Hansard Transcript 1994-Nov-21 | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Standing order 62(a) provides that, "The standing committee on estimates shall present one report with respect to all of the estimates and supplementary estimates considered pursuant to standing orders 59 and 61 no later than the third Thursday in November of each calendar year."

The House not having received a report from the standing committee on estimates for certain ministries and offices on Thursday, 17 November 1994, as required by the standing orders of this House, pursuant to standing order 62(b) the estimates before the committee of the Ministry of Housing, the Ministry of Environment and Energy, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and the Ministry of Natural Resources are deemed to be passed by the committee and are deemed to be reported to and received by the House.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CRIME PREVENTION

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I rise today to address the issue of crime prevention and safety both at home and in the workplace. Last Friday, I had the opportunity to meet with acting Staff Superintendent Joe Hunter and with Sergeant Pat Tallon of 41 division in my riding of Scarborough North. He was kind enough to give me a tour of the division and explain its workings.

Sergeant Tallon is also responsible for media and public relations for 4 district headquarters and district community services.

I had occasion to utilize the expertise and resources of 41 division recently when I was compiling information for my booklet, Crime Prevention and Personal Safety Guide, published for my constituents. For anyone, of course, wishing a copy of this guide, it's available free of charge through my office.

I am pleased to report to members today that violent crime is down in my area and all across Scarborough by 5.4%. Clearly, the initiatives that the police and community organizations have implemented in raising public cooperation and awareness have contributed to this decrease. There is still much work to do, and the involvement of everyone is crucial in addressing this issue.

I was very impressed with the fact of the lack of funds and lack of support that are given to the police from time to time for such an excellent job. I'd like to acknowledge also the participation of numerous community groups and organizations that have done a tremendous job.

Again, thanks to those wonderful men and women who enforce the law and thanks also to the community.

VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): This afternoon, I plan to introduce a private member's bill that would amend the Highway Traffic Act to allow volunteer firefighters the use of a green flashing light on or in their vehicles while they travel to an emergency call. We need this because volunteer firefighters use their own personal vehicles when responding to an emergency call. The flashing green light would alert motorists that emergency personnel are on their way so that time is saved and safety is enhanced. The lights would not allow firefighters to disregard the rules of the road.

Many municipal councils in Wellington have written to me to express support for this important safety device. I have also a letter of support from the firefighters' association of Ontario. On September 10, 1992, I wrote the first of nine letters to the former Minister of Transportation requesting that the government amend legislation to allow for green flashing lights. The minister promised in each of his replies -- nine replies -- that his government would actively pursue this issue, and I believe he said at the earliest possible opportunity.

This past June, I asked the minister in the Legislature why the government had not yet acted. He responded that the Liberal caucus was responsible for the delay but that the government would act on this item as soon as possible. However, eight days later he indicated to me by letter that the government would not proceed with amending the legislation in the near future.

For more than two years, the government has been promising volunteer firefighters that the law would be changed to allow them to use flashing lights. I believe now that there is broad consensus between all three parties on this initiative. I encourage all parties to put their partisan feelings aside and work together to ensure that this private member's bill, which would allow volunteer firefighters the use of a flashing green light, is made into law before the House recesses at Christmas.

SEWAGE AND WATER TREATMENT

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): I am pleased to take this opportunity today to tell everyone about a project in Niagara-on-the-Lake which has the potential to radically change the way we treat waste water. It's called the SWAMP, or sewage waste amendment marsh process, and it involves using marsh plants like cattails and bulrushes to treat waste water without the use of chemicals. If proven effective, everyone in Canada and the US will have an inexpensive, environmentally friendly way to treat waste water.

Constructed wetlands clean up sewage effluent year-round without the use of harmful chemicals while providing a wildlife sanctuary in a natural setting. The experiment has been going on at a "swamp" in Niagara-on-the-Lake under the watchful eye of Dr Edgar Lemon from the Friends of Fort George organization for over three years, with great results. I'm pleased that the Ministry of Environment and Energy has assisted this research project by providing funding and technical support totalling over $65,000.

Recently, I attended a ceremony where the federal government and the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced they would also contribute funds to the experiment. The SWAMP method of treating sewage waste is not only environmentally friendly; it's much cheaper than our current practice of using chemical treatment plants. In fact, it would cost about $2 million to construct a swamp purification plant or system which could do the job of the $7.5-million plant just opened in Niagara.

I highly recommend this system and I hope all members will consider this for their ridings.

CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES

Mr Charles Beer (York-Mackenzie): Earlier today, members from all three parties attended the annual lobby of the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, more commonly known as OAITH. During the course of the meeting, the names of all of the abused women who have been murdered by their spouse or partner during the past year, some 119 women and children, were read out.

I do not for a moment question the desire among all members to bring forward legislation, regulations, programs, whatever is necessary to end this devastating toll, and yet we must as legislators recognize that while we have made tremendous strides in dealing with the issue of abused women and their children, we clearly have not yet done enough.

The concerns raised today covered a whole host of issues: concerns around the implementation of the social contract and expenditure control plans of this government; concerns around social assistance reform at both the provincial and federal levels; concerns about pay equity, employment equity; many concerns affecting the provision of children's services, of more supervised access centres, and concerns for a real attack on child poverty; concerns that despite progress in the judicial system there is still a lack of sensitivity to racial, cultural and sexual diversity; concerns about how effectively our family court system understands the nature of abuse issues and concern about the cuts to legal aid plan funding; and finally, real concern over the cancellation of training of anti-racism and anti-oppression work.

At the end of their session with each of the caucuses, the representatives from OAITH gave us roses and asked us to place them at each member's desk. Let us today recognize the progress we have made, but let us equally recognize what remains to be done and pledge to do it.

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ANTI-TOBACCO LEGISLATION

Mr Cameron Jackson (Burlington South): On Monday, November 14, I had the privilege of speaking in recognition of the installation of the Merchant Navy Book of Remembrance at Queen's Park and to greet and pay tribute to the many naval veterans and associations that attended.

Today I wish to acknowledge with pride that the Royal Canadian Naval Association, Burlington branch, has won the national honour of RCNA club of the year. Nelson Larche, the president of the association, received the high honour of becoming RCNA member of the year for all of Canada. I would like to publicly congratulate the RCNA, Burlington, and President Nelson Larche on their significant achievements which assist us all, and especially our youth, to keep forever alive the timeless call, "We shall remember them."

This is why it is so hard to reconcile that the NDP government now wishes to remove smoking privileges in some of our veterans hospitals. On November 3, I wrote to Health minister Grier asking her to investigate this matter and to reconsider it. To date the minister has not responded.

On Friday, November 18, I visited Parkwood Hospital in London, home to almost 500 veterans, and met with Bob Eggleton, a non-smoker and president of the veterans' residents' council, concerned about the no-smoking ban in the designated lounge areas.

A smoke-free society is clearly a health promotion goal. However, Canadian veterans who have made so many sacrifices for our freedoms should not have the simple pleasures which comfort them in their last days removed. On their behalf, I again ask the Health minister to reconsider this ill-advised decision.

TOWNSHIP OF ERNESTOWN

Mr Paul R. Johnson (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings): I want to tell you where it's hot in Ontario with respect to manufacturing and industrial growth and where it's happening. In Ernestown township, that's where.

Located in the eastern end of the riding of Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings, just west of Kingston, Ernestown township is an ideal place to live and work and play. Recent significant investments by the Ontario government through the Jobs Ontario program, investments by the township, Ontario and Canada through the Canada-Ontario infrastructure works program, and most importantly, investments by private sector industries mean investments totalling almost $1 billion in the township in the past year according to David Cash of the Kingston and Area Economic Development Commission.

I would like to share some specifics with respect to these considerable investments. Celanese Canada Inc recently announced an investment of $160 million to upgrade its plant to ensure that the present 360 jobs will be maintained. This happened directly as a result of the soon-to-be built Destec cogeneration steam electricity plant, which will reduce operating costs for Celanese.

The Bombardier-UTDC plant has a contract for $600 million to build vehicles for an urban transit rail line in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which means employment for over 300 workers.

Ernestown township has over 770 acres of land planned and prepared for industrial use. Situated on Lake Ontario, it has excellent rail and highway service, and air service at Kingston airport. It will soon have an abundant supply of steam available for industry requiring it.

Much credit goes to Ian Wilson, immediate past reeve of the township, for his continued efforts to ensure the township is a leader in growth and development and also a wonderful place to live.

LEADER OF THE THIRD PARTY

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): This weekend the Conservative boss got yet another makeover: The same American image maker who tried to transform Ollie North from a convicted liar and thief into a law-abiding politician has been working with his new prize student. Like a new car, the image makers unveiled yet another model of Mike Harris.

Gone is the tough exterior. Gone is the man who enjoyed the nickname Atilla the Un just a few months ago. The new Mike Harris is going to be a sensitive guy of the 1990s. He says he cares, he bleeds, he even hurts. The problem for Ontarians is that while Mike Harris wants to be a warm and sensitive guy of the 1990s, his ideas and attitudes firmly remain anchored in the 1950s.

Mr Sensitive thinks children on welfare are getting too much to eat, and so he's going to cut, cut, cut. Mr Sensitive says natives are just sitting on their reserves being lazy. And Mr Sensitive said of immigrants, "We're getting too many, not just blacks, we're getting too many from other countries too."

One thing hasn't changed: Atilla is still a member of a party that dares not speak its name. In his sensitive-style speech on Saturday, there were lots of words: nouns, adjectives, verbs. Even "Liberal" and "NDP" were mentioned four times. But the words "Progressive" and "Conservative" were never mentioned once.

Don't be fooled. The Conservative Party is the dangling participle of Ontario politics. A zebra can't change its stripes, and Mike Harris's stars and stripes are red, white and blue.

CHILD DAY

Mrs Elizabeth Witmer (Waterloo North): Yesterday, November 20, was national Child Day, a date which was proclaimed last year by the federal government to coincide with the anniversary date of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In my community of Kitchener-Waterloo, close to 50 different organizations joined forces to plan a week of activities to raise public awareness about this day, to increase the community sensitivity to the special care and nurturing that all children need, and to encourage families to participate in celebrating this important day. I would like to congratulate the regional community health department for taking the lead in organizing this important campaign.

However, as we talk about national Child Day, it is important to remember that some 681,000 Ontario families live in poverty, and this morning, when my colleagues and I met with the representatives of the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, they impressed upon us the need for urgent action by the provincial government to assist in meeting the goal of eliminating child poverty by the year 2000. This Thursday, Campaign 2000 will be releasing its fifth annual report card on child poverty, and it's expected that it will show that the number of families living in poverty in Canada has increased.

We are all concerned about the plight of children who live in poverty. I urge everyone to make an increased commitment to helping those children.

PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE PARTY

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): I stand in my place today to talk about the revolution, partly, in London.

A neighbour of mine in Orono is, believe it or not, the daughter of Eric Liddell. Eric Liddell is that fine humanitarian who did more for civilization than a thousand Tories would attempt to do. He served the poor; he gave his life for the poor. He served in China; he gave his life in China. His life story was the essence for the movie Chariots of Fire, and that movie went on to win the best picture of the year and all kinds of Oscars.

I just want to say on the record that for the Tories to use the march, the theme music from that wonderful movie Chariots of Fire, in London on the weekend as they fought like frenzied crocodiles to bid for the bill to destroy Bill 40 that means so much to the working people of this country is absolutely diabolical. It's not only an affront to all the working people, but more than that, to use the theme music from Chariots of Fire is an affront to Eric Liddell, the man who stood for the working and the underdogs in this country and in China. You're a disgrace, the whole blinking lot of you. You should be shot, the lot of you.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order under standing order 21. I have two matters to bring to your attention.

It is reported in the morning's Globe and Mail that the Progressive Conservative Party, presumably with the knowledge of the leader, sent a camera crew to the biennial convention of the Ontario New Democratic Party. This camera crew, firstly, lied to convention officials with respect to their identity and shot clips of the Premier for broadcast to the Conservative convention.

This is not the substance of my point of privilege, although I note that those kinds of dirty tricks had no place in Canadian political life until now. They are more associated with the antics of Oliver North and his ilk. But I do want to call to your attention that the imposter camera crew got the television clips broadcast to the Conservative convention, in the words of the Globe and Mail, "to poke fun at NDP leader Bob Rae by engineering the sound track to give him a stutter."

Mr Speaker, we have seen this kind of disgraceful behaviour before, when the Conservative Party of Canada tried to ridicule the facial expression of the Honourable Jean Chrétien during the 1993 general election.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Would the member for Oxford please take his seat. The member for Oxford, please come to order. He will know that he does not have a point of order. He speaks of matters which occurred outside of the chamber and are not subject to the standing rules of this House.

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Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): Mr Speaker, on a point of order: How can the opposition conduct question period with none of the government people here? About two thirds of them are not here.

The Speaker: The member will know that he does not have a point of order.

VISITORS

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I would invite all members to join me in welcoming to our assembly and indeed to our country, seated in the Speaker's gallery, the honourable Ishmael Roett, Speaker of the House of Assembly, Barbados, and Ms Delores Watson from the Barbados consulate. Welcome.

ORAL QUESTIONS

WATER QUALITY

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): I have a question to the Minister of Environment and Energy and it has to do with the report of the Provincial Auditor of last week. The minister will be aware that the Provincial Auditor revealed last week that there are communities in the province that are being exposed to discharges of untreated or raw sewage. Their sewage treatment plants are not complying with health and environmental guidelines set by you.

The Provincial Auditor reviewed the performance of 27 treatment plants and almost one third of these plants were found to be in non-compliance for one or more of the following reasons: They did not have the equipment to monitor the discharge of untreated sewage; they did not measure or report the discharge of untreated sewage, or they had significant delays in reporting these discharge occurrences to your ministry.

Will the minister today commit to releasing the list of sewage treatment plants as identified by the auditor that breached your guidelines for discharging untreated waste into our lakes, rivers and streams, our potential sources for drinking water?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): Yes.

Mr Offer: By way of supplementary, the auditor revealed only 27 sewage treatment plants in his report, and of that, almost a third were in non-compliance with your guidelines regarding the discharge of untreated sewage.

As you've committed today, you should be aware that there are 415 sewage treatment plants in the province, and if the auditor's report is any indication, there could be as many as 125 sewage treatment plants in the province today that are not meeting proper treatment and discharge requirements. Thousands of people across this province are potentially at risk.

The auditor stated, and I quote, "To date, little action has been taken by the ministry to address these concerns." Minister, what action have you taken to inform the people in the province who are currently at risk? What action will you take to ensure that filth is not being dumped into our lakes, rivers and streams?

Hon Mr Wildman: I hope the member will not attempt to describe the situation as any more serious than it is. He will know that the auditor's report was dealing with a situation as he identified in 1992. It was based on the dischargers report of 1991, which he knows I'm sure is an annual report that is required by law from all of the dischargers which we compile and then release. Not only do we release it, we share it internationally because of our obligations to our neighbours around the Great Lakes. So all of this information is available publicly and has been.

The auditor's report, as I said, dealt with a situation in 1992 based on the 1991 discharges report. The number of communities actually involved was not 91 as the auditor indicated but 96 that were out of compliance. I'm happy to say, based on the information we are currently compiling from the 1993 dischargers reports, which we will be releasing soon, all but 15 are in compliance. Only four operated by OCWA and 11 by municipalities are currently out of compliance.

We are working with those municipalities to ensure that they will in fact come into compliance. Some of those involve capital expenditures and a number of those municipalities have applied for assistance. Some have gotten approval for assistance for new sewage treatment plants or whatever. Some of the non-compliance matters, of course, are very minor and don't require a great deal of capital work.

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

Hon Mr Wildman: So let's be very frank here. This is an important matter, but we have in fact taken action and have responded and the matter is being dealt with.

Mr Offer: It's very interesting. I'm glad that the minister has brought forward the annual reports that he is supposed to release. The auditor did refer to an annual report published by your ministry on discharges from municipal sewage treatment plants in Ontario and the auditor did make note that the most recent edition is the report on discharges occurring in 1991. But it was released by your ministry in September 1993 -- one and a half years to release this report.

When we take a look at that 1991 report, it reveals that fully 91 sewage treatment plants in the province failed to meet the compliance guidelines of your government. The report also lists that of the 10 worst-performing sewage treatment plants in Ontario, seven are operated by you, the provincial government.

So the question remains, Minister: Why was there a delay in releasing the results of the 1991 report, and will you provide an update on the status of the compliance of the 91 sewage treatment plants identified in your own report?

Hon Mr Wildman: I think it's unfortunate the member didn't hear my answer to the previous question before he wrote the question for his third, because I just answered all of that in my answer to his second question. In fact, I did give an update and I indicated how we had responded and I pointed out that the information the auditor had was based on the 1991 report. I indicated to the member that it was not the latest material available to the public or available, for that matter, internationally. In fact the latest is 1992. I indicated what the current status is based on the matters that we are compiling from the 1993 dischargers report which we are currently bringing together, to which we will respond.

As I said, I am prepared to table the information the member has requested and I indicated to him that of the 96 communities that the auditor was considering -- not 91, as he said in his report -- only 15 remain out of compliance. So the member mustn't have heard what I said in answer to his second question or he wouldn't have repeated it in his third question.

JUSTICE SYSTEM

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): My question is to the Solicitor General. The response of people across this province to the release of Wray Budreo this weekend underlined the lack of faith people have in the criminal justice system. This weekend people demonstrated and marched to express their rage and frustration with a system that they think no longer protects their children. In fact, it's a system that seems to give more rights to the criminal than to the victim.

I think the police and local communities did a good job this weekend with inadequate tools. We've asked the Attorney General what action she could take and we saw her shrug her shoulders. We asked the Health minister and we saw her shrug her shoulders. I want to ask the Solicitor General what specific and concrete action he has taken, every possible measure he's taken, to ensure that children in communities across this province are protected, and I want to see more than a shrug of his shoulders.

Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): As the honourable member knows, the issue he's raising is a federal one. It was the federal system that the individual was released from. That's not trying to pass the buck, but merely to make sure that we're stating the facts and putting things in their proper context.

In terms of the police, which is my direct responsibility, and I would assume that's what the member was striving to hear from me on, I've been working with the corrections community both provincially and federally as well as the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, in particular to work on a set of guidelines that would assist police in dealing with the question of release of names. What types of measures should they take and when would it be appropriate, and how do they balance the rights of the individual in terms of their rights under the law as well as the rights of communities?

I agree with him that the police in this case have handled this exceptionally well, with great sensitivity for the rights of the individual, but also recognizing the importance to communities. We're down to the final stretch on this. The police are a part of developing the guideline. We've got just a few more issues to work through and then I expect to be issuing a directive from my office to all police services giving them the kind of direction that they need.

I would say to him very directly it will very much resemble the types of responses we've seen from police on this particular issue and also if you look at what the police service in Hamilton-Wentworth, my own community, has been doing with its own type of local release-of-names process.

