils, are not devoid at all of concern about the environment; in fact, that is their prime concern. Their prime concern is maintaining their areas in a truly environmentally sensitive way with preservation for the agricultural land that is the bedrock of their community and their economy.
My friend speaks very clearly of how well the consultation process has gone about, how it has involved all of Ontario, how he, as a politician with a great deal of experience in municipal matters, will be involved through the hearing process. I know that my friend, through his long experience in provincial politics as a member of the government and previously as a member of the opposition, has spoken extremely well on behalf of the rural communities in western Ontario and will be a very, very diligent representative of the ministry on those committee hearings.
We're looking forward to the comments that my colleague will be making and the sensitivity with which he will be able to approach these issues throughout all of this province, so he will be able to hear from and respond to hearings throughout this province.
Mr Robert Frankford (Scarborough East): I'm very pleased to be part of this debate. It's a very important piece of legislation and a topic on which I have considerable enthusiasm and which I've learned a great deal about since I've been a representative of Scarborough East.
I think we're extraordinarily fortunate in having John Sewell as the lead on this, somebody who has considerable experience, who is very thoughtful and who I believe is really at the forefront of a new approach to planning, which I believe is something that is in the spirit of our times and is moving across North America. I believe Ontario is very much at the forefront with this.
Mr Sewell writes regularly in Now magazine, and I have the most recent one here, which is about a conference in Los Angeles about the sort of neo-traditional approaches to planning. He says here:
"The provincial government's recent adoption of a comprehensive statement of planning policies and the introduction of legislation to implement many recommendations from the Commission on Planning and Development Reform should encourage these attempts to create more livable communities."
I believe this legislation opens the way to those new approaches to planning which are desperately needed as we look around at the type of suburbanization which is prevalent throughout the continent and which is subject to very profound criticism by people like Andres Duany, who is advocating neo-traditional towns, which I believe, as I listened to the opposition, is what they would really like but that they have unfortunately got stuck with being part of all the traditional land use, land zoning that has had very detrimental effects on our economy and on our environment.
Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): I've had the opportunity to listen to my colleague from a neighbouring riding to mine, the member for Essex-Kent, and I listened to the member from the Conservative Party. When I listened to my colleague from Essex-Kent, he was very clear in highlighting the benefits that are there versus the current situation, which I believe Mr Tilson was commenting on. It's quite a difference.
What he's talking about is that personal information, financial, be in the public eye so that the public know what the elected representatives are, because I believe Mr Tilson had clearly indicated there are backroom deals going on currently in the system and they were making decisions politically versus the reality of communities.
What I also wanted to bring up, which my colleague brought up, was that through the examination of the freedom of information and protection of privacy, there were a lot of concerns about more open government, because the general public, who are becoming more acutely aware of what's going on in our communities, wanted to know what's happening; in the public eye versus behind closed doors, in camera meetings. I think it's very important to allow more of an open process so the general taxpayers can clearly understand what's going on.
The other important issue about the legislation is the time. I heard the Conservatives saying, "Well, there wasn't enough time to prepare." If since 1990 is not enough time to prepare on the consultation that has taken place on this legislation, I wonder how much longer they would like to go. Are they saying they would like to continue to stall the process? I think my colleague was very clear on the timing that has been put forward in developing this legislation.
What I see with the legislation is, number one, it's going to save money, both for the participants of the municipal area and the builders and the community in itself. I feel it being a creative and positive way of creating economic renewal in our communities, because it allows local planning for the local elected officials to look after the needs of their community. What I also believe it will allow us to do is be more rational in our decisions about what we do for our communities to make sure that the socioeconomic factors in our community are taken into consideration during the planning process.
The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments?
Mr David Johnson: I appreciate the comments of the parliamentary assistant, and I want to be fair in this debate.
Mr White: Well, do so, David.
Mr David Johnson: I will do so, thank you very much. The parliamentary assistant, I know, because of his background in municipal life and his involvement with this ministry, is sincere in his comments. I would ask him, though, if he has the opportunity, to address some of the concerns that are coming in across the province of Ontario.
I have a letter, for example, from the director of planning and development in the county of Wellington. He's speaking on behalf of the county planners. He feels that the policies, for example, in agriculture leave little room for local decision-making. He's afraid that particularly the rural regions in the province of Ontario will suffer and they will have no leeway in terms of planning their municipalities.
I speak on behalf of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, which has expressed the same sort of concern. There are two different groups: one representing municipalities and one representing business, the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. They say that the policy is a made-in-Toronto proposal and limits the choice of housing for the people of the province of Ontario, and they have concerns.
2240
Then I speak of another group, another totally different group, Mr Minister. I'm sure you would be interested in the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto. The Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto, had you listened to them, have a number of concerns. In particular, they feel that you've protected the environment but at the cost of shutting down development totally in the province of Ontario. That's what they say.
Have you read their letter, Mr Minister? Take the time. It might be instructive. You might learn something.
The Speaker: The member's time has expired. The honourable member for Essex-Kent has up to two minutes for his reply.
Mr Hayes: I think it's quite obvious that the Conservative member over there didn't listen very well to his own colleague, because his own colleague was almost suggesting that we should do things across the rest of the province the way they do it in Toronto. I don't agree with that.
You're talking about all the fear. I think it's very simple that whenever there are any kind of significant changes that a government proposes, there is always going to be that kind of fear. But I think the other thing is that the member has failed to realize that there are a lot more other organizations and associations and municipalities that support this legislation than any letters that he has over there.
In the interest of saving time here, I want to thank everybody who participated and responded to my comments. I certainly look forward to their support in pressing forward and getting this legislation implemented so we can have some real good planning reform in the province of Ontario.
The Speaker: Further debate? The honourable member for Brampton South.
Mr Callahan: Let me say at the outset, I agree with some comments that were made in this House that the provisions requiring disclosure are nothing more significant than what members of this Legislature have to do. I think it's important that if the integrity of the process is to be maintained, and also I suppose for the protection of the municipal representatives, having this type of disclosure available in a public forum can do nothing more than to add to the fairness and understanding by the public of just what goes on by their elected representatives.
There may be problems with smaller communities. I would think the minister might look at that, perhaps as a result of people who come before the public hearings during the summer, because the situation in larger municipalities -- although I know it has been argued in this House -- should be similar to smaller municipalities.
There are often things in smaller municipalities where you may have a town or a village of 200 people where probably most of them are related. They probably all know everything about one another, and what you do by requiring this type of disclosure may be unnecessary or in fact may cause them some type of embarrassment in having to reveal things that perhaps heretofore no one knew about.
I will not go into those in great detail. I think you can just simply let your mind think about it and you can understanding what I'm talking about. That's all I have, really, to say about the disclosure provisions. I think they're necessary and responsible.
I might say that when I was on city council for 16 years, we did not go into closed session except for the reasons that are now being put forward in Bill 163, and I think most municipalities did not do that. I suppose the additional item that this legislation will provide is for a motion to be made so that the public knows why you're going into a private meeting, and then the result of the decision will have to made public. I think that makes sense.
I bring to the minister's attention, jumping very quickly to an item about delegation of authority -- and you indicated that I might be giving you a legal opinion tonight. I believe that the delegation of the powers of the committee of adjustment may very well be outside the appropriate boundaries of delegating authority, and you might want to take some advice from your municipal lawyers on that. There have been cases, I believe -- I haven't done municipal law for a long time, but it seems to me that delegation of powers that are rightly those of elected representatives cannot be delegated. I want to take a look at that.
I want to bring specifically to the attention of the minister, for purposes of the record, a letter I received today from the chairperson of the Dufferin-Peel Roman Catholic Separate School Board. The letter was basically a formal registering of objection to the fact that this act does not deal with the issue of school locations.
All of the years that I was on council it was a very significant problem in our community in that we were growing so rapidly that children were being bused from the place where their development had been set up, where they were living. They had to be bused long distances to another school at some other location.
Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): Why did the municipality approve the development?
