POWER CORPORATION AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LA SOCIÉTÉ DE L'ÉLECTRICITÉ
ASSESSMENT AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉVALUATION FONCIÈRE
Report continued from volume A.
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MUNICIPAL AND LIQUOR LICENSING STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI A TRAIT À LA DÉLIVRANCE DE PERMIS D'ALCOOL ET À LA DÉLIVRANCE D'AUTRES PERMIS PAR LES MUNICIPALITÉS
Mr Philip moved second reading of the following bill:
Bill 198, An Act to amend the Liquor Licence Act, the Municipal Act and the Regional Municipalities Act and certain other statutes related to upper tier municipalities / Projet de loi 198, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les permis d'alcool, la Loi sur les municipalités, la Loi sur les municipalités régionales et certaines autres lois ayant trait aux municipalités de palier supérieur.
Hon Ed Philip (Minister of Municipal Affairs): I rise to present for second reading Bill 198, our government's legislation to control after-hours clubs and other late-night businesses.
The members will recall that the bill was introduced on November 24. A couple of days later, in the early hours of a Sunday morning, a 22-year-old man was shot in an after-hours establishment here in Metro. Fortunately, his injuries were not life-threatening. With this legislation in place, businesses such as the one in which this young man was injured will be subject to licensing conditions that may prevent these violent acts. As terrible as this incident is, it reinforced the importance of passing this bill and the urgency of doing it as quickly as possible. I therefore greatly appreciate the cooperation of the members who have agreed to deal with this bill promptly.
When it comes to dealing with the illegal sale of alcohol or with the premises that have a special-occasion permit to hold an event and serve alcohol, this bill will make it easier for police to get a warrant when there is reason to suspect that Liquor Licence Act offences are likely to occur. The police will have new powers to vacate the premises and to seize not just the liquor itself but the cash box, the cash and any other equipment used in the commission of the offence.
In the area of municipal licensing, the courts will have new powers to close clubs convicted of breaking municipal licensing bylaws, maximum fines will be substantially increased and the legislation contains the new power to seize a business's equipment in the event of non-payment of a fine imposed for a licensing infraction.
I don't propose to go over all the provisions of the bill again today. However, I would like to take a few minutes to address some of the concerns that have been raised by various people.
First, the concern has been raised that the legislation will give municipalities too much power which could be used to restrict in some way the activities of legitimate and legally operated restaurants, bars, coffee shops or doughnut shops. The new legislation will affect only those individual licensees and applicants who have given licensing authorities good reason to suspect that they lack honesty and integrity and will not operate the business in accordance with the law. Furthermore, the evidence of honesty and integrity must always be relevant to a licence or a business.
Many municipalities are already making licensing decisions on these grounds, and case law has supported their right to do so. This legislation clarifies the municipal powers in this area. Furthermore, these decisions to issue or suspend a licence, to set hours of operation or to impose other conditions would be made on a case-by-case basis so that the problem establishments can be controlled without adversely affecting a majority of other businesses that are operating in a reasonable way; in other words, similar businesses that are not causing any kinds of problems.
To further alleviate concerns about the use of this power, it's important to point out that municipalities cannot make arbitrary decisions under this legislation. They have to have legitimate reasons for imposing conditions or for refusing, restricting, revoking or suspending a licence. Upon the request of the applicant or licensee, a written reason will have to be provided, and that reason will have to be able to stand up in court because the legislation gives businesses the right to appeal licensing decisions to the court, as does most other legislation dealing with similar sorts of situations.
For several months now, we've been hearing concerns about certain businesses that operate late at night. We've read reports about shootings in or near after-hours clubs. It's been known that some late businesses such as certain doughnut shops -- only a few, but none the less some -- have become hangouts for drug dealers, and people are becoming increasingly concerned about the activities of people going in and out of these businesses in their neighbourhoods.
Last June, my colleague the member for Fort York introduced a private member's bill to give Metropolitan Toronto greater licensing powers over late-night businesses. That bill would have gone a long way towards helping Metro deal with the problems. This fall, though, a young woman was killed outside an after-hours club in London. It was apparent that the problem was not limited to Metro, and in October the Premier promised quick government action.
I appreciate the fact that many people have provided advice to us. We've consulted with the police and with other enforcement agencies, with community groups that are very concerned about this and with municipalities. This legislation will enable the police, municipal agencies and community groups to work closely together to prevent the present threat to the public and to our communities and our neighbourhoods.
I want to thank all of those groups, the police, the community groups and the municipalities, as well as my own staff, who have worked so hard on bringing about the consensus that I believe we have here and the support they've shown. I urge every member of the House to support the bill.
The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Are there any questions or any comments?
Mr Joseph Cordiano (Lawrence): In the short period of time that I have, which is two minutes, I would just like to comment very briefly in response to the minister's introduction of the proceedings and suggest that obviously I believe the action that is being taken with regard to this legislation is overdue.
With respect to the number of incidents that have occurred regarding after-hours clubs, this is the least we could do, although I have to add that I think much more needs to be done with respect to policing and the serious danger that these types of establishments present, not only to the general public but also to the police. We've heard from the police on matters pertaining to after-hours clubs and other establishments that are open late at night that are dangerous places. The police have also made comment about the fact that their officers are quite concerned about entering such establishments. I think we need to deal with the concerns that are expressed around policing, along with the measures that have been taken in this particular piece of legislation.
These are good measures. They go some way in addressing the concerns. They're good first steps. However, I would say more needs to be done around policing with a view to other efforts that can be made and that should be made. I don't have time to get into that, but I will in further comment that I make about this legislation.
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The Deputy Speaker: Any further questions or comments? If not, Minister, you have two minutes.
Hon Mr Philip: I appreciate the comments of the member for Lawrence and his support for the bill. He indicates it is the least that could be done. I believe his colleague was quoted in the newspaper -- maybe not accurately -- as saying that the proposals, when we announced them, went too far.
I'm pleased that his party has come around to seeing that there is a balance here between the right of legitimate, law-abiding citizens to operate businesses without undue interference and those who in fact are violating the law and creating major problems in our communities. I appreciate the fact that he is supporting the bill and that his party is supporting the bill and I look forward to discussing any concerns he may have in committee tomorrow.
The Deputy Speaker: Are there any other members who wish to participate in the debate?
Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): I do appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate on this initiative. I do want to echo the concerns expressed by my colleague the member for Lawrence about, to a certain extent, the timing related to this initiative. I think it will be of some interest to members and to those watching that it was in fact in 1990 that Metro council approved a report on a variety of issues related to crime and policing in Metropolitan Toronto. It's dated September 20, 1990, a few days after a certain election. It's now four-plus years later and we're finally getting to address some of the, I think, quite worthwhile recommendations contained in this report.
In fact, if I remember correctly, it was a certain Mr Pantalone, a member of the New Democratic Party, who in part worked on this along with, as I see, representatives of the Ministry of the Solicitor General of Ontario and representatives of the Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario more than four years ago, which is why I have to express some concern about the delay that has been involved in acting on this.
Since that time we've had, unfortunately, a number of incidents involving after-hours clubs and booze cans, as they are known, somewhat colloquially. It's unfortunate that we didn't have the tools earlier than this because it has been historically the case --
Hon Mr Philip: What did you do? What did your government do?
Mr Murphy: I hear the minister heckling. In fact, there was a report done in 1987 which was basically acted upon. It didn't deal with this issue. A follow-up report was sitting on the shelf for four years before this government chose to act on just a small bit of it. I notice there are parts of this that are still not acted upon, more than four years later.
In fact, it's indicative of this government's response of government by panic. It is at the last minute, only when the furore is too difficult for it to take, that it acts. It acts in a way that is rushed, that does not give people sufficient time to respond to the concerns in a detailed way. It is rushing through committee tomorrow.
We said we support the intent of this bill. It was our request that committee hearings happen to give at least some opportunity for comment from a variety of organizations -- the restaurant association, the chamber of commerce and others -- depending on who we will see. But it is unfortunately somewhat typical that it's at the last moment that these things happen. This has happened time and time again in terms of the initiatives that have been brought forward by the government, and it's unfortunate we're having to deal with that kind of initiative by this government again.
This deals with merely one aspect of what is a broad and unfortunate problem, not just in our urban centres but certainly strongly in urban centres, and that is the tie between drugs and violent crime in urban settings. I know the member for Fort York has an interest in this issue; we share a common boundary. I've heard it certainly from the members for Eglinton and Parkdale, from many members who represent city ridings, from members who represent Scarborough and other areas, that we are seeing an escalation of violent crime, and it is unfortunate.
It's not just related exclusively to booze cans or after-hours clubs, although that's certainly part of the problem. We are seeing an increase in the sale and use of drugs, especially crack cocaine, which I've seen referred to in the courts as the cancer of modern society. What we are seeing is a relationship between the opportunity to sell and purchase and use those drugs in these late-night clubs. There are two components to the clubs, and one of them is those that operate illegally, the booze cans, which do not have a licence, do not have approval to operate at those late hours.
Effective enforcement by police officers of the existing laws could and should assist in resolving those difficulties. The problem we have is the question of the allocation of resources to police officials in, for example, Metropolitan Toronto. The Solicitor General will know that in Metropolitan Toronto alone the police force is down by just under 800 officers from its full complement. We are adding to the burden of enforcement through this legislation, probably not inappropriately, but again we are not giving the police forces sufficient resources to handle the job well.
I think, for example, of my area, which includes Regent Park and the communities around it like Cabbagetown, SOBRA, Corktown and St James Town and other areas, where there is a real concern about the rising incidence of crime. We have attempted to try and get the police services board, which has a majority of appointees from the provincial government, to listen to what the community has to say, and that is fairly simple: that they need police officers on the ground.
This past summer, as a result of a deputation by groups from the riding, myself and others to the police services board, we managed to get an additional allocation of officers to the riding and to that part, to 51 division in particular, to assist with the very real and pressing problems with drugs in the community. The interesting thing was that it helped. When you had police officers that the community could see, that the dealers could see, that the criminals could see, the crime went down.
What we are talking about is an allocation of sufficient resources to police to make sure they do the job. When you think about after-hours clubs, part of it, sure, is the question of adequate authority and search powers and seizure powers to them in order to do the job well, and some of that's in this bill. In fact, I don't think anyone has made a derogatory comment about that aspect of the bill, but I'd be interested in hearing from some people tomorrow on that. I think one is the least controversial in terms of the amendments to the act, but I'd be interested to see what some of the groups tomorrow have to say.
It is a question of resources, of focusing on the real problem. In a way, the problem with after-hours clubs and the violence and use of drugs associated with after-hours clubs is really a symptom as opposed to a cause of the real problem. The real problem starts with drugs and the rampant use of drugs and the violence associated with it. After-hours clubs really only become a location, an opportunity for that kind of activity to take place.
In a sense, by focusing on after-hours clubs with a legislative hammer as we are, we may be able to fix one of the symptoms, but I have every expectation that it will pop up somewhere else and that we are not getting at the cause; we are not focusing on the issue of the use of guns and other weapons in violent contexts, especially as associated with drugs.
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I do want to say that this does arise out of a series of incidents that are very unfortunate, like the circumstance outside Tae's in the riding of the member for Lawrence, and there was a circumstance in London, previous circumstances in the city of Toronto -- and I suspect elsewhere that go unreported -- where what has happened is that certain clubs have attracted people for a variety of reasons. I think part of it obviously relates to an opportunity to continue to have a party, or whatever the colloquial term is, after the regular closing hours of bars, which is 1 o'clock.
I think it's important to look at the issue of whether the opening of those places later might be a way to help with that problem, to give another location where people can spend that time peaceably. I'm not sure that will be a solution to the problem; only if it does get attached to a sufficient policing of those institutions will it help.
For example, the report of the advisory committee on liquor regulation in 1987 in fact referred to that issue. We are in the process of debating that within our caucus at this very time. I am personally supportive of that, and I think people in my community would be supportive of it. We will have to see what the result of the caucus deliberations are, but that's my view and it is one I'm willing to defend in my community, in my riding. Obviously, we have to ensure that the interests of the neighbours of those places are dealt with appropriately, but I think the appropriate procedures are in place under the Liquor Licence Act and municipal bylaw processes so we can effectively police that.
The key thing that I want to make sure gets adequately dealt with in this piece of legislation is that it in fact gets at the bad guys without unduly penalizing, or in fact penalizing at all, the good guys: the people who behave properly, the people who are law-abiding, the people who carry on business in full compliance with the law, in compliance with community standards, who are good community citizens. I have, for example, in my riding Parliament Street, Church, Wellesley, part of the Yorkville Business Association and where the Old Cabbagetown Business Improvement Area, the Church-Wellesley businesses, the Yorkville businesses, businesses at Yonge and St Clair and others are attempting to work with the community to solve community problems.
We, for example, in the Cabbagetown area and Parliament Street have a problem with the sale of rice wine, which is supposed to be undrinkable but is nonetheless purchased by people for consumption; they end up littering the area with rice wine bottles. We have people who have passed out and we inevitably end up spending a lot of money phoning for emergency vehicles, and we get the fire and the police and ambulance responding to the calls about people who've become unconscious because of rice wine. It would strike me as sensible to have the liquor control board put that, like bitters were, into the liquor stores as opposed to being able to sell at the corner store.
But the point is that the community was working together. The businesses in the area were working with the community to attempt to reduce the sale of that, and it's now down to one store, basically, because the businesses responded by working with the community. That is fully to be commended on behalf of those businesses. The point is that businesses by and large, the small businesses, the corner stores, try and work with the community.