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Mr Murphy: To blame this issue on the federal government shows the Solicitor General does not understand this issue. The Attorney General's own deputy pointed to her government and his government as having the appropriate field for action, so it's clear that he doesn't understand what's going on. It's just not good enough. If the government doesn't have the tools to do the job, it should create them. That's what I hear and people in ridings all across this province hear. The police will tell them they don't have the adequate tools to do the job.

Last week my colleague urged the government to act on the laws to keep sexual predators locked up. All your colleagues the Attorney General and the Minister of Health could say was that they would continue to have meetings to discuss it.

Today I will be introducing two bills which are designed to make the parole system work for victims and not just for offenders.

A year ago we raised in this House the issue of Clinton Suzack. We have not heard a single report back from the Solicitor General on that issue yet despite a year's passing. He could have acted in the interim.

I'm asking the Solicitor General, will you undertake to work with me to ensure that legislation to implement victims' rights and to make the parole system more accountable to the people of Ontario can be passed? I've provided you with copies of those bills, and I hope you'll support them.

Hon Mr Christopherson: It's disappointing to see this particular member play those kinds of misinformation games and try to twist things around. That's not usually his style; he's usually very straightforward. The fact is that he asked me questions about my area of responsibility with regard to this issue and issues like it. I answered very directly and very up front about where we were and what we had done and what we're continuing to do to work with the police.

I would remind him, if we're going to talk about who's responsible for what, that it's his Liberal cousins who run the national government. Why don't you talk to them about what they ought to be doing? They're the ones who said they can't do anything. Why do you pop up here and then say, "No, I'm not trying to play any games"? That's very much unlike you. I'm very shocked to hear you like that.

On the issue of his legislation, I've had a chance to look at the two documents. I think there are two different pieces of legislation he's proposing. I had a little bit of time before the House to look at them. I think that he will know that Bill C-45, which the federal government now has in the House, deals with parts of this. In fact, much of it is word for word what the Liberals have proposed. We are indeed very interested in what they're doing. As you know, they've had first reading. Now it's gone to committee. As I understand it, in fact the committee process starts this week. I would think he and I and the rest of us here would want the benefit of those committee hearings and the community groups that are going to have input.

With the issue of victims' rights, we have done a great deal in that area. We continue to work in that area. We are not finished in the area of victims' rights. We will continue to make it a priority. He will see that as the balance of our mandate unfolds.

Mr Murphy: Again the Solicitor General shows his misunderstanding of the issue. It's his own government that said his government should act and not the federal government. He should talk to his compatriot the Attorney General and get her to explain it to him, although she's -- well, I won't say that.

I do want to say that what people were concerned about and protesting about this weekend was their sense that their governments are complacent and unwilling to take the steps that are necessary to make our cities and towns safe. They see their governments stand by and watch human tragedies take place and then say there was nothing they could do. People are tired of hearing that nothing can be done.

I'd like to get together and act now and find a way to do something. We've worked with you before on other things, and I'm asking you to do it again and not to put it off. As I said, I'll be introducing these two bills this afternoon.

Interjections.

Mr Murphy: I hear heckling from the third party, and I hope they join with me and I hope the critic from the Progressive Conservative Party will join with me to meet today and determine whether there is support to pass these bills this session. Are you prepared to even take this one small step?

Hon Mr Christopherson: As I've already indicated to the honourable member, much of what he is suggesting here is contained in Bill C-45 that the federal government has tabled. They are interested in receiving community input and hearing what the experts have to say before they enact it, and I would strongly suggest that it makes for good lawmaking for us to do exactly the same thing.

With regard to the other piece of legislation that he has suggested, I would remind him, of course, that much of this is already done. Granted, it's done by policy, but that was policies -- to give credit to the previous government, it was done in 1989. So if there's a real need to make them mandatory, you could have done it at that time.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't look at it, and we will and we are and we're working closely with the federal government with regard to their changes because, as the member knows -- I think he is a lawyer; he understands this better than I -- indeed much of the legislation we have with regard to correctional release and probation and parole is set by the federal government. In fact, the federal government and the federal national parole system is the parole system in most provinces. We're one of the few that has our own. We consider this -- I consider this -- to be of the utmost importance and I can assure him that we've already been on top of this and will continue to stay on top of it.

DRINKING AND DRIVING

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): My question is for the Attorney General. For a year now the Attorney General has had sitting on her desk a dozen excellent suggestions from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. MADD proposes several legislative changes to reduce the tragic problem of drinking and driving which takes hundreds of lives in Ontario every year. In fact, alcohol is a factor in 81% of all highway deaths. Two months ago the Drinking/Driving Countermeasures Office released a statistical report which showed that after a decade of decline, drunk driving is now on the increase.

By this minister's own report, there were 30,000 drunk driving convictions in 1992. A shocking 59% of those were repeat offenders; 18,000 drivers drunk and caught. We don't know how many were out there in that one year.

I ask the Attorney General, why have you not acted on the excellent suggestions that were put forward by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and why have you done nothing to fight drunk driving?

Hon Marion Boyd (Attorney General and Minister Responsible for Women's Issues): Well, the member is quite wrong that we have done nothing at all to combat the problem of drunk driving. In fact, she needs to be very much aware that we see the drunk driving problem together with the other problem drivers, aggressive drivers, where we're working in terms of the photo-radar and some stepped-up stances against speeders and against aggressive drivers, the graduated licence program where there's a zero tolerance of alcohol for young or new drivers, and we are gradually working at that.

We made a conscious decision that for some of the changes in licensing that would be required under her bill and the suggestions that had come forward around an automatic suspension until trial for drunk drivers, we needed the opportunity to see the effect of some of these other areas of licence change, particularly the graduated licence.

This government has continued to support the RIDE program, we've continued to fast-track impaired driving courts so that we can get some of these cases through the courts, get our convictions earlier, and it just simply is incorrect to say that because we haven't followed a certain number of recommendations from an advocacy group, we have done nothing. That is not to say we're not interested in those recommendations and that we don't consider them as actions that we may be able to take in future years.

Mrs Marland: Minister, I'd like you to go today and knock on the door of a family of victims of drunk drivers and tell them that photo-radar is doing something to stop that killing. That's insulting. You cut your budget $2 million and you say you're doing something.

Today I will introduce a bill that will get tough with drunk drivers. I have provided you with an advance copy. Under my bill people convicted of drunk driving more than once will lose their licences for life. Before getting those licences back, first-time offenders will have to take education and rehabilitation programs. Drivers charged with impaired driving will have their licences suspended automatically for 90 days after the charge is laid. I point out that that is the case today in Manitoba, it's gone all the way to the Supreme Court and it's been challenged twice and upheld. Vehicles of people who drive while disqualified would be impounded and, if the driver is guilty, sold by auction and the money used for education programs.

My bill would also make it an offence punishable by a fine or imprisonment to knowingly lend a vehicle to a disqualified driver.

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

Mrs Marland: Minister, if I as a private member could come up with this kind of legislation, why hasn't your government come up with tougher legislation when, by your own report, drunk driving is on the increase --

The Speaker: Could the member complete her question.

Mrs Marland: -- so what you're doing is not working?

Hon Mrs Boyd: There are some real problems with what the member suggests, and these are problems with which we are trying to work before taking the kind of drastic action she's suggesting.

For example, we know that the largest number of those who are drunk drivers are repeat drunk drivers, and they often are driving while their licence is suspended. There is great concern among those who know a great deal about this and are specialists in this field that the effect of a lifetime suspension, which this member suggests, would simply fuel the problem of people driving while their licence is suspended. Similarly, there is clear evidence that when people's cars are seized or they haven't got the access to the car in which they were driving at the time they were stopped, they simply get another one. We need to find ways to resolve those problems, and we will do so.

Similarly, on the vehicle seizure issue, there are real problems, and certainly our police forces have advised us of the real problem of the kind of warehousing of vehicles that would occur with the seizure of vehicles while this process is going on. The member says, "Just sell them," and there are some real problems around the private property issues for people under those circumstances.

Mrs Marland: I can't believe that you're standing in this House talking about a problem being warehousing vehicles. Is the problem not putting bodies in the ground that are killed by drunk drivers? I ask you, is that not the problem?

The real problem is you. If you cared and you wanted to do something, you could do something, instead of standing in this House and making excuses about why this bill wouldn't work. I simply say to you again that if you wanted to act on this bill in a non-partisan manner, you could, the same as you did the bullet bill. In two days we passed a bill controlling the sale of ammunition in this province.

I say to you again, if you were sincere about doing something about people being killed by drunk drivers, you wouldn't worry about what you would do with their vehicles when their vehicles were impounded --

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

Mrs Marland: -- for driving without a licence.

I ask this minister again for a commitment to the people who are victims in this province by their family members and friends being killed by drunk drivers. Don't stand there and defend them, the fact that they wouldn't have a car to drive --

The Speaker: Would the member please place a question.

Mrs Marland: -- or where you would store it.

I ask you finally, once more, will you once and for all take a strong stand against drunk driving and take away the licences of people who drink twice and are caught for impaired driving twice?

Hon Mrs Boyd: The members on this side of the House empathize as much as the member opposite about the problems that are faced by victims and by families of victims of drunk drivers, and we are very concerned about the issues that have been raised and very much admiring of the kind of work that advocacy groups like MADD have done.

But what we are saying to the member is that there are issues that our caucus has looked at that we as a group of people believe need to be straightened out before we take some of the actions she has suggested. We are not convinced that the actions she suggests are the ones that are going to be the greatest deterrent, particularly the lifetime suspension issue.

I do not have any empathy with people who drink and drive. In fact, I feel just as strongly as the member does. But the problem with us in making laws is to make laws that work and have the effect that we expect them to have. We have real concerns that the measures which the member is suggesting would have the effect that she wishes they would have.

HEALTH CARDS

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): My question is to the Minister of Health. I have a series of very simple questions with respect to your new health card system. I want to know whether it's true that over the last year you committed to the people of Ontario that you would have a province-wide telephone verification system in place to check the validity of new health cards.

I also want to know whether it's true that only 10 hospitals to date have a telephone or IVR system in place. Also, can you tell me whether or not it's true that, of those physicians and staff at those 10 hospitals now that are checking health cards, about 25% of the health cards have been reported back over the telephone system as either being invalid or having major, major problems? One in four cards being checked currently in this province have major problems. Can you confirm that, Minister?

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): No, I'm sorry, I can't, but I will certainly try to get that information and confirm or deny the member's allegation. I can say to him that the validation pilot projects are up and running and that in fact a growing number of providers have the capacity to use the validation, the verification system to make sure that the cards with which they are presented are in fact still current. We have made enormous progress on improving the system, improving the efficiency of the system, and we continue to work on the preparation of Ontario's new photo health card.

Mr Jim Wilson: It's astonishing that when you're spending all this money on trying to put your new photo health card system in place you're not aware of the day-to-day happenings out there with respect to the implementation of the system.

Minister, last May you announced that all Ontarians would have a new photo OHIP card within three years and that the registration process would begin in February 1995. I want to ask you, Minister, is it true that only a small segment of the population, about 10,000 people, will actually receive new photo health cards in year one of your process, and is it true that the registration process will now take much, much longer than the three years you said the process would take? Are either of those true, Minister?

Hon Mrs Grier: As I said in response to the first question, work is continuing on both the design of the project and the implementation. It is extremely complex. We are working with my colleague the Minister of Transportation in order to ensure the most appropriate way of delivering the health card across the province.

But what is fundamental for us is not to repeat the mistakes that were made the last time, when health cards were issued to anybody who applied and there were in this House, day after day, instances of double health cards, ineligible people getting health cards. This is a health care system that our government cherishes, protects and is going to protect even more by eradicating fraud, duplication and cheating in our health care system.

Mr Jim Wilson: That was a very interesting response, because when I first raised this issue a couple of years ago in the House, we had about 12 million health cards in the province of Ontario for a population of 10 million. Today we have close to 15 million health cards for about the same population base.

I've also been informed that the reason that only a few thousand Ontarian residents will receive cards in your first year of registration is that the cost to produce the new green and white cards with a trillium on them is about three times the original estimate of $90 million, that the new figure is about $180 million.

I want to ask the minister a couple more very, very important questions. Is it true, Minister, that you have a report from experts that advise you not to implement the photo health card system that you're planning to implement? Is it true that the costs for your system have risen and that officials in your ministry now estimate that it could cost three times more than your original estimate? And is it true that after your system is in place, after you've spent the $180 million, your system will cost $30 million per year just to operate and it will be $30 million for ever and ever and ever, year over year over year? Is that true, Minister?

Hon Mrs Grier: Let me remind the House that when the Conservatives were in government, there were 25 million health numbers out there in the province. When the Liberals issued the new card, there were, I think, 15 million or 16 million issued. There are now 11.1 million active health cards in Ontario. That is exactly, or almost exactly, the population of this province.

I have made it clear from the beginning that we regard the implementation of a new photo health card for the province of Ontario as very important to the future protection of the system. We are doing it, we are doing the work and we intend to get it right.

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LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM

Mrs Barbara Sullivan (Halton Centre): My question is to the Minister of Health. On August 18, 1994, last summer, your director of long-term care told care providers who appeared at public hearings into Bill 173 that, and I'd just like to quote from Hansard:

"The costs associated with the severance of that individual would obviously be a government responsibility, given that you" -- the service providers -- "don't have the resources to pay for it otherwise and it's our policy that has required you to take that action."

I'd like the Minister of Health to confirm that it is still her policy to protect existing long-term-care employers such as the Victorian Order of Nurses, Red Cross homemaking, the Saint Elizabeth Visiting Nurses' Association, Meals on Wheels and so on, from severance costs for those employees who are not hired by your new MSAs.

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): As the member well knows, we have made amendments to the long-term-care legislation to provide that the MSAs will be successor employers. We have protected the rights of those who are working in the system so that they will have a mandatory job offer. As I've said time and time again, this is an area of health care that is expanding as we bring long-term care into part of the health care system.

I am confident that in fact the vast majority of those people providing care will continue to provide care, albeit in some cases for a different employer. Part of our reason for doing that is not just because we want to protect the people who work in the system, but we know that by protecting those people and making the transition smooth, we're protecting the people that this reform is all about: the seniors and the disabled of this province who will get continuity of care.

Mrs Sullivan: I'd just like to point out that the mandatory job offer that the minister refers to as a headline, that really is a reasonable offer, which is the requirement of the employer, and that reasonable offer is made to union workers over non-union workers under the terms of the New Democratic Party amendments to the bill.

But recently, in meetings with service providers, Ministry of Health representatives indicated that existing providers may have to dispose of all of their assets before the government can make severance payments through the labour adjustment fund. In other words, the Victorian Order of Nurses, Red Cross homemaking, Meals on Wheels and many, many other agencies would necessarily, and in consequence, be forced on the road to bankruptcy.

Is bankruptcy for these agencies which provide exemplary care how you guarantee severance payments to workers you are putting out of a job?

Hon Mrs Grier: There are no lengths to which the member will not go in order to portray reorganization of long-term care as a disaster about to fall on this province. In fact, we had in this House last week 300 representatives of a vast variety of seniors' organizations saying to this House, "Get on with your legislation, because we've been waiting for it for 10 years and we like the way you intend to protect seniors, to protect the disabled, to protect volunteers, to protect ethnocultural groups that are already providing services and to protect the workers in the system." That's what our legislation is doing and maybe that's why the member opposite doesn't like it.

HYDRO PROJECTS

Mr Noble Villeneuve (S-D-G & East Grenville): To the Minister of Environment and Energy, last week the Ottawa Citizen and the Toronto Sun revealed that Ontario Hydro had commissioned a study on manipulating the gas emissions from ruminating cattle. You've had a sex survey; you now have a farmyard gas survey. If Ontario Hydro wasn't so deep in debt, this would be an absolute joke. What did this cost Ontario Hydro?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): The member I'm sure will be glad to know that the reports in the press regarding Ontario Hydro investing in such a study were nothing more than hot air.

Mr Villeneuve: If the real truth were known, methane gas from garbage dumps is 100 times more than the emissions from our ruminating livestock. If Ontario Hydro and the government doesn't know this, go to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture tonight and ask a few farmers just where these emissions really come from.

Mr Speaker, through you to the minister, do you have control on the expenditures of Ontario Hydro or do you let them run amok?

Hon Mr Wildman: I guess I shouldn't have used such colourful language. Obviously the member who comes from rural Ontario is not aware of what I meant. The fact is that Ontario Hydro is not investing in, nor is it considering investing in, cattle-diet modification projects in Canada or internationally or anywhere.

The fact is that Ontario Hydro is very much aware of the fact that methane gas coming from landfill is a potential serious problem for greenhouse gases and also is a potential source of energy. As the member knows, Ontario Hydro announced last week $110 million to be invested in alternative energy technologies, one of which will perhaps involve studies of methane gas escaping from landfill sites as a source of energy both to deal with the need for alternative energy sources and to avoid pollution in the future.

But I just want to make very clear, as clear as I can, that the member's concerns about the possibility of cattle flatulence being subject to Ontario Hydro investment and study is incorrect.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations has a reply to a question asked earlier by the honourable member for Renfrew North.

FURNACE VENTING SYSTEMS

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): I am pleased to respond to the question asked by my good friend the member from Renfrew North. I watched the tape and I'm well aware of the issue and the question.

In response to what the ministry and the government is doing to coordinate efforts to try to solve this indeed serious problem, we in fact have been the first jurisdiction in North America -- because this problem exists right across North America -- to take action whatsoever, and those other jurisdictions are now turning to us to see how they can deal with it.

The first thing we did as a consumer ministry is put out some consumer alerts. We placed ads in newspapers across the province, and we also directed the utilities to inform their customers and indeed to conduct inspections and to inform our ministry of the defects that they were finding out there.

We have also been working with the Ministry of Housing in terms of the problems within the housing that we're responsible for as a government and have come up with a compensation fund for our own housing to help with that. In the meantime, the industry has been working with our government to come up with a solution, and perhaps on the supplementary I can tell the member about that.

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I appreciate the minister's timely response. She'll know that last week the Ontario Home Builders' Association wrote to her colleague the Minister of Housing. I think a copy of the letter went to herself and to the Premier. In that letter the Ontario Home Builders' Association indicated that the problem was serious and it was urgent. In fact in that letter dated last week the representation was made to the Ontario government that action needed to be taken within days, if not within hours.

I'm wondering, Minister, what you can tell the 10,000-plus Ontarians who face this potential and serious hazard, what specific action the Ontario government is prepared to assist with in the immediate future so that people across the province faced with this potential hazard will know what they can do as the winter of 1994 bears down on them.

Hon Ms Churley: The industry has been working hard to come up with a solution to this and it does have what it believes to be a problem-free product. This will be able to be used. It's not for the long term. It too will have to be tested, but they believe that it is a problem-free product, and the utilities are out there working with their customers to make sure that these replacements are done and the inspections are done. This is all happening at this time.