Mr Callahan: The Minister of Health says, "Why did the municipality approve the development?" Minister, I had suggested that they not approve it for that very reason. However, they did approve it, and in fact I think that was the subject of a court challenge, in which case the municipality was told that it had to proceed with the development.
So what I'm saying is that the school boards still face the very --
Hon Mrs Grier: That's what this legislation would prevent.
Mr Callahan: This legislation, with all due respect to the Minister of Health, does not address this problem. In fact when I was on city council it got to the point where two issues were addressed, and the first one the Minister of Health will be very interested in.
For all the years, I guess the last 10 years and perhaps even before that, I fought to have a further health facility developed in my community. They had some 45 acres of land which was zoned by the Chinguacousy health services board. We got within about an inch of finalizing it under the former Liberal government. Unfortunately, when this government took power and took office, the former Minister of Health, who is no longer the Minister of Health, indicated to me and my colleague the member for Brampton North that the provision for that health facility was not going to be carried out and that in fact they were restudying the plan.
At the time a great deal of money and time and effort and thought had been given to this, to the point where we had a model developed. It seemed to me incongruous and almost to the point of lunacy that the district health council then would be directed again to study this issue and spend more time, more tax dollars on an issue that was clearly one of importance to my community, one that made sense because the land was available -- it wasn't a situation where the province had to spend great dollars on land -- and it was to be an ambulatory care facility, which in fact would have taken a lot of the pressures off our emergency services.
The reason I raise that issue is because that was something that bothered me greatly when I was sitting on city council, along with the fact that we did not have appropriate sites or necessary sites for servicing the numbers of people who were coming into the Brampton area. We were probably one of the fastest-growing municipalities in North America.
I had suggested at one point in fact that we had to alert the people who were coming into our community about this inability to provide schools within the neighbourhoods of the housing developments that were going up. The best we were able to get was a sign that was posted outside of the subdivision, saying: "Your children may not necessarily be allowed to take their schooling in this area. They may have to be bused to another location."
As I'm sure, Mr Speaker, you would understand and all my colleagues in the Legislature would understand, if you look at the budgets of school boards, the cost of busing is horrendous. It's in the millions. We do no service to our taxpayers who are already in the community by putting the burden of that busing on them.
So I register again, as I say, the objection of the chairperson of the Dufferin-Peel Roman Catholic Separate School Board, and I'm sure it's one that will be echoed by the public board as well, that this legislation does not provide for a mechanism or a process whereby developments, specifically in legislation, cannot be approved or will not be approved unless the sites for these schools that are within the developments that are being proposed have to be available. I simply register that as an objection that was sent to me, and I think a very meaningful one, by the chairperson of the Dufferin-Peel Roman Catholic Separate School Board.
2250
I'm not going to speak to the full 30 minutes, so I will relieve everybody's anxiety. I want to get a few things on the record; that was one of them. I've dealt with the question of minor variances. It's always been my belief that a minor variance, as I said before, was if you've got a bylaw that requires a front yard or a side yard or a setback of x feet and you're a couple inches off, you can obtain, through minor variance, a relief from that bylaw.
I found the experience, and I think maybe other members who have been on municipal councils experienced this as well, that very often you would get committee of adjustment decisions where the developer had actually gone to the committee of adjustment for what he thought was a minor variance or perhaps didn't even think it was a minor variance. He figured he'd take that approach first, and if he was able to do it there, he got it done a lot faster and a lot cheaper.
They would come back to council and council quite properly would look at them and say, "Well, this is not a minor variance and we're going to appeal it to the Ontario Municipal Board." I recognize that within this bill there is a mechanism set up for a rehearing of the provision by the council. I'm not sure who rehears it in the event the council is the committee of adjustment that's hearing the original minor variance.
I think it leaves itself open to the potential of abuse. As I said before, zoning, in my view, has always been the proper planning of communities to ensure that the existing residents are not going to suffer any additional expense or unnecessary crowding or use of their facilities without the people who are coming in paying their proper and fair share in participating in that community. I have some fear that this might be the case.
The other interesting feature of the minor variance is that it is not subject to the Statutory Powers Procedure Act. The Statutory Powers Procedure Act is really a statute of the province that was enacted to ensure that people who are being dealt with and have a decision rendered against them will have it rendered against them but they'll have a fair and equal opportunity to respond and to address the matter. By taking away these procedures, it would allow -- and I'm not suggesting they would do it, but it can happen -- these municipal members to, perhaps, act capriciously. If that's the case, then what remedy does the constituent or the person have? I suggest that's a very real weakness in the whole process.
I want to address one other issue. In reviewing the bill itself in totality, I understand the government's purpose was the same as the Liberal government's purpose: to try and speed up the process of development and to ensure that the development was done in an orderly way. Because if you don't do that, what in fact happens is the cost -- this is how we got into this cost-of-housing problem we've got, in two ways.
The first way we got into it was because the process took so long that the costs that were entailed in trying to develop land were passed on to the home buyer. I often wondered whether or not my kids would ever be able to buy a house. Years ago, you looked at a house for $20,000, $30,000, which is now selling today for $200,000, $250,000, and that's outrageous.
I think the second process, and it is addressed somewhat in this bill and I do agree with it in a sense, is that if a subdivision draft plan is put on and nothing happens for -- I think it's a period of up to two years -- then the approval can be taken back.
That's a very drastic process, but what it does do is it ensures that those developers, who truly wish to develop the subdivisions in a municipality and thereby provide the taxation revenue that comes from increased houses being built, mean business. If they don't mean business, if all they're doing is trading in paper -- which I must say, when I was on city council, I saw that happen frequently and used to object to it and tried to raise the issue that there should be timings put on these transactions so that you weren't just getting trading up of densities and the increased value of land to the point where I could see what was coming.
It was the high cost of land and therefore the high cost of homes for particularly the youth of our community coming up with perhaps both of them working and having to pay a large amount of their disposable income for housing.
So I can agree with that, but I think it probably is going to be a subject of much review during the committee hearings, because there are possibilities. I've looked through the act and I can't find what happens if by some chance the developer is working on the subdivision and forgets about it, or through negligence or oversight lets the time go by and loses his subdivision approval, and in the meantime perhaps he has proceeded to lay sewers or sidewalks or whatever else, lay out the lots. There doesn't seem to be any procedure. I may be wrong and I would hope to hear from the minister if there is a procedure whereby that can be reinstated or turned around. If it's not there, it should be there, because that can happen; obviously mistakes can be made.
Finally, there are certain provisions here that appear to trigger automatic referrals to the Ontario Municipal Board just simply with time limits passing. That's a matter of some concern, because if the nature of the beast is to try to speed up the process of approvals and to get moving on development, then obviously anything that triggers it to the Ontario Municipal Board is a difficult situation, because all it does is block that body and delay the process.
I might add as well, finally, that the Conservative provincial government of the Davis and Robarts generation -- I think perhaps it was during Mr Davis's regime -- developed a process which they called provincial policy, which in fact allowed the provincial government to have a very large imprint on any developments within municipalities. I often thought that was an unfair advantage. I think that municipalities are the closest form of government to the people, are the most accountable to the people, and to allow the Legislature, the senior level of government, which actually creates municipalities, to have that type of power was, I thought, wrong.
If one looks at this act, and I think it will come out during the public hearings, the impact by this provincial government is far more significant. I could spend another 25 minutes -- which I don't have, and I don't wish to prolong this debate -- on investigating the massive amounts of authority that the provincial government has over this whole process, and I think that's dangerous.
Finally -- and I said that before -- I want to go back to the question of the landfill site in Bolton. There is a provision in here for provincial policy to cover such areas as developments not being built around aquifers. That's one of the indicia. Yet the landfill site that has been approved as being the appropriate one for the region of Peel is located in Bolton on an aquifer site. It's also on good agricultural land. So it flies in the face of two of the principles espoused in Bill 163.