Now, there are others. I've received complaints, as I'm sure other members who represent urban ridings have, of phones located outside late-night doughnut shops where the use of the phone, most suspect, is for quite nefarious purposes, and I suspect their suspicions are correct. There are a few locations in the riding. In those circumstances, some of it might be more appropriately putting pressure on Bell as opposed to putting pressure on the local business, but the local businesses do need to be aware of that community concern. I think some of what's in the bill will be helpful in that way.
One of the concerns I do have, and I would like to hear what the responsible minister has to say, is the issue of the application of the "honesty and integrity" clause, because for me there are certain businesses in which the interpretation of that clause by a municipal council or a licensing commissioner or police services board may be inappropriate in certain circumstances.
I think we have to give those people who wish to operate legitimate businesses in our communities the opportunity to do so without suspicion that they will not operate them in a legitimate way and with integrity; that it's only when there has been some failure to comply with law applicable to their businesses that those kinds of criteria apply. In other words, we don't operate on the assumption that everyone is bad, we operate on the assumption they're good until proven otherwise, and then we provide the scope for judging those businesses on the scale, for example, of honesty and integrity.
I know it's currently applied, for example, in the Liquor Licence Act and I think the Employment Agencies Act and a few other areas. By and large, the application of those has worked out, although I'm sure members have seen, as I have, where sometimes the application of those has resulted in court cases that have gone against the people attempting to apply the standards for purposes other than those which they were intended for.
I am concerned about that happening in the first instance with businesses across the province, because there is a fair amount of authority being given to municipalities here. I heard the minister talk about the issue of municipalities being allocated too much power, and I'm not sure, frankly, on the face of it, that I was comforted by his response, in part because his response was a response shaped to the politics of the House. Actually, I'd rather hear from the people who know within his ministry and be given an opportunity to question them, be it the policy people, the lawyers, whoever, on the basis of response from organizations that have to live with those rules. Whether we have enough time tomorrow I'm not sure, but I would like to have that opportunity and I'm hoping those groups that will be affected will come forward and say, "Here are the problems we have," and we can put those concerns directly to ministry staff and others tomorrow.
I do also have a concern about what this bill does, for example, in the hours of operation of certain businesses. It repeals certain provisions in section 109 of the Municipal Act and then adds a new section. My question is whether the powers provided in the new section, section 109.1, give municipalities the power to change the hours of operation. There is some dispute, on the face of it, about whether that's the case, but I think the wording of section 109.1 is pretty broad. It basically says municipalities have the power to impose conditions on licences without any real restrictive wording on it: "a council or police services board may...impose conditions on a business licence at the time it is granted or at any time during its term." There is really no restriction on that other than the purpose for which it is to be done, which is dealt with in subsection (5), in which we get to the "honesty and integrity" provisions.
My question, which I hope will be answered, is whether those conditions could include, for example, hours-of-operation conditions, which could then, especially in smaller municipalities, change the hours of operation of businesses to subvert the purpose otherwise of the Municipal Act. Even, on the face of it, if that's not its intent, it could be its effect. As we all know, the process of determining that result will take a long time in courts and reward only lawyers, which is not always the best public policy.
Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): I beg to differ.
Mr Murphy: Even the member for Willowdale agrees, who is of course still a practising lawyer, a very successful one and a skilled one, I hear. He can put that in his brochure if he wants.
I also want to know from the government, in terms of response to the Report of the Joint Staff Team for Legislation/Enforcement Co-ordination, why some of the provisions in here were not included. I do know there were some recommendations relating to found-ins at after-hours clubs in terms of police authority. I'd be interested in the response of either the Solicitor General or the Minister of Municipal Affairs to that.
For example, the recommendation was that the Liquor Licence Act be amended to provide for a specific offence for being a found-in in an unlicensed after-hours club, with a minimum fine for that. That's not in here. The question I have is, why not? As the member for Lawrence said, there's a degree to which this bill only does half of what's needed or a part of what's needed, and I'd be interested in what the response is to that specific provision.
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There are other things which could be dealt with in terms of policing drugs in an urban setting; for example, whether any consideration is given to licence suspensions for drug convictions. That's been raised by the member for Parkdale as a possible solution in some circumstances. I know that's been tried in a number of US jurisdictions -- somewhere around 20 is my recollection -- with some success, in any event, as a method for policing those who traffic in drugs.
In my particular area there is also a problem involved with the use of taxis for the purpose of the sale and purchase of drugs. People who come from elsewhere by way of taxi come to parts of the riding where drugs are sold and then leave by taxi. I've met with members of the taxi industry and the licensing commission. I've had some indication of cooperation from the taxis but, frankly, I have to say none from the Metro Licensing Commission and no indication of urgency or assistance from the government in this regard. I hope they would look on that as an avenue to pursue in terms of policing drugs and violent crime in our urban setting.
I do want to talk briefly as well about special-occasion permits. The tightening up of those provisions are something we have both supported and called for and I think are provisions we can support in terms of restricting or limiting or more effectively policing the issuance of special-occasion permits. For example, there have been those we would call hatemongers who have been able to get special-occasion permits, sometimes through deception, either intentional or not, but who have been able to get them and therefore have the kinds of events that I think every one of us in this House would say were inappropriate and that we would like to stop. To the degree to which the provisions of the special-occasion permits can help us more effectively police that, that's a helpful thing to do.
A couple of provisions are worthwhile looking at, in any event, in terms of special-occasion permits. I think some kind of waiting period of a sufficient minimum time before the issuing of a special-occasion permit should be a provision we should look at tomorrow in committee, and I hope the government will look on that with some favour.
As well, there is some concern about where a special-occasion permit may be obtained in terms of whether it's close to or in the municipality where the event is to be held. I actually think that if it's in the place close to the municipality, that's probably sufficient, at least if it has some sense of the event in the community involved.
There are provisions in the Municipal Act about which there is some concern. I have addressed some of them and I'd be interested in the reaction tomorrow. I realize this is a reading in principle, but since we're doing this in such a compacted form I thought I'd give some of the detail now so we have an opportunity to be able to address it tomorrow.
For example, in section 109.1(2)(d), which I refer to in terms of how great an authority it does give to municipalities to police it, there is a suggestion that the phrase "at the time it is granted" be removed. I think what it's trying to get at is the notion that some misbehaviour by a business be shown before these new powers that are given to a municipality by this bill be able to be exercised. But the intention is that, as I said, some misbehaviour be shown. I'm not sure taking out those words does it, but I think something that would say, "The municipality can impose conditions at any time during its term or at a renewal or at the beginning if the proprietor or the company operating the business" -- if you can see through the company to the proprietor -- "has committed some kind of breach of a bylaw or statute first," would be the kind of thing we could look at supporting.
I think it's also important to note, for example, in subsection 2(7), related to the hearing, related to the restrictions to be applied on a licence, all it says is, "A council or police services board shall not exercise its powers...except after giving the applicant or licensee an opportunity to be heard."
I would assume that the Statutory Powers Procedure Act applies to this legislation, but none the less, I think it's important to give some indication in the statute of the kind of notice required so it is clear to businesses and municipalities, or police services boards in some cases, the kind of hearing process and the length of time that's needed, so that everyone knows the rules up front rather than guessing or having to go through a court process. I think certainty in this kind of procedural mechanism for a hearing is better early on, because otherwise you'll end up spending, again, a lot of lawyers' fees fighting about the process as opposed to the substance, which I think is unfortunate.
So I would look at some kind of minimum notice before the holding of such a meeting, and 14 days is one suggestion, I think the point being that you need sufficient time to prepare. Whether it's 14, 21 or 10 days --
people can differ -- I think some reasonable time is sufficient.
I think too the decision that comes from the hearing, from the municipal council or the police services board, should be, when requested, given in writing within a period of time after the decision is taken, because essentially I would expect in a number of cases the business may not be operating while it's waiting for the decision. So imposing some term on when that decision should be issued so there's a certainty and an appeal process can be undertaken or whatever's appropriate I think would be a good suggestion and something that we should look at.
There may also be scope for a clause in the law that says if a condition is imposed, then upon the imposition of that condition the business fulfils the requirements of that condition for some period of time, whatever that may be, some number of years perhaps; in other words, if good behaviour is shown by a business after a period of time, they should be allowed perhaps to get rid of the condition on their operation.
Those are some of the particulars that I think are worthwhile looking at, and I did want to talk briefly, if I could, about a couple of other specific issues while I have the opportunity. As I mentioned earlier, my concern was that this is again a circumstance where we have government by panic, where there is a series of events that cause the government to act after it's raised in the House by the opposition and the concerns are raised by the media, where the government finally is awakened from its slumbering sleep and says, "Oh, my gosh, we'd better act," and acts at the last moment. We've seen it in a number of other situations.
Interjections.
Mr Murphy: I hear a cackling from the government benches. It always happens when the truth hits home that we hear them heckling from the other side. It almost makes no sense that sometimes you can get this government acting very quickly, barging ahead on issues only when the pressure builds from the public side and at other times it digs in its heels despite the public pressure. I think of Bill 173, the long-term-care reform, where all I get are letters from community groups in my riding and elsewhere who have real concerns with the impact of the bill.
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I just got a letter today from the Red Cross in my riding. They just cannot understand how the government can proceed jamming this through at the last moment. We have it today with the WCB bill when it goes to committee. It was interesting. I was in the justice committee, and we had injured workers in there who were actually prepared to trade the Ontarians with Disabilities Act for getting rid of Bill 165 if the government would proceed with the Ontarians with Disabilities Act.
I mean, it's a government that seems to proceed despite what the people in the community are saying. Then sometimes it waits and waits and waits and panics and reacts at the last moment, and it almost always, when it does that, gets something wrong. It's inevitable, frankly. It's not just this government, anybody when it does that. When it waits until the last moment to react, it's going to get some of it wrong because it doesn't give the due consideration that it needs. It doesn't give the consultation that it needs. It doesn't give time for people to react, to assess the impact of a bill in all of the myriad situations that are going to be faced in this province. The time is not given, and it's unfortunate.
Now, it would be interesting to see what the impact of this bill is over time. I expect that unless we see greater police resources allocated to police forces in those areas where they're going to have to enforce this provision, one of two things will happen: We're going to have an empty shell of a bill because either the police will be using their resources elsewhere or they will decide to police these and something else will fall by the wayside.
The only way they're going to be able to effectively use this bill as a tool for policing is to give them the resources to do the job. I hear that complaint on a daily basis. The 51, 52 and 53 divisions of the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force cover my riding, and it's interesting, because actually the police and community work together. The police and community say the same things to me. They want police out in the street, out of their cars, in the communities, where they can be seen and where the community can see them.
I think that's the way to go. That's the way you're going to reduce all sorts of tensions between the police and the community, because the police will get to know the community and the community will get to know the police. Those barriers start to break down.
We've seen that in some small way in 51 division, for example, where we are starting to set up a process of informal connections between members of the Caribbean community and the police force in the area. That's starting to have some effect, but it only really works if you start getting police in the communities and on the streets so the people get to know them.
But we haven't seen a commitment from the government to that kind of effective policing, and I've got to say that if the government were prepared to take those kinds of initiatives, to put police in the streets in the community, you would see a decrease in some of the explosions of violence that are associated, for example, with after-hours clubs decrease by that very fact alone, because you would have effective policing.
You've also got to have effective deterrence. In my riding, I've worked on a program which has now been imitated by the member for York Mills and others, where we're getting members of the community to come in and give evidence at sentencing hearings of drug dealers, and we've started to see the sentences go up for dealers. Where before it would be measured in months, now they're measured in years for people who are dealing in drugs of a most awful, serious kind, who cause pain and agony, addiction. We see it on the streets, people who are essentially too stoned to take care of even themselves.
These are the kinds of initiatives in getting the police, the justice system and the community tied together that frankly this government hasn't taken, hasn't focused on. In fact, the justice system broadly, I would say, has been neglected by this government; it has been its lowest priority, its least interest, and it is the thing that has suffered the most through this government. It is as if the rest of the government's agenda mattered to it except this one and it was pushed to action only when the pressure got too great to withstand.
We've seen that in a series of initiatives, where it has been a Band-Aid here, a Band-Aid there but no sense of what the true overall objectives of the justice system need be, how you can work to use the justice system to effectively keep our communities safe, because that's ultimately what matters.
It matters in my riding. It's what I get every day. I would say that housing, welfare and safety are the three things I get most in my office. People are concerned about their safety; people are afraid to walk the streets at night; people are afraid to come out of their apartments, go in the stairwells, walk in their neighbourhoods. It's a sad comment that this is what is the daily experience of so many people who live in downtown Toronto. I don't think we should kid ourselves or be fooled by the rhetoric that a bill of this nature is going to fix that.
When you think about it, the after-hours clubs are a real problem, but in totality, the number of incidents of violence involving the dealing of drugs on a daily basis in our streets far outnumbers the unfortunate incidents at after-hours clubs. It's true that this doesn't mean we shouldn't focus on that problem, but it is in a sense, in fact it is, focusing on the symptom and not the cause. This is a cure only for a small, small part of the real problem, which is widespread.