I should add that the product in question that the member referred to was banned for sale in Ontario. That was done right away when we first heard about this problem. The industry does believe that this replacement is problem-free and we will be monitoring that very, very closely.

1430

OLDER WORKERS

Mr Steven W. Mahoney (Mississauga West): My question is to the Minister of Labour. Minister, last week you expressed great concern for workers in the Uniroyal plant in Waterloo who are caught in the bureaucratic nightmare of the program for older worker adjustment.

I want the minister to be aware that over 1,300 workers from all across the province, from Mathews Conveyor in Cobourg, from Cooper Tools in Port Hope, from SteelFabCo in Paris, from Campbell Red Lake mine in northern Ontario, from McDonnell Douglas in Mississauga, are all affected. In fact, the member from Quinte, Hugh O'Neil, has informed me of three plants -- Murata Erie, Field Aviation and Corby Distilleries -- where older workers are awaiting help. Some of these workers have been waiting since 1991. Some of them have even died while they waited.

Five provinces in Canada participate, as you know, in this joint federal-provincial program. All provinces except for Ontario have signed the annual memorandum of agreement for 1994. Since March, your officials have been dragging their heels and dragging out the negotiations with the federal government, which paid for 70%. Minister, can you tell us what is the status of your negotiations with regard to the program for older worker adjustment?

Hon Shirley Coppen (Minister of Labour): The negotiations are still going on between the province and the federal government. As the member has said, the program is funded 70% by the federal government, 30% by the provincial government.

Ontario was hit the worst by this recession that we have lived through for the last four to five years already, with many plant closures, many people being put out of work, and the funding for the program was almost exhausted. As we speak, those negotiations are still going on. We are hoping for a conclusion of them in the next couple of weeks. We will be looking at all of the workers, evaluating which workers will receive their money, as soon as possible, and we should have that done by the end of the year.

I am very sorry, like the member, that this has gone on so long, but he has to remind himself how deeply Ontario was into the recession, and with limited amounts of money, how difficult it is to fund this program.

Mr Mahoney: That may be the first time I've heard the minister admit that they are not prepared or have not been prepared to fund the program. Did I just hear you say, "There is not money available to fund this program?"

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): That's not what she said.

Mr Mahoney: That's what I just heard you say.

Minister, you talk about the recession. The provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and British Columbia have seen fit to sign this program designed to help older workers who have been laid off and who have run out of their unemployment insurance benefits. Only the province of Ontario has refused to sign. Only your ministry has been holding back, so laid-off older workers who are entitled to these funds and have been entitled to them in the past are not being serviced. These people are desperate. Don't remind me about the depth of the recession. They can remind you. They are feeling and reeling under the recession because they've been laid off.

Minister, can you please tell us in this House today and those older workers across this province who have been affected by your government's mishandling of these negotiations exactly when they can expect to start seeing the money rolling in? These people are desperate. They need your help and they need your commitment. Give us a firm date today.

Hon Mrs Coppen: I feel the member is being totally unfair by saying that we are stalling the negotiations. We are not stalling them. We're working in cooperation.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Order.

Hon Mrs Coppen: You notice no blame on my part being put on the federal government. This is a very difficult project that we're undertaking. I am not putting blame on any other level of government. I am looking forward to the conclusion of these negotiations so that they will help the workers here in Ontario, and with that type of attitude I hope we will be able to resolve this problem very soon and be able to address the problem.

GO RAIL EXPANSION

Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): My question is to the Minister of Environment and Energy. It concerns the Go Transit rail expansion program in the Richmond Hill corridor, which passes through my riding of Willowdale. The expansion will increase service from the current eight trains per day to a total of 34 trains. These trains will literally be travelling through my constituents' backyards.

Minister, for over a year and a half I have been asking you to commit to an individual environmental assessment to ensure that my constituents' concerns are addressed. Are you willing to make that commitment today?

Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): The member knows that there is a process for determining whether or not there should be a bump-up for an individual environmental assessment. Currently the environmental assessment branch is analysing the request and the evidence that might substantiate such a bump-up and will be advising me, at which time I will make a decision, and the member will be the first to know.

Mr Harnick: Minister, my constituents feel that they have not been properly consulted on this issue and that the proposed expansion will have a negative impact on their neighbourhood. The recommendations from the Environmental Assessment Advisory Committee were sent to you last March. I have heard unofficially that you have approved this project and that you will be making an announcement before this House rises in December. Minister, can you confirm that you have made this decision?

Hon Mr Wildman: Again, I can confirm that the member will be the first to know when the announcement is made publicly.

NORTHERN ECONOMY

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): My question today is for the Minister of Northern Development and Mines, a member of this Legislature with deep roots in northern Ontario, having spent a number of years working in the mines of our special part of the province, indeed having spent a number of years working in the mines and plants of northern Manitoba; also a member who understands the politics of northern Ontario, having served for a number of years as reeve of the wonderful community of Manitouwadge.

My question, Minister, is about the impact of the Conservative Party's Common Sense Revolution. Is it for real or is it just the first and most serious of a series of pranks designed for purely political purposes, to distract us from the serious work at hand? What impact would this proposed program have on we who live and work in northern Ontario?

Hon Gilles Pouliot (Minister of Northern Development and Mines and Minister Responsible for Francophone Affairs): I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond to a question in the House, where it's been over two years since the Minister of Northern Development and Mines has been the recipient of such an opportunity. The Tories and the Liberals haven't asked one single question in over two years. Do they care about the north? Have they forgotten about the north?

The Common Sense Revolution? There's really nothing commonsensical about the Common Sense Revolution. It's a nonsense revolution. The Tories promise to cut spending by 20% and yet not impact on health care. It simply means to the north that jobs by the thousand will be eliminated. Programs for municipalities, transfer payments and different boards of agencies will all be gone. That's what 20% cuts for the people of the north mean, nothing short of that. It will kill the initiative in the north.

Mr Martin: Very frightening indeed. I'd like to be a little bit more specific with you. If you look at the 20% cut and the budget of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines and compute that to be $50 million, could you tell me specifically what $50 million will mean to your ministry and your ability to deliver programs of any consequence to the people of Sault Ste Marie, Manitouwadge, Atikokan and all the places that contribute so much to the economy of this province?

Hon Mr Pouliot: Simply put, it means $30 million in the heritage fund. We're looking at 10,500 jobs gone, cancelled. We're looking at $14 million to renovate old schools. The Conservatives would have them collapsed.

We're looking at $500,000 for wife assault. That's the human dimension. Those are real people in need of services. What is it that's being said here? "Go back to the closet and stop complaining. Your problems never existed," because you have no funding for those clients in dire need. "Cancel the aid to prospectors, to minor developers, people who are creating real wealth." It does not make sense, no common sense whatsoever. Let's do it progressively --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the minister conclude his response, please?

Hon Mr Pouliot: -- let's put people first, let's inject some compassion where it's needed the most, in that special part of Ontario, namely, northern Ontario. Shame on you.

The Speaker: Would the minister please conclude his reply.

Hon Mr Pouliot: How can one party, when all is said and done, take --

The Speaker: The minister has answered the question. New question.

1440

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): My question is to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and it has to do with the plans the province may have for dealing with some of the major issues facing Metropolitan Toronto, particularly in the areas where the province I think has a major role. The minister knows that Metro Toronto has lost about 200,000 jobs since 1989. We've lost about 15% of the jobs in Metro Toronto, as the minister knows. I think the tax base in Metro Toronto, as he knows, is eroding.

In the municipal election, clearly there was a signal, at least from the city of Toronto voters and I think from others, about their concern about the complexity of government in Metropolitan Toronto. The board of trade, as we all know, has indicated its concerns about the governance of Metropolitan Toronto.

I wonder if the minister might tell the House today what the province's plans are for resolving some of these issues with Metropolitan Toronto where the province has the key role to play.

Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): I think a number of people have a key role to play. The member is quite right. The referendum in the city of Toronto gave a clear indication that people had concerns about governance. It also had a clear indication that they were concerned about such questions as leadership at the municipal, local, lower-tier level.

What is fairly clear is that this is not a new problem, but it is an increasingly disconcerting problem. If we do not bring together the taxation questions, the governance questions and the economic development questions, a coordinated approach to this, we could well be, as American cities are, the centre of, the hole in the doughnut, with economic development taking place around, and the inner city being in a very unfortunate position, the inner city being Metropolitan Toronto, or even worse perhaps, the city of Toronto. I can tell you that we take this seriously. We're working with Metro in its study. We're working with the GTA mayors, and I'm meeting with them on a regular basis.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Could the minister conclude his reply, please?

Hon Mr Philip: We are putting all of the pieces together. We are not going to allow Toronto or Metropolitan Toronto to be the same as US cities. But maybe the honourable member --

The Speaker: Could the minister please conclude his reply.

Hon Mr Philip: -- would tell me what the position is of the Liberal Party on this issue, since we've called its research department and they tell us --

The Speaker: Could the minister please take his seat. The question has been answered. Supplementary.

Mr Phillips: If I heard the minister correctly, he was saying there is the need for the province to take action, that the problem was bad and getting worse and that there is a need for a coordinated approach. So I think the minister is saying the province needs to take action, but I gather the minister has no action he's planning to take.

I would say that it's quite clear that what is required is indeed a comprehensive study of the problem and a proposal on the solutions. You can call it a commission, you can call it a comprehensive review, but it is clear that the government should and must act very quickly to establish that body that will do that study very quickly -- I think it is urgent -- and to bring forward the recommendations.

Now, there's a specific recommendation to the minister. That's our recommendation. If you're going to do something different, tell the House today. If you have nothing else you want to do, you can't figure out what to do, then take that recommendation and act on it.

Hon Mr Philip: I take the member's recommendation seriously. Indeed it's a recommendation that has been given to me by such people as Bill Davis and other people who I think are concerned about Metropolitan --

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): Don't listen to him. See what happened to us.

Hon Mr Philip: Mr Stockwell says, "Don't listen to Bill Davis." I'd rather listen to Mr Davis, who was the leader of a Progressive Conservative Party, than to the reform party members who are on that side of the House today. I tell you, Bill Davis is so happy because we gave him a job, he looks 10 years younger, and he's going to do a great job for us.

With regard to the suggestion the member has made, certainly that will be one of the considerations that we will be taking into account. I will be meeting with the new chairman of Metro, whenever that person is appointed, or reappointed as the case may be, and we'll of course be meeting with the lower-tier mayors.

But I wonder if the member would clarify whether it in fact is true that the position of the Liberal Party, or one of the positions it was considering, was the abolition of Metro. If they think that is a simple solution, maybe they'd tell us and come clean with it.

LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): My question is for the Minister of Health, and it concerns Bill 173 and long-term care. Minister, with your government's closure motion, you've closed down, as of 6 o'clock today, committee debate on this very important piece of legislation, and we are left in committee with quite a mess with respect to the amendments that are on the table.

Minister, your last-minute labour adjustment section 15 amendments very clearly favour only unionized nurses and home care workers in the sector today. The ad hoc coalition concerned with Bill 173 has put forward new section 15 amendments to bring some fairness to the bill so that both non-unionized and unionized employees will be able to apply for jobs in the new multiservice agencies. Will you accept the new section 15 amendments today and bring some fairness back to the labour adjustment provisions of bill 173?

Hon Ruth Grier (Minister of Health): We made it clear from the introduction of Bill 173 that it was our intention to protect those people currently employed in the system. If they have a collective agreement, then that is protected; if they don't have a collective agreement, then they have a job offer of a comparable job. That's what our amendments manage to do, and that's what will be part of the bill when the committee votes on it.

1450

Mr Jim Wilson: Minister, that is not what your amendments say. That may be what your briefing notes say, but that is not what the legal text that is on the table downstairs right now says. It very clearly gives jobs to unionized workers and says, "The rest of you are out of luck."

Minister, because thousands of nurses and home care workers who currently work for VON and Red Cross and Saint Elizabeth visiting nurses will lose their jobs under your MSA program, will you today commit to paying the severance costs for those thousands of workers who are non-unionized who will clearly lose their jobs in this sector? You've left an awful mess down there with respect to amendments, and right now you're stinging the VON and the Red Cross and Saint Elizabeth and dozens of other provider agencies --

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): Would the member complete his question, please.

Mr Jim Wilson: -- with the severance costs, once you steal their employees.

Hon Mrs Grier: We have laws in this province that protect workers. We have always had laws in this province and our government is very proud of the way in which those laws have been implemented for the protection of workers, organized and unorganized, within this province and within the workplace.

The district health councils, which are doing the planning for long-term care, were requested from the very beginning to prepare human resource plans so that the transition for people already employed in the system to new employers would be as smooth and as trouble-free and as effective as possible.

In response to many of the submissions heard by the committee we have clarified what we have meant in our directions to DHCs, we have clarified how workers can be protected and we have ensured that for the people who matter, the seniors and the disabled, the transition to a new system will be as smooth and as seamless as possible. That's what matters to us.

APOLOGY

Mr Gordon Mills (Durham East): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Earlier this afternoon, in my statement, I used a British colloquialism that might even suggest a violent act. I'm not a violent person and I wish to withdraw that.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I don't know precisely what the member was referring to, but it sounds like a good thing that he's doing.

QUESTION PERIOD

Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I ask for your direction. This morning, attending the infrastructure program out in my riding, the Minister of Municipal Affairs related having observed William Davis in the House when he was Premier and how he could spin out the answer to a question over a considerable period of time in order to limit the number of questions that might be asked in the House. The Minister of Municipal Affairs indicated that he admired that and did his best in each answer to spin it out as long as possible in order to limit the number of questions that might be asked during question period in this House. I ask for your direction as to whether or not that contravenes the orders.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): The member will know that each member who utilizes a considerable amount of time causes some frustration for the Chair and for other members, and I simply ask all members to try and keep their questions and replies as brief as possible.

CORRECTION

Mr Jim Wilson (Simcoe West): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I would just like to correct my record from question period today. I used the figure $180 million in reference to the new estimated costs of the NDP's photo health care plan. It should be three times $90 million, which, as everyone knows, is $270 million, if I could correct the record, Mr Speaker.

The Speaker (Hon David Warner): It's good to correct arithmetic.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT (FIREFIGHTERS), 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE (POMPIERS)

Mr Arnott moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 192, An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act respecting Firefighters / Projet de loi 192, Loi modifiant de Code de la route en ce qui a trait aux pompiers.

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

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): The intent of this bill is something I talked about in a statement earlier this afternoon, and that's to give legislative approval to allow volunteer firefighters to attach a green flashing light to their vehicles when they're going to an emergency. I think this bill is needed in rural Ontario. I think all members of the Legislature pretty well support this concept and I would urge all members to give it their support when it comes for second and third readings.

ASSESSMENT AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉVALUATION FONCIÈRE

Mrs Caplan moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 193, An Act to amend the Assessment Act / Projet de loi 193, Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'évaluation foncière.

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

Mrs Elinor Caplan (Oriole): This is the bill that I said last Thursday I would be introducing unless the government introduced its legislation first. This is the last week that bills can be introduced. It's my hope that the government will introduce similar legislation by Thursday so that we can ensure that small mall retailers will be protected from the huge increases that they are facing.

COUNTY OF KENT LOCAL MUNICIPALITIES ACT, 1994

Mr Hayes moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr159, An Act respecting the county of Kent and the Local Municipalities in it.

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

BOARD OF PAROLE DECISIONS AND VICTIMS' INFORMATION ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LES DÉCISIONS DE LA COMMISSION DES LIBÉRATIONS CONDITIONNELLES ET SUR LES RENSEIGNEMENTS DESTINÉS AUX VICTIMES

Mr Murphy moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 194, An Act to provide for Procedures in respect to Decisions of the Board of Parole and for Provision of Certain Information to Victims / Projet de loi 194, Loi établissant des procédures à l'égard des décisions de la Commission des libérations conditionnelles et prévoyant les renseignements que peuvent obtenir les victimes.

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

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): Briefly, this bill sets out information that the board of parole must consider in making decisions on parole, the rights of a victim to be notified of a parole hearing, to make oral statements at parole hearings in certain cases and to be notified of the date of an inmate's release, and information concerning inmates available on request to victims and others, as well as other procedural matters.

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE

Mrs Marland moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 195, An act to amend the Highway Traffic Act / Projet de loi 195, Loi modifiant le Code de la route.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): Today I have the pleasure of introducing my private member's bill entitled An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act, 1994.

The purpose of this bill is to legislate several tough new measures aimed at reducing drunk driving. Chief among these measures is the permanent revocation of driving privileges for repeat drunk driving offenders. It is my hope that the threat of a lifetime ban on driving will be the deterrent drunk drivers need to change their behaviour.

My bill also provides that when a person is charged with impaired driving his or her licence would be suspended until the charge is heard in court or for 90 days after the laying of the charge, whichever occurs first.

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Upon a first conviction, the driver's licence would be suspended for one year. The suspended driver would be required to complete mandatory educational and rehabilitation programs prior to reacquiring his or her licence.

Some people predict that a lifetime ban on driving will result in more people driving without a licence. My bill has responded to this potential problem in two ways. First, my bill would enable police officers to impound the vehicles of people who drive while disqualified. If the driver is found to be guilty, the vehicle would become the property of the crown and would be sold by auction. Moneys raised by the auction would be paid into a new drinking and driving trust fund for programs to prevent drinking and driving. Secondly, my bill would make it an offence punishable by fine or imprisonment to knowingly lend a motor vehicle to a disqualified driver.

My decision to draft this bill resulted from the Attorney General's inaction on this issue and the sad fact that I have heard from too many people about the loved ones they have lost as the result of a drunk driver. Earlier this afternoon I outlined the shocking statistics. The fact that the incidence of drunk driving is on the rise is unacceptable and alarming.

The Acting Speaker: Could the honourable member please summarize?

Mrs Marland: I will just complete one paragraph, Mr Speaker. I hope that all the members of the Legislature who read this bill will recognize that drinking and driving is not a partisan issue; it is an issue of justice and human compassion. I urge the government to take action to ensure the passage of this legislation.

MINISTRY OF CORRECTIONAL SERVICES AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LE MINISTÈRE DES SERVICES CORRECTIONNELS

Mr Murphy moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 196, An Act to amend the Ministry of Correctional Services Act / Projet de loi 196, Loi modifiant la Loi sur le ministère des Services correctionnels.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): Briefly, the proposed amendment authorizes the chair of the Ontario Board of Parole to recommend to the Minister of Correctional Services that an inquiry be conducted by a judge of the Ontario Court (General Division) to determine whether a board member should be subject to disciplinary measures. It increases the accountability in the system and ensures that a decision like that made with reference to Clinton Suzack be accountable to people within the judicial system and not to political figures.