I find it difficult that if this bill passes without some fine-tuning of it, certainly the good people of Bolton are going to be scratching their heads and saying to themselves, "Well, you know, Bill 163 says you can't put a development on that type of an environmental concern, but you can put a landfill site on it." That just strikes me as being inconsistent; also on good agricultural land, that you can destroy good agricultural land by doing that.
I have a number of other things I would like to address, but it's getting on in the hour. There are other people who wish to speak, and I wish to allow them that opportunity.
I look forward to the public hearings. I think they will be of some significance, because Mr Sewell did put a great deal of time and effort into this. He wasn't followed in many very important areas, and I think one of them was the question of provincial policy-making. He had recommended, I believe, that that be removed, and in fact what the government has done is just the opposite. It has enlarged the powers that it has to make policy statements that impact on the community as a whole.
2300
There is also, I note in here, a good deal of powers that can be enacted by regulation. I'm a great adversary of regulations; they're the silent laws of Ontario. They do not give people who are elected to this place the opportunity to debate them, to look into them, to determine whether they're good for our ratepayers. They're just done by cabinet. I think that's a process that hopefully this government or the next government will look at.
We came that close in reviewing the whole process through private bills and regulations. Had the election not taken place, we probably would have had a process in place which would have made regulations much more open to the public and shed some light on them so people knew how they were being affected by these laws in a very significant way. I want to thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity of speaking.
The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Brampton South for his contribution to the debate and invite questions and/or comments.
Mr Perruzza: In responding very briefly in the two minutes that I have to get some comments on the record, I too have gone through Bill 163 with great interest. Speaking to some of the issues the member spoke to, what this act really looks to doing is taking all of the players in the land use process in Ontario -- the people, the communities, the neighbourhoods, the developers and the cities -- and mapping out a clear vision for all of them and a clear process on land development and with respect to land use issues.
People in communities are essentially protected because, again, as I say, when you have a community and some developer comes there and wants to do something that's absurd and off the wall and is just speculating, communities have to get together and fight that and go on for years and expend a lot of money and a lot of resources and in the end it creates a whole lot of disappointment. What this does for them and for those people is, it sets out clearer rules so that some developer can't move in and say, "I'm going to do something here that's absurd." For developers, on the other hand, it makes the rules clearer.
Mr Stockwell: What about zoning and official plans?
Mr Perruzza: Maybe if he gives me a little bit of his time I'll explain to him a little bit about zoning and what's involved with zoning, but for developers as well it makes the rules obviously clearer. On the one hand it discourages them from absurd speculations; on the other hand it does streamline the process. And for municipalities, it empowers them to make some decisions, decisions which they can't now make.
Mr Eddy: I wish to thank the member from Brampton South for his comments and drawing to our attention certain peculiarities about the recommendations in the act. I know they will prove to be very useful for people who look into the matter, read Hansard and will be making presentations, because he's brought some things out and he does his research, I know, on all occasions before he speaks. It was very helpful and I thank him for his comments.
The Speaker: Further questions or comments? The honourable member for Brampton South has up to two minutes for his reply.
Mr Callahan: I'm not sure what Mr Perruzza's riding is.
Mr Stockwell: Downsview.
Mr Callahan: I appreciate what the member from Downsview and also the member from Brant-Haldimand have said. I want to address what the member from Downsview has said. He says the process is to make it clearer for developers. I suggest to him that he should take a good hard look at the bill, because in fact in some areas it creates a great deal of controversy. If you look at the severance powers that have been provided, although they've been delegated and time limits have been put on them, the minister has an overriding refusal on it.
If you look at subdivisions, even if the official plan is in place and the developer has done all the proper things, the minister has an override.
I'm sure that you, as a former municipal councillor, would agree with me that municipalities, which are the closest to the people and the most accountable, actually, should be the people making those decisions. If you vest that power in the minister to be able to come and say, "Well, I'm sorry, little fellows, you're just a creature of the province; we're not going to approve that," like Big Daddy and take it away, I think that creates an atmosphere of uncertainty which can do nothing more than create problems in terms of somebody being able to plan a subdivision and to ensure that it's brought to fruition in the fastest possible way in order to ensure that the cost of those homes will be affordable for your children and mine.
Finally, I would say that I'm with you: I believe a good planning process which requires people to get on with development as opposed to playing games is the most efficient thing we can have. I'm not quite sure that this bill in its present form has achieved that. As I say, I look forward to the public hearings so we can improve the bill and ensure that that does take place.
The Speaker: Is there further debate?
Mr Stockwell: Yes.
The Speaker: I recognize the honourable member for Etobicoke West.
Applause.
Mr Stockwell: Thank you very much. Why don't you run around and we'll sound like a crowd? I thank the member for Downsview for exuberance and his non-partisan approach to this place. I think that after the next election he would make an excellent appointment to some board or commission.
Mr Mammoliti: Is that a promise?
Mr Stockwell: No, it's not a promise. I'm afraid I'd have to get that through the caucus, and I'm not sure I could.
I'd like to deal with this on the global basis that it was presented, on the kind of global thing. The member for Downsview is the global, macro kind of guy he is, tending to review issues and items in a very broad cross-section, macro way that only the member for Downsview, in his intangible way, has of doing it. I think if he doesn't get 20 minutes to speak to this bill, there's something wrong with democracy in Ontario.
Just in my short period of time that I have to speak tonight, I will talk quickly. I want to begin with the fact that I don't think a government can introduce a piece of legislation this broad that broadly determines planning across the entire province. I think there's going to be pitfalls in that approach.
Certainly if you expand the definitions of some of the policies that will be met out in the process of the reporting of Mr Sewell, then you end up with what I think you have here, which is a very convoluted, esoteric document.
Why I say that is: The definitions of some of the planning thoughts Mr Sewell put down on paper are going to have to be interpreted, and as I read them, they're going to be open for interpretation. I know the member for Brant-Haldimand would be interested in this, having worked in a municipality. They're going to be interpreted at many different levels. For instance, when you get a broad planning policy like this document, you'll get an interpretation at the local level that may be different from the interpretation at the regional level, that may be different from the interpretation of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and, once again, interpreted differently at the OMB.
Why that is difficult is this: A planning document in some instances can be broad but in specific site development must be very specific.
Why I say it needs to be very specific is that developments and official plans and zoning and severances etc have to be specific for the people who live in those areas or regions.
Why they want that is twofold. One, they want certainty and security within the area they happen to live in. There's no way that you're going to convince somebody who lives in a single-family residential neighbourhood that by having neighbours in single-family residential houses, it's going to be good for him or her to build an apartment building two doors down. That's why you have very specific zoning regulations and official plans that itemize these very specific kinds of issues.
What Mr Sewell has tried to do, in my opinion, is write, as best he can, the first official plan for the province of Ontario. To me, writing an official plan for the province of Ontario is practically impossible.
Why it is impossible is because every community, every neighbourhood, every street, town, city, district and region in this province is different. The differences may be very subtle and they may be very, very vast, and examples are very clear. Trying to write a policy in terms of development and application of that development for downtown Hamilton and for cottage country in Simcoe or a northern Ontario small town is nearly impossible.
2310
So what Mr Sewell has tried to do -- and mark my words. I want to get this on the record. I, as a member of the Conservative caucus, have served on council with Mr John Sewell. Mr Sewell is a bright, imaginative, interesting person. I think he served the city of Toronto very well. When he came out of Trefann Court in the 1960s and organized the first neighbourhood associations and groups, he offered up a different view of municipal politics that has captured the imagination of the people of the city of Toronto many times over.
I'll also say, David Crombie can probably thank John Sewell for being elected mayor in the city of Toronto. David Crombie adopted many of John Sewell's attitudes towards planning. I remember vividly the 45-foot height bylaw. Mr Johnson, who was a member of East York council at that time --
Mr David Johnson: Alderman.
Mr Stockwell: -- an alderman in East York, will also back me up. I remember vividly Mr Crombie campaigning for mayor in the city of Toronto against Mr Rotenberg and O'Donohue and Mr Crombie selling the 45-foot height bylaw designation. That was during a period of economic boom and development and growth unparalleled in the history of the city of Toronto and in the surrounding regions.