Interestingly enough, I know there was a great internal kerfuffle in the government related to what was called the riot on Yonge Street of a few years ago in a reaction to that. Yet when I look at what's happened, for example, in the riding I represent in terms of a response to that in areas where young people have to make a real, unfortunate choice when they don't have any jobs, the only place to make money is in dealing drugs. They make $1,200 or $1,500 a night in dealing drugs, and yet the employment opportunities for those people in my part of Ontario, the riding I represent, aren't there.
People are forced to make the unfortunate choice, and despite what was an internal difficulty that the government ran into in responding to that riot, it hasn't really noticed the urgency of dealing with the unemployment problem in some of the downtown areas. The general rule, for example, if you spend three years on welfare, statistics show that you will be on welfare for the rest of your life, and that's an unfortunate thing.
We are seeing that people who have gone on welfare in 1990 and 1991 are now approaching that three-year mark and have not had the prospect of a job in the entire time. I've seen people I've known for many years who held midlevel posts in businesses in the city who lost their jobs and have been unable to find employment. There's no sense of urgency in responding to that.
We have empty stores on Parliament Street, Queen Street and some of the other streets in the riding. In part, the reason has been the increase in the taxes that these people have had to bear, and yet, if they were open, they could be providing employment in the community, giving people an option. The WCB rates are too high, the taxes on those businesses are too high, the paperwork they have to do is too high -- everything that works against incentives for starting a business.
In fact, we should be helping people start businesses on these streets, no matter what kind of businesses they are. So we've got to make sure that what we have in this bill does not detract from those who would choose to open businesses in those communities, because really in some ways the best crime-fighting measure we can take is to give people in downtown urban cores jobs, an opportunity to get off welfare, other choices than the easy and unfortunate one of being involved in the drug trade.
That's not to forgive or excuse those people who get involved in the drug trade when there is the absence of another option. But that is just to recognize the cold and unfortunate reality of life as an unemployed person in downtown Toronto. When the options seem non-existent, when the difficulties seem insurmountable, sometimes the choice of being involved in the drug trade becomes, or at least is perceived to be, the only out.
We have got to give these people hope, because hope is the only thing they can hang on to as an opportunity and as a way around that problem. To make sure we give these people hope, we have to pay attention to these other issues. We've got to make sure that taxes for businesses go down, that the paperwork for businesses goes down, that we work to encourage businesses to set up and not, by acting quickly, by acting hastily at the last moment, impose a burden we don't intend to impose on businesses. So I want to hear some of that as well in the one day that we have in committee.
I know some of my colleagues want to speak on this issue and so I will yield the floor, saying only this: While we support the bill in principle, it is important for us to hear what affected parties have to say. We're looking forward to that, and I hope the government too will listen so we can make changes that make this bill work and so it focuses on penalizing the bad guy and does not hinder the law-abiding, peaceful businessmen or businesswomen who are fundamental to our long-term economic success.
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The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Thank you very much. Questions or comments? The Attorney General -- Solicitor General.
Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): I've got enough problems, Mr Speaker, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on the remarks of the member for St George-St David. Again, by and large, the member offers up a constructive contribution to developing legislation that is important to all members in this House and to all the citizens of Ontario. I certainly, at a personal level, appreciate that approach to important matters like public safety and I'm sure all members of the House do.
I do want to, having said that, comment on a couple of aspects of his remarks that I think need to be responded to. The first is that this very bill is building on the bill that was introduced by the member for Fort York, one of our own members, the parliamentary assistant to the Premier. That was before the Leader of the Opposition stood in her place and raised this issue; so suggestions that we weren't there are inaccurate. We were there. The honourable member was working towards this goal, we've been able to build on that and, through unanimous consent, going through this process, we'll be able to introduce and pass into law these measures that will indeed take great strides in our ability and the ability of the police and others to respond to issues of after-hours clubs and other related problems.
I would also point out, on that particular point, and I've said this before during question period: Look at the record. While we have been responding to the issue of crime, as it needs to be responded to, through measures of this government -- and, to their credit, the Tories have been raising this all along -- the Liberals were nowhere to be seen on this issue until recently, when it was headlines. Before that, you never heard from them. Check the record. It's there to be seen.
The last thing I'll say, in terms of how far this has gone for the police, is that I met with the police chiefs personally on this issue to receive their input. They are very pleased with the measures we're taking and feel that we've gone a long way to addressing the issues that are before us. Allow me to close, though, by again acknowledging and thanking the member for his positive contribution, although we may disagree on certain aspects along the way.
Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): I just thought, after the member's remarks over there, that he'd be interested to know I have a letter here from AMO; as a matter of fact, it's addressed to the minister. It says:
"On behalf of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) I would like to express our support for Bill 198, Municipal and Liquor Licensing Statute Law Amendment Act.
"The Municipal Act does not give municipalities adequate powers to deal with the number of recent incidents involving after-hours establishments and their negative impacts on communities. AMO is pleased your government has taken a comprehensive approach to this issue by providing municipalities across the province with the authority to...deal with these issues.
"We understand the second component of your approach to after-hours establishments is a series of other initiatives which will encourage coordination and cooperation among municipalities, the police and community groups. Municipalities are certainly receptive to working with other sectors to address these problems. Accordingly, AMO would be pleased to participate in any further consultations with you regarding how to facilitate more cooperation and coordination.
"We look forward to further discussions with you on this important issue."
Signed by Bill Nicholl, the president of AMO.
I think that should really send the message to the opposition on what this government is doing in putting together a good, comprehensive package to deal with this very serious issue.
The Acting Speaker: I thank the member for Essex-Kent. Further questions or comments?
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): This is a matter that of course has concerned municipalities for a great many years. In fact, I would say it's a couple of decades that we've had the problem. So I don't think anyone needs to say we're reacting to public demand in a timely manner. It just isn't so.
I'm pleased that the member for St George-St David, has spoken to this matter and enlightened us as to what it will do, its shortcomings and many of the factors concerning the problem that faces us, because it's a very serious problem, and there have been municipalities pushing for this and asking for legislation for a great number of years. So let's get on with it. It's very important.
I'm pleased to know that a private member -- even though it's a government member; great -- pushed his party, his government into doing something and that's what's happened. I think we have to acknowledge that, that a member did come forward with the proposal and a bill to -- I can't remember the riding.
Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): Fort York.
Mr Eddy: Oh, Fort York. Thank you very much for reminding me of that. It's awfully important and it's something that members must do on occasion in order to get good measures passed in this House, and I'm so pleased it has finally happened.
I would say we've all been remiss and lax in not coming forward, and I think it's great when any member, including the Leader of the Opposition, jumps on an issue and draws it to our attention and says, "Something must be done, something is going to be done and let's get on with it."
It's, as I say, very important. I'm pleased AMO has decided that it's on side on this issue. They're pushed by the large urban municipalities where many of these are, but it's right across Ontario.
The Acting Speaker: We can accommodate one final participant.
Mr George Mammoliti (Yorkview): It's not only AMO that's on side with this, but I can tell you that a number of officers on the beat in Yorkview are on side with this. The superintendent of 31 division in my riding is on side with this. The residents in not only my riding but in most people's ridings are on side with this. Even some of the nightclubs and after-hours clubs themselves --
Mr Marchese: The legitimate ones.
Mr Mammoliti: -- the legitimate ones, are on side with this. Even the bars that you see open on a regular basis, the well-managed establishments, are on side with this. There isn't a politician around or a civilian or a member of Ontario's population who is not on side with this, and if there is, I would plead with those people to please write to my office and let me know who you are, because I'd like to know who isn't on side with this.
This is a piece of legislation that has been acted on relatively quick, and I can only hope that other pieces of legislation can be acted upon as quickly as this one.
I want to thank the member for Fort York for bringing this to everybody's attention. It is the member's bill. There are some changes to it. I'm glad the minister has taken it on, but I want to thank the member for Fort York for letting us know how to deal with it, because it's with his leadership that we've done this.
The Acting Speaker: This completes questions or comments. The honourable member for St George-St David has two minutes in response.
Mr Murphy: I'd like to thank the members for Yorkview, Brant-Haldimand and Essex-Kent and the Solicitor General for their comments. I think the member for Fort York does deserve credit for his role as a private member. There are other private members' bills which, for example, I've introduced in the area of the justice portfolio which I wish the government would proceed on and allow, but it's amazing how a government member introduces it and it gets some action, and you're in opposition and it doesn't.
We have reform for the parole board that we'd like to bring forward. I have reform for the MTHA, the Landlord and Tenant Act, to assist in evicting drug dealers. My friend the member from Mississauga has reforms to the Mental Health Act which we could bring forth. These are all within the justice portfolio that we have been on for ages.
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So when the Solicitor General says, "Look at the record," I'm proud to look at the record because we've been calling for these changes for years and years. We've been on these issues. In fact, I look at the record in my riding. For example, in the last four years, crime has gone up while this government's been in power. The resources the police have to fight crime have gone down. That's the record. If you want to judge the record, let's judge effectiveness, let's judge who is doing a better job on the streets, in the ridings and in downtown Toronto. That's the only record that's effective in the criminal justice system: whether it's making the community safer. If you talk to people who live in Metropolitan Toronto, they don't feel safer. They say, when they look at the record, that it isn't effective, that it's not working, that a good job is not being done by this government.
I'm generally prepared to be non-partisan with the Solicitor General but he is falling from his usual course of not quite being so partisan, and it's unfortunate, because when he sways into partisanship he steers into a course where his facts are less credible and his arguments carry little or no weight.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate on second reading of Bill 198.
Mr Harnick: I listened with interest to the speech from the member for St George-St David and also to the discussion that he's just engaged in with the Solicitor General and I'd like to offer my remarks in that regard.
That the Solicitor General, in responding to the member for St George-St David, was very astute in that he recognized it is the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party that has stood for law and order, that has fought on these issues relentlessly for the last four and a half years to ensure we had streets that were safe, neighbourhoods that were good to live in and police departments that had resources to deal with the problems on our streets.
Interjection: And he said so in a very non-partisan way.
Mr Harnick: And he said so in a very non-partisan way.
I appreciate that because it's one thing to stand on a law-and-order agenda and to carry that agenda for four and a half years and it's another thing to look for an issue and overnight to become a law-and-order party. That certainly has not been the way in this party, it has been the way in the Liberal Party, and I appreciate that the Solicitor General has made those kind and very astute remarks, recognizing the consistency of our ways. So I do appreciate that.
The bill we're speaking about is Bill 198, An Act to amend the Liquor Licence Act, the Municipal Act and the Regional Municipalities Act and certain other statutes related to upper-tier municipalities. The whole purpose behind this bill is to regulate, or attempt to regulate, an illegal activity. That is really what this is about, and I'm afraid to say to the government, "You cannot regulate that which is illegal."
If it's illegal, if it is contrary to the Criminal Code, if it is contrary municipal bylaws, if it is contrary to provincial acts, then you can't regulate it. You can't regulate an establishment that sells liquor without a licence; it is breaking the law. You can't regulate an establishment that sells liquor without a licence after hours because that, too, is breaking the law. You can't go ahead and regulate what exists only for an illegal purpose.
After-hours clubs, as they've been known in the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, take several forms. There are legal after-hours clubs which, if they do have a liquor licence, stop serving liquor at 1 o'clock in the morning and then continue to serve fruit juices and offer dancing and music until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning.
I had the pleasure of appearing on a panel with a gentleman who runs just such an establishment. It was very interesting, in discussing it with him, when he explained to me that you can't get into his establishment without going through a metal detector, that at 1 o'clock in the morning no more liquor is dispensed, everything is done by computer, there are chits and invoices for every single drink that comes out of that establishment and, after 1 o'clock in the morning, it is only fruit juice.
That is one form of after-hours club. That is an after-hours club that is regulated by the Liquor Licence Act already, and it has an operator who respects the law and doesn't try and bend the law.
There are other kinds of after-hours clubs, and there are kinds of after-hours clubs that the mayor of North York has been heard to describe as "only existing for one purpose, and that's for people to go and shoot one another. They go there to kill each other." That's what the mayor said, and in fact he is quite right. That's what happens at other kinds of after-hours clubs, and those are the kinds of after-hours clubs that we are attempting to deal with by legislation.
Those after-hours clubs only exist for an illegal purpose. They exist in a manner that might be in one location one week and in a different location a week later. They exist to open late in the evening, early in the morning. They exist to sell liquor in an unlicensed place after hours. They exist in a milieu where people come to spend large amounts of money to buy drinks. Other things of an illegal nature go on there, drug deals and that kind of experience. That is in fact the kind of after-hours club that we, and I believe the government in this particular instance, are trying to deal with.
There is only one way to deal with that kind of establishment. They are there only for an illegal purpose; they must be closed up. The only way you can deal with that is by providing the resources to police so they can enforce the law. There is nothing wrong with the law as it exists now in so far as those establishments are concerned; the problem we have is that we don't give the police the necessary resources to deal with that problem.
I have heard it said, and I don't know how totally accurate this is, but it's pretty close, there are a minimal number of police officers out on the roads between 2 am and 6 am in Metropolitan Toronto on any given night. I don't want to be inaccurate so I don't want to throw out a number, but a minuscule number of police officers who are out on the road.
If that's the case, how are we going to close up these establishments if we find they're operating? You can't, because the resources and the officers are not out there to do the job, because we haven't permitted them, under the enforcement capacity that municipalities and provincial governments have, to have the resources necessary to deal with that problem.
Therefore, we have after-hours clubs existing in a neighbourhood one weekend and going to another neighbourhood another weekend, where the operators get rich by selling liquor after hours in an unlicensed place at high prices and they make lots of money doing it, then they close the doors and find a new location a week later.