LUNG ASSOCIATION, OTTAWA-CARLETON REGION ACT, 1994

Mr McGuinty moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr137, An Act respecting the Lung Association, Ottawa-Carleton Region.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

BUSINESS REGULATION REFORM ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 PORTANT RÉFORME DE LA RÉGLEMENTATION DES ENTREPRISES

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of, Bill 187, An Act to reform the Law regulating Businesses / Projet de loi 187, Loi portant réforme du droit réglementant les entreprises.

Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): I believe, Mr Speaker, that at the end of the debate on this bill some days ago, the last speaker was a member of the Conservative Party.

Usually, the rotation would have come to this side, but you'll also recall that the critic for the third party, the member for Parry Sound, had stood down his opening remarks. I believe he will pick up his opening remarks at this point and then the rotation should proceed as normal from there.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): According to the government House leader, do we have agreement? Agreed.

Mr Ernie L. Eves (Parry Sound): I'm sure the government will be happy to know, as will other members of the Legislature, that I don't intend on taking my full 90 minutes this afternoon; in fact, far less.

Applause.

Mr Eves: I see that's already meeting with an overwhelming chorus of enthusiasm on the government benches.

I would like to get a few comments on the record with respect to regulatory reform and this bill, Bill 187, the bill being introduced by the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations as a part of the Clearing the Path initiative which was launched by the government to respond to small business concerns about red tape and the high cost of compliance with government regulations.

After more than a year of study, including several interministerial working groups, the government I think has achieved three things, but only three things:

Firstly, computer business registration workstations will allow entrepreneurs to electronically complete four of the most commonly required forms for an unincorporated business startup.

Secondly, this unified reporting will make it possible for businesses to receive consolidated monthly statements and remit taxes in a single payment. The objective set forth by the government is to combine retail sales tax and employers' health tax in 1995, and it professes or proposes to add Ontario corporate tax at a later date.

The third thing is that new business registrants will be given a single federal business number. That is another initiative the government is proposing through Bill 187.

Having completed these three, albeit necessary but I would submit somewhat less than revolutionary, changes, no doubt the government will then go out on the election trail in the next provincial election next year and claim that it has responded to the concerns of the business community. I think nothing could be further from the truth.

The government will undoubtedly try to make the electorate believe that it has made significant progress towards reducing the barriers to business growth in this province. However, I would submit that Bill 187 is really about an elaborate PR campaign by the government, since the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations is only dealing with four out of 43,164 registered forms currently required by the government of Ontario. I think the public should be aware of that and I'm sure the business community is aware of that fact. We are dealing with only four out of 43,164 forms. That leaves another 43,160 to be dealt with. This is a small step indeed to regulatory reform in the province of Ontario.

In May 1992, the government's final report from its interministerial committee on plain language reported that over 50% of Ontario government communication is done through forms. This followed the February 1992 publication Improving Service Quality in the Ontario Government, which reported that some of the barriers to service quality improvement included lack of clear language in documents and forms, poor form design and, most importantly, in block letters, too many forms.

The committee reported that the number of registered forms in the Ontario government is 43,164, as I mentioned earlier, and that it costs $21 million a year to print all these forms. This figure does not include another estimated 42,000 unregistered forms floating around in the bureaucracy of government. So what we have here is in excess of some 85,000 forms annually required in one form or another, using a pun on words, by the province of Ontario, and Bill 187 purports to deal with four out of 85,000, a small, small, small step indeed, if it could be described as a step at all.

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An outside consultant, the Gartner Group, estimated that the cost of processing these 43,164 legitimate forms by the government is an estimated $1.47 billion -- not $1.47 million -- a year. If you add the other forms, the unregistered forms, which number about 42,000, we have a figure in the neighbourhood of $3 billion a year that the government spends processing forms itself. This is just the cost to the province of Ontario: $3 billion a year. This doesn't even begin to recognize, doesn't talk about the expense to business and single entrepreneurs out there of filling out the forms themselves.

As a result of this study, the committee observed that if the government improved 5% on the legitimate forms' processing costs of $1.47 billion, the province of Ontario would save $73 million a year. That's just improving 5%. Their savings would be $73 million a year, a very significant figure indeed.

In response to these reports, this government is making, I would submit, a less than dramatic advance or move on four of the forms out of 43,164, if you want to take just legitimate forms that are required, and four out of in excess of 85,000 if you want to include interbureaucracy forms floating around in individual ministries.

However, even though the government claims to be cutting red tape, we discovered that the government will only be streamlining compliance. There will not be a reduction in the regulatory burden. They're just going to streamline four forms as to how you comply with the regulatory burden. They're not really going to the crux of the problem or the root of the problem.

The whole area of government regulation, paper burden and red tape needs to be examined carefully to ensure that unnecessary duplication or requests for information are eliminated. Regulatory reform is needed to reduce the impact and cost of unnecessary requirements of government.

The province of Ontario alone passes in the neighbourhood of 750 to 1,000 new regulations every single year. Just think about that for a minute: 750 to 1,000 every year. The cumulative effect of this is mind-boggling. How the average Ontarian or average businessperson is expected to keep track of these is almost impossible. It's not as if every person in the province of Ontario reads the Ontario Gazette every day like they read the Toronto Star or their weekly newspaper.

It is estimated that employers in this province have to devote the equivalent of one month's work every year to completing forms and complying with government regulation. One month out of 12 is devoted to nothing but red tape requirements of government. I find that figure rather appalling, but the government doesn't seem to be too concerned about it, if Bill 187 is any indication. This is what we get after well over a year of consultation and some two years to think about it.

As a result of the consultation with small businesses and entrepreneurs, our party has had task forces on creating jobs through small business. We know the regulatory burden is indeed a matter of genuine and growing concern throughout the province of Ontario.

Our document The Common Sense Revolution recommends the appointment of an arm's-length commission to review all current regulations affecting businesses in the province of Ontario. Any regulation that could not be justified would be eliminated within 12 months of a Harris government taking office. The commission would have as part of its mandate the responsibility to review all existing regulatory initiatives for their impact on private sector job creation.

Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells has committed himself to a complete and full review of all regulations that impact on business by introducing a sunset provision which comes into effect in April 1995. Regulations in that province are currently being examined by bureaucrats and an arm's-length committee, as we suggest, under the auspices of the Economic Recovery Commission to ensure that only appropriate regulations will survive that sunset date of April 1995.

Surely, if this government were as committed as is Mr Wells in the province of Newfoundland to reducing the regulatory burden and reforming the system, it would be introducing some similar legislation after having in excess of four years to look at the problem. Currently the province has no formal policy whatsoever towards governing the development of regulation. There is no formal planning process that would warn the government and the public that a new regulation may be introduced and no mandatory requirement for public consultation or notification unless it is explicitly provided for under the act authorizing the regulation itself.

The Legislature, as I'm sure many members will know, has no direct input at all into developing regulation. The government does not evaluate regulations that are in place and the economic impact of regulations are not done prior to their implementation. Having been the past chair of the standing committee on regulations and private bills of the Ontario Legislature, I can certainly assure you that this is the case. That committee merely looks at regulations after they've been passed to see if any of them might be ultra vires of the government's authority to pass such regulations.

I'm sure that the minister will know that, partaking in the cabinet committee on regulation herself, there really is no great public consultation process. I have served on that committee in cabinet as well, and the process that we go through is quite antiquated indeed. There is not a great deal, if any in some cases, of public consultation and feedback as to what the government of the day is purporting by way of regulation.

Personally speaking, I find government by regulation to be somewhat undemocratic and autocratic, to say the least. I think that, where possible, things that are done should be done aboveboard and in this chamber. That's what we have a parliamentary system of government for.

Even the NDP government of Saskatchewan has introduced a code of conduct, called the Regulatory Code of Conduct, to ensure that businesses and citizens have better access, understanding and input into the regulatory process. That code requires, before implementation of regulatory measures, that departments, agencies and the crown will examine non-regulatory alternatives and identify the potential costs and benefits to businesses and individuals resulting from proposed regulations.

The code goes on to outline characteristics for the regulatory process. For example:

(1) advance information and notice of proposed regulatory initiatives and amendments, where not part of the budget process, to the sectors most affected by them;

(2) opportunity for affected sectors to provide input into statutes and regulations;

(3) regular review of statutes and regulations and their objectives to ensure continued relevancy;

(4) efforts to minimize regulatory conflicts and differences both within the Saskatchewan government and among other government jurisdictions in the province of Saskatchewan;

(5) drafting by professional draftspersons who are subject to clearly identified and uniform drafting styles and standards.

As happens here, as I'm sure most members are hopefully aware, the bureaucrats in the legal departments of various ministries are responsible for drafting their own legislation and regulations. There is no uniform system of doing it.

(6) A detailed review of proposed legislation and regulations by elected officials; and

(7) regulatory requirements communicated in an understandable language -- more user-friendly, in other words -- a suggestion that the government's own interministerial committee has recommended to it but which to date it has so far chosen not to pursue.

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In the United States, the Paperwork Reduction Act gives every citizen the opportunity to comment on any form of government that they have to fill out. The address for comments is clearly identified on the form. The user of the form is therefore given the ability to comment directly on its use or its relevancy.

Again, given what other jurisdictions have introduced, it is surprising that the government of Ontario seems content to deal with four out of 43,164 forms. Successive governments throughout Canada have continually added to the regulatory burden for decades. As a result, we now need a fundamental review of government regulations, not just mere tinkering around the edges, I would suggest to you.

Regulation is important to Ontario's competitiveness and a critical factor in the decision of many businesses to invest or not to invest in this province. Legislative and regulatory initiatives have imposed significant administrative and financial costs on employers. Although individual legislation may have merit, the cumulative effect of our onerous legislative environment has made Ontario a less and less attractive jurisdiction for investment.

Ontario has the highest minimum wage in North America. Bill 40 introduced the most comprehensive labour laws in North America, a fact of which this government is abundantly proud. At the time of Bill 79's introduction, Ms Ziemba stated that the bill was the foremost employment equity law in all of North America and perhaps in all of the world. Yet the government has made no attempt to harmonize standards with the federal government or other governments of the ever-increasing costs to business in this province.

In Bill 162 the former Liberal government's WCB reforms added over $1 billion to the unfunded liability in this province and resulted in even higher assessment rates. The current government is now compounding that problem by introducing Bill 165, which will add to the $11 billion unfunded liability of the workers' compensation scheme in this province of Ontario.

On January 12 of this year the Financial Executives Institute Canada released a report comparing the financial position of workers' compensation boards across Canada. Here in Ontario our board is responsible for 70.25% of the accumulated $11.8 billion of the national WCB debt, just in excess of 70% when Ontario workers only make up 39% of the nation's workforce.

Those figures don't compute. How can we be responsible for 70% of the entire accumulated unfunded liability in Canada through workers' compensation boards when we only have 39% of the workforce? It's almost twice as much as we should be responsible and liable for in this province.

The report goes on to conclude:

"It is clear that the rising cost of workers' compensation cannot continue simply to be passed on to employers through ever higher assessment rates. Corporate competitiveness is crucial to maintaining our Canadian standard of living and this is one program in urgent need of repair. There is a danger of affecting both current and future jobs."

This is what that independent body and report found, yet we don't seem to be doing anything about that. We're going to address a problem of four forms out of 43,164.

The report goes on to recommend that in those provinces where the Workers' Compensation Board is fiscally weak -- and it names them: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Alberta -- it urges those provinces to follow the leadership shown by the provinces of Manitoba, New Brunswick and Newfoundland. "The latter provinces enacted legislation that reduced costs significantly but still maintained an effective safety net for injured workers." Ontario has not seen fit to act on this recommendation either.

When the previous Liberal government was in power, it passed Bill 208. It amended the Occupational Health and Safety Act to require health and safety committees in all workplaces. The small business advisory committee to the Workplace Health and Safety Agency has found certification training requirements outrageously expensive and totally unrelated to small business workplaces across the province.

Then we have the issue of the $50 corporate filing fee. We have debated this issue in this Legislature on numerous occasions. Our party's dissenting opinion to the report on the underground economy recommended that the government eliminate the corporate filing fee, as compliance costs would appear to be far greater than the fees themselves.

This government has added continually to the cost of doing business in the province of Ontario. I see Bill 187, Clearing the Path legislation, as nothing more than a very simple PR exercise by the current government to try to convince businesses in Ontario that it has responded to their concerns.

Businesses in the province of Ontario are buried under a mountain of regulatory reform, although there's nothing detrimental to say about Bill 187 per se, except that it doesn't say very much and doesn't even begin to deal with the problem. This bill purporting to deal with the problem of regulatory reform and burden in the province of Ontario is equivalent to giving businesses a Q-Tip to dig themselves out from the bottom of this avalanche.

The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments? Further debate? Does the minister want a question or comment?

Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): No, Mr Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: This is now further debate. The honourable member for Norfolk.

Mr Norm Jamison (Norfolk): Do you want to carry on with debate or are you asking for questions right now?

The Acting Speaker: I did ask for questions or comments. No one rose. However, I now see the member for Downsview. Is it the pleasure of the House that we revert back to questions or comments on the member for Parry Sound's participation? Agreed.

Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): I simply want to take a minute or two to speak to some of the issues raised by the member opposite. I just want to say I couldn't agree more with many, many of the things that he has talked about in terms of the paper burden and some of the regulations that we apply and in fact require business, and small business in particular, to have to deal with in order to carry on their affairs.

It's very important and incumbent on us to change a lot of that and to introduce reforms that would reduce a lot of the paper burden and a lot of the regulations that we apply to businesses. I think that can be done quite easily.

One of the processes which the government has undertaken and has initiated in order to do that is the whole process of what's being called on the government side, and many of the opposition members will know the name of it, the Clearing the Path initiatives, where you come to house a lot of the applications and a lot of the forms that small business has to fill out sort of in one area.

Now, as you will know, Mr Speaker, particularly in that area, if someone wants to start up an enterprise, they have to go to a whole bunch of places and fill out forms and so on. That I think goes a long way to helping many of our small business people in eliminating some of the paperwork and some of the red tape they're required to go through. So I'd make that as an alternative and supplementary suggestion to the member's arguments.

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The Acting Speaker: Further questions or comments? The honourable member for Wellington.

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): Nothing further.

The Acting Speaker: You don't have questions or comments. Any further questions or comments?

Mr Noel Duignan (Halton North): I appreciate the words from the member for Parry Sound but, as he well knows, what this particular bill will do is set a whole chain of events into place so we'll be able to offer some long-term service expansion in this whole area. He is quite correct: to most taxpayers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses in this country, all levels of government are the same, no matter what it is -- provincial, municipal, regional or federal.

What this bill will do is allow, in the long run, the amalgamation of all the registration, be it municipal, federal or provincial and it will allow us to create a single, one-stop shopping and master licensing system for businesses in this province. Negotiations are already under way with the federal government to adopt the single business registration number, and hopefully that will begin to deal with that process.

What this bill does is give the government departments the authority to go ahead and move in that particular direction and deal with some of the questions around freedom of information and protection of privacy as well, which is posing a problem. This bill begins that process and hopefully, within a couple of years, we will have single-window shopping for businesses in this province. So when a business walks into a small business office, it will be able to complete all the necessary forms and licensing systems for its business.

I've taken a look at what's happened out in Washington state, for example, where they have over 700 licences for business in that particular state. They have it all down into one master licensing system. Hopefully, that's what this bill will ultimately be able to do.

Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): I'd like to briefly relate a little bit of history behind this bill. At least three years ago, a committee of parliamentary assistants was set up to look at how we could help small business and we did meet with various groups such as the chambers of commerce and the small business federation. It was a difficult task, let me tell you. First of all, I told my government colleagues that I wanted to be on this committee because I represented the city of Niagara Falls and, I would say, compared with many other cities, we have more small business than probably anywhere else.

The difficulty was with getting several different ministries together, the bureaucracies, to work together and realize that, in order to help small business, they had to simplify and they had to work together. This took quite a while, to make sure they understood what they had to do and to make them go back and do it. I'd like to give some credit to my colleague Norm Jamison from Norfolk, because he was the one who chaired that committee and he was the one who insisted that it continue and that it be done, and finally we have it here before us.

I would like to say that small business is going to be very important in the next few years to getting more jobs in this province; not the large companies, but the small companies. My husband just opened a small business over the last year and it is now expanding so I know what he has gone through to get to this position and I would encourage others to look at small business in this province.

The Acting Speaker: We can accommodate one final participant. Seeing none, the member for Parry Sound has two minutes in response.

Mr Eves: I appreciate the comments made by the members for Downsview, Halton North and Niagara Falls. I commend them on their basic thought. However, I still would like to point out that the government has been in place for well in excess of four years now. It's had its own interministerial report since 1992. It's had some time to respond to its own report.

I would have hoped that after that period of time -- I'm not belittling, believe me, the efforts of the members who have just spoken, but I would like to think that, having had this period of time in which to contemplate and deal with this problem, they would have come up with a more all-encompassing -- some call it a step; I would call it an inching forward along a road that's perhaps as wide as the province of Ontario itself.

I think there could have been more dramatic solutions and more reform solutions such as the ones that Premier Wells in the province of Newfoundland has implemented. Provide sunset legislation. I understand the problems that the member for Niagara Falls relates to with respect to different ministries and getting it through to them but, believe me, if you passed a sunset law that said, "One year from now all your regulations will cease to exist unless you can justify them to me," that would certainly get their attention and they would certainly be able to respond. I think if you make them justify their own existence and why they're there, surely that would be one small step down the path towards regulatory reform in the province.

Mr Jamison: It's a pleasure to stand in the House and speak to Bill 187, a bill that I believe is very important in an area of major concern to most business people in this province -- and in any other jurisdiction, for that matter -- and that is the ability to allow businesses to do business with their governments, at whatever level, in a more efficient way, therefore allowing businesses to do business.

As members of the House will recall, my honourable colleague the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations introduced this bill for first reading on November 3 of this year. I am delighted to say that this bill reflects the government's commitments to cutting red tape for business in Ontario. The bill also acknowledges the vital role played by small business in the revitalization of this province's economy.

Many members have stood in this House and extolled the virtues of small business and its job creation efforts over the last number of years, and certainly I will echo those by saying that what has been said about the numbers of jobs created in the small business community is true.

You know, business confidence is coming back. Investment is up and businesses are making investments in capital spending. In fact, some economists are now predicting that Ontario will be one of the leading industrialized sectors in economic growth in the next few years. We might say, "What does that have directly to do with the bill?" This bill ensures that those businesses will be doing business with their governments in a more efficient, streamlined fashion.

This is not a tiny step. This is a large leap forward. Let me explain that we're not talking about streamlining and combining four forms; we're talking about a piece of legislation that we can call umbrella legislation that will allow for much, much more streamlining than that to take place.

Small business is a big reason behind the recent upswing in this province's economy, business that helps spur the economy and business that creates jobs. However, as regulations and standards have changed and increased, businesses have found themselves forced to spend more and more time filling out forms, responding to inquiries from various levels of government and so on.