I know full well that the Minister of Health, who was a member of Etobicoke council during that period of time, can probably cite in her curriculum vitae that one of the major reasons she got elected her first time was because of the planning process and the development that was taking place in and around New Toronto, Long Branch, Mimico and the Lakeshore.
Hon Mrs Grier: No, it wasn't. It was the Tory actions for amalgamating my municipality with Etobicoke.
Mr Stockwell: That's true, the amalgamation probably had something to do with it. The fact still remains that when that election campaign took place a lot of people were involved in the planning process and what happened during that planning process, and Mr Sewell captured the imagination of the people of the city of Toronto and Mr Crombie carried forward to become mayor of the city of Toronto.
Mr Callahan: The tiny perfect mayor.
Mr Stockwell: He was a tiny perfect mayor. At the end of the day, they've both done very well. Mr Crombie seems to get appointed by every government of every stripe and Mr Sewell seems to do the same thing, so clearly they've been doing something right.
Having said that, there are some criticisms I have of Mr Sewell's idea of planning and his approach to planning within the city of Toronto and now in the broader province of Ontario.
Mr Sewell is convinced, in my opinion, through this report, that by itemizing these specific concerns he will therefore reasonably control development, make planning priority decisions on environmental concerns but not hinder development in the meantime. This government is caught in a very serious difficulty by adopting this piece of legislation.
I say to the member for Brant-Haldimand, I say to others across the floor, and the member for Downsview, who I'm sure knows full well that this government has changed its attitude with respect to development and economic growth and so on and so forth. They're looking to see development take place. They're looking for job creation and they're looking for the kinds of things that create work for people and money and risk-taking and entrepreneurs.
Hon Mr Philip: That's what this bill does.
Mr Stockwell: Well, the minister is behind me. It's always easy to tell when the minister is behind you when he speaks. I know Mr Philip is back there saying, "That's what this bill does." I don't believe that, because I think what you're going to find --
Mr Hayes: Read your fortune.
Mr Stockwell: I read that.
Ms Haeck: How about reading it out for all of us?
Mr Stockwell: It says, "You will be overwhelmingly elected coming next fall and the NDP will be wiped out."
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Is that a Chinese cookie?
Mr Stockwell: That's a Chinese fortune cookie. "...and Rosario will stay because he's the greatest." That's what it's got at the bottom.
I want to continue. I think this is going to place some severe difficulties and restrictions upon the rural ridings. I think what you're going to find with respect to this piece of legislation is that any major change or minor change, be it a severance smaller than a severance, is going to be subject to an environmental assessment review. If you're looking for economic growth and development and you're going to subject something as simple as a severance to an environmental assessment review, you're going to be clogging down a process that is already slow to begin with.
Much has been made about the speed with which the OMB operates today. I can look across the floor and see the Liberals, and I know they'll agree with this, whether the government does or not: The OMB is not working, in my opinion, any faster; it just has fewer applications.
I remember sitting in council, and if you didn't deal with two or three major applications at a council meeting, then you weren't doing business. But today, applications for major development -- drive through the city of Toronto and you're lucky to see one crane. In the city of Etobicoke you don't see any. That means there's been a tremendous slowdown in planning departments, in official plan designations, in zoning redesignations and in the OMB. So you've slowed the process down, in my opinion.
I'm not going to say the OMB hasn't had some efficiencies made up, but if you think the OMB, when this recession leaves, will be able to handle an increase of the magnitude you're hoping for, with environmental assessment and appeals and so on on things such as simple severances, you've got another think coming, folks. I don't think you're going to be processing these nearly as quickly and the system's going to bog down. You're going to have a funnel approach, in my opinion.
You're going to have all these developments going through. You're going to have anybody asking for an environmental assessment -- under the Environmental Bill of Rights you can do practically anything you want -- and then under this piece of legislation you're going to need environmental assessments on all kinds of things you didn't need before, and it's all going to end up at one place and it's going to bog down again.
So the growth and economic prosperity that you're hoping for won't be there, because you won't be able to get these developments on stream and get people back to work because they're going to be bogged down in red tape. Those are the kinds of concerns that were brought forward by, for instance, the Greater Toronto Home Builders' Association and the Urban Development Institute. They responded to this New Approach proposal by pointing out that streamlining will not be achieved and municipalities will not have greater control over the development process.
Hon Mr Philip: No. That was Morley Kells responding.
Mr Stockwell: No, that was not just him. The Greater Toronto Home Builders' Association said the same thing. You're not giving more control to municipalities, you're making it more difficult for municipalities to approve projects. I don't know anyone in Metropolitan Toronto who thinks development applications go through too quickly. I can't speak for the rural ridings, but I can't believe that those rural ridings think the development process is operating so quickly that we can throw a major ratchet in it and slow it down and not have an impact on development applications.
These people come forward with some honest criticisms, and as I was saying about Mr Sewell, the one criticism I have of Mr Sewell is that he bogs processes down to such a great extent, looking for input, looking for environmental assessments, looking for policy statements, looking for neighbourhood public hearings, that it turns from a reasonably priced development into a very expensive application, a very expensive housing project, because the costs get increased due to processes put in place by government.
I look across the floor and, I'll tell you something, I don't know what Mr Pilkey's position on municipal council was on some of these applications, but I'm willing to bet that as mayor of Oshawa you probably had your fair share of difficulty with development applications and the processes and the length of time they took and the costs and burdens they added to the application, which drove the price up, which took what were considered affordable residential housing units up to the mid-range point.
You know as well I do that it wasn't very good, the way the system worked. It was bogged down often, it was time-consuming, and the OMB in fact bogged down greatly; in some instances we waited up to eight to 12 months for a hearing. We don't wait today that long. Is it because the OMB's more efficient or is it because there are just not that many applications flowing through?
Mr Hayes: It's because of the New Democratic government.
Mr Stockwell: That's what you're saying. I understand the member for Essex-Kent saying what he says. He's taking credit for the New Democratic government speeding up the OMB. I think you have to some degree. I think Dale Martin's done a fairly good job, I do, but I also think you must admit that the number of applications coming before the OMB is significantly less than it was in the 1980s when the OMB was bogging down. I think you will find that with this kind of legislation you're going to have more end up there, because you've introduced new processes, new plans, new environmental assessment hearings on issues that in my opinion don't belong being heard at the OMB, but they'll end up at the OMB. That is a very important point that needs to be made.
I speak to the planning process and the zoning process more specifically than the others, because I find it closer to my heart and probably an issue that I understand much better than some of the other issues.
2320
Another thing I think this does that I don't particularly care for, and I can't believe the Minister of Health would agree with this because she would be the last person who would agree with this, but by making these kinds of policy statements that must be adhered to by local councils, this to me smacks of top-down government, this to me smacks of the provincial government telling local neighbourhoods and communities how they should be planned. I don't like that.
If there's anything I like about the planning process today, it is the way it works from the ground up. I like the fact that neighbourhoods and communities have official plans that are sent out to the people and they comment on them and they're adopted by duly elected local councillors, and then they have the right to debate those in public hearings should a council want to change an official plan.
By putting forward what you've recommended in the Sewell report, I say to those members across the floor, particularly the member for Downsview, who I know full well would agree with this, by putting forward these recommendations you've determined that the best way to plan in Ontario is to start at this level and work down to tell people how they should have their communities planned.
I don't think the community of the member from Chatham would agree with that. I don't think the member for Downsview's community would agree with that. I don't think the communities across the province would agree with that. I don't know how the member for Fort York could agree with that, because if there's anything I thought he would agree with, it's something like this: Planning is a neighbourhood responsibility. Planning and zoning come from neighbourhoods and they set the important criteria that people must follow to maintain the livelihood and distinctiveness of their own community.
By introducing legislation that says, "We will tell you how your community should be planned," you lose the basic, fundamental beauty of the Planning Act, which says that local neighbourhoods tell people what they should be living in. I think that's good, it's always worked, and I don't know why we want to change it.