I am in a position to say, and I will bet that I will be right, that this act will not regulate or close down or affect in any way, shape or form after-hours clubs that are operating illegally to start with. This act will not accomplish that purpose.
What this act will do, in many respects, is to control legal operations where the law is being broken. By that, I mean places that already have a liquor licence, places that already run a legitimate business, but where an illegal activity happens to be taking place, oftentimes after hours. That is what this bill will do, and quite frankly, I am supportive of this bill. I'm supportive of that aspect of it.
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Interjection.
Mr Harnick: But the Solicitor General tells me I am wrong. What I want to know is, if the Solicitor General can tell me, as he shouts across the floor, where in this act he will have any recourse to dealing with establishments that only exist for an illegal purpose. I will bet that the Solicitor General in all his wisdom -- and I told you about his couple of minutes of wisdom earlier this evening -- will not be able to point out to me where those sections lie.
Nevertheless, I do wish to deal with this bill in some detail. I find parts of it curious. I find parts of it not all that understandable, or I can't conceive how in many cases it's going to be workable.
But at any rate it's important to note that many of the issues surrounding enhanced enforcement of liquor legislation don't require legislative changes. They should have been acted upon long ago, and they were identified by the Liberals as far back as 1987 in their Report of the Advisory Committee on Liquor Regulation, and that is an interesting report because I believe the former Solicitor General, Mr Offer, was the chairperson of the Advisory Committee on Liquor Regulation.
In that committee the former Liberal government recognized a number of the problems that are now faced by the NDP government in the area of after-hours drinking in licensed establishments, and that was as far back as 1987. Perhaps if the former Liberal government had not only done the study but acted on it, this problem of people going to after-hours clubs and killing one another wouldn't exist today. We would have had a handle on this and it wouldn't have escalated to the extent that it now has escalated to, and the present Solicitor General wouldn't have to be worrying about where he's going to get the police officers to do the job and stop people killing one another at after-hours drinking establishments.
But the Liberal government did the right thing; they had a study. Then they did the wrong thing; they did nothing. Then when people started killing one another at after-hours clubs, the leader of the Liberal Party jumped up in question period, like she'd just discovered the wheel. She decided she was going to stick it to this government and she was going to embarrass them and make them deal with the problem. In reality, it was her government -- and she sat in the cabinet, for goodness' sake, from 1987 onwards -- that did nothing about a problem that was obvious; they had studied it, they had made recommendations on it and then did nothing. Then what did we see? We saw the histrionics of a leader during question period trying to make political hay in an area that her government of which she was a member completely ignored. There are those who would call that hypocritical, Mr Speaker, but I don't know if you would deem that to be parliamentary language, so I won't dwell any further on that.
At any rate, Bill 198 is intended to address the issue of illegal after-hours clubs and legal clubs in which legal activities are occurring. Instead, it has its focus on legally run businesses, and this will have far broader ramifications. What I fear about this legislation is that it might hurt good guys and continue to ignore the bad guys. The continuing problem of illegal after-hours clubs is one of enforcement, as I see it. The legislation that we now have, before we even pass this bill, hasn't been properly or adequately enforced.
If we're going to pass this piece of legislation, which I don't think is going to stamp out the bad guys -- it'll further regulate many who are good guys, but I don't think it's going to get rid of the bad guys in this business -- at least I hope the government, now that they've committed themselves to legislation, will commit themselves to enforce this legislation and the existing legislation that we already have, because that is the only way we are really going to be able to deal with this problem.
I fear when I look at this bill that there will be some real problems when we deal with what is section 2 of the act, the sections that deal with the honesty and integrity aspects of the amendments. What happens, in effect, is that the act reads, and these are amendments to the Municipal Act:
"(2) Subject to the Theatres Act, a council or police services board may,
"(a) grant a business licence to an applicant;
"(b) refuse to grant a business licence to an applicant;
"(c) temporarily suspend or revoke a business licence at any time during its term; or
"(d) impose conditions on a business licence at the time it is granted or at any time during its term."
That will now become the power of the licensing body.
Then it goes on to say:
"(5) The exercise of a power under subsection (2)" -- those powers that I just read -- "is in the discretion of the council or police services board and, without limiting such discretion, the council or police services board may exercise its powers under clause (2)(b), (c) or (d) if," and this is the key,
"(a) the conduct of the applicant or licensee affords reasonable grounds for belief that the applicant or licensee will not carry on the trade, calling, business or occupation in accordance with the law or with honesty and integrity."
If you look at that section, it's almost an impossibility to think that someone puts in an application and they say, "I would like to operate a doughnut shop." Well, they put their application in; effectively they want a licence from the municipality to operate the doughnut shop. How from the very face of the licence can one make a determination dealing with whether you're going to carry on your business according to the law or with honesty and integrity? I don't know how that determination can be made.
I also see it as sort of a reverse onus, you know, that someone is considered to be a lawbreaker or not a person of honesty and integrity until they go before the board and they have to prove before the municipality that they are a person of honesty and integrity. Quite frankly, when we look at the problem that this legislation is deemed to deal with, I don't think that in any way comes close to solving the problem.
I put this to the Solicitor General, who I know is listening intently: If someone is going to open an after-hours club and operate it in an industrial factory on a Saturday night or a Friday night and they're going to sell liquor -- they don't have a licence, they don't have any permit from the municipality to do it, they've found an empty warehouse and they're going to go ahead and run their after-hours club and make some bucks -- how does that section in any way, shape or form deal with that particular issue? It doesn't.
As I say to the Solicitor General, it is that kind of after-hours club we have to deal with, and I don't know where in this bill exist any sections that will deal with that, because you can't legislate an illegal activity, you can't regulate something that is totally and purely illegal. The only way you can deal with it is through the issue of enforcement. That's the only way.
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Hon David Christopherson: That is intellectually dishonest, and you know it.
Mr Harnick: The Solicitor General tells me I'm being intellectually dishonest. I ask the Solicitor General, and I know he's going to jump up on his feet, to explain to me how you regulate by law something that is illegal. Do you pass an act that says you can't sell liquor in an unlicensed premise? We already have that act. Do you pass an act that says you can't have more than 50 people in a room if alcohol is being served? We already have that act. The fact of the matter is, this act regulates legal activities that already exist where something illegal may be happening there.
Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): We can tell you. We keep telling you. You haven't read it properly.
Mr Harnick: The Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations is chirping away at me, telling me I haven't read it properly. All I say to her, as she yips away at me, is that when I sit down you will have your two minutes to tell me how this bill regulates after-hours clubs that are not licensed, that operate in a different place every weekend, that have absolutely no controls on them whatsoever --
Hon Ms Churley: Did you say "chirping," Charlie? That was a sexist comment and you should apologize.
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): Oh, give me a break.
Hon Ms Churley: Well, it was a sexist comment.
The Acting Speaker: Order, please. The member for Willowdale has the floor.
Mr Harnick: I know that the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations is going to tell me how this bill regulates those kinds of activities. I say to the minister, there is a way to do it: You do it under the existing laws; you must permit the police to have the resources to go in and deal with it.
We have this great big scandal in Ontario where municipal politicians are apparently corrupt and we set up a task force, Project 80 or whatever it's called, and we devote all kinds of money to dealing with municipal corruption. What you're going to have to do here is devote some money to dealing with the eradication of real after-hours clubs that exist for a purely illegal purpose, and that's the only reason they exist. They're never in one place more than two weekends in a row, and the only way to deal with them is through police enforcement. That's the only way.
Hon Ms Churley: How many do you want to hire, Charlie? How much money?
Mr Harnick: The Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations says to me, how much money do we need? The reality is that we need enough money to stop people going to these establishments and killing each other every weekend with their guns. You stop it by enforcing the law and giving police the resources they need to deal with the problem.
Mr Mammoliti: How much is that? You'd have to have a cop on every corner.
The Acting Speaker: Order, please.
Mr Harnick: Mr Speaker, it appears we've struck a nerve.
As I ask all my friends on the other side -- we've gone through the Solicitor General, the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, and now it's the member for Yorkview. I'm going to ask him the same question I asked the previous two ministers, even though he's not a minister. His day may come, but I rather doubt it. I ask him to please pick up this act and read it for me and tell me how this act regulates places that exist only for a purely illegal activity.
I see the member for Welland-Thorold. He's not getting involved in this debate, but I know he understands that you cannot regulate an activity that is illegal for its very purpose. You can't regulate something that's illegal. That's the only point I want to make. I praise the government for creating a piece of legislation that will deal with some of the problems, but it will not deal with the very root cause of how people are getting killed every weekend at after-hours clubs, where they go for the purpose of shooting one another. At any rate, I shall move on.
There is a section in here, and I do want to put this to the Solicitor General, because it's a section that I hope he will direct be made more clear at the committee hearings, which apparently are tomorrow. I'm concerned about subsection 4(1) of the bill, which reads as follows: "Where an owner is convicted of knowingly carrying on or engaging in a trade, calling, business or occupation...without a licence required by a bylaw passed under this act, the court shall order that the premises or part of the premises be closed to any use for any period not exceeding two years."
I have some concerns about what that section means. It talks about where the owner is convicted of carrying on a business or occupation without a licence required by a bylaw; so if the owner runs a business without a licence, contrary to a bylaw, "the court shall" -- not "may" -- "order that the premises or part of the premises be closed to any use for any period not exceeding two years."
What I wonder is, who is the owner? Is the owner the owner of the building where the business is carried on, or is the owner the owner of the business? I don't believe that is defined in here. If I rent someone's premises and I carry on a business without a licence that should be a business that is licensed by a municipality, it says, "the court shall order that the premises or part of the premises be closed to any use for any period not exceeding two years." If I own the business but someone else owns the premises, does that mean that person's premises are closed for a period of two years because the tenant who was carrying on the business was doing something illegal, operating without a licence? I ask the Solicitor General to clarify that section for me, or at least to provide us with some guidance in the committee hearings taking place tomorrow so we can deal with that issue.
I have some concerns, particularly if you're the landlord and someone rents your premises. Is this now going to mean that the landlord has to ensure the business carried on there is a business with a permit? Is that something that now becomes a landlord's obligation? Or is it merely a matter of the tenant going in, doing something illegal and the landlord paying for it down the road by having his premises padlocked or boarded up for two years? That is a small concern I have.
In terms of the aspect of the bill dealing with special- occasion permits, it appears from the tenor of this bill that many after-hours clubs operate under special-occasion permits. In other words, you go down to your local liquor licensing office, you apply for a permit, you get a permit, and for the day that permit specifies you can during the hours specified in the permit, I suspect, run a bar or an activity where there is a liquor licence temporarily on the premises for the purpose of that occasion. It could be a wedding, it could be a barbecue, and I suppose it can also be an after-hours club. Someone rents a place, they have a special-occasion permit and they run a bar, and I gather that becomes legal because you have a special-occasion permit. I can see that many illegal after-hours clubs are operated under special-occasion permits. I suppose what happens is that the permit runs out at 1 o'clock, when the bar is supposed to be closed, but they continue to serve alcohol after the bar closes and it becomes an illegal after-hours club at that very moment.
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We are now trying, under this particular bill, to deal with control of special-occasion permits, and I think this is very important and it's very necessary to be done. It's different from the after-hours club I spoke of earlier because this after-hours club, by its very nature, is known to the liquor licensing authorities. They know the licence has been granted, they know where the special occasion is taking place, so there is a measure of control; we can deal with this kind of situation.
But I think there are a couple of things the government can do to beef up the sections it has recognized with special-occasion permits.
Apparently, and the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations would know this, there is no tracking or recording of special-occasion permits by computer. So if I go in and apply for a special-occasion permit for an event coming up next week and the application otherwise looks in order, they will grant me the permit. But if I had a permit a year ago and I kept my bar open after 1 o'clock in the morning and in effect ran an illegal after-hours club, nothing is kept in ministry files or computers that can be readily accessed so it would be recognized that I am a person who has abused a special-occasion permit in the past and therefore should not be entitled to one today.
I put it to the minister that perhaps we can make this section tougher and have some control about the history of applicants dealing with special-occasion permits.
Hon Ms Churley: We'll be doing that.
Mr Harnick: The minister's shouting something at me, but I can't hear her.
Hon Ms Churley: I was trying not to chirp.
Mr Harnick: She indicates she was trying not to chirp or yip or whatever she does. Anyway, I would suggest that is a very realistic thing for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations to deal with.
There has been a suggestion as well, and I don't know if I particularly subscribe to this, but the minister would know better because she has all the experts in her ministry --
Hon Ms Churley: And I'm smarter too.
Mr Harnick: The minister says she's smarter; I'll stake her on that any time, but that's for another day.
The minister has all these people who are very wise in the ways of dispensing liquor and providing permits for liquor, and there has been a suggestion that perhaps we should adopt as an experiment an extended-hours policy for six months. We have had extended hours from time to time in the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, when we've had a big convention in town, when there's been a World Series or a Stanley Cup or whatever. As I say, I don't know whether this would be a good thing or not a good thing, but it has been done before and the sky has not fallen.
I think we have to ask, if people are going to be drinking, is it better that they drink in controlled circumstances where they are being served by professional servers, where there are professional bartenders in attendance, where there are limitations on how many people can be in the room at any given time, where there is an owner of the premises who has an obligation to abide by the law or he might lose his liquor licence and thus his livelihood? Is it better to have people drinking after hours or at later hours in places like that, or is it better to have them drinking after hours in clubs that are operating in one industrial plaza one weekend and another industrial plaza the next weekend, where there is no such control?