Paperwork: Small business people will tell you, time and time again, beyond taxes it's paperwork. I listened to the last speaker on this issue. There we have a representative of a government that was here in power in this very place for some 42 years that kept adding and adding and adding to that paperwork burden. This government is committed to reduce that paperwork burden. We're doing so by the initiation, by the implementation, by the introduction of Bill 187 here in this House, as introduced November 3.

We talk about the regulations. Those regulations have changed and increased somewhat over the years. Businesses have found themselves forced to spend more and more time filling out those forms and responding to inquiries from various levels of government. I can tell you that giving a unified number to businesses, a unified number that potentially will work right across the scale, right across the scope of governments at every level, is a large step forward.

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The Business Regulation Reform Act is designed specifically to streamline and simplify the business registration reporting process, thereby lessening the paper burden. The act will overcome hurdles in specific program legislation, and that's why I call that an umbrella piece of legislation. It will provide the way and the means to lessen the number of forms -- forms that may be mentioned specifically in other pieces of legislation and forms that, up until this time, governments have refused to recognize as not needed in some cases. They've always been there, regardless.

We are also going to introduce and pave the way for electronic registration, using the technology that we have at our fingertips today to enhance the ability of doing business with business in this province. I can tell you it will also provide the authority for registration and reporting, all of those services, and the expansion of the ability of that system to be used to reduce the red tape in this province. The regulatory burden placed on small business in Ontario has grown over a long period of time. Opposition parties, while they were in power, took no initiative to reduce that burden -- no initiative.

Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): None.

Mr Jamison: None. We have. Today, we're talking about a bill that will mean a significant amount to the small business community in its ability to be doing business rather than be doing paperwork. We're dealing with this problem head on. It's not a roundabout approach. We're talking clearly about the reduction of the paper burden that small businesses have felt in this province.

This government has shown initiative by introducing this legislation to streamline the number of processes involved in starting up a small business. Our government takes its regulatory responsibilities very seriously. This bill will ensure regulations necessary to maintain a fair, safe and informed marketplace that supports a competitive economy and that it will be administered in the most efficient and the most effective manner and cause the least amount of work for businesses.

One might say, "Well, why the legislation?" We were able to introduce these initial improvements without legislation because they are an overlay on the existing process. I want to make that clear: They are an overlay on the existing process. However, we cannot reach an optimum level of service to our business clients without clear legislative authority to do a number of things, and this legislation will do that. This legislation will provide clear authority for such things as combined registration forms, overcome roadblocks to consolidate requirements in individual program areas and provide authority for anticipated service expansion, such as links with the federal government. The single registration number is very important in that light.

When we look at this particular issue, it's a long-standing issue. It's not an issue that just came about over the last few years. I agree with many of the members who have spoken in this house: Governments have traditionally layered the red tape upon the business community. Let's understand that this is not a small step forward. This is a piece of legislation that will allow us to go a long, long way in reducing that red tape.

Can you imagine creating a single-window, one-step service that will integrate registration and reporting requirements for all three levels of government -- municipal, provincial and federal? That will be a first. Just imagine being able to walk into one government office where a businessperson can electronically complete all the forms required by the municipal, provincial and federal regulations. Just think about the advantages of being able to remit business taxes with a single payment. These are not insignificant steps; this is leaping forward. I'll tell you, that's the way it should be described.

The government is committed to providing equal access to services across Ontario. That means businesses throughout the province will have access to the level of service that up until now has been available only for those living in or around the Toronto area.

We're also committed to reducing the regulatory overlap and the duplication that currently exists among Ontario, Canada and other jurisdictions, thereby providing taxpayers with more cost-efficient and effective government. Informing the governments only once about any change in information, instead of going to many different ministries to advise them of the same change, is a significant step forward. I believe that to be true; other members don't.

While we're talking about client feedback, we had a parliamentary assistants' committee working diligently, looking at what we could do in and around this issue. I personally would like to express my thanks to those people who really sacrificed of their time and put forward such a commitment to seeing this through, and today it's in bill form.

I found it humorous listening to some of the previous speakers. One speaker would get up and say, "You know, this bill is only eight pages long." Then the same speaker would get up and talk about reducing the amount of regulation in government. I found myself almost lost for words at that point, but I was able to respond somewhat on that occasion.

The issue is that what we're introducing here is an umbrella piece of legislation, one that allows us to deal with and cut through the hordes of legislation that's out there, that reflects directly on small business, and it allows us to do it very directly and very clearly.

Interjections.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The Minister of Northern Development and Mines has just addressed us as "neo-Fascists." I would request that he withdraw that immediately.

The Acting Speaker: Would the honourable minister please --

Hon Gilles Pouliot (Minister of Northern Development and Mines and Minister Responsible for Francophone Affairs): With sincere apologies I will withdraw both "neo" and "Fascist," Mr Speaker.

The Acting Speaker: Thank you.

Mr Jamison: Mr Speaker, it's been said in this House that this bill combines only four forms. We can combine those four forms without legislation. This legislation is enabling legislation that will allow us to go forward and combine and streamline the many hundreds of forms that are out there now relating to small business.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. The member for Norfolk has the floor very legitimately.

Mr Jamison: It will also provide a single system to file information under designated acts. This bill will provide a single system for handling applications, registrations, renewals, cancellations and all other changes under the designated acts. It will provide a single financial and statistical reporting system for businesses.

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Clearing the Path will standardize dates and combine processes for filing information and making payments. Clearing the Path will provide the streamlined forms to replace the multitude of forms under designated acts -- not four forms; the multitude of forms.

Bill 187 will allow us, again, to adopt a single business identification system to assist businesses to deal with many government programs. As we often do in this House, we hear the rhetoric, and of course this is an adversarial place, or can be from time to time, but I can tell you that we had an advisory committee that worked very hard along the way on this issue. That advisory committee clearly represented the business community, and they are extremely interested in seeing this bill go forward. This is a bill that's important not only to the business community but to the whole economic fabric of this province in the future.

We're using, as I said earlier, the technology that we have available. If you're starting a small business in this province, for example, rather than having to go or send forms off to seven, eight, nine, 10 different ministries, you go to one location and you can do all your filing there. You can do the business name search at the same location.

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): Really?

Mr Jamison: This is something that -- again members across the floor are indicating, "Really?" I have to say, well, really, why didn't you do it? Really. We hear the rhetoric from across the floor. The question is, why didn't you do it?

It took an awful lot of work to put this together and it was one that we had to go forward and make sure that what we were doing was going to be done correctly. But when I hear the opposition parties over there shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Oh, really?" -- well, really, why wasn't this done before? You were the governments that laid on top, page after page, the regulations and the paperwork in this province. You had an opportunity to move earlier, and my question would be very simple. Why wasn't this you doing this? Why?

The program itself, yes, there are short-term benefits and there are long-term benefits in this program. The legislation will provide specific, immediate solutions to small business concerns and issues, including combined business registration forms and electronic filing in a number of key areas. Completed registrations and workstations will take more or less just a one-stop-shopping aspect to this, and that in itself goes a long way to creating confidence in starting and maintaining a business in this province or, for that matter, anywhere else.

I can tell you that when we look at the client feedback, and I'm sure we all agree that small businesses are one of the foundations of this province's economy, now I can tell you what clients are saying. Now they will have to spend considerably less time and effort registering their enterprise here in Ontario. That means by us helping them to reduce the time they spend on paperwork, they can do what they do best: expand and create jobs and help Ontarians get back to work. I believe that no member in this House could disagree with that.

The obstacles out there facing our small business community are also ones that face our medium-size business community and our farm community and various communities. This legislation potentially has a positive effect in all of those communities. So when members opposite in this house would stand and basically indicate that this has little significance -- I can tell you it's a travesty when that happens.

This bill is one that's very, very important to the small business community and I can tell you that I am very appreciative to the minister, who has been diligent in bringing this bill forward. I'm appreciative to the parliamentary assistants committee and to the advisory committee, which consisted of Judith Andrew from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business; Emily Black, an entrepreneur, Blackwood Capital Inc; Fran Brown, the economic development officer of the town of Tillsonburg; Dave Cash, the executive director of the Kingston and Area Economic Development Commission; Dick Charboneau, general manager of the Thunder Bay Economic Development Corporation; Barry Clavir, the vice president of Motivational Strategies; Lynda Eng, Jim Harper, all business people; Michael Leckie and Janice Moyer.

The people who served on this committee and helped us greatly in moulding this legislation so that it will work for them and their communities are very interested in seeing quick passage of this bill, and I can say that I am also, but I'm also thankful to all of the people that helped me in the endeavour to get this legislation put forward.

Before I take my seat again in the House, I understand that the thrust from the opposition on this bill has been that it doesn't go far enough. I can tell you that their remarks as far as this bill only enabling four pieces of regulation to come together are inaccurate -- highly, highly inaccurate as far as it pertains to this bill. This bill will allow the multitude of forms that businesses have to fill out and the red tape that businesses have to endure to be lessened dramatically, and I want to make that very clear here today.

With that, I would ask this House to support this very important bill that has concerns in and around the number one job creator in this province, that will reflect very well on them and their ability to do business in this province, and I would ask that the House support this bill unanimously because I believe strongly in this particular piece of legislation.

Having said that --

Interjections.

Mr Jamison: -- and of course, we hear from across the floor: "Oh, oh, no, no." I would say, if that didn't happen it would send a very clear message to the business community about the kinds of politics that might be played in this House. I would say to you that this is a very, very important piece of legislation, one that will reflect very well on our business community and the economic growth that's taking place here in this province. I've had an interesting time listening to speakers in this house, but I have to say that this bill speaks for itself.

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The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): Thank you to the member for Norfolk. Now we have questions or comments to the member.

Hon Ms Churley: I would like to thank and congratulate the member for Norfolk. He, along with other members from our caucus, worked very hard on the parliamentary assistant's small business committee and first brought this whole matter to some of the ministers' attention. I thank them for doing so. Certainly I have to agree with the member that everybody in this House should support this bill.

I find that very often the opposition, and the member alluded to this a bit, seems to think it has a special knowledge and relationship with the business community that the NDP can't possibly have, can't possibly understand, and I have to say that the arrogance associated with that is a bit misplaced at times. As the member said, this regulatory burden based on small business has been built up over years and years by that government, the Tories, and that government, the Liberals. It took this government to get into power, this government to say, "Something has to be done about this red tape," and we are dealing with that.

As the member for Norfolk said, this is not insignificant. I think perhaps members of the opposition are just a little bit jealous that they didn't think of this and didn't do anything about it after all these years and are a little bit perturbed that in fact this party did work very closely in a cooperative spirit with the business community -- yes, with the business community -- and came up with this plan.

It starts off with the 40-odd workstations that will be up and running by September, but by 1995 and going on into the future, the significance of this bill is absolutely incredible. I think that the members of the opposition in time will learn to appreciate that once they look at the bill more closely.

Mr Stockwell: I would compliment the member for Norfolk for his speech today because I think it was diligence and hard work that brought forward this piece of legislation. I think he has spent a significant amount of time in his own caucus trying to bring forward some kind of legislation that will be seen favourably by the business community.

I don't think the business community is going to look on this with any jaundiced eye. I think they're probably going to say: "Well, this is something that probably needs to be done. It doesn't go very far, but if you're going to amalgamate these four forms into one, that's a start, I suppose." They're probably going to say, "Maybe you're not going to implement this until after the next election because you can't get it up and going." The business community is maybe going to see this as possibly a bit of a sop that you're putting out there, because it doesn't honestly think that this government is speaking on its behalf.

I'll be happy to put the minister's concern at rest, where she says, "Why would the opposition benches" -- at least this one -- "think they understand the business community or can speak for them any better?" The business community believes that -- I think you know it as well as I know it -- they think that your government has not been business-friendly during most of their first four and a half years. I'll also tell you we're not jealous or the least bit concerned about this piece of legislation. We think the time has come to cut the red tape and the bureaucracy involved for small business.

I guess the problem I have with this, and I put it through in my earlier comments, is that you spent three years dealing with a piece of legislation that was going to cut the red tape at Queen's Park for small business and, as I said, we got a four-page piece of legislation, once the translation's removed, that amalgamates four forms out of 43,167. I don't think you're going to knock anybody over with that kind of information. They're going to say, "Well, ho, hum, four forms amalgamated." I'm certain, and I will remind you, we're not jealous of you people, because I know you think you've got us right where you want us.

Hon Mr Pouliot: When one looks at what is being proposed here, with the highest of respect to both the immediate opposition and members of the third party, there has to be, simply put, a general acquiesence that it's better than it's been, that over the years, especially in the context with the focus on small business people, small entrepreneurs, we have built -- and I say "we" at all levels: municipal, federal and provincial governments -- through the years, a paper bureaucracy, an empire, a convolution serving the law profession, among others, with the highest of respect to the profession.

It's not very commonsensical to spend more time, more emotions addressing more aggravation by way of paperwork to satisfy all three levels of government, to do justice to a bureaucracy that represents a style of operation of yesteryear. It doesn't belong any more. You must give people accessibility. It's already being implemented. It's not as far as some people promised it to be, but it makes the system simpler. At least, with the highest of respect, give this the recognition; it's better than it's ever been, and it will get better still. It's a vote of confidence for entrepreneurship, for putting people back to work.

It has been recognized that Ontario is leading western jurisdiction in the recovery. Whether you like it or not, these are the facts. Read the financial papers and they will attest to this. It's not the best piece of legislation perhaps in your view, but it's as good as has been delivered after 42 years, plus five years, 47 years of consecutive opposition government.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I would like to add to this debate the fact that perhaps there wasn't sufficient emphasis given to clearing the path, because if the path had been cleared, then the government would have time to consider a magnetic resonance imager for St Catharines.

I think that what's extremely important is that the government put that on its plate and the only way you can do that is if you clear the path in the first place. That is, if the government were able to get this legislation through, and I see no opposition to it of significance this afternoon -- the opposition has tried to be helpful in some of the suggestions and is wondering why into the fifth year of the government they are now deciding they should be doing this -- but our main concern in St Catharines now is that once you clear the path, you have an MRI machine allocated to our city.

I know, as a member for Niagara Falls, that we would be pleased, just as we're all pleased if you can clear the path for business, we'd be pleased to clear the path on the way from St Catharines to Niagara Falls so that people coming from Niagara Falls could use the magnetic resonance imager that I know the government will be giving consideration to for the city of St Catharines.

While there are now three CAT scanners in the Niagara Peninsula, and we're quite delighted to have the Niagara member saying this -- I know the member for St Catharines-Brock is here, she would support an MRI machine --

The Acting Speaker: Were you responding to the member for Norfolk?

Mr Bradley: Which member was it? The member for Norfolk, I know, because he's not that far away, would know of the need for an MRI machine in St Catharines as well, because that would leave more -- I think you would recognize this, Madam Speaker -- space, more allocation in the MRI machine in Hamilton for those who are in Norfolk, and they need it as well. So I'm glad I was able to participate in this and I know the member wanted to mention this.

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The Acting Speaker: Now the member for Norfolk has two minutes to reply.

Mr Jamison: Again, in response, and I thank all the members for their responses, I believe that it shows in some light how much some are listening and some aren't. What I'd like to say about the comments, specifically the comments from the member for Etobicoke West, I thought I'd made it very clear that we could combine the four forms that he was talking about and have done that in the first stage of this without the legislation.

The legislation is an umbrella piece of legislation that allows us to further combine forms and registrations and reduce red tape. I can tell you that this is a very important issue. It was 42 years that the Progressive Conservatives were in power in this province.

Hon Ms Churley: The "progressive" Conservatives?

Mr Jamison: Or the Conservatives. I believe they still are Conservatives. I'm not sure.

And it was five years that the Liberals were in power, up until September 1990. I can tell you that this is the first move on paperwork and red tape as it pertains to business in this province. The only moves that were made prior to that were to increase the load of regulatory burden on businesses in this province. So I think it's important that I make that clear again, because obviously some members are listening more than others in this House on that particular issue and about the bill itself. I appreciate those comments regardless --

The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired.

Mr Jamison: -- because it certainly puts light on who's listening.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Offer: I've had the opportunity of listening to all of the debate, basically, that's taken place today on this particular bill, Bill 187, and it is a strange debate that the government enters into. It is strange for a number of reasons, because I think that there are some world records that actually are being set by government members. I do not believe that the phrases "the reduction of red tape," "the reduction of regulatory burden," "the burden of red tape," "the burden of regulatory burden" are said so often in one particular speech in so many different ways, trying to send out some sort of message that this bill is something that I think, if you read it, it just isn't.

But the government members must have a little note that they get that says: "Say 'reduce red tape' as much as possible and your speech is okay. Don't refer to the bill as often as possible and your speech will be wonderful as well," because the bill is nothing very much. The members in the government try to say that it is a massive leap into heretofore unchartered waters. It is a huge and giant burden removed from somebody's shoulders. We don't know who they are, but they are carrying all of the red tape that has always been created.

There is just something that rings a little hollow when you actually look at the bill, which has as its purpose the reduction of regulation. There's something strange about a bill that professes to have that as its purpose and the bill is but a regulation. There really isn't very much in legislative form in this bill. All it does is, it says that the government can create some form of new regulations devised to reduce existing regulations. The bill is four pages, eight with translation, and really just doesn't do very much for the small business community.

Now, members of the government will say -- this is hard for me to say -- "We are the friends of small business," and I apologize to all of small business in Ontario for having to say that, because for the last four and some-odd years, that isn't what the small business community has been saying to me.

Interjections.

Mr Offer: The members in the government are now hooting and hollering, but I can just tell you how members of my riding and the members of the small business community have viewed the actions of your government over the last four years and some-odd months. They're saying, "Over that period of time, you haven't been our friend. Over that period of time, when we've had an issue or a concern and took it to you, you didn't listen. Over that period of time, if you are our friends, then we need no enemies," because the small business community in no small way has been hurt by the actions of the government.

I would bet that the small business community would be absolutely, gloriously in support of a piece of legislation which removed the corporate filing tax. There is something that we heard where the government ripped out of the small business community's hands a tax that they never had to pay before. We remember what the government said at the outset. They said: "This is just a one-time requirement so that we can keep our records in order, so that we can update our records." We found out that after the first year went over, the second year was another grab against the small business community.

It's not me that's saying this. The small business community is absolutely opposed to the direction, to the type of policies and to your style that you have meted upon them in the last four years.

Interjection.

Mr Offer: Members of the government get so upset when they find out there is somebody who says, "There are a few people who disagree with what you've done in the last four years." I know you might find this quite difficult to believe, but I travel throughout my riding, and I know other members do, and there are a few people in and around the ridings who just are a little upset about some of the things the NDP government has done to them in the last four years and a few months. They're a little upset with the type of policies you've rammed down their throats. They're a little upset about some of the things you've done in and around landfill sites.

Interjections.

Mr Offer: Oh, look, they're jumping up and down.

They are a little upset about the fact that you promised there wouldn't be any expansion of a landfill site, that there wouldn't be any new landfill site without a full environmental assessment hearing.