Hon Mr Philip: That's why you want the minor variances to go to the OMB instead of having local neighbourhoods decide.
Mr Stockwell: I heard his words, but I'm not really sure where he heard that from.
Hon Mr Philip: From the previous speaker for the Conservative Party.
Mr Stockwell: Communities in rural Ontario are also concerned about the legislation, more so even than urban centres. They're concerned because what has happened with this piece of legislation is that the government has said, "You must write an official plan," and communities that are very small don't have them, "and if you don't write an official plan, we will write one for you."
The smaller communities, particularly the rural communities in Ontario, are very concerned about a provincial government walking in and writing official plans for them, because when you ask somebody to write an official plan, it means the government hires a planning consultant to go in and write an official plan for a community that they may not live in, that they may not react to, that they may not understand. The beauty of writing official plans is that those plans have to be approved by the council, drafted by planners within that council, public hearings are held by the council. A community writes an official plan, not a consultant and not the province of Ontario.
There's been some concern registered about this and I can understand that concern, because it takes the responsibility of the community and neighbourhood you have away from those people who have to live in that community, who should be making those decisions.
Mr Hope: Name that rural community.
Mr Stockwell: I know there are communities in Wellington that have said just that. The member spoke to me not two hours ago about the concerns with respect to official plan writing in those communities.
Mr Hope: Well, that was one.
Mr Stockwell: I could stand here for the rest of my time and list the rest of them, but it would be somewhat counterproductive in terms of getting 45 minutes to speak to the bill. Maybe afterwards we can sit down and I'll write them out for you, or maybe I'll print them out.
The other concern is that, in my opinion, too much concern in this Sewell report is put on environmental issues.
Mrs Irene Mathyssen (Middlesex): What?
Mr Stockwell: The member for Middlesex is muddling out of her seat.
Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): There's not enough.
Mr Stockwell: And the member for Riverdale. I understand that you think there's not enough. I don't agree with you. I think the environmental issues are very important and are concerns that should be dealt with, but I think this piece of documentation is tilted.
Hon Ms Churley: As long as it doesn't get in the way of developers.
Mr Stockwell: No, that's not the point at all, I say to the member across the floor. That's not the point at all. I think we can deal with the environmental concerns without throwing up huge roadblocks in the way of development that offers jobs, creates work, creates housing, creates prosperity, does all the things you're supposed to be trying to do right now. I think that can be accomplished and protection of the environment take place.
To the member for Riverdale, just listen for one minute. If you had read this document, you would know that a simple severance will end up going through an environmental assessment review. What possible benefit could be had --
Interjections.
Mr Stockwell: It's not nonsense. You see, this is what I mean. Those are the kinds of concerns that have been outlined by municipalities, that, as they read this document -- and who interprets this document? The member for Riverdale won't be interpreting this document. The Minister of Municipal Affairs won't be interpreting this document. The municipalities are saying, and I agree with them, that simple severances could be subject to environmental assessment hearings. If you have not heard that criticism, I'm shocked. I think the member for Don Mills would tell you the same thing, because those are the kinds of concerns we've been hearing. If you're not hearing them, then people simply are refusing to tell you or you're not listening.
Mr Hope: Or they have no problem, right?
Mr Gary Wilson (Kingston and The Islands): You see the trouble you get into when you don't read the bill?
Mr Stockwell: It's not often that this member from Kingston, who plays checkers during debate, has any room to start questioning whether or not a member is prepared.
Interjections.
Mr Stockwell: He was playing yesterday. The member for London South was playing today, just to make sure who's the checker champion on that side. I'm not certain I want to take a bunch of heckling from a member while he's playing checkers in the House.
Mr Winninger: I don't play checkers. Do you know the difference?
Mr Gary Wilson: What are you playing with over there?
Mr Stockwell: There's a comment I'm sure he would want to be careful about, Mr Speaker. I don't mind heckles from members who are listening to debate and offering up concerns, but to suggest that I have not read the bill while he's doing what he's doing -- maybe before he throws stones, he should check the panes of glass in his house.
Those are the kinds of concerns we've heard with respect to this piece of legislation as far as severances are concerned.
In my opinion, some elements of the legislation, such as streamlining the planning and development process, are very laudable. They're goals that I fundamentally think should and could be accomplished. I don't think the present process for planning is necessarily impossible to streamline. I don't think we need to revamp the whole process. I think it has worked and it's worked rather well in the last number of years, and you've had some fairly well-planned communities.
I can speak first hand about the Metropolitan Toronto region. I think the city of Toronto is a very well-planned community. I think Etobicoke and North York and Scarborough and East York and in some instances York have been very well-planned communities in this area. They've lived under the present planning processes. In the last 10 years, the planning process saw a boom and a growth during the 1980s that was unprecedented and much was approved in development.
There have been mistakes -- I don't deny it -- and there always will be mistakes. But by the same token, on the whole it's still a safe city. It's considered a world-class city as far as transportation is concerned. It's a city that has operated with neighbourhoods that have been maintained downtown. As far as world cities are concerned, it's ranked one of the highest. I think you'd have to admit that the general efficiencies of metropolitan government, both in the planning process and in the elected process in terms of Metro and local councils, have worked rather well.
Hon Ms Churley: What about those high-rises down there at Harbourfront, right on the waterfront?
Mr Stockwell: The member for Riverdale talks about Harbourfront. There are some good things about Harbourfront and there are some bad things about Harbourfront. On the whole, the member for Riverdale, if they want to get into a huge debate about Harbourfront, probably would endorse a lot of the activity that takes place in Harbourfront, the arts communities and the community groups. Why do they take place there? Because of the development that took place that paid for and funded a lot of those projects.
I also will say to the member for Riverdale that those were the projects that you sat on council for that were voted in favour of by duly elected officials. You opposed them at the time and I don't know why you're so upset about those, because I also remember that when you were on that council you opposed casino gambling.
The Speaker: A point of order, the member for Riverdale.
2330
Hon Ms Churley: On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: The member is mistaken. I just want to correct the record. I was not on council. I was on council from 1988 on, when all the planning and decision-making for those high-rises on the waterfront were being developed, planned and approved.
The Speaker: The member does not have a point of privilege.
Mr Stockwell: I certainly withdraw that if she came in 1988. I thought she was there a little earlier. But I don't understand why the member for Riverdale is so concerned about those kinds of issues when, as a member of this government, it seems she has taken a lot of issues differently from the time when she was elected at a local council. It seems to me that you can rationalize decisions very easily, so I thought there were a few others you could rationalize in here as well.
Mr Curling: Like what? What did she change her mind on?
Mr Stockwell: Gambling comes to mind right now.
The elements are laudable goals, in my opinion, as far as the planning and development process is concerned. In our report in the Common Sense Revolution, I think one of the most important issues that we've dealt with in the planning process is the elimination of the red tape. It seems to me that a lot of development applications have to jump through hoops, going through the same process month after month, trying to get a development approved that only drives the cost of that development up.
When that development goes through the processes that are put in place by governments at all levels, it costs money. When it costs money, you drive the price of development up. When you drive the price of development up, all developers end up doing is passing that price on to the consumer who ends up coming in to buy that piece of development.
I think this Sewell commission report is going to apply a lot of the bad principles that were adopted in Metropolitan Toronto to the outlying regions and rural areas, which will do nothing but drive the cost of development up, slow the process down and not be favourable for the prosperity that you're hoping for in this recovery, because those processes, those projects, will take longer to get through the system than they in fact do today.
On the conflict-of-interest portion within this bill, I think it's going to be very difficult in the rural ridings to convince politicians who are making -- and I spoke again to the member for Wellington a few hours ago; he gave me some examples too -- a few thousand dollars that they're going to want to go in and lay out their entire net worth, their holdings and so on and so forth.
It seems that there's a bit of overkill in this. When you're dealing with a council of the size that we are dealing with in some small towns, asking them to come forward to the town clerk -- I guess it's the town clerk in most instances -- and sign off on a series of inquiries into their own personal state, I think you're only going to discourage people from running.