I know the Ontario Restaurant Association has put it to the minister, "Why don't you just try this on a six-month basis and see what the impact is?" and then we can do a study. Maybe that would get rid of the kinds of purely illegal after-hours clubs that exist. There wouldn't be much purpose for them if you could go to established licensed premises. I don't know what the answer to that is, but I suspect the minister will enlighten us when she gets up to respond to what I'm saying.
The other interesting aspect about special-occasion permits is that maybe we should have a 10-day holding period, something the member for St George-St David mentioned and something that the restaurant association has indicated would maybe be realistic. What they say is that perhaps a 10-day holding period for special-occasion permit applicants would allow the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario, the police and other interested parties, such as the municipality, to properly review the application. It seems reasonable to me. I don't see it in the act.
So we have a couple of things that really can be implemented: We can deal with computerized retrieval systems so we can know about the history of an applicant and whether he's ever abused a special-occasion permit before and maybe isn't the kind of person whom we should be issuing it to. And maybe we should have a 10-day holding period so the police can be notified that there is an application and other interested parties might have an opportunity to find out about it, such as a municipality, so the application can be reviewed properly and everyone can know about it before the event and before the licence is issued.
Another interesting thing, and the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations might be interested in this, is that a special-occasion permit must be applied for and obtained in the same municipality in which the function will be held. Apparently, that is not the case today. I can apply somewhere in the municipality of Metropolitan Toronto for a special-occasion permit and I can have that permit to run an event several hundred miles away, and no one has any idea that I'm going to do that. The permit says it, but are the police in that jurisdiction notified? Is the municipality in that jurisdiction notified? Is the township in that jurisdiction notified? Are the Ontario Provincial Police notified? These are all very straightforward things that the government and the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations can do if they really want to deal with this problem.
The other interesting aspect is that the restaurant association recommends that policing powers and resources need to be increased in order to deal with illegal after-hours clubs or legal clubs that are involved in criminal activities. I know the Solicitor General and the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and the member for Yorkview don't want to hear that kind of stuff, but the fact is that all of this is contingent on the police having the resources to do their job. It's as simple as that. You want to eradicate this kind of thing? You want to stop people going out on Saturday night and killing one another? Well, I've said it before, I'll say it again right now, and I'll probably say it again before I sit down: It's very important for police to have the resources to deal with these problems.
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I think the bill is a very decent attempt to deal with a difficult problem, but I fear that the bill is going to punish those who might be involved in legal activities because they are more accessible than the people whom we really have to punish: those who are involved in the purely illegal activity that the government I think should stand up and admit, "We are having trouble dealing with," because it's an impossible problem it's now being faced with.
The reason they're being faced with that impossible problem -- and I wish, instead of saying this act is the be-all and the end-all, they'd level with people and say, "The act can only accomplish so much" -- is because what has happened is that since 1987 this problem has escalated out of control, and the Liberal government should have been dealing with it. The problem here is that the NDP government inherited a terrible situation that was out of control, that had no brakes put on it, and they are now struggling to deal with a problem that has become too big, too unwieldy.
Quite frankly, and I say this with the greatest respect to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and to the Solicitor General, they are trying to deal with a problem that is impossible to solve by legislative means purely and simply. Maybe in 1987, when this problem was just in its infancy and the Liberal government recognized it by the report it prepared, they could have dealt with it and it wouldn't have escalated to the point it did. Now you're in a difficult position. It's become part of the culture to have after-hours clubs popping up in one place on a Saturday night and then being 10 blocks away on the next Saturday night, and it's almost impossible to deal with that eventuality. I admire the fact that you're trying, but this bill does not deal specifically with that illegal activity. You can't, as I said earlier, legislate something that exists for a purely illegal purpose.
To be perfectly fair, which is what I want to be, I think you've done a good job of trying to put the brakes on a very difficult problem, a problem that was recognized by the Liberal government in 1987 and ignored, a problem that the Liberal government set up a committee to deal with, which made recommendations, and then turned a blind eye to them.
Mr Anthony Perruzza (Downsview): Make some suggestions. Forget the bafflegab.
Mr Harnick: The member for Downsview says, "Make some suggestions." If he was listening, I've made a number of suggestions, and the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations will probably admit that to him. I made suggestions about special-occasion permits, and she nodded affirmatively, quite surprisingly, at a couple of them. She's still nodding affirmatively. I guess the member for Downsview recognizes a nod only if it comes with a little rattle, because that's what he's used to; when he nods, he hears a little rattle. The member for Downsview has not really been paying attention to what I've been saying; I have offered some suggestions.
But I must tell the member for Downsview that this is a very difficult problem. It's a problem that is almost impossible to legislate, so I think the member would do well to read this act and see what it is trying to accomplish and to understand that it can accomplish a level of regulation of recognized, existing, licensed businesses or premises. It can't deal with something that is totally illegal and without a licence.
At any rate, that is what I have to say to the member for Downsview. If he listens to what I'm saying, he'll see that I have been making recommendations.
It's interesting as well, and I say this to the Solicitor General and to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, that right at the beginning of the act -- I wish the Minister of Municipal Affairs were here, because this is really his part of the act -- in section 2 of the act it states, as I said earlier, what the powers are regarding the granting/refusing of business licences by a municipality.
One of the things that concerns me is that you can impose conditions on a business licence at the time it is granted or at any time during its term. It strikes me that if you have to impose conditions on a club that might be serving liquor and you have to make a licence conditional, maybe you shouldn't license the premises at all. I think that is something the government should consider. I don't know what kinds of conditions they envision, but if you think conditions are necessary, maybe that should be indicative of an establishment that shouldn't be licensed at all. That is something I think the government should and would be well advised to consider.
Interjection.
Mr Harnick: I think this is a very good initiative by this government, in spite of the fact that the member for Fort York wants me to sit down and is shouting to me, not with anything of any particular intelligence, not with anything that deals with anything between the covers of the bill. I think this bill is a very good initiative by this government to regulate --
Mr Marchese: It's about time you said that.
Mr Harnick: The member for Fort York says it's about time I said that. It's probably about the third or fourth time I've said that.
This bill is a very good initiative, and it will be a very good bill in regulating what we know exists -- something that already has a licence, something that's applying for a licence, some business that is existing and is on the rolls of the municipality -- but it will not, I'm afraid, deal with the kinds of establishments where people go every weekend to shoot at one another. Quite frankly, I don't think the smartest people in the world could come up with a way to regulate something that is purely and simply existing for an illegal purpose. The only way to deal with those kinds of establishments is to provide the police with the resources and support they need to close down those kinds of places. I know that's what the mayor of North York wants; I suspect it's what the government wants. But until the government is prepared to set up an initiative to deal with those kinds of after-hours clubs, the problem will continue.
Hopefully, this will slow the problem down; hopefully, it will make the problem less prevalent; hopefully, fewer people will shoot each other on Saturday nights, particularly in large metropolitan areas. I hope this bill finds that measure of success, but I say to the government, it will only be successful at the end of the day if you give the police the resources to do their job.
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The Acting Speaker (Ms Margaret H. Harrington): Thank you. Questions and/or comments?
Hon Mr Christopherson: It's always a pleasure to hear the comments of the honourable member for Willowdale, an individual I respect and enjoyed being on committee with earlier in the term and continue to enjoy exchanging ideas with.
I do want to acknowledge, first of all, his support and his party's support to unanimously put this through. Having said that, I do want, of course, to take exception to a couple of comments and positions he has taken, as I know he expected.
I was cautioned, "Give Tories an inch and they'll take a mile," and sure enough, I say something complimentary about their being consistent and he runs with it to the ends of the earth. I would just point out to him that there's a big difference between being constructively consistent and being consistently rabid, which is where his party has been many times on the issue of law and order.
I want to speak specifically because the time goes very quickly. I can't comment on all the issues, but on the issue of resources and the number of officers I want to take just a minute to explain and be sure the member understands that this is not an issue per se of officer resource alone -- not that that's not always helpful in many areas when we're trying to deal with public service. But, specifically, the police are not looking for more officers to line up at the top of a stairwell or to burst through a door. In many cases, these are exceptionally vulnerable positions for our officers to be in. Going in and raiding these places is not what they want to do. It jeopardizes our police officers. It jeopardizes the public. We could have mayhem in there.
The real answer here is one of prevention. It's at that juncture that I take exception to the fact that he makes the claim that there is nothing here that allows us to go after totally illegal establishments. It does in a big way. It allows a greater access, an easier threshold, to warrants. It allows police to have powers of seizure. It allows police to have the ability to clear establishments. That will send a strong message out in terms of deterrence; that will go a long way. And if he questions that, ask the police how they feel about these added powers, because they're the one who are saying these tools will make a difference and it's that way we can make the kinds of changes that need to be taken here.
I'll close by being positive and again thank the member for his support on the issue.
Mr Cordiano: I want to refer quickly to something the member said about not being able to legislate out of existence something that is illegal. I really can't understand that. Perhaps he's going to suggest to me that that's taken out of context. But I think his entire premise around this question, in his efforts to criticize the initiatives being taken, is that most of what is a problem is illegal, the illegal booze cans.
I will admit to the member that there are many illegal booze cans that exist out there, but the fact that they're illegal does not mean we should not legislate against those illegal establishments. That, he has claimed, is already the case with a number of statutes that are in place. Granted. But by the same token, the measures in the bill I believe will lead to some further closures of these illegal booze cans because there are greater teeth in this legislation. That is another reason for supporting the legislation.
Furthermore, I would add that in 1988, a private member's bill introduced by one of my former colleagues, Michael Ray, respecting the city of Windsor, was a forerunner to the legislation that's been introduced by this government. It dealt with a number of matters being dealt with in this legislation and it was a private member's bill. I will suggest to the member that the problem now has become exaggerated and totally out of control, witnessed by the fact that there are many people out there who feel much more unsafe now than they did in the past, in 1988. People do not feel as safe as they did then.
Mr Tilson: I'd like to make a few comments in response to the member for Willowdale's remarks with respect to Bill 198. I think he has said that as far as our party is concerned, we support the plan. This bill does set forth a plan to deal with this problem, but it doesn't provide the tools or the personnel to effect that plan.
Bill 198 does provide certain amendments to the Municipal Act, and yes, the regional municipalities will require more dollars, more funding, more organization, more bureaucrats, and that's going to mean more local property taxes. I guess the question is again, what commitment is the province going to make to assist those municipalities?
The same goes for the Liquor Licence Act. That has to deal more with the police of this province, whether it be municipal or Ontario Provincial Police, and again there doesn't seem to be any commitment from this government to provide assistance to the Ontario Provincial Police or the municipalities to effect what is a good plan. This bill is a good plan, there's no doubt about that, but the problem is going to continue. It's fine setting up rules and regulations, but if you don't have the personnel to effect that plan, then it's all for naught. That's the major criticism.
He did make one comment, which I've got a few seconds for, with respect to section 4 of the bill where it says, "Where an owner is convicted of knowingly carrying on or engaging in a trade..." and the question was, who is that owner? Is it the owner of the business or is it the owner of the property? It's a very good observation.
One other issue of course is that it says, "the court shall order that the premises or part of the premises be closed to any use for any period not exceeding two years." In many of these situations, the after-hours clubs, once that's happened, it's simply going to move to another location, and again it gets back to the whole issue of personnel.
I congratulate the government for at least dealing with the initiatives, but it's only half completed.
Hon Ms Churley: I'd like to thank the member for Willowdale for his comments, and would just like to say to him first that I'm glad real men don't chirp. I just want to clarify a couple of things he said.
You did make some really good points, and I really do thank you for your support. You'll be pleased to know that already there are currently in place waiting periods for special-occasion permits. I just have to check, but for a reception it's a 10-day waiting period, and for all others it's a 30-day waiting period. But he's quite right that in the past, as special liquor licences came up over a period of time -- it was brought in under the Tories -- of course they've extended. There are about 80,000 or more a year now for small community events etc.
We are in the process of automating. It's a very good suggestion. It's not actually in the bill, but we have been in the process of trying to do that for some time, and we'll have it in Toronto by the end of December. It's almost there. It's a very important point.
I think the Solicitor General pointed out fairly well the difference in the powers the police have now and what they will have after the bill passes, in that now they can go into a premises which doesn't have an SOP and isn't licensed under the Liquor Licence Act if there's a perceived problem in terms of certain regulations or the act; they now have the ability, which they didn't have before, to go in and vacate the premises and seize, and then of course the municipal powers can take over.
The last point I'd like to make is in terms of the six-month extension. If the municipalities and the police would be supportive of that, we might take a look at it, but so far -- and first of all, I don't think it would solve this overall problem, which I agree is very difficult -- AMO has voted against it and the police have some real problems with it as well. But it is something, if we get permission from municipalities, we can be looking at.
The Acting Speaker: Now the member for Willowdale has two minutes in response.
Mr Harnick: I appreciate the kind remarks from the members who have commented on my speech, because I do think this is a very difficult problem. It's a problem that has no simple or easy or quick solution.
The one issue that comes to my mind, and I say this somewhat in jest, is that when you say the police have the power now to clear the premises, you can rest assured that when they break into or when they enter into an illegal after-hours club and someone yells "Raid," the premises vacate very quickly. So they don't have to have that power, practically speaking.