Mr Turnbull: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I think the points that my colleague is raising are rather important and I think we should have a quorum here to hear them.

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

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

The acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Senior Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals: Madam Speaker, a quorum is now present.

The Acting Speaker: The member for Mississauga North may continue his debate.

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Mr Offer: As I was saying, it is clear that there are a number of people around this province who are very upset with some of the policies, the decisions, the style of government that the NDP has foisted upon them in the last four years.

I was using one example, and this is extremely relevant to this particular piece of legislation because the government seems to feel that it is the friend of small business. But in my area we have what's referred to as the Britannia landfill site, and just to give you an example, the members of the government will remember that the Premier indicated that there would be no expansion of any existing landfill site without a hearing. You will also remember that the Premier, that you guys over there, expanded that site, and you expanded it without any hearing. You guys over there said --

The Acting Speaker: Through the Chair, please.

Mr Offer: -- to the people of Mississauga North that this site was going to be expanded. So I use that as an example, and I know that there are some members over there who do not understand this train of thought, but it is an example as to how your particular style of government has been divisive, how your particular style of government has sought to not only divide people but to cause friction, how your particular style of government grinds people as opposed to trying to embrace them and send out a certain message of working together.

So we have this particular piece of legislation, and this piece of legislation is referred to by members of the government as -- what do they refer to it as? It's not Bill 187, though I think that's the actual number; it's referred to as Clearing the Path for Business Success. The NDP government is now indicating that it is able to clear the path for business success.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. Will the member for Scarborough Centre come to order.

Mr Offer: There are a number of people in the small business community who believe that if there is one group that is not able to comprehend how to clear the path for business success it happens to be the existing government, that in fact what they have done over numbers of years is create hurdles, is create burdens, is to distance themselves from the small business community. This bill, in its small, minuscule way, is not one that could be viewed as clearing the path for business success. In fact, there are those who think that an election will be laying the pavement that will be a path for business success.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order.

Mr Offer: Members of the government seem to get very upset when you use the word "election." I wonder why. I just wonder why. They will say anything when all you're doing is saying one word: "election." That's all I said, and the members seem --

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker: Order. Interjections are out of order. At the end of this member's debate there will be time for questions or comments directed to the member. I would ask the members to make their comments at the end of the speech.

Mr Offer: Madam Speaker, thank you very much. All I'm trying to do is chat a little bit about the particular piece of legislation and a little bit about how I view the legislation and a little bit about how I disagree with the government that it is a massive leap to help small business in this province. I just sent out a suggestion that there are people in this province who feel that the way in which you can really lay that path for business success --

Hon Mr Pouliot: Are you going to vote against it? How are you going to vote?

Mr Stockwell: Clear the path.

Mr Offer: -- or clear the path is to just maybe call an election and let that small business community voice its opinion. Now, members of the government seem to be a bit upset when you use that terrible word "election."

Interjection.

Mr Offer: The Minister of Northern Development and Mines is just chomping at the bit, waiting to get up and chat a little bit about this particular piece of legislation, I'm sure. It will be up to him when his turn comes to take a little bit of time and tell us about how friendly you and your government --

The Acting Speaker: Please address the Chair.

Mr Offer: -- have been to the small business community -- Madam Speaker, I direct my comments to you -- and how this bill is sort of just a continuation of the wonderful assistance you've given to small business. I know they were knocking down your door saying: "Please, give us that $50 filing fee. Please listen to us." I know that you listened as you listen to everyone and you said, "Well, that's what we'll do then."

When they said, "But this is a cost of doing business; we are in the depths of a recession; we are the ones who create more jobs than any other sector; we need your assistance; the best assistance you can give us is lay off, don't tax us, let us do what we do best, create long-term, secure jobs," I know how that government over there, that Bob Rae NDP government, listened.

What they did was, they just whacked that $50 on to every small business in this province at a time when they could least afford it and then they said: "Well, you know, the first year, don't worry about it because it's just a one-shot deal. We would never think of doing it a second year and we would never think of doing it a third year."

Hon Mr Pouliot: You embarrass your friends. They have all gone.

Mr Offer: Guess what the friends of small business did. You will know what the friends of small business did, they whacked them each and every year. Now what we've got is their piece of legislation, Clearing the Path for Business Success. We know that in all of our communities a very important aspect of job creation, a very important aspect of community growth is from the small business community.

Interjection.

Mr Offer: Madam Speaker, I saw you turned your head so you know that one of the ministers seems to have a great deal to interject. I think we can assume that the minister will use his turn when it comes around on rotation or, if the minister doesn't, we can then assume that his comments are particularly irrelevant. But we will see what happens when the opportunity arises.

Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): Oh, stop.

Mr Offer: Now we've got the Solicitor General, who has graciously come into the Legislature to listen. Certainly we appreciate the Solicitor General coming into this --

The Acting Speaker: I would appreciate you addressing the bill.

Mr Offer: I am. I'm glad you've asked me, Madam Speaker, because I believe it is absolutely essential that members of the cabinet are in this Legislature listening to this debate so that they can take the message to the next cabinet meeting that maybe this particular piece of legislation just isn't the grand leap that it's made out to be.

As I was saying, and I don't want to gloss over this particular point because of the fact that in all of our communities, the small business component is crucial. The small business component is crucial in the creation of jobs; the small business component is crucial in maintaining existing jobs. In no small measure, the small business community really builds up the communities and the neighbourhoods that we represent.

We must do all that is necessary in order to make certain that they are able to carry out their purpose, their objective. We all benefit when small business prospers. There is no question about that. When small business prospers, we benefit. When small business builds and becomes medium size and large, then this province, if not country, prospers.

It is crucial that we recognize that the role of government is not to suffocate but to stimulate. That is important, and it is a message which I have heard throughout my area and which I trust we have all heard throughout the province, that many people have said that government has become in many ways a burden on business doing business.

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Let me say that businesses recognize that there is the need for regulation. They recognize that; what they can't understand is the burden, the overburden, the overregulation. They are not saying, "Throw away all regulation." They don't say that. They recognize that there is in certain areas, certain instances, the need. They view that as a responsibility and they can well work within it. What they can't do and what they can't understand is the overburdening of regulation upon them doing what is so important.

This particular piece of legislation -- four pages or eight pages, depending upon how one reads it -- just doesn't, I believe, do what the small business community has been asking. It creates some sort of power for the Lieutenant Governor to designate any acts for the purpose of the bill, it creates regulations, but there is nothing specific in this bill.

There will be those who say, "That's exactly the need for the bill. This bill has to be an empowering type of piece of legislation," but the fact of the matter is that this bill comes with no accompanying statement by any minister of the crown as to what regulations are going to be addressed. It comes with no statement as to where the first areas will be that will be addressed and how they will be addressed. This is a bucket with nothing in it. I think there are many people who wanted to say and see, "Where is the government going to go with this particular piece of legislation?"

We've heard some examples about their being able to reduce four regulations to one regulation, and they talk about that with this bill. That's just, in a word, ridiculous, because they did that without this particular piece of legislation passing. The fact of the matter is, we've heard nothing from the government about what it wants to do with this bill.

I know they'll probably want to do something like this, just hold it up as some sort of message to small business that notwithstanding everything that they've done over the last four years they are now their friend, but there's nothing that the government has done with this bill at all.

This bill is nothing more than another series of regulations, it's another series of saying, "We have now the power to do something." We say, "What's the something that you're going to do?" They say, "Wait and see." When are we going to wait and see? What's the operative date of this particular piece of legislation?

Mr Stockwell: May 25.

Mr Offer: May 25? September 1995, is it not? Now, there are some who would think that is a curious date that the government has chosen to say, "This is when we're going to announce the type of things that we're going to do under this particular piece of legislation."

You haven't announced anything yet. They talk about these four forms that are now one form, which they could have done without this bill. People are saying, "What are you going to do with this bill?" They say, "September 1995 is when we really want to get cracking with this bill."

There are those who are cynical. I don't profess to be one, but there are those who are cynical, who say that September 1995 is a strange date to have chosen.

Hon Mr Christopherson: You don't want September, do you?

Hon Mr Pouliot: You don't like September.

Mr Offer: I like September. Why hasn't there been a statement by any minister as to indeed what you are going to do with the bill? I wonder, what is the government going to do with the bill? They are going to, I would think, pass the bill. They are going to say, "We're going to do something with the bill in September 1995. But we're going to ask them, "So what exactly is this going to be?"

What exactly is this huge leap that this bill seems to signify to government members that is going to be in action? Are we reducing 1,000 regulations to one? Is that what is in here? Is that the huge leap? Are we reducing 500 regulations to one? Are we reducing anything to anything, or are we passing a bill to say we've passed the bill? I just think that there are some people who might think --

Mr Stockwell: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: I'm sorry, the member for Mississauga, but 20 is a quorum and I think there are about 10 here. I think we should have a quorum.

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

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

The acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Senior Clerk Assistant and Clerk of Journals: Speaker, a quorum is now present.

The Acting Speaker: We will resume the debate from the member for Mississauga North.

Mr Offer: As I was saying, I am somewhat concerned that the government, though professing that this bill represents a huge leap into the chasm of regulations and that it is mowing them down right along this field, that it's just going to mow those regulations down with this particular bill, that it is the undoing of burdens on small business that the government --

Hon Mr Christopherson: You got it.

Mr Offer: Maybe the Solicitor General, who says that is correct, would be so kind as to share with us in this Legislature all of the regulations that are going to fall by the wayside because of this bill; or maybe, if that doesn't happen to be at hand, you might just want to share with the small business community through this debate all of the burdens -- you guys seem to use that word all the time -- that are going to be lifted upon its passage.

You can't use that registration of four regulations to one. That doesn't count. That's not fair, because that's now in place and it doesn't need this bill. So that one's off, and I'm sure small business is appreciative of that small movement that you've made, but it didn't need this bill to do it.

This bill is nothing less than four pages or eight pages of regulatory requirements and it sort of just creates some more regulations. I guess the question that small business will have is, "Where are we in the bill?"

I think that's sort of an important question. A lot of people hear from a government that "this particular piece of legislation is for you," or somebody else, and that group then picks up the piece of legislation and says: "Well, the government said this is for me. This is devised for me. This has as its purpose me. So now I'm going to read the legislation and find out where I am."

There's nobody in here. No one can see where small business is going to be assisted. We don't see any statement by the government as to what regulations are going to be lifted, what burdens are going to be lessened. All we do is, we hear a few speeches by government members that this is a big step. Well, it isn't a big step. If at all a step, it would be a very, very, very small step.

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This bill, by the way, will not undo what the government has done to business over the past four years. This bill will not undo the bad, harsh feeling that the government has created with the job creators in this province. This bill will not bring back the confidence of the small business community with you as government.

This is not going to meet that purpose, and I would hope this bill would not have been created for that purpose. Four years to come up with this is very suspicious indeed. An implementation date of September 1995 -- and I stand corrected if that not be the correct date, but my understanding is it is around September 1995 -- is very suspicious.

I would think the government had an obligation to the small business community. In fact, the government had an obligation to the business community as a whole throughout their term, their mandate. They should have sent out a message, clear and strong, that, "We understand, we recognize the difficulties of the particular economy, we recognize the impact of the recession, and we want to talk to you, to listen to your concerns and to deal with them."

That government over there did not do that. For them to introduce a bill on November 3, 1994, Bill 187, the bill I speak about, a bill which has government hopes to have an implementation of September 1995, a bill which carries with it no statement by a minister as to what regulations indeed are going to be affected, is, I believe, a tremendous disservice by that government to the business community as a whole, and to the small business community in particular.

We will await what government statements will go with this bill as to regulation. It is a small step forward, but don't try to send out any message that it is anything other than that. Do not try to say to the business community, who know what they speak of, that it is anything more than small. I think the government has made some significant errors in the past, errors that will not be forgotten in the future.

The Acting Speaker: Now we have the opportunity for comments and questions.

Mr Kimble Sutherland (Oxford): I want to respond to the comments from the member from Mississauga and say that I believe this legislation is very good legislation. As has been stated by other speakers to the bill, it is enabling legislation that sets out the framework that allows the government to proceed with cutting red tape, cutting paperwork, those important things that every small business person has told every member of this Legislature.

We know the opposition parties have talked about it. In one of these vision statements that the Leader of the Opposition has had, she says she wants to cut red tape. She hasn't identified what red tape she's going to cut; she just says she's going to cut up to 50% of it. "Fifty per cent of what?" is the question most people are asking. This legislation is real action to get on with the job. It's not just platitudes talking about it.

Besides this piece of legislation, this government has done a lot of other good things for small business. Jobs Ontario Training in my community has been very beneficial for small businesses, which don't always have the ability to access normal types of training programs. But this one they've been able to take good advantage of, and that has helped many of those businesses expand in terms of more employment, but also expand their businesses.

You will recall that earlier this year we changed the financial services act. My colleague from Scarborough did a lot of work on that to allow a couple of other things to happen, to allow credit unions and co-ops to do different things for new financial instruments for small business.

In the budget, we made changes for loan and trust companies so that they could have more flexibility and be more competitive in helping to finance small business in the growth area.

We've also set up the investment fund. We've done a wide, wide range of things that small business people can take advantage of. With the economy growing as it is, small business is making a strong statement that it does have faith in Ontario and this government.

Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): As many in this House know, I chair the standing committee on regulations and private bills.

One of the tasks of that committee is to go through revivals of corporations that for some reason, frequently through inadvertence, have failed to maintain their corporate information with the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

What I find so reprehensible about some of the comments of our member from Mississauga and some of the other members in the opposition around the filing fee for small business has been the fact that it's been characterized as a tax. The reality --

Mr Turnbull: That's what it is.

Ms Haeck: No, it isn't, and thank you to the member for York Mills.

The reality is that when you take a look at the whole legal procedure, and one that has been in place for many a year, long before this government, the cost involved in reviving an organization, be it profit or non-profit, is quite expensive, much more expensive than the $50 to maintain their corporate records with the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

The printing cost alone in the final bill to revive the corporation that goes to the Ontario Gazette is in excess of $1,600. I would suggest that many corporations, and especially a small one, do not want to spend that kind of money.

So I would suggest to our colleagues across the floor that their information, and especially the kind of advice they give to their constituents, is extremely wrong, highly inaccurate and definitely not giving their constituents the kind of information they could rely on. So when they encourage them to scoff at the law, they are in fact not giving appropriate information.

Mr Randy R. Hope (Chatham-Kent): As I listen very intently to the member opposite from the Liberal party talk about what we've done, it's important that we remember what they did in five years. You talk about the attack on the small business community. Look at what the employer's health tax has done to that community. I hear constantly from the small business community. There was an offload on that.

Interjection: Commercial concentration tax.

Mr Hope: My colleague also indicates the concentration tax, which was a big hit on it.

But one who likes to follow the federal Liberals in hoping they can ride on the shirt-tail of Jean Chrétien, I must remember in their Liberal red book -- and you notice I put it in a blue one because they've become quite Tory lately in their policies federally -- it clearly indicates about removing the paperwork, the duplication and making sure that we can put business back on track with less hours. Remember the businesses we're talking about. We're talking about a person who owns the company, who is the accountant, who is the lawyer, who is everything else, who is doing all the paperwork. What we're trying to do is alleviate that. We currently did it with four already. There is more that's going to be implemented. That's the important thing.

But when I hear the members opposite talk about how they can represent business and support business, the only time I heard the Prime Minister's lips move on ethanol was when he was in China supporting the production of an ethanol plant in China and not supporting the industry which is even located in my own riding, which is going to create jobs, $160 million of capital.

So if the members opposite who like to ride Jean Chrétien's shirt-tail and hopefully win in the next election, they'd better start understanding, and the general public had better understand what our federal government is doing to the small business community: the UI changes; not helping the farming community; the interest rates are another prime example.

I think the public wants to know what importance there is here. Look what Chrétien is doing to the small business community. Look what we're trying to do to fix problems they've created for five years.

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The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. We have the opportunity for one more question or comment. I recognize the member for Etobicoke West.

Mr Bradley: You'll be surprised. There's another closure motion.

Mr Stockwell: Look at this: another closure motion, on Bill 165, workers' compensation. They're moving on that. That's awful, shameful. What a place. Three bills, three closure motions.

Interjections.

Mr Stockwell: For a government that refused to come back to work for five weeks because they couldn't get out of bed to come to work, they've got their third closure motion, brought in on the Workers' Compensation Act.

The Acting Speaker: We are responding to the member for Mississauga North.

Mr Stockwell: Yes, I'm trying to respond, but it's very frustrating to be handed this the moment you stand up and see a government moving closure on another piece of legislation.

They won't come back to work. When they finally come back to work, they move closure on the three most important bills that we're going to deal with during this session, because they can't come back to work. What they don't move closure on are piddly little bills like the one we're dealing with today that's going to amalgamate four forms; that won't get implemented until after the next election; that's buying off in some warped, dysfunctional, socialist fashion the business community, which they think is going to go flowing all over each other under this government because it amalgamated four forms and does nothing else.

Yet when we have substantive pieces of legislation dealing with municipalities, the Workers' Compensation Act or health reforms, we get closure motions; no debate. There's debate on this because we all agree. We're voting in favour of this piddly little amalgamation of four forms. But on substantive issues, this government is gutless and spineless because it moves closure motions and doesn't allow the people who want to speak to bills an opportunity to debate them, the important ones that are coming before this government and this province.

To add insult to injury, you can't even come back to work five weeks because you can't get out of bed, because you're too embarrassed to face the public with this government of yours. Shameful. Third closure -- shameful, shameful, shameful.

The Acting Speaker: The time for questions and comments has expired. The member for Mississauga North now has two minutes to respond.

Mr Offer: Two minutes is just not enough time to respond, but I would like to say that the $50 corporate filing fee for the small business community is a tax. You're taking the loot out of their pocket. If you don't believe that, then there's one of two things: Either you don't understand it, or you haven't spoken to anybody about it. My guess is it's a combination of both.

Hon Mr Pouliot: It's a licence. Do you renew your car licence, your driver's licence?

Mr Offer: The question that you bring forward with respect to revivals is absolutely ridiculous.

The Acting Speaker: One member at a time.

Mr Offer: You don't understand a thing about what you're saying. You don't understand a thing about what $50 meant to business in a recession. You and your government should be ashamed of what you've done.

Interjection.

The Acting Speaker: Will the member for St Catharines-Brock come to order.

Mr Offer: The second thing that you've been so negligent about is this time allocation. We know you're bringing in another time allocation motion, now on the workers' compensation system. It is shameful. It is irresponsible. It is negligent of that government to ram through another piece of legislation.

Let me tell you something: That's exactly why the business community has no faith in you, in your government and in your style of government, because all you've done is ram through stuff. It never mattered what they had to say. You never listened in four years to anything that they said, whether it was on corporate tax, whether it was on landfill, whether it was on long-term care, whether it was on any issue. You guys are just a bunch of arrogant, irresponsible nincompoops.