Now you can shake your head, but I can't imagine that if you're going to run for a job that pays a couple of thousand bucks a year, you're going to want to go in and start disclosing to the town clerk in a very small town exactly what your holdings are, your net worth, where your money is. That's a rather personal bit of information.
Hon Mr Philip: Your net worth is not required. No dollar amount is. Why don't you read the bill?
Mr Stockwell: Your mortgages, your holdings, all those things that are required from us when we go in to file our notices. You must file the mortgage on your house then, for instance, or a loan on a boat, these kinds of things; or your income, how much your wife is earning or how much your husband is earning.
Hon Mr Philip: That is not required at all. Read the bill. That is not required at all.
Mr Stockwell: No, no, Mr Speaker.
Hon Mr Philip: Yes, yes, Mr Speaker. If you can't read the bill, we will read it to you, but that is not in the bill.
Mr Stockwell: When this was asked to be put forward on this part of the legislation, they talked about disclosure for private municipal council members. The disclosure that they're asking for is similar to the disclosure that we go through when we get asked to disclose at the provincial level.
Ms Haeck: It is similar but not the same. Do you understand the nuances of things?
Mr Stockwell: There's no doubt about it. When we disclose, we're disclosing fully for this job. They're going through the same kinds of disclosure --
Ms Haeck: No. Similar, not the same.
Mr Stockwell: Okay, similar, not the same. Fine. They're going through similar processes to disclose. The point I was making was, when you're earning some few thousand dollars a year to sit on council, going through a very similar process of disclosure, I think, will discourage people from running. I don't think it's an incentive at all to run, in my opinion.
Ms Haeck: Why?
Mr Stockwell: Why? Because I think, firstly, these are small towns. You're going to go in and you're going to disclose for a couple of thousand bucks a year. It's almost at the point when where serving on those councils --
Ms Haeck: But they have a responsibility for decisions.
Mr Stockwell: If you're going to ask why, you've got to listen to the answer. When you're sitting on councils in those small towns, it's almost providing a public service at the kind of money you're being paid. If you're going to provide a public service and you're going to be asked to disclose, then I think some people will say, "I am not prepared to do that." That in fact will discourage candidates from running for those elected offices.
Mr Hope: Most people know what they make anyway.
Mr Stockwell: If you don't agree with me, that's fine. Those are the kinds of concerns that we've heard with respect to the conflict-of-interest guidelines.
Mr Mammoliti: Chris, you can do better than that. There is the other argument. I didn't expect that from you.
The Speaker: Order. The member for Yorkview.
Mr Stockwell: I'm not really shocked that the government members don't agree with the comments I'm making. They didn't agree with the comments on a lot of bills that they've brought forth. They haven't agreed with a lot of the comments that we've made with respect to most of the legislation they've brought forth, but what has been very clear is the people of Ontario don't agree with much of what this government does. Something must be going right on this side of the House, and something must be going seriously wrong on that side of the House, because the people of Ontario don't seem to be supporting the members opposite.
Mr Gary Wilson: Two wrongs don't make a right. Didn't your mother ever teach you that?
Mr Stockwell: Clearly the checker-playing member from Kingston would understand this, because the people of Ontario have clearly spoken in a few by-elections and in public opinion polls that they are not thinking you're doing such a bang-up job.
Maybe if you took some time to hear from the opposition critics, who have spoken to people who have some concerns about their legislation, rather than simply heckling them and suggesting that everything we offer up is wrong, you might be better off. In fact, you might be better off in the polls. You might even have gotten your deposit back in a couple of by-elections; you quite possibly could have gotten 15% of the votes.
Before you go telling everybody in this side of the House how wrong they are, how they don't understand your legislation and how you know exactly what you're doing, maybe you should examine what the people in the province of Ontario are saying about you. Maybe you should examine some of the by-elections that have been happening in this province in the last few years, and maybe you should take a look at a few rolling polls that have come in in the very recent past.
Then you might think to yourself: "Maybe I don't know it all. Maybe we have passed some dumb legislation. Maybe the legislation we're offering up this time might need some help. Maybe we could use some corrections here and there. Maybe we should listen to the people in the province of Ontario." Maybe then this government would have a little better popularity than it has today.
Interjections.
The Speaker: Order.
Mr Stockwell: I will move on, but maybe if you listened a little more to what the people are saying about your legislation and maybe if you amended it, you might be a little more popular than you are today.
Mr Mammoliti: Blah, blah, blah, blah.
The Speaker: The member for Yorkview, please come to order.
Mr Stockwell: So I ask for that small bit of cooperation.
Mr Mammoliti: Do we have to listen to this at 11:30 at night?
The Speaker: Order.
Mr Stockwell: No, Mr Speaker, the member doesn't have to --
The Speaker: I caution the member for Yorkview that he must come to order or he will be named.
Mr Stockwell: Mr Speaker, I don't think there's a quorum present.
The Speaker: Would the table officer count to determine if there's a quorum.
Acting Clerk Assistant (Ms Lisa Freedman): A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Acting Clerk Assistant: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West.
Mr Gary Wilson: Did you read it yet, Chris?
Mr Stockwell: I see the checker-playing member from Kingston is still here to heckle. I appreciate that.
The other concern I have with respect to the intensification argument that they bring forward and they've often talked about is that it's also expensive and hard to implement through the planning process for private developers.
Why I say that is, intensification of development, particularly in areas that are built up and completed -- it's very difficult to look for private developers to intensify. It's a process that is (1) very expensive and (2) not very popular in most aspects within neighbourhoods and communities in the province of Ontario.
I would suggest to you, in most urban settings where they're looking for intensification, if you wanted to intensify in a single-family residential neighbourhood, you would end up with probably significant hostility from the neighbouring community. I say this at first hand. If you're looking to intensify single-family residential or duplexes to create four, five, eight, 10 units, you'll find yourself up against a very determined neighbourhood group and association that is completely and thoroughly opposed to the intensification argument.
2340
Now you're asking private developers to in fact intensify in neighbourhoods that don't want them. When you have a neighbourhood that doesn't want intensification or particularly doesn't want a certain kind of development, as a developer you're in for a very expensive fight because, generally speaking, local councils, knowing they're elected by a community that opposes certain development, will go to great lengths to ensure that development not get built.
That means the costs of intensification to the private developer are going to be somewhat burdensome. That also means that when you think you're intensifying for a reasonable cost, because of the delay, because of the legal fees, because of the costs involved of intensification, you're driving the price of that product up.
By driving the price of the product up for private developers, you're doing exactly counter to what you wanted to do. You're driving the price to the private consumer up and that means they're less affordable, which intensification is supposed to make more affordable. It becomes less so when you have intensification for private developers when it isn't a popular idea in the community.
The intensification is kind of a made-in-Toronto idea, and quite frankly hasn't really worked in Toronto either. There's been a lot of talk about intensification. I think you'd be hard pressed to find any serious intensification that took place in the city of Toronto. There are splashes here and there where it has happened, but on a generally widespread view it's been a thought process, it's been a conversation point, it's been a debating issue, but it hasn't really happened.
I know the city of Toronto has said that it is in favour of intensification, but it's not something that I've seen on a widespread basis that would prove to be successful, in my opinion, to alleviate the housing shortage, which it thought it would.
Hon Ms Churley: I was there for that.
Mr Stockwell: The member from Riverdale said she was there for that. It was a quiet intensification because I don't think it was outrageously successful.
Hon Ms Churley: It hasn't begun yet.
Mr Stockwell: As far as alleviating the housing shortage, in fact I don't think it did that at all.
Hon Ms Churley: It hasn't happened yet.
Mr Stockwell: Well, of course it hasn't happened. That's what I'm saying. It's a city of Toronto intensification program that's now being foisted upon the rest of the province of Ontario. I'm saying to the rural members across the floor, if you want to see a made-in-Toronto policy, take a look at the intensification policy that's being offered up in this piece of legislation.