It was interesting to listen to the comments of the member for Lawrence. He told me in his response that it's possible to regulate booze cans. From that, I gather the Liberal position is that they, as a government, if they're the next government, will license or attempt to regulate booze cans by some form of business licence, liquor licence or other regulation. Booze cans operate illegally; they operate without licences, business licences or liquor licences. The only way you can deal with them is by enforcing the law as it exists; that's having police who can go in and close them up, because they change locations every week. But it's nice to hear that it is the Liberal position that they want to regulate booze cans.
I don't know about the Liberal position, but I can tell you it's the position of my party that booze cans are not regulatable and we want to make sure that every one of them is closed up so that citizens are safe and we stop having people killing one another on Saturday nights in Metropolitan Toronto.
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Mr Cordiano: On a point of order, Madam Chair: I just would like to note that the member for Willowdale, from the Conservative Party, who was referring to my comments, is badly misinformed about what he reinterpreted my statements to be.
The Acting Speaker: That is not a point of order. We are looking for further debate on Bill 198.
Mr Marchese: It's my pleasure to speak on Bill 198. We have a history of involvement on this bill, so it's a pleasure for me to take part in this.
I heard a few critical remarks by Mr Murphy and Mr Harnick and I want to respond briefly to some of the points they have made and then make my own remarks with respect to this bill.
One of the things Mr Murphy had talked about as a criticism was that unfortunately we didn't do it sooner. I understand the frustration of the opposition; I understand why they would be saying that. We as government members and as a government always have a problem with the opposition, because if you don't do it you get attacked for not doing it, and if you do do it you get attacked for not doing it sooner. It's a no-win situation for the government and for its members, and I understand that; it's part of the respective roles we play, obviously, as effectively as we can.
The other matter raised which I think is a bit of a problem is that this bill will not solve the root problems of anything or everything. When we set up phantom problems and phantom solutions, it's a problem; if we have goals that are almost immeasurable or criteria that are very unreachable, it will be very difficult for any bill to do justice to the problems they speak about. True, it will not solve all the problems Mr Harnick raised and indeed some of the questions Mr Murphy raised, nor is it intended to solve these things. In fact, all bills are evolutionary, that is, they respond to particular problems of the time and, as we move on, we make changes to those bills with respect to their practice so that as we recognize the weaknesses or the problems contained in those bills, we change them; future governments do that.
So as a criticism to the criticism, when you set up these phantom problems and solutions, they're not workable. When Mr Harnick says we need more police out on the street, he doesn't have an answer about how many more we need. It's not the answer, necessarily, to have a thousand more police on the street, and even if you had a thousand more police on the streets, you wouldn't be solving these problems. He knows that.
At the same time Mr Harnick says we've got to cut budgets, all budgets -- social services, education, health -- on the other hand, they'll find more money for the police. I understand that, but even that, I argue, would not be the solution to the problems that he himself was speaking about. Even if you put 50 more, 100 more, you'll still have the same establishments Mr Harnick speaks of out there.
Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): We don't need any more police officers; is that what you're saying, Rosario? This is about smoke and mirrors. It's all smoke and mirrors.
Mr Marchese: The point is that this legislation deals specifically with some specific problems and it establishes a law, enforcements and fines that will hopefully deter many from being illegally involved in these establishments.
This bill is about many things. It's about working with community, it's about keeping out downtown livable, it's about keeping cities and communities livable, it's about keeping the selling of crack cocaine from becoming a permanent part of our neighbourhoods. As much as we are respectful and tolerant, there comes a time when government has to be able to deal with this in a way that, through the enforcements we set out here, we'll get to deal with a lot of illegality that is going on.
A bit of the history: About a year and a half or two years ago, a community group came to my office with a simple request for assistance. They were saying, "Help us to get back our community." Crack dealers were making their downtown streets unlivable. In my part of the world, we had shootings, residents threatened, residents assaulted, and a police officer was stabbed. All the while, various government agencies and others kept stepping into red tape whenever they tried to take action.
So led by the community -- and I want to praise the community, because that's what a civic movement is all about; that's when solutions happen, when communities get involved -- in my riding, we started to really work together: the Toronto east downtown residents, the police, the local housing cooperatives, city councillor Kyle Rae, Metro councillors Olivia Chow and Joe Pantalone. We worked together, and today our safe neighbourhoods bill takes another step towards becoming law.
Some details of the bill: A private member's bill I introduced last summer has been broadened by Municipal Affairs Minister Ed Philip to serve the whole province. When I raised this issue back in March, he was very responsive to the proposal I was putting forth to him, and it's because he moved very quickly in response to the request I had made that we were able to introduce a bill in this House for first reading, as we did. This legislation gives municipalities the tools to deal with illegal after-hours clubs and, I would say, the small percentage of legal establishments that have become havens for drug dealing and violence.
My bill targeted a number of establishments which repeatedly ignore obvious criminal activity on their premises or actively participate in crime. It gave the licensing commission the power to restrict the hours of operation in establishments in which drug trafficking regularly takes place and it increased fines for businesses operating without a licence. That's what my original bill did, and it was intended to deal with unscrupulous businesses and unscrupulous business operators in my riding, and indeed in Metro and across the province.
The new bill introduced by the minister gives the same licensing power to all municipalities across Ontario. The new bill also closes other legal loopholes to give municipalities and police more effective power to deal with illegal after-hours clubs.
I want to talk about some of the myths that have been introduced by some people, and I think it's good to put it in the context of myths.
The bill does not affect legitimate business. In fact, we were responding to requests from the restaurant industry for more effective action against those after-hours clubs which have no business licence, pay no taxes, follow no rules and compete unfairly with legitimate small business. Our government gave the city of Windsor similar powers and we have had over the years no reports of complaints in Windsor.
This bill does not set up new bureaucracies. This is a grass-roots initiative. By giving better tools to municipalities, the bill provides for more effective action without the expense of more bureaucracy.
This bill does not threaten anyone's rights. Police actions will still require warrants, and all the customary civil rights protections remain in place, but it will be easier to quickly close an illegal club where there have been drug dealings and violence.
I want to talk about the liquor licensing provisions that we've put in place. Again, these are enabling provisions we have put in that will give the tools to the police, the additional powers they need, to deal with the problems we have. What power will they have? Under the liquor licensing provision, they will be able to enter premises, order people to leave, arrest without a warrant for offences against the regulations, seize the liquor being sold illegally, the proceeds from the sales and any equipment such as tables and chairs involved in the commission of the offence.
Other changes are being made to increase flexibility in the issuing of special-occasion permits.
The regulations will require that special-occasion permits be issued from the LCBO outlet in or closest to the municipality where the event is to take place. We do this because we know a lot of the people who have set up these fly-by-night operations go all over the place, get a permit, set themselves up, make a great deal of money, leave and they're up again in another location.
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They will require that upon request an applicant for a special-occasion permit must produce photo identification. We think this will be an important deterrent.
They will require that if the permit holder does not attend the event, the person designated to attend in his or her place would have the same duties under the Liquor Licence Act as the permit holder. This means the permit holder would not be able to avoid liability for whatever happens at the event.
Information on special-occasion permit applications will be shared with the police to help the police head off events they have reason to believe will pose threats to public safety.
These are measures that will be effective in order for us to be able to deal with those establishments selling liquor illegally and doing illegal activities in general.
Under the municipal licensing provisions, the bill clarifies and codifies current licensing practices, which are not at the moment clear, and gives all Ontario municipalities additional licensing powers to address some of the problems identified by the Metro drug abuse prevention task force, which was set up in 1986-87, and made its recommendations in 1990. The added powers would include the ability to impose conditions on licensees, including restricting the operating hours after a hearing, and it gives them the ability to temporarily suspend a licence following a hearing. In addition, the legislation raises the maximum fine from $5,000 to $25,000 for individuals and from $5,000 to $50,000 for corporations and gives the municipalities the power to seize business equipment in the event of non-payment of a fine.
All of these are attempts to produce legislation that deals with an immediate problem that many in our communities have identified, that the police themselves and some of the police chiefs have identified, that many municipal councillors and municipalities have identified as being a problem. What we are doing as a government is responding to all those concerns by all those different constituencies in Metro and beyond. My colleague read a letter from AMO that speaks of its support for this bill, Bill 198.
As final comments, I want to say that, while I've taken it upon myself to introduce this bill and work for its passage, I want to share the credit with all the people I mentioned, the Metro councillors, the city councillor in my riding, who developed the idea through the Metro task force on drug abuse prevention. Last spring, Toronto city council passed a resolution supporting action. All six Metro-area mayors also expressed strong support for legislation to control after-hours clubs.
Tomorrow, we'll be in committee to hear the views of opposition members. I hope we can find a way, obviously a speedy way, to support this bill and facilitate its passage as immediately as we can.
I thank the minister and the other two ministers, Minister Churley and Minister Christopherson, for their involvement, for being very receptive and helping us to create the other necessary tools we needed to create effective legislation, the genuine response to the concerns of our communities.
The Acting Speaker: I thank the member for Fort York. Are there questions or comments to the member?
Mr Cordiano: Very briefly, I believe that the efforts made by the member for Fort York, in large part, have obviously led to this piece of legislation coming forward as government legislation. I would like to add that I believe it was our cause in the Legislature, both my leader's and other members of the opposition, that helped and assisted the government in coming to its wits about this and bringing forward this legislation as government legislation.
Let's be honest about this. At least on this side of the House, this party believed that action needed to be taken swiftly. Indeed, I don't believe the government would have acted if it had not perceived that there was a readiness or a willingness on the part of members of the Legislature, including this party, to support the legislation.
I believe that, at the end of the day, the government took the action it did partly because of the efforts of the opposition. I'm not so sure I can say that about my Conservative friends, because they are rather ambivalent and rather inconclusive about their support for this piece of legislation.
Mr Pat Hayes: I wouldn't take that, Dave. Get him.
Mr Cordiano: I still don't understand, with all due respect to my friend sitting in the Conservative ranks right now, where the Conservatives will be on this piece of legislation on third reading.
But, as I've said from the outset, I believe this is the least the government could do in attacking or dealing with this issue. I believe more needs to be done to make all of our neighbourhoods safer places to live, and I will be speaking about that a little further when I get the chance to speak.
Mr Tilson: With respect to the comments of the member for Lawrence, our party is taking a position. We will be supporting the legislation, which is far more than we've heard from the Liberal Party. We do say, however, that the legislation does not go far enough.
I congratulate the member for Fort York for bringing this legislation forward. His was Bill 180, I believe, and I gather that this legislation substantially accepts or adopts what he has put forward.
I still come back to the fact, as the member for Willowdale had commented, that this piece of legislation does not go far enough. It's fine to set out all these rules, but you have to have personnel, you have to have police officers to enforce them. The one brief members are starting to refer to, and I assume everyone has received one, is from the Ontario Restaurant Association, which does talk about much of that criticism, the fact that it doesn't go far enough, that there are major concerns.
I think you're going to find support for this piece of legislation, Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, Minister of Municipal Affairs, and I suppose the Solicitor General is also involved. But the fact is, as someone mentioned in a heckle, it is smoke and mirrors. It doesn't go far enough. I think you've had an opportunity to do that and you haven't done that.
One little point I'd be interested in hearing about in comments from the member for Fort York is a statement made in the Ontario Restaurant Association paper prepared for committee hearings, and I'd like the member to respond to it.
"We believe that Bill 198 is seriously flawed in that its focus is on the establishment where an illegal activity is occurring, regardless of whether or not the proprietor is involved in the activities.
"Bill 198 will not necessarily punish the person who is committing an illegal activity; rather, it will punish the establishment as a whole by revoking, suspending or imposing conditions on the business licence. This will impose a severe burden on small business operators, who, under Bill 198, will be punished by the actions of their customers."
That's a question I hope the member would respond to.
Mr Perruzza: I want to speak to some of the comments made by my honourable friend and colleague the member for Fort York in relation to this bill. Before I address some of his, I want to speak to some of the reactions from the opposition simply by saying this: If in this place you got paid by the word, all those folks would be millionaires, but if you got paid on the basis of content, they'd all be penniless. They have offered nothing to this debate.
What my colleague from Fort York has done is, he's sat down and given considerable thought to a real problem. You don't come to understand real problems by getting in your car, as my Conservative friend the member for Willowdale does, and driving from Queen's Park into well-to-do Willowdale and reading the headlines in the papers the next day and saying, "Oh geez, we got a problem in the middle of the night happening here in Metro Toronto." Or you don't do it, as the Liberal leader does, by going from Queen's Park to the airport to Thunder Bay, and saying, "Oh geez, we got a problem in downtown Toronto."
You understand it by understanding the city and by understanding how these people work. They rent warehouses, they bring in a whole bunch of stuff, and it becomes a private party; they stay until all hours of the morning and nobody, quite frankly, can do anything about it. This bill increases the fines, takes away the tables and chairs, takes away their alcohol, and puts them out of business.
Don't think for one minute that the police don't know where the after-hours clubs are. They do know. They just don't have the ability to get in there and put those people out of business. That's what they can't do, and that's what this bill will do. It will allow them the access to get in there and put them out of business.
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Mr Mammoliti: One of the reasons I enjoyed my colleague's speech was because it was quite different from what we've heard tonight. We've heard consistently from opposition tonight that perhaps more police officers are needed on every street corner; perhaps every street corner and every curb and everywhere in sight on every street should have a police officer present so we can deal with the murders and we can deal with the assaults and we can deal with the problems in our communities. But the individuals who bring this forward don't talk about how much that's going to cost the taxpayer. I haven't heard today from any of the members across the floor how much it will actually cost their constituents.