The Acting Speaker: I would ask members to respect the decorum of the House.

We have time for further debate. I recognize the member from York Mills.

Mr Turnbull: I intended to speak in a little detail on this flimsy bill that they've brought forward which they call Clearing the Path. The only thing this government can do effectively is be very creative about creating titles for bills. That's the only thing that they can do effectively, because indeed, just a few minutes before I stood up, we found that once again the government was moving closure on a bill in this House. They have moved closure on Bill 163, the Sewell bill; Bill 173, the health bill; and now indeed they're moving closure on Bill 165, the WCB bill.

These are the most important bills before us in this session. They are bills which are highly controversial in that the government has heard from the public a lot of criticism, where overwhelmingly the public delegations have said that it is wrongheaded in all of its assumptions. It hasn't gone well for the government in these hearings.

The government itself has brought in innumerable amendments. Even though they have brought in hundreds of amendments between these three bills, they are not allowing the opposition sufficient time to discuss them in committee. That's reprehensible in itself, but when one considers that this House was called back some five weeks later than the legislative agenda calls for, it is even more reprehensible, because we could have been getting on with these jobs. The government doesn't want to work very hard. Most importantly, they don't want the scrutiny of daily question period.

Today we're debating a piece of legislation, Bill 187, which they refer to as Clearing the Path. In essence, all this does is it combines the reporting of four forms. The government, under the chairmanship of, I believe, the member for Norfolk, has spent some three years speaking to business about what it should do to help business. In the meantime, they have thrown up every possible roadblock to business creating jobs. They laboured and they came back and produced this bill which combines four forms out of some 43,000 forms that the government uses.

The government seems to be absolutely resolute about the fact that it's going to use its new-found powers to close down debate of anything which it finds a little controversial. I see the minister of northern affairs is nodding and agreeing that yes, you close it down.

I must say that in the last election I clearly was running against the Liberals, because I did not believe in what they had done, but the New Democratic Party, which had always preached about its integrity and its openness, has done more to destroy democracy than almost any other party in Canada. They brought in new rules which substantially reduced debate. At the time that these new rules were put forward to the opposition House leader and third-party House leader, there was a promise made that at most they might use closure once in a session, probably more likely only once in the whole of one Parliament. But instead, in the few weeks that we have been back, we now have three pieces of closure.

In the years that the Conservatives were in power, dating back to Confederation, there have been three closure motions by the Conservatives. This, if I remember correctly, brings the number of closure motions that this government has used in its four and a half years to 14 closure motions. One has to have serious concerns for the ability of the opposition to be able to express the legitimate concerns of those people who don't agree with the government.

This is a principle that the current government should have a great deal of concern about, because when they return to this side of the House, provided they have enough members to even come to this side of the House and they're not sitting out in the halls watching the monitors, they will indeed face the same problem, that governments will have such power that they can close out debate. That is a very serious threat to the whole concept of democracy.

1700

There could have been no doubt when this government was elected that they had different views from those my party subscribed to, and that's legitimate. But I didn't believe that the party that had always spouted over the years about democracy and how they would do things differently would want to close down legitimate debate. I remember Peter Kormos speaking --

Hon Mr Pouliot: You weren't here, I remember. I sat here for years and years.

Mr Turnbull: -- before I was elected. Yes, indeed. The minister says I wasn't elected. You're quite right.

Interjections.

Hon Mr Pouliot: But you weren't here.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Order please, Minister. There is a period called questions and comments. If you have any questions or any remarks to make, take advantage of that period. I would encourage you to debate the bill, please.

Mr Turnbull: This is very much about the bill and about the problems that businesses are having in being heard by this government and the vital task that a government has to create jobs. Part of it lies in the regulations which are being passed and the bills which are being passed by this government. The government went and spent three years and produced this bill, which combines four business forms. But indeed, the business community has been telling you that they have concerns about the operations of the WCB and consistently, in the presentations that were made to this government during the WCB hearings, they were told that they were wrong, that they were off base.

There is nothing in this bill which addresses those vital concerns of businesses, businesses that want to create jobs in this province instead of seeing them disappear across the border to other provinces or to the United States. It is a serious, serious threat to business. What has the government done? They've combined four business forms. It's about as much sense, combining four business forms -- and I agree with them; I'm going to vote with the government on this -- but this has about as much sense as getting four bailing buckets on the sinking Titanic, because that's how much use it will do. But I guess it makes you feel good.

It's very interesting that in fact this bill is only going to be implemented in September 1995. Here we are in November of 1994. I wonder if, after three years of hearings around the province, the government might bring forward something a little bit more substantive.

We know we have had a devastating recession, for which I'm not blaming the government entirely. This has been a worldwide recession, but it has been exacerbated by excessive government regulation and the attempt by this government to placate all of its union friends.

We now have a province which has excessively high costs of doing business. The business community I know told the government this, but they don't address it in this bill.

The business community said they have great concerns about the WCB. They said you need to address it. Well, the government's approach to that is when the bill is brought forward that the business community has said is wrong-headed and will not address the serious problems of WCB and the mounting unfunded liability, the government chooses to ignore it -- more than ignore it; they closed down the committee that is studying that bill.

Mr Speaker, when you say, "Speak to this bill," I am very much speaking to this bill, but it is impossible to decouple this bill from the other legislation we have before us. It is impossible to uncouple it from the WCB bill. It is impossible to uncouple it from the health bill, Bill 173, because it's part of this government's intent to unionize all of this province.

We have seen how this government has consistently attacked business. They have raised the amount of money that the minimum wage is to a point that business is saying, "It's difficult for us to create the new entry-level jobs." What we should be doing is encouraging those good people around the province who are unemployed at the moment to go to work and we've got to help them by topping them up, by assisting them to get their children into day care.

But on day care what has this government done? This government has attacked the private day care sector. They have consistently refused to help the private day care sector because they say, "We're not going to give any more funding to new spots in private day care." Even if people live immediately across the street from a private day care centre and there are spaces and the quality of care is just as good as in a non-profit centre and there are spaces there and the people who have children live at the other side of the street, this government is saying, "No, we would sooner spend capital money on creating new non-profit day care centres," which will be in competition with the existing for-profit day care centres, because they are philosophically opposed to the private sector.

This labelling which brought forward a mouse -- when you take the French-language translation out of this, this is four pages of a bill, four pages which I would suggest in and of themselves are worthwhile, but they are such a tiny step that it shows that the government hasn't been listening to those people who create business.

The Mike Harris task force on small business went around this province in approximately the same time frame and it came forward with a report which clearly speaks to the concern of small business. I think the feeling of small business people around this province was probably best expressed in somebody from the chamber of commerce, I believe it was in Kitchener, saying, "Ontario is a great place to live but a lousy place to do business." I don't believe that opinion is going to be changed by the passage of this bill, let alone the fact that this bill will not be implemented until long after this government has gone.

For those who read the Globe and Mail Report on Business dated November 14, they're talking about the horrendous slump of business in Ontario compared with Canada and we see that Canada as a whole has recovered from the recession and that jobs are increasing. We look at Metropolitan Toronto and today the employment levels are at approximately 91% of what they were when this government came to power.

We know that the problems that beset Metropolitan Toronto and my own riding of York Mills, which has an unusually large number of small business people, is the fact that the government is ignoring the vital concerns of Metro. They fail to give any funding to the school boards in Metro. The only places in the province that get no funding on schooling are the city of Ottawa and Metropolitan Toronto.

We have businesses which are leaving Toronto and moving just to Vaughan because of the lower tax base. I don't have it here, but there was an interesting article in the paper, I believe over the weekend, which spoke to the problems that Metropolitan Toronto has, the fact that they don't get this funding for police. They fund a lot of things which are to the benefit of the whole province. But the government hasn't addressed any of that.

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In fairness, it was the Liberal government that took away all of the funding for education in Metropolitan Toronto, and in opposition I believe that the NDP spoke out against it, but they have done nothing in their four and a half years in government to help that.

What is the link? Property taxes are very high in Metropolitan Toronto. Before the recession came along, rental rates in the office towers used to be some of the highest in the world, and that to a great extent was due to the very heavy property tax burden. The net rent in office towers today in Metropolitan Toronto is very often less than $5 per square foot; in some cases one sixth of what it used to be. But the taxes have continued to go up, so the burden of property taxes far outweighs the net rent that the landlord receives. That's why we have seen the demise of a lot of property companies.

In fairness, we can say that some of the companies overlevered themselves, some of them were overambitious and hadn't followed the ebbs and flows of business and hadn't recognized the fact that probably the absorption rate wouldn't be there. I accept all that, and there was a worldwide recession, as I've said.

But the fundamental problems of business in Metropolitan Toronto and in fact around this province are taxation problems and overregulation. Nobody in any of the parties represented in this House would suggest that we should move to getting rid of all of our regulations, but clearly we have to be more reasonable about the kind of reporting structures that we impose on small businesses.

We must have reporting structures which recognize the amount of time that an owner has to fill out forms. Indeed, as a small business person myself, I know how much repetition there is in the forms, where over and over again, from different ministries of the government, and the federal government too, you're filling out the same piece of information and sending it many, many times per year.

A lot of small businesses that spoke to our task force suggested that they have one person, full-time, spending one day per week on all of the associated compliance dates and paperwork that's required. We've got to address that, and, yes, I will say to the government that combining four forms is a good idea. I'm not speaking against that. But you have failed to address the fundamental problem, and that is that we have far too much regulation. After three years of studying, for you to come back with this bill as it stands today is frankly an insult. It ignores the very real concerns that people have about the burden of WCB.

I know that there are many companies around the world which, when they look at North America and they are considering opening a plant in North America, look at the total tax burden and they look at the regulatory burden and they conclude, with such issues as the huge unfunded WCB liability, that Ontario is a very dangerous place to set up business. Today we have in Ontario 500,000 people who are unemployed.

Hon Mr Pouliot: Chrysler, GM, Ford.

Mr Turnbull: I hear one of the members from across the floor from the government shouting about Chrysler. Let's just talk about Chrysler. Chrysler is one of the most profitable companies in Canada. What did this government do? They forgave it loans totalling, I believe, something close to $20 million.

This is the same government that asked the government employees to take a reduction in pay, the same government that has laboured and brought forward this bill where it's combining four forms, and it forgave something like $20 million to Chrysler, one of the most profitable companies in Canada, instead of doing the right thing, and that is reducing taxes all across the board and reducing regulation all across the board so that we can get on with the private sector and small business creating jobs, because we know that by far the largest number of jobs have been created by the small business sector. This government is completely out to lunch on that score.

I was at the lunch today where Premier Ralph Klein was speaking, and he said something which rather appealed to me. He said, "You have to go hunting where the ducks are." Well, believe me, you ain't hunting where the ducks are when you come forward with a bill that combines four forms after three years of study.

Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): How many kids are starving in Alberta under the same policies?

Mr Turnbull: You have a government which ignored the business sector with respect to what it did, what it has said about WCB.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, the member for Durham West. The member for York Mills has the floor.

Mr Turnbull: The government has ignored these vital concerns, and the best indication of that is the fact that the business sector said they were very, very concerned and they feel the WCB legislation is very dangerous. Instead of doing something constructive about it -- there was a whole group of business people who came forward with a proposal at the Premier's request, and what did the government do? They picked out the things which they thought were favourable to labour which the employers had given them, and ignored all of the real substantive issues which would have put the unfunded liability down to zero by the year 2014. That would have been a sensible measure, because that would have been a real job creator.

There was a recent meeting that we had to discuss governance held here in Queen's Park that my party put on, where we had people from labour and business coming forward to discuss our document The Common Sense Revolution and how to downsize government. One of the discussion pieces was about regulatory burden, and also one of the labour union leaders talked about the fact: "Oh, well, wait a minute. Business is not interested in giving up its subsidies." A lawyer, I believe, for the Ford Motor Co got up and said, "That's not true." He said, "It's true that we certainly look at these giveaways by government, but we look at the total package, and it has to make sense."

This government has decided that the only way we can make the auto industry in Ontario viable is by giving them loans and then forgiving them, instead of reducing the basic problem, the tax burden, all across the board and letting small businesses have the same breaks that this government is giving to big business which is unionized. It is significant that the breaks that this government gives are always to unionized labour and it's the big unions. We see it today, we see it in this bill and we see that the government comes forward and closes down committee discussion of the WCB bill as we go through clause-by-clause.

There is a wad of amendments an inch thick to the WCB bill, many of them the government's, which were thrown on the table immediately before this closure came down, just days before. We haven't had a chance to discuss those amendments. Some of them we agree with, some of them we fundamentally disagree with and the business community fundamentally disagrees with them.

Instead of allowing that committee in an orderly way to work through them -- and I emphasize to work through them in an orderly way -- we see this bill is not going to be implemented until September 1995, and yet they want to close down the WCB committee hearings where they, the government, have put forward all of these amendments. They're closing it down.

In the three weeks that we have been back from this excessively long recess that we had, the government has closed us down on debate on three bills. This is not democracy, Mr Speaker. This absolutely abrogates the powers of the opposition to criticize legitimately what the government is doing.

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I remember when Peter Kormos stood and spoke for 17 hours on the auto insurance bill. What did Premier Bob Rae, at the time the Leader of the Opposition, do? He went and embraced him at the end of a 17-hour debate.

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): He gave him a hug.

Mr Turnbull: He gave him a hug. But that's not possible now, because this government makes sure it closes down the debates long before it's going to get to that. So there are going to be no hugs.

You ask Mr Kormos what he thinks of the way this government conducts itself. He doesn't think the party is very democratic these days. I will never be a political kinsman with Peter Kormos, but I'll say this for him: He clearly stands up for the principles that this party used to espouse. As he has said on more than one occasion, "I didn't leave the roots of the NDP; the government did." He is still there, speaking out for the opposition, because he doesn't believe that you should close down debate. He doesn't believe that this is the democratic way.

It's very significant that a government closes down debate on the WCB bill the very day we're debating how to help small business. And they call it Clearing the Path. Well, that ain't clearing the path; that is increasing the amount of concrete on top of the roadblocks, plain and simple.

I'm absolutely at a loss to understand how a government that campaigned on the fact that it was going to be different and this was going to be open government would have closed down 14 bills in the four and a half years it has been here when all Conservative governments since Confederation have closed down three bills. That's a rather sobering thought. Go away and think about that.

Hon Mr Pouliot: You had two bills per session.

Mr Turnbull: Don't just heckle; go and think about that and decide whether that is democracy. I think you will be hard-pressed to come to that conclusion.

The speaker who was introducing Premier Klein talked about the problem that this government has, and all governments in Canada of all political stripes. Talking about Braziling, she said Braziling was what Brazil did when on two occasions it hit the wall, where it was borrowing money to stay afloat, it was borrowing money to pay the debt.

This government has consistently borrowed at least $1 billion a month since it has been in office. The government cooked the books, and it wasn't until the Provincial Auditor said, "I won't sign these books," that the government finally started rejigging its numbers. It was very interesting. In fairness to the Finance minister, he has come forward and he has said yes, he's going to republish these numbers.

We now indeed see that the only government that said it had had a balanced budget in the last few years was the Liberal government, the year before it went to the electorate, when you'll recall they said they were going to have a balanced budget but in fact they didn't have a balanced budget with the new numbers. They were somewhat like $2 billion in the hole.

Here we've got this bill which absolutely ignores the fundamentals that business has been asking for. Businesses were concerned with the $50 filing fee which was brought in by this government. We were told when they brought it in that it was just a one-year fee and then they got addicted to it and they came back. They've been closing companies down because they haven't complied with it, closing businesses down which were creating jobs. That's how much they have done to create business.

This piece of paper, yes, we're going to vote with you, but I'll tell you, it's not enough and it's too late.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Your time has expired.

Mr Hope: I look forward to the debate we'll be having on the WCB, because I would like to talk to the member opposite about some of the things he brought forward. But I think it's important. The member sits there and recites how they support small business. We must remember what government brought in the goods --

The Deputy Speaker: It's questions and comments on Bill 187.

Mr Hope: That's what I'm doing.

Interjections.

Mr Hope: He made a comment about workers' compensation, did he not?

The Deputy Speaker: No, no. It's Bill 187, please. If not, I'll cut you off.

Mr Hope: The issue around being supportive of the small business community, you must remember, the member opposite, the federal government which implemented the goods and services tax, which disguised the 13.5% tax and rolled on top of it another 7%, which is demoralizing to the small business community today, and if you're out there talking to them they'll tell you about how that GST is really affecting their business.

In the Hacksaw Mike's American Revolution document that's out there, it talks about cutting government grants and subsidies: It will cut business subsidies and reduce government grants for a total of $200 million. I tried to figure out what subsidies are out there, and that means actually paying the cost of hydro; that means actually paying the cost of workers' compensation; that means actually paying the cost of health care.

The members opposite in their document, which is a Mike Harris American Revolution, talked about a $200-million saving; they're talking about making business pay those full costs for those full programs. If not, then they're talking about not even helping small businesses up on their feet through recovery programs or whatever it may be to help those businesses achieve a better marketplace.

When I read this document, which is also talking about scrapping the Jobs Ontario program -- I know in my own community that we had a projected number for three years; we did it in two years and more and more small business communities are coming on -- this is what this one's talking about in order to support his government's agenda in the Mike Harris Hacksaw, this American Revolution. It talks about eliminating the red tape and it states here:

"Starting a company in Ontario can mean going through as many as 10 different government departments or agencies. Every year, Ontario passes...new regulations. It's little wonder that employers..." When I read their own document, their own document is not even specific in what they will do as far as red-tape cutting for the small business community.

Mr Bradley: I enjoyed the remarks of the member for York Mills because they really pointed out the limitations of this piece of legislation and I think that has to be done. This is trumpeted as some revolutionary new piece of legislation and the fact that it is getting so little consideration in this House in terms of the time allocated to it I think is an indication of its level of importance.

It is a step and everybody always wants to see a step taken, but if one wants to look at what's really required, it's a change in the entire atmosphere, a change in the entire climate for investment in this province. That still hasn't happened, and it hasn't happened because the bill doesn't contain enough provisions which would ease the minds of those who would intend to invest in this province. I think that's what the member for York Mills was referring to, that the bill, as limited as it is, does not serve its purpose.

The consideration and the amount of time -- and you as an individual in the chair are interested in the amount of time given to this particular bill, as is the member when he started out his remarks this afternoon. The opposition parties, in recognition of the fact that this is a tiny step forward, wanting to be as cooperative as always, agreed that it would take a limited amount of time on this bill.

The thank you, of course, that the opposition gets for this is another closure motion filed with the table today. That means that when we try to accommodate the government with a rather limited debate on this so that we can spend more time on more substantive legislation, we end up with a thank you which is a closure motion, which is the third closure motion, you would remember, that we have had in the last three weeks when the government refused to bring the House back.

Those are my comments on the member's remarks. I think they were quite suitable and I know the Conservatives want to speak.