It hasn't worked in the city of Toronto. The member says it hasn't started yet. Well, it hasn't started yet because it can't work. It can't work because the only people who can afford to intensify are the government, local government. Developers aren't prepared to take the costs involved in intensification any further because it becomes unworkable to try and buy land, pay the cost of developing it, pay the cost of hearing it through the OMB, pay the cost for lawyers, build it and then try to sell it. It hasn't worked.
Again, it was in the mid-1980s when it was attempted. At that time the economy was much better off and it didn't work then either.
Hon Ms Churley: I got it mixed up with mainstreaming, actually.
Mr Stockwell: Mainstreaming, oh.
Mr David Johnson: Mixed up again.
Mr Stockwell: She got it confused with mainstreaming, the member from Riverdale. Mainstreaming is what you do during the election.
Mr David Johnson: How about casinos? Intensify casinos.
Mr Stockwell: Yes, we could always have casino intensification. I don't know if she's ever thought of that.
Hon Ms Churley: I guess I better keep my mouth shut.
Mr Stockwell: Yes, I think you'd better.
The other concern I have with respect to this document is, it seems to me there is no strategy for job creation. All we're talking about in this document is a planning process that's put in place. In my opinion, it's going to slow down the development industry significantly, and when the recovery comes -- and I hope it will come sooner than later -- it'll slow down the development industry and thereby be counterproductive for job creation.
When you talk about your job creation programs, with any cyclical uptake in the private sector, they could outstrip any kind of job creation this government could do and the billions of dollars you spend by a cyclical uptake in the economy out there, if the economy can turn around. If you throw roadblocks up like this particular report, the Sewell, or this piece of legislation, you're going to hinder yourself in recovery.
You're going to hinder the development industry because of the processes that you're putting in place. You're going to hinder the development of the construction jobs. You're going to hinder the development of housing starts, of multi-use housing starts, of commercial starts. By hindering that process, all you're going to do is slow down the recovery, because the recovery is a kind of thing that happens particularly in the construction industry and housing starts.
I'd like to know from any member across the floor exactly what this --
Mr Paul Klopp (Huron): How about the ones on the floor?
Mr Stockwell: On the floor? The member for Huron is on the floor.
The strategy for job creation is certainly not outlined in this piece of legislation. I thought this government was committed to creating jobs and I don't see it. I know the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, who will be commenting on this, I'm sure, during the debate, will probably have -- his constituents probably love it, I'm sure. Considering his most recent announcements, it would surprise me if they didn't love this piece of legislation. I'd be shocked if they didn't think this was a wonderful piece of legislation introduced by your government, Mr Minister.
The last thing is the municipal plans conforming to provincial regulations and environmental principles. You had that before, but the documentation involved as far as conforming is concerned is that you asked them to conform, you didn't dictate to conform. That, in my opinion, was a far better way to approach a municipal council.
They are autonomous boards, duly elected by the people of the province. By requesting that they follow certain guidelines, you got almost unanimous and total cooperation when you requested that they follow certain guidelines set down by the provincial government. Most municipalities, and particularly the big municipalities, understood that in fact they were creatures of the province. They would begin and attempt to follow certain guidelines.
Under this particular reform package, you're demanding that they follow certain guidelines and all guidelines aren't in fact applicable to all developments in all regions within the province of Ontario.
Mr David Johnson: Must be consistent with.
Mr Stockwell: That's right, they must be consistent with. By forcing them to conform, you're making decisions on their behalf that may not be sensible decisions in their community.
Interjection.
Mr Stockwell: The member for Huron certainly must understand that his planning issues in the towns and communities that he represents have to be different than the concerns in London, Hamilton, Windsor and so on, but the same criteria that you must conform to is applicable to all areas. Be it urban or rural, all areas have to conform to the exact same criteria.
If that isn't a broad-brush statement on how planning should be done in Ontario, I don't know what is. I look to the member for Brampton South. His community has issues and development applications that are very different than the member for Huron's, but nine or so principles are in place that they all must live within.
Any rational, reasonable person would suggest you can't set specific guidelines for every neighbourhood and community and city right across the province because they're all different. I would say that is a concern.
Mr Klopp: They're not disagreeing with that.
Mr Stockwell: They don't disagree, but that's what the guideline says: You must conform to the guidelines set down by the province of Ontario. Everybody must conform, so I can only assume the member for Huron would then oppose this kind of legislation.
Mr Klopp: The OMB now recognizes that, and I have one of the toughest planners in Ontario. He told me that is one of the problems with this bill. It is a red herring.
Mr Stockwell: I think the OMB reads the same things we read and they say "may." I think that "may" is the word in the previous one.
Mr David Johnson: "Shall have regard."
Mr Stockwell: That's right. "Shall have regard." You're changing from "shall have regard" and mandatorily saying that you must now conform, and that's a vast difference.
Mr Klopp: But you can't go to an OMB hearing and use that or you get thrown out.
Mr Stockwell: When you go to the OMB -- let me tell you, Mr Huron. When you go to the OMB, the OMB then reads the legislation. They say "shall have regard" means there's flexibility. Under this piece of legislation, there's no flexibility. You must conform. The bottom line is, every community, village, city, urban centre, across the province must conform to the principles listed in this piece of legislation. Case closed. No argument. The OMB's hands are tied. You must conform. That's all there is to it.
Every application from a severance to a lean-to to a skyscraper must conform, whether it's applicable to that community, whether it's applicable to that city, whether it's decent development, decent zoning; it matters not, you must conform. Whether there's an application or not, you must conform to these guidelines as set out by the Minister of Municipal Affairs. It doesn't make sense, Mr Speaker.
It doesn't make sense, and that's the problem with the piece of legislation. I think they came at the problem -- they could have brought forward a lot of ideas that could have resolved them, but one idea that seems to cause the most concern out there, that is the most anxious, I think, for elected officials out there, is that they're top-down planning. They're telling everybody how they should be planning everything in the province of Ontario from here down, and it doesn't work. Communities have different standards, communities have different ideas about what a neighbourhood is, communities have different ideas about what is acceptable and what isn't. You can't make decisions for them here and then say, "Disseminate those decisions out across the province."
2350
What is acceptable in the city of Toronto is not going to fly in Etobicoke, and they're kilometres apart. God forbid you should try and write legislation that says, "In Hamilton you've got to do this and in Wawa you have to do the same thing." It's absurd. That's the point that's being made consistently.
Hon Mr Philip: It doesn't do that. You should read the bill.
Mr Stockwell: That's what they're saying. He's the same guy who told me he was cutting the school boards in Ottawa.
This is the kind of thing they're talking about. These are the kinds of concerns they're bringing forward. I ask the members opposite to take into consideration those concerns. They're not things that can't be applied to this bill. There are not amendments that couldn't be made that could fix this bill, but if you leave it as it is, in my opinion you're asking the entire province to have top-down planning and take away the very fundamental principle that made this place and neighbourhoods good, and that was neighbourhood planning, neighbourhood decision-making and the kind of processes that were put in place that gave communities a right to say what kind of communities they want to live with and the kind of politicians who say, "My community's different and distinctive and this is what we want."
The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Etobicoke West for his contribution to the debate and invite questions and/or comments.
Hon Mr Philip: I think the honourable member, who has municipal experience, and I appreciate that, must have been reading the Costa Rican Times rather than the bill, because certainly some of the things that he said about environmental assessments on severances simply don't make any sense at all. The Environmental Assessment Act applies only to infrastructure projects, not to severances. The policy statement on natural heritage does require an environmental impact study on land adjacent to significant ravines, valleys, streams, which I think he'd agree with if he had any sensitivity to the environmental concerns. But if these significant natural features are not nearby, the environmental impact study is not required. So the member is wrong. He's wrong. He's dead wrong. He hasn't read the act or the researchers for the Conservative Party haven't understood it.