My colleague has spoken about the progressive way of dealing with the problem at hand. He has spoken effectively on what this bill is going to do for communities and for the police department. It's not going to cost any more. It's not going to increase the number of police officers on every corner. We can deal with the problem in after-hours clubs in our way, effectively, with this change. It's his belief we can, it's my belief we can, and quite frankly it's the belief of most of the members in here, whether they want to admit it or not, that this would be the solution.
I'd like to hear a little more about the progressive way of dealing with the problem, and I hope that over the next little while we can hear from other members who might share some of the real ways of dealing with the problem, and not the smoke and mirrors from the opposition.
The Acting Speaker: Now the member for Fort York has two minutes to respond.
Mr Marchese: I thank the members for Dufferin-Peel, Lawrence, Downsview and Yorkview for their comments with respect to what I said.
Some quick remarks about what the member for Lawrence said: I want to acknowledge that Lyn McLeod did raise a question in this House about my bill, and that was useful. It was good for us to listen to the Leader of the Opposition raise a question about a bill that I had before this House. I acknowledge that she did do that.
With respect to what the member for Dufferin-Peel said, I am a touch puzzled about some of the remarks he made. "This bill doesn't go far enough," he says. I don't quite understand what that means. I think he's trying to perpetrate another myth with whoever is listening that perhaps this is yet another smoke-and-mirror exercise, but I don't quite understand what he was proposing about how much farther this bill should be going. The fact is that the police were participants in the creation of my bill. The police chief was at our press conference and spoke in favour of this bill, and many other police chiefs were there and spoke about their support of this particular bill. We did it with them and in response to what they said.
The member for Downsview says quite clearly that the problem is that we never had the rules in place, didn't have the proper law that would give the tools to the police and to municipalities to deal with these illegal establishments. That's why we introduced the bill. That's what the police wanted, that's what communities wanted, that's what municipalities wanted, and that's what we did. Then the member for Dufferin-Peel comes and says, "This bill doesn't go far enough." I don't know what he's talking about.
He puzzles me and the communities that are listening with respect to what he's proposing. I don't know what they're proposing, but this bill goes far, it responds to communities, and it will be effective in dealing with the problems that the communities have identified for us over the last couple of years.
The Acting Speaker: Now we have further debate on Bill 198.
Mr Cordiano: I would like to make a few comments in the brief time I have about this piece of legislation, which I say from the outset I very much support.
I said earlier that it is the least the government can do with respect to safety in our communities. Well, there's a lot more the government can do about safety and security in communities. This bill does a certain number of things in terms of problems it attempts to solve, and to that end I think it does a fairly decent job of addressing some of the concerns this legislation attempts to deal with.
To the member for Fort York, again I acknowledge that credit is due to him for having brought this piece of legislation forward in the form he did as a private member's bill, but I would also reiterate, because I'd like to clarify what he said, that my leader did stand up in the House not just to ask a question about the incidents that were occurring, the acts of violence that had occurred, but to urge the government to act to do something to correct this situation. She specifically referred to his legislation when she did ask a question of the Premier, and it was in that exchange that the Premier did say he would be committed to bringing forward legislation. That was the first time we heard his real commitment towards enacting legislation.
All these things add up to a measured amount of real support and concern by all members of the House for safety and security in their own neighbourhoods. I would be the last person to stand in this House and say that there is one member in this House who isn't concerned about security in their own neighbourhoods. Of course that is the case. The question is what we do about it, and the question is, what is the government ready and willing to expend in terms of energy, resources, and the time that remains for this government to deal with some of the very real problems that exist in the communities out there?
To that extent, I would say this is a good step in that direction, in dealing with some problem spots, those being after-hours clubs and illegal booze cans. I do believe there are measures in this piece of legislation that attempt to deal with illegal booze cans and give the police the teeth to deal with it, as has been enumerated and elaborated on previously. I will not go into that in any greater detail.
I believe, after having spoken with members of the police department in Toronto, that this legislation will at least give them a fighting chance going into these establishments, these illegal booze cans, in an effort to shut them down, which I think will go a long way to alleviating many of the problems we have seen with these illegal house parties and booze cans that have emerged in much larger numbers. I would add that, that over the years there has been a literal explosion of the proliferation of these types of establishments. They did exist during the time when we were the government, but there has been a proliferation of these things emerging, sprouting up all over the place. So it was actually very urgent for the government, and I think it acted with some degree of urgency, to deal with this matter.
While the government has chosen to deal with matters pertaining to after-hours clubs, I would like to point out that in my community people have had basic concerns about their safety, largely dealing with various incidents that have occurred, well publicized, in my community. I have sent out over the past number of months a survey asking residents a number of questions pertaining to safety in our local community, and there has been an overwhelming response. I would like to share with members of the House that over 700 residents have written to me in response to this survey to express their very real concerns about the lack of safety in their communities.
That is unprecedented for my community. I have over the years surveyed residents, and never before has there been such a great expression of concern as there has been over the last year. I think this past year has galvanized public opinion around the issue of safety in the neighbourhood. There was always a question about safety and security in neighbourhoods, but I have never seen the reaction we are now witnessing on the part of many of my constituents with regard to safety in their neighbourhoods.
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I would like to share with the House some of the responses I received. First of all, dealing with after-hours clubs, it's very clear there are many people who have written to me who have simply said, "Shut down all after-hours clubs."
This is from one person: "Please close down all after-hours clubs and extend hours in the legal drinking places. This way police can keep better control. We must stop the violence that is happening in our city." There are a variety of opinions here with respect to what should be done. These are just a few. "Keep after-hours clubs eliminated in our district."
Obviously, people are talking about after-hours clubs in respect of their close proximity to residential neighbourhoods. A well-documented, well-publicized incident at Tae's International led, I believe, to the galvanizing of public opinion around this issue and I think prompted all of us to take the action that has resulted in this legislation. The shooting that took place at Tae's International touched people in a very profound way and spoke to their very real fears about the violence that is committed on the premises or off premises with after-hours clubs.
I think the very real fear people felt around that incident was precisely because Tae's International was in a residential neighbourhood. It's not a commercial street on Dufferin Street, but no less than 15 metres away sit residential streets, 15 metres away there are neighbours who live there, the first home. There are residential streets surrounding the entire after-hours club.
People came to a public meeting where various people spoke to tell us their very real fears -- and I have to pass this along, because people were literally breaking up with emotion at the way they felt -- how their community had been overrun by acts of violence and criminality. They literally broke down at the meeting and began to cry, to express their concern about what was unfolding in their communities. Their communities had been taken over by these acts of violence, literally in their backyard. I say we cannot ignore the plight of those people, the very real fear they felt. It's very discomforting.
As legislators, if we fail to provide security and safety for people who live in our residential neighbourhoods, I think we have done a great disservice to the people we represent. We have essentially abrogated our responsibility. We have let down those very real people in our communities, all the people we represent and even our own families. We will let them down if we fail to act, not just quibble with each other over what has to be done with respect to the semantics or the nuances of the legislation.
Everyone has to realize that we have to err on the side of caution. Indeed, the credit I give to this legislation is because it attempts to do that. I will give credit when credit is due, and I'm giving credit to the government for having brought in this piece of legislation in the manner in which it did, but I also would add that more needs to be done to ensure the safety of our communities.
I have been dealing with problems of violence and problems that pertain to drug dealing etc which permeate a number of residential communities in our neighbourhoods. Obviously, it's not an easy problem, but we have to keep vigilant about this. We have to continue to endure the onslaught that each and every day we face in terms of criticism about the lack of funding for policing. I do believe there is a lack of funding for the kind of policing that needs to be done in our communities to make them safer places to live.
People in this survey made it clear that they wanted a greater police presence. I would just share this with you. One person wrote in and said: "I do believe in the presence of police on foot. Get to know the people, teenagers. Provide activities for youth, places to go, so there is less reason to hang out."
"More police protection. No more budget cuts. Police are overworked already." Those are some of the sentiments.
Gun control, for example: "Stiffer sentences for criminals." I believe the federal government has taken the right course of action with tougher gun control laws. I very much support that, particularly in urban areas where I do not understand the need for handguns, why we have to have handguns available to people. For legal uses, I simply cannot understand why handguns are necessary. I can appreciate why hunting rifles would be something people would appreciate having to carry out their recreational activities. But handguns to be used on the firing range -- while there is an argument to be made for that, I believe they lead to unnecessary danger for citizens. Perhaps the registration of those firearms would go a long way, in the short term and in the long term, to solving some of those problems.
I simply say that at the end of the day this piece of legislation does do some good things. Furthermore, before I end my remarks I would like to comment on the position of my Conservative friends, because the member for Willowdale went on at some length to try and put the position of the Liberal Party with his interpretation, in the context of what he had to say. What has me miffed a bit about the Conservative position is simply this: The member for Willowdale called for the extension of hours so that bars can be licensed beyond what is 1 am now and suggested that this would solve the problem of illegal booze cans.
I don't believe that for an instant, because these establishments spring up illegally precisely because these establishments can operate in an illegal fashion without having to go through the requirements of the regulations that are in place. It is precisely to get around those regulations and the licensing aspects of what's in place now that these illegal booze cans are established. So by simply extending legal drinking hours, you're not going to eliminate illegal booze cans. I cannot understand how you come to that conclusion, I really don't.
It is the kind of measures in this bill, which the police have suggested are very much needed, to go in and close down illegal booze cans, confiscating the liquor that's there, taking away the proceeds from the sale of liquor and other equipment on the premises, the police being able to do that in an instant, that is the key to effectively shutting down illegal booze cans. The police have suggested this, and I happen to agree with them.
So I cannot understand my Conservative friend's position suggesting that the extension of legal drinking hours would eliminate the problem of illegal booze cans. I cannot agree with that, and I an illogical conclusion has been reached by my colleague the member for Willowdale.
I would suggest that we will support this legislation when it is in committee tomorrow. I look forward to the hearings. There are some other concerns that have been expressed by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, the Ontario Restaurant Association. Their concern is that there will be a patchwork of municipal regulations and that the broad powers given to municipalities will result in legitimate business owners being dragged needlessly through the courts to defend their right to operate.
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With respect to these establishments that are open long hours, I think there is a need, as I said from the beginning, to err on the side of caution. But apart from that, I believe some of these stringent requirements already exist in the Liquor Licence Act and the Employment Agencies Act for business people having to go through these very stringent requirements in order to be licensed.
I don't believe there is much in this legislation that is much more stringent than what already exists, so at the end of the day, because of the violent incidents that have occurred, because of the dangerous nature of these establishments operating late at night, we have to err on the side of caution. I say that because it's in the interests of the community at large. It's in the interests of my constituents, who fear for their very lives, who have seen these establishments spring up right in their backyards, literally in their backyards, and have no way to defend themselves at 2 or 3 in the morning when people are carrying on in a fashion that would lead to dangerous results, as we have seen in the number of incidents that have occurred leading to random acts of violence and very real acts of criminality that have occurred in some of these establishments.
I say it's time to close those places down if they have been deemed to be dangerous. Giving the police powers to do that and municipalities the powers to regulate and limit their hours I think is the right way to go, so I will be supporting this legislation, along with my colleagues.
The Acting Speaker: Now we have questions or comments to the member.
Mr Mammoliti: I want to touch briefly on one of his latter comments, that being him not wanting any part of the possibility that we should give the authority to open up later to established, liquor licensed bars. I think that's what I heard the member saying. If that was what he was saying, perhaps before he closes his mind on this he should consider, as many of us have, looking at opening them up temporarily. I would certainly want to look at that, for a number of reasons.
After speaking to many of the individuals who go to these after-hours clubs, one of the reasons I would look at it is for the reason of shutting them down to begin with. If you look at the clientele and the reasoning behind individuals going to after-hours clubs, you'll understand that if a licensed establishment, for example a bar, takes on a particular program that might attract some of the individuals who might be going to those types of bars, you will take away that clientele and you will end up getting rid of some of the after-hours clubs.
This is an issue that I think is worthwhile talking about. It's not something we should be rushing into; it's something we should be talking about. To say simply, "Forget about it; we shouldn't even be looking at it," and criticize other members for bringing up the discussion I think is wrong. Perhaps in his response the member can elaborate on what he actually meant.
Mr Eddy: The member for Lawrence is very clear that this party supports this very important bill and the reasons for supporting it. He's outlined the concern of the citizens of his riding and indeed citizens across Ontario about the loss of their safe communities and the urgent need for citizens to take back their communities and to restore safety in them.
It's so very important, and anything that can be done in that regard is important and is needed. Certainly, it should've been done sooner. Successive governments should have accepted the challenge and there should've been an ongoing tightening of the situation so that these things couldn't continue to grow and fester and become worse and destroy many of our communities.
It's a very sad thing that's happened in the communities across Ontario in what were considered safe communities. It is so bad that even where I live in the wilds of South Dumfries, there was a drug deal that went bad and a murder a few rods from my home, if you can imagine. So it's across Ontario, the violence and the crime that's happening that needs to be faced.
This concern about police services being equipped to handle it is a very genuine concern, and indeed if it's going to cost more money to do the job, it's a priority situation that must be faced and we must get on with it. We're not delaying the bill in any way. We have a bit of time to discuss it, and it's important that we work together on this occasion, and certainly we are prepared to do that.