Mr Tilson: I'd like to make a few comments with respect to the member for York Mills's address with respect to this bill.

I think the remarks from the member for York Mills express the frustration, at least on this side of the House, when the minister stood up, I think in her statement when the bill was introduced, and used the words that the bill "reflects the government's commitment to cutting red tape for business."

I can tell you that I think all sides of the House were concerned with the bureaucracy that -- for whatever reason and whatever party -- has been created over the years, and I suppose some of that bureaucracy can be attributed to all parties, but certainly this bill -- and the member for York Mills has expressed it very rightly -- is with respect to the disappointment, the disappointment that, "Is this all there is?"

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Certainly anyone who talks to me, and I'm sure other members in this House, about wanting to invest in this province, whether from outside the province or inside the province, they're concerned about the mass of regulations that have developed over the years. They're concerned about the taxes that have increased over the years and how they're causing a lot of problems with respect to competitiveness not only with other provinces but with respect to the United States.

I can't resist commenting on the topic that the member for York Mills made when he compared Clearing the Path, when that's exactly what's going on in the past two weeks. Every piece of legislation, three of the most important pieces of legislation, all of which in some fashion are going to affect business in this province, whether it be WCB, the planning legislation or the long-term-care legislation, all of that is being put through by closure. We're going to have, what, a day to discuss three of the most important pieces of legislation this province has ever seen? That's what I call Clearing the Path.

Mr Perruzza: I appreciate the opportunity to respond very quickly to some of the comments that the member has made. There's no question that some small businesses and some businesses in the province of Ontario are hurting and have been hurting for quite some time. There is no question about that.

Nobody has the ultimate knowledge in this area. A lot of the time my colleagues across the way heckle across here and say: "Those New Democrats, they know nothing about business. They know nothing about small business." Here we come along and try to simplify -- yes, in a small way -- along with a number of other small things that we've done for business to lower the overhead, lower some of the costs that businesses are afflicted with and have to deal with in order to survive as businesses.

They, the business party of Canada, are the first to stand up and say: "Nay to you New Democrats. You know nothing about business. You're not doing diddly about business." I'll remind them that what they did, what their party did, what free trade has done has forced Ontario and Canadian businesses to have to compete with Mexican businesses, with American businesses, where in the latter cases the overhead is much lower.

I'll tell you some of the other things that we've done. We've removed the commercial concentration tax, a $1-per-square-foot tax on business. We did that. You didn't do that; they didn't do that; we did that. We lowered the business tax rate in Ontario. We lowered the business tax rate; not you and not them. We gave employers, on the employer health tax, a one-year --

The Deputy Speaker: Your time has expired. The member for York Mills, you have two minutes to reply.

Mr Turnbull: In response to the last speaker, all I can say is perhaps you're a little bit mixed up. It was the Liberals who put the commercial concentration tax in place; it's the Liberals who put the employer health tax in place. We haven't been the government since then. We certainly would've taken it off. We agree you should do it.

Mr Wiseman: You're the GST party.

Mr Turnbull: My friend across the road says we're the GST party.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr Turnbull: The fact is that when the federal government reduced taxes, this government, the NDP, was quick to mop it up. But people suggest that somehow we're unfriendly to business with this. Ask businesses. They think it's a good idea to get rid of all of the subsidies. They say, "Let's just have lower taxes." The fact is that we're going to reduce taxes by some $4 billion. But in order to do that, we are going to reduce government spending by $6 billion. We'll still be $2 billion to the good.

The fact is, anybody who suggests that you can't cut $6 billion off a $55-billion budget should be mindful of the fact that when our party left power in 1985, the provincial budget was $26 billion. Anybody who understands about inflation adjusting a number knows that you don't get anywhere near $55 billion. So this is a relatively small reduction, but it is needed. As Ralph Klein says, "You've got to hunt where the ducks are," and the ducks are government spending which is choking businesses and choking employment.

We intend to give tax reductions all across the board, not just to businesses. We are giving it through the income tax system so every union member will get a reduction. It's like a 13% pay increase.

The Deputy Speaker: Time has expired. Any further debate?

Mr Wiseman: "Cancel the kindergartens." That's the Ralph Klein approach.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Minister.

Hon Ms Churley: I want to begin by correcting some misinformation that I'm sure is honest misunderstanding by the opposition parties. I do want to correct this because it's very important that people understand that this bill is not about opening up the single-window registration process. We have done that already without legislation. These self-help offices are already opening up and no new legislation is required to do that.

Mr Bradley: Thank God for briefing notes.

Hon Ms Churley: No, I wrote these myself. Look, it's my own handwriting, just to refresh my memory here. No briefing notes. Look.

The Deputy Speaker: Minister, I would ask you to address the Chair.

Hon Ms Churley: Actually, I am going to produce a briefing note for just one moment, because it is very important that people understand what this legislation is all about and the significance of this legislation.

It establishes a framework that will enable the government to simplify filing and reporting and tax payment processes for all businesses, and that includes sole proprietorships, partnerships and corporations. I am going to, if you'll allow me, just read off some of the processes in this bill, once it's passed, because I'm sure the opposition at the end of the day, despite all of the heckling, will support this bill.

-- It provides a single system to file information under designated acts.

-- It provides a single system for handling applications, registrations, renewals, cancellations and other changes under these designated acts.

-- It provides a single financial and statistical reporting system for businesses.

-- It standardizes dates and combines processes for filing information and making payments.

-- It provides streamlined forms to replace a multitude of forms under designated acts which, I may add, came in under a succession of other governments.

-- It adopts a single business identification system to assist business to deal with many government programs.

-- It links with the business identification system maintained by the federal government to assist businesses to deal with both levels of government.

-- It will maintain all business records in an electronic system.

-- It authorizes users to input information directly into the electronic database.

-- It will accept payment by credit card.

-- It sets up a new organization to ensure effective delivery of services to business.

-- Very importantly, it provides a unified service to handle all approvals, licences and permits required by businesses -- this is the master business licence service -- of Canada or any province or municipality.

I could go on, but there really is quite a misunderstanding as to the magnitude and the importance of this bill.

I do want to talk a little bit about the regulatory responsibilities because both parties today talked at great length in their desire to minimize this bill and say it isn't important to business. I am somewhat appalled by the level of the debate in terms of the competition on which government cares more about business and which government wants to do more, can do more.

I think, when it comes right down to it, we all understand the importance of small business to the economy in this province and we all want to work together to try to improve that. One of the things we have mostly heard from the small business community and the big business community is the red tape that's built up over the years in government.

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I want to say that our government takes its regulatory responsibilities very seriously. I think it's important when we hear the leader of the Liberal Party talk about cutting regulations by -- what is it, 50%, she said? But she doesn't identify what she's going to eliminate. The same with the Tory party. People have to live in the province of Ontario. They're raising their kids in the province of Ontario. They're playing in the parks in the province of Ontario. This province isn't here and this government or any government is not just in existence to help business. We have to remember that also people live here, and we have to find that balance in regulation that is necessary to make sure the safety of the people who live in this province is maintained.

I would like to hear what the Liberals and what the Tories exactly are talking about eliminating. I think the people of Ontario would also like to hear --

Interjections.

Hon Ms Churley: Mr Speaker keeps telling me to look at him because of the constant heckling from across the floor.

We do have to remember that when you start talking about cutting and slashing regulation, yes, it is important to look at the kind of regulation that's in place and whether or not it is necessary, and in all kinds of ways we are doing that. The bill that we brought in recently, the omnibus bill, which is here somewhere in my pile of briefing notes, is already starting to do that, to cut the kind of regulation that, let me say again, has been brought in over time by governments of the day. It is important to take a good look to see if that kind of regulation is still necessary, but I really want to hear what kind of regulation they're talking about cutting. I think environmentalists out there are worried when they hear opposition parties talk about cutting government regulation. I think people who worry about the safety of their kids wonder about what they mean. We want to hear just what regulations are being talked about here. It's really important.

Because there's been quite a lot of discussion here today about the annual filing fee, I am going to spend a few moments talking about that annual filing fee, because once again there is a misunderstanding about what this filing fee is all about. Let me reiterate once again that every jurisdiction, every province in Canada, has this annual filing fee. The Liberal federal government has this filing fee and they charge $50 every year. The Liberal government in PEI has this annual filing fee and charges $200 -- not $50 but $200 -- to all the corporations in their province.

When I hear a Liberal or a Tory stand up and tell me or this government that we don't understand business, let me say to him that every province and the federal government has this filing fee, and do you know what they have that we don't have in this province? They have a system that's in order. When people go to search their public records each year, what do they find? That it's in order.

The legal community, the business community, private citizens, all kinds of people -- there are about 350,000 searches a year in this province. We have to make sure, especially while we're starting to harmonize with all the provinces across Canada, that our database is up to date. We have found since we brought in this annual filing fee that at least 60% of the information we had was incorrect.

It is a legal responsibility for everybody to make sure their files are kept up to date, because it is important public information. What we have found by looking at what other provinces have done by keeping and maintaining this annual filing fee is that their records are up to date. We can't even begin to go ahead with doing these kinds of things that I was talking about under the act unless our public information data is up to date.

So when people in this House get up and tell me that this government doesn't understand business because we're bringing in an annual filing fee, they should look to their brothers and sisters, their fellow political friends in other provinces, and ask them why they have kept their annual filing fee and what kind of shape their public data is in.

I'll conclude by saying that this bill, I believe, will be supported by all three parties. People have offered, in the midst of their long speeches about all the things they think we're doing wrong and suggesting that this bill is just a piddling little bill that doesn't go far enough, by I believe quite honestly just missing the point here -- I believe that once they understand and hear what this bill is all about -- if they listened when I read this out, they will understand and support this bill.

I urge them to do so, because leaving aside whether or not some regulations have to be removed or changed, I think we all agree that we have to make government more efficient. We're in the process of doing that through the omnibus bill. I believe that we all agree. We've heard from business, and red tape is a problem. This government, with this act, is changing that and in fact is going a long way. This bill will allow significant changes to be made to the way government conducts business with business out there.

So I urge all members to support this bill and try to be, as much as possible, even though there is an election coming up, as non-partisan as possible. I do believe that small business out there would like to see us be cooperative and make sure that this bill passes in a timely fashion.

The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr Bradley: I'll take advantage of the opportunity to comment on the last comments of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, who has responsibility for a variety of fields, including stuffed articles, amusements devices, pressure vessels and so on, all of which probably require some of her attention.

Hon Ms Churley: Elevators. Don't forget elevators.

Mr Bradley: I was wondering, and I thought she would mention it in her speech, so I'll react to that, why she didn't mention -- and the member for Etobicoke West will be interested in this -- why the NDP at its convention agreed now that it will accept corporate donations. I don't know if you're aware of that. I think they believe that by streamlining the process for business perhaps they'll be able to attract some business support.

This is, as the minister has appropriately described it, a very modest step forward that everybody in the House is going to agree with and that we're prepared to let move rather quickly. But I know that the member would not have mentioned a car repair business on Secord Drive in St Catharines, where I went in to talk to the individual about red tape, the kind of steps that you're talking about.

Here, an individual has a new set of forms to fill out that replaced another set of forms and the only difference he could identify -- well, there were two differences. One difference is, the colour of the form is different, and the second is, the cost is about five times the cost of the last set of forms that he had to fill out. If you're going to really deal with the everyday problems that people have, you have to stop taxing these people indirectly by charging them for new forms.

Mr Tilson: I would like a few comments with respect to the remarks made by the minister. I've been reading some of the material that's been put out by the government with respect to this particular bill, and I look at some of the things that they're going to be doing. This bill is supposed to eliminate some bureaucracy, and yet this is what this bill is going to do: They are going to have a kit. I don't know how much it's going to cost, but the government is going to put out a kit to explain this stuff. They're going to have a kit which is going to include registration forms and it's going to provide general information about registering these businesses, and who knows how much that's going to cost or how many bureaucrats that's going to cost.

Then the best part is they're going to have a pamphlet which describes the kit, and then they're going to distribute that pamphlet around, which is going to tell us how to read the kit. Then they're going to have a help line and the help line's going to tell you how to read the pamphlet, which in turn's going to explain the kit. This is the wonderful new world of the New Democratic Party government in trying to eliminate bureaucracy.

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Hon Mr Pouliot: Who wrote that stuff?

Mr Tilson: I don't know who wrote this. I couldn't believe it when I read this.

Interjection.

Mr Tilson: I know we're going to get rid of it; we should get rid of it. We should get rid of all this bureaucracy that you've created.

Do you realize the bureaucracy that your government has created since you've come to power? Every bill you've got a commission. You've got the Advocacy Commission. That's a great thing, and all the wonderful work that commission's doing. You've got a commission called the Employment Equity Commission, and all the cost that's going to have.

Then you're going to have an environmental commission. That's the best one. I think I've referred in the House a couple of times to a letter which I got from the Environmental Commissioner that says she's going to look at something that I wanted her to look at in 1998. All this wonderful bureaucracy that you've created over the years, and all you can do is to put forward a bill that eliminates four forms. Shame on you.

Mr Drummond White (Durham Centre): I'd like to congratulate my colleague on her speech and of course upon this bill. My colleague has done an excellent job as the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, and I think it behooves us to take a look at what the bill does. We're talking about simplifying business forms, we're talking about making things easier and simpler to do business in the province of Ontario.

My friends in the opposition will rant and rail about the high cost of bureaucracy, about all of the travails of small business, but should it not be pointed out that they created those monstrosities, and here we are doing some creditable work in making life simpler for small business in Ontario.

We are looking also at a range of other services. We are looking at, for example -- our government that did not go lock, stock with the federal government with its GST. We did not raise taxes. We did not raise our provincial sales tax with the federal GST. In fact we've reduced small business taxes.

My friend the minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations has been a very, very strong advocate for small business in our province. Time and time again she has put forth the needs of that constituency in our caucus and in our cabinet, and in areas like this we can see the product of her work, the product of trying to make it simpler for small businesses in our province, to make accessible government, to have one-stop shopping essentially, a one-door approach, not a situation where, as in the past, small business is forced to go to all these different offices of government but rather one office that will serve them. Through bills like this, our minister is moving ahead in the interests of small business in our province.

Mr Stockwell: The minister has played this the way she was supposed to and the way the government was told to. They're trying to palm this piece of flimsy legislation off as some kind of new wave approach to resolving the issues of small business. The cynical and maybe the more pragmatic thinkers out there will say, "Gee, if they wanted to amalgamate these four forms, they could have done that by simple regulation." You could have done that, Madam Minister, and you know it. A simple regulation and you could have amalgamated the four forms.

The other cynical point about this is, none of this stuff will be implemented before the next election. You had five years to pass some serious legislation that will go about dealing with the concerns of small business. The best that you could offer up was one-stop shopping, so you can get confused in one location rather than five and you can do four forms instead of one.

I know the member for Norfolk knows full well that this stuff won't be on the board, won't be being done until after we've gone back to the people, and all you're using this flimsy four-page piece of legislation for is a sop. You're going to try on the pretence that you'll get some small business support because you're going to tell them you passed Bill 187 and you're going to fabricate what in fact it will be doing.

What it comes down to is this is a sop at election time to small business because you've punished them with your short-sighted budgeting, your narrow-minded deficits and your hopelessness at dealing with the economic woes that befell this province. This isn't going to buy them at all. It's a sop, we see it's a sop, and from this point on small business will read it and say: "Big deal. Instead of going to four offices to fill out four forms, we go to one."

The Deputy Speaker: Minister, you have two minutes to reply.

Hon Ms Churley: I think that the member for Etobicoke West must not have listened carefully to my remarks, because if he had and if he had really read the bill, he would have understood by now. Once again, he mentioned that this bill was doing nothing but opening up one-shop windows. That in fact is not the case. We're already doing that. I pointed this out previously. Some of these offices are now up and running and more will be coming by the spring of 1995.

They keep saying that this bill doesn't do anything beyond that. I've already outlined in great detail, when I made my speech -- and perhaps he was out of the room or perhaps he didn't hear me -- but I'm going to reiterate once again: We have started the process which no other government has done. We have started the process after 42 years of Tories bringing in all this red tape. We are doing it right now, and it's much, much more than one-stop shopping. It provides a single system for handling applications, registrations, renewals, cancellations and other changes. People will be able to pay with their credit card. They'll be able to file electronically.

In a way this is revolutionary. People in Ontario small business have had to, under other regimes for years and years and years -- do you know that a small business right now has to go to at least seven different ministries just to register that business? Already, with the opening of these self-help offices, they no longer have to do that for four of the forms. Pretty soon, they won't have to do it for any of the forms. I urge the members to read the bill and pay attention to what this is really all about.

The Deputy Speaker: Thank you. Your time has expired. Any further debate?

Interjections.

Mr Stockwell: When is the bill valid? In September 1995. That's when it gets done, Marilyn. I read it, September 1995. You don't even know that.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Etobicoke West, order. The member for Dufferin-Peel.

Mr Tilson: Mr Speaker, I notice I've got about two minutes to give my presentation this afternoon. I would like a little bit more time. Accordingly, I would ask that this matter be adjourned.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Dufferin-Peel has moved the adjournment of the House. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Being close to 6 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow afternoon.

The House adjourned at 1759.

November 21, 1994

ESTIMATES

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CRIME PREVENTION

VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTERS

SEWAGE AND WATER TREATMENT

CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES

ANTI-TOBACCO LEGISLATION

TOWNSHIP OF ERNESTOWN

LEADER OF THE THIRD PARTY

CHILD DAY

PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE PARTY

VISITORS

ORAL QUESTIONS

WATER QUALITY

JUSTICE SYSTEM

DRINKING AND DRIVING

HEALTH CARDS

LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM

HYDRO PROJECTS

FURNACE VENTING SYSTEMS

OLDER WORKERS

GO RAIL EXPANSION

NORTHERN ECONOMY

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

LONG-TERM-CARE REFORM

APOLOGY

QUESTION PERIOD

CORRECTION

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT (FIREFIGHTERS), 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE (POMPIERS)

ASSESSMENT AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉVALUATION FONCIÈRE

COUNTY OF KENT LOCAL MUNICIPALITIES ACT, 1994

BOARD OF PAROLE DECISIONS AND VICTIMS' INFORMATION ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 SUR LES DÉCISIONS DE LA COMMISSION DES LIBÉRATIONS CONDITIONNELLES ET SUR LES RENSEIGNEMENTS DESTINÉS AUX VICTIMES

HIGHWAY TRAFFIC AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LE CODE DE LA ROUTE

MINISTRY OF CORRECTIONAL SERVICES AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LE MINISTÈRE DES SERVICES CORRECTIONNELS

LUNG ASSOCIATION, OTTAWA-CARLETON REGION ACT, 1994

ORDERS OF THE DAY

BUSINESS REGULATION REFORM ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 PORTANT RÉFORME DE LA RÉGLEMENTATION DES ENTREPRISES