He has concern about open local government. I can tell you that I get, on an average, between 300 and 500 inquiries or concerns by local ratepayers a year. I can tell you that the basic thrust of the Conservative Party -- and I must say that the Liberal Party was much more open on this issue -- is to go back to the old closed-door, cigar-smoking back rooms in which municipal councils, some of them, got together with the good old boys and made the decisions out of public view. He knows that's happened. We can name cities, we can name the smallest of towns where that's happened. I have the letters from people who are concerned about that. If you want to go back to the old days, this is the revision -- I mean, Mike Harris has a plan for the year 2000. The trouble is that it's 2000 BC rather than 2000 AD.
Mr David Johnson: I want to compliment the member for Etobicoke West. Give him a round of applause. I think it's unfortunate, though, that the minister starts to refer to the old days and cigar smoking and that sort of thing. Why don't we just have a decent debate and talk about the issues?
The member for Etobicoke West has raised the issue of intensification. The member for Etobicoke West served here in Metropolitan Toronto about the same time that John Sewell was serving as the mayor of the city of Toronto, and the member for Etobicoke West knows from personal experience Mr Sewell's view of intensification. I can tell you, when John Sewell came to East York and talked to us when I was mayor about intensification and said we should put five or six storeys on every building on the main streets, that was one concept: main street intensification, five or six storeys.
In East York, not long after that, we had a public hearing. Sure enough, we had an application to put six storeys on a building on the main street. The problem is that people live behind, people in little bungalows, and for Pete's sake, this is a tremendous change on their living environment. They come out in great force and they say, "We've lived here for 20 years," or, "We've lived here for 30 years," and, "You're going to ruin our environment." This is a real adverse impact.
Intensification doesn't always work. The Board of Trade of Metropolitan Toronto has submitted a brief and said that it basically supports intensification, but you cannot force it on the people. So there certainly are problems.
The member for Etobicoke West, in his calm way, is trying to bring that out. I wish the minister would reflect upon that. Let's have a little even debate and not worry about cigar smoking in the back room.
Mr Mammoliti: I firmly believe that a four-, five- or six-storey building is much better than the skyscrapers that the Conservatives would advocate for, the 20-storey high-rise building. I guess there's not as much profit in the four-, five- or six-storey buildings, and that's probably why they don't agree.
In the member's speech, however, there is one point that really disturbed me and that's the point of disclosure. I can't understand the logic, and I hope that he answers my question. I'll ask him very directly: What is the problem with councillors disclosing gifts, disclosing whatever they might receive from their grass-root municipal constituents? What is wrong with that? You very clearly in your speech said we shouldn't be doing that, that we should allow that flexibility, that we would discourage people from coming forward to run in elections. That's what I heard.
Mr Stockwell: It's not the same thing.
Mr Mammoliti: He's saying, "It's not the same thing." I'm asking him very directly to answer the question: What is wrong with what we're asking? You were complaining. Again, he was complaining in his speech in terms of disclosure.
Interjection.
Mr Mammoliti: He's saying I've missed my point. I've said enough. The questions have been asked. I hope he answers.
Mr Callahan: I just wanted to rise and say that the concern I have, and I think it has been expressed by the member for Etobicoke West, is that this really is top-down planning. The power the minister has is absolutely incredible. When you think about it, Bill 163 assigns municipalities the authority to make subdivision approvals, authority which municipalities already have. It also allows the minister to withdraw that authority.
Similarly, the minister is also given the power to remove the existing consent-to-severance authority of a municipality. This allows the minister additional authority to prohibit severances and subdivisions, even if the local official plan contains a provincially approved policy on severances and subdivisions.
That's an example of a tremendous amount of power being exercised by a minister of the crown who is only subject in a majority government to election every four years. Municipally, you can go before your municipal council and you can try to argue why this should not happen. People don't get that opportunity. If it's done by the minister, it may be done in a capricious fashion. It's an administrative act which is probably not subject to any type of court process and puts, I suggest, an unbelievable amount of power in the hands of the minister of the day of whatever political stripe.
If we're trying to plan for the benefit of a democratic state, then we really shouldn't be looking at that type of power being concentrated in the hands of one individual. I suggest that did happen in countries. We've seen what the result of that happening in other countries was, and it can become a very autocratic situation.
I think it makes it very difficult for developers or people who are about to develop to even figure out, "If I do this, will the minister crunch it afterwards?" I think it makes it very unclear and will cause a bad environment for development.
The Speaker: The honourable member for Etobicoke West has up to two minutes for his reply.
Mr Stockwell: I thank those who made comment. Quickly, to the minister, I don't want to talk about cigar-chomping back rooms. I am a Conservative. I sat on a number of councils and I don't ever remember having a cigar-chomping backroom meeting about the political destiny of a development.
Hon Ms Churley: You know what we mean.
Mr White: He wasn't at the meeting. He doesn't remember the meeting.
Mr Stockwell: Mr Speaker, I want to get finished this.
The Speaker: Order.
Mr Stockwell: I think it's a grotesque overstatement, it's unfair, it's not what I'm calling for and it isn't worthy of debate in this place. I don't call for secret deals in secret rooms and cigar chomping. I'm insulted by the comment.
As far as the assessment --
Interjection.
Mr Stockwell: You can look at the report that was put out by your ministry, sir: Comprehensive Set of Policy Statements. It lists on page 19 where severances are going to need environmental assessment reviews. Go read it. You're saying no.
Take your policy statement -- oh, I nearly said something I shouldn't have -- on page 19, and read it. It tells you where you need assessment reviews on severances, so don't tell me they're not needed. Right there, in your report your ministry wrote that you didn't read. Don't tell me I didn't read the legislation. It's right there, and it's got your own government stamp on it. It says right on it, government-stamped, page 19. Read it and then maybe you'd understand what you're talking about.
Instead of talking about cigar-chomping rooms, maybe you can talk common sense about your piece of legislation that you don't even understand, which is more bloody embarrassing than anything.
As far as the member across the floor from Yorkview, I think you misunderstood the point. It wasn't campaign donations I was talking about, it was disclosure of your assets, your mortgage, those kinds of things. Campaign disclosures I agree with. I disclosed municipally, as well as some other members probably had to too. I don't think anyone should get campaign donations without disclosing to the public. That's not what I was talking about. I agree fully with that. I endorse that. I've done it in my life and I accept it. I wasn't talking about that. It was disclosure of assets such as mortgages etc for a $3,000-a-year job; it's going to discourage people from running.
The Speaker: Does the Government House Leader have the business statement for next week?
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon Brian A. Charlton (Government House Leader): Pursuant to standing order 55, I wish to indicate the business of the House for the week of June 20.
On Monday, June 20, we will give third reading consideration to Bill 136, courts of justice, third reading consideration to Bill 134, credit unions, committee of the whole House consideration to Bill 91, the Agricultural Labour Relations Act, and Bill 119, the Tobacco Control Act, and second reading consideration to Bill 171, sustainable forestry.
On Tuesday, June 21, we will give second reading consideration to Bill 175, the efficient management omnibus act, third reading consideration to certain private members' bills followed by second reading consideration of Bill 159, the Ontario Loan Act. Any time remaining following completion of these items will be allotted to the debate on the 1994 Ontario budget.
On Wednesday, June 22, we will give third reading consideration to Bill 91, the Agricultural Labour Relations Act, and Bill 119, the Tobacco Control Act, second reading consideration to Bill 175, the efficient management omnibus act, and third reading consideration to Bill 159, the Ontario Loan Act, and Bill 161, revenue enforcement. Following these items, we will consider a motion for interim supply standing in the name of Mr Laughren.
On the morning of Thursday, June 23, during private members' public business, we will consider ballot item number 65, second reading of Bill 170, standing in the name of Mr McGuinty, and ballot item number 66, Bill 176, standing in the name of Mr Hayes.
On Thursday afternoon, we will give third reading consideration to Bill 160, the Budget Measures Act, second and third reading to certain private bills, and other business to be determined.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): It being past 12 midnight of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock Monday next.
The House adjourned at 0004.