The Acting Speaker: Are there any further questions or comments? Seeing none, the member for Lawrence has two minutes to respond.
Mr Cordiano: I want to comment very briefly on what was asked of me by the member for Yorkview with respect to extended hours. I simply said that I did not believe my colleague's view that extending legal drinking hours to regulated licensed establishments will lead to shutting down or closing or effectively eliminating illegal booze cans.
My point is simply that these illegal booze cans operate illegally and for that very reason have no regard for the law. Simply as a result of that, they'll continue to exist if we do not tackle the problem at the root cause, or at least give the powers to the police and municipalities to have greater authority to go in and close down a place that is operating illegally. That is really a matter for enforcement, and I do believe the police have been given the teeth to deal with that in this legislation.
Although this is a piece of legislation that deals with after-hours clubs and the need to regulate or limit hours and the authority granted to police to deal with certain problems specific to this piece of legislation, safety and security in our communities cannot be underestimated. We need additional measures on the part of this government to ensure that people are safer in their communities. I don't have time to read a very poignant letter that was sent to me by one of my constituents, but when I read some of these things, people lament the fact that they've lost their own sense of comfort and security in their neighbourhoods.
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The Acting Speaker: Thank you for your comments. Now we are looking for further debate on Bill 198. The member for Leeds-Grenville.
Hon Ms Churley: Now, Bob, be nice.
Mr Runciman: I'm going to heed the advice of the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and attempt to be very nice this evening.
Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Oh, that's scary.
Mr Runciman: That is scary.
I've been reminded by my colleague Mr Turnbull, the member for York Mills, that we've indicated we're supportive of this legislation, but I want to say that it's not without some degree of reservation.
We have a letter I think all members of the Legislature received from the Ontario Restaurant Association, outlining its concerns. I want to put a few of those on the record. I'm quoting from the first page of the submission to members. They expressed their concern specifically that "We are concerned with the implementation of the proposed legislation and the requirements and possible effects it will have on legitimate and law-abiding small business operators."
They go on to say, "While Bill 198 is intended to address the issue of illegal after-hours clubs and legal clubs in which illegal activities are occurring, it instead has its focus on legally run businesses and will have far broader ramifications, and we fear this legislation will hurt the good guys and continue to ignore the bad guys." I know the minister responsible for this legislation is in the chamber tonight and perhaps he can respond to that concern.
Hon Mr Philip: I spoke already.
Mr Runciman: I'm sorry if I missed that, and hopefully we'll have some more discussion of it in committee tomorrow. Certainly those concerns are worth further discussion. The Ontario Restaurant Association is a responsible organization which has made a number of constructive recommendations.
The member for Yorkview was commenting just a few minutes ago about the recommendation they make in respect to a six-month trial period for the adoption of extended hours for the operation of outlets selling beer and alcohol in this province. I want to concur with what he said and contrast that with what the Liberal member indicated was his party's strong opposition to that. I think that proposal is worthy of a trial period to see what impact it has, not only in terms of the operation of illegal booze cans and after-hours clubs but also in a host of other areas: in terms of impaired driving, utilization of transit systems, the increased crime of a minor nature in the streets in communities, noise levels -- those things that cause concerns for residents in most communities when you talk about extension of drinking hours.
I think a six-month trial is a legitimate proposal to make and will give us all an opportunity to measure the impact, be it negative or positive. Perhaps the most positive impact that could be achieved is the one suggested by the Ontario Restaurant Association in terms of eliminating the viability of many of these illegal booze can operations which are transient in nature, moving on a nightly or weekly basis to various locales for operation.
Of course, the problem with this legislation and with the whole question of illegal booze cans is one of enforcement, and we've raised this issue on a number of occasions. I mentioned in the House the other day in response to the minister, just taking a look at the Metro police force alone, that its strength is down by -- and we got this directly from the chief's office -- 600 men and women. They're having extreme difficulty carrying out the responsibilities that have been placed upon them now by the Criminal Code, municipal bylaws, provincial legislation, what have you, and they're operating at 600 bodies less than they should be in terms of requirements for manpower, and that's only in Metro.
We can take a look right across the province. In my area we have problems, and I know my colleague Noble Villeneuve from S-D-G & East Grenville has comparable problems, as have many people in rural Ontario especially, in respect to the availability of the Ontario Provincial Police. In district 10, which covers a good chunk of my riding and I think also those of the member for Lanark-Renfrew and the member for Renfrew North -- I think district 10 extends into his riding as well -- we have something like eight officers in the late-night hours covering an area which is something like 11,000 square miles, 275,000 people -- eight officers, if you can imagine, required to cover that area. Obviously, they can't do the job. They can't do the job that Ontarians expect of them. They can't provide the safety and security that Ontarians have become accustomed to over the past 30, 40, 50 years in this province. Those are the kinds of meaningful questions we have to deal with.
I'm not going to be overly critical of this legislation brought in by the government, but let's face it, this is a modest measure and it's not going to have any real or meaningful impact on the levels of crime in this province. I said the Minister of Municipal Affairs, when he made his announcement about this legislation, was engaging in a gross exaggeration, to say the least, when he concluded his remarks by saying, "We're giving back the communities to the people who live in them." Anybody who believes that this legislation is giving back communities to the people who live in them is living in some kind of fantasy world. This is going to have a modest impact and will give police forces and other agencies, municipalities, some additional tools in order to come to grips with some of these problems, but it's not going to eradicate crime in any meaningful way.
It may have a modest impact in terms of eliminating a serious incident here, a serious incident there. The Solicitor General knows that's the case. When we're talking about real problems, real concerns of Ontarians in terms of the levels of crime, especially serious crime, especially crimes that result in bodily injury or death, those are the things this government and the predecessor Liberal government have failed to come to grips with.
I wasn't here earlier this evening when the Solicitor General, I gather, participated in the debate -- I suspect it was the two-minute response to a Liberal speaker -- and accused the Liberal Party of political gamesmanship. I may not be quoting him directly, but that was the general context of his comments that were relayed to me. In fact, he complimented our party in sort of an off-handed way that at least we've been consistent on these kinds of issues, and I want to thank him for that. That is indeed an accurate assessment of what we've attempted to do over many, many years.
I share his view that the Liberal Party has engaged in what is accurately described as political gamesmanship. When they see an issue that's rising in terms of poll stats as a concern of the Ontario public, all of a sudden they're on their feet expressing concern: On perhaps a daily or weekly basis the Liberal leader, Mrs McLeod, raises leader's questions on law-and-order issues. Of course, when we look at the record of the Liberal government during its five years in office, it's something considerably less than supportive of police officers in this province and policing in general.
I want to put forward a few facts to remind our viewers of the Liberal record in respect to law-and-order issues. Some of us in this House will recall the Attorney General of the day, Mr Ian Scott. One of the things that stands out in my mind about Mr Scott and his view about policing was a situation in terms of Metro Toronto police and their frustration with dealing with drug dealers. We know that illicit drugs are the source of so many crimes in this province, in this country, worldwide, really.
This is a situation where Metro police officers were consistently arresting people for dealing in illicit drugs -- heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, you name it, very serious illicit drugs -- who were doing untold damage to the young people in our province and our country and costing all of us millions upon millions of dollars.
The police publicly expressed their frustration with the revolving-door approach of the courts in this province, the fact that they spend thousand and thousands of dollars in terms of investigations, make an arrest, take these people to court, they're convicted, and they're out on the street within a matter of days or hours. These two police officers in question simply expressed their frustration to the media about this revolving system that was allowing this slime back out on to the streets of our province.
So what was the response of the Liberal Attorney General of the day, Mr Ian Scott? Was he supportive? Did he at least acknowledge the very legitimate concerns of these police officers and say: "Look, I sympathize with them. I'm going to do what is necessary, to direct through the crown offices that judges take a stronger position in dealing with drug dealers. I'm going to do what I can to encourage the federal government to bring in legislation, amendments to the Criminal Code, that may deal with these individuals in a stronger fashion"? No, none of those things.
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What did he do? He threatened those police officers. That was the Liberal Attorney General's response to the very valid concerns of police officers in Metropolitan Toronto. He threatened those police officers. If they dared to speak out in public again, he was going to put their jobs in jeopardy. That was the response of the Liberal Attorney General.
The Liberal Party stands up today and says: "We're concerned about increasing crime in this province. We're concerned about the youth in this province." Well, the record says something totally different.
Another example: Many of us who've been around this place for a few years can remember the shooting of Mr Wade Lawson in Peel region, an individual who was with another chap in a stolen car, who tried to run down two police officers in Peel region. A shot was fired and Mr Lawson unfortunately lost his life in a stolen car that attempted to drive down two Peel Regional Police officers.
I've been in this House for a long time and I don't recall a Liberal cabinet minister ever standing in his place in this House and expressing concern about the death or injury of a police officer in this province. But do you want to know what happened with this individual, Mr Lawson? Two Liberal cabinet ministers, Mr Wong and Mr Curling, attended his funeral, the funeral of a man shot by police in a stolen car attempting to run down two Peel Regional Police officers. Two Liberal cabinet ministers attended that funeral. What kind of message does that send out to police officers right across this province? Not a very happy one, not a very encouraging one.
Now that they're in opposition, now that it's a rising issue in the polls, the Liberals all of a sudden have grave concerns about law and order in this province and are showing all kinds of support for policing -- but when in government, a totally different situation.
We simply have to talk about some of their responses. Who created the SIU in this province, which has created all sorts of problems? Again, the Liberal government in its five-year period in office. The special investigations unit has caused so much grief for police officers in this province, so much incompetence and so much grief for the policeman and policewoman on the street, anyone who has been through that drill and been left hanging, swinging in limbo for years because of the incompetence of the special investigations unit created by the Liberal government between 1985 and 1990.
Who appointed Susan Eng to the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force? Who appointed Ms Susan Eng?
Hon Ms Churley: Now, Bob.
Mr Eddy: Let him go. Let him blow it off.
Mr Runciman: Ms Susan Eng -- the Liberal member seems to think that's something to boast about. Well, I don't think so. If you look at all the conflict we've had on the Metropolitan Toronto Police Services Board in the past number of years, a lot of that could have been avoided. I don't lay it all on the doorstep of Ms Eng, but certainly she was a significant contributor to all the problems that Metro Toronto police services have experienced.
If you don't believe me, talk to the cop on the beat, talk to the person who has to go out there and work every day, with the dangers that police officers face in Metropolitan Toronto, and ask for their opinion of Ms Eng. She came before one of the standing committees when she had her reappointment and I had an opportunity to talk to her. She'd been in office for some several years at that point and had never taken the opportunity to drive with a police officer in any of the very difficult divisions in this city -- 52 division, for example -- where these people are facing pretty significant dangers on a very regular basis.
I suggested to her: "After several years as a member of the police services board, you couldn't find the time to spend one or two evenings to drive around with these people, to find out the kinds of experiences they are facing on a daily basis? How can you make judgements? How can you make decisions affecting their lives, without having even a modicum of experience in terms of the challenges they face on an everyday basis?"
She didn't have an adequate answer for that, and she usually doesn't have adequate answers in terms of the way she deals with police officers and policing in this province. If the Liberal Party wants to get up and defend that, fine and dandy. I have no problem with staking out my position in respect to Ms Eng. I think we need people serving on the police services board who are more interested in recognizing not only the concerns of the community and not only the concerns of special interests in the community but the broader public good in terms of public safety and the real challenges that police officers face on a very regular basis.
Getting back to the Liberal record, I want to talk specifically about this legislation as it relates to the Liberal record. This was raised as well by my colleague Mr Harnick, the member for Willowdale, and I think it's a relevant point. Perhaps I'm taking after the Liberals a little more than usual, but I think their political opportunism on this issue is worth drawing to the attention of the House and perhaps any members of the public who are viewing this.
In 1987, there was a very extensive study carried out looking at liquor legislation in this province. The Liberal member for Mississauga North, Mr Steven Offer, chaired that commission. I stand to be corrected -- I'm drawing on memory; this is seven years ago now -- but I was the critic for Consumer and Commercial Relations at the time and I believe Mr Offer was the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. That's why he was given the assignment to chair this commission, taking a look at a whole range of issues related to liquor licensing, special-occasion permits, you name it.
Perhaps the current Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations will want to respond to this as well, but part of that commission report dealt with these booze cans, these illegal operations, the after-hours clubs, and made some specific recommendations. This is seven years ago, two years into the Liberal mandate, and the Liberal government of the day did not act upon the recommendations of its own member, Mr Offer.
Again this points out the irony -- and I'll be polite and use the word "irony" -- of the Liberal position in respect to this issue, where we have the Liberal leader, the member for Fort William, getting up on a number of occasions in this House and demanding that this kind of legislation be brought forward and having a very selective memory in respect to the record of her own party and the recommendations of her own colleague dealing with this very same issue.
I simply wanted to take this opportunity this evening to make sure that members of this assembly were reminded of the position that Liberals have taken in the past in respect to all sorts of issues related to law and order, community safety, public safety and more specifically with respect to the regulation of after-hours clubs.
The House is going to adjourn, prorogue, in three days. I'm not known for saying good things about government members on too many occasions, but I want to take this opportunity in terms of this legislation to compliment the Solicitor General. I think we've had three or four solicitors general over the past four and a half years while the NDP has been in power, and I want to say that he has perhaps -- I'll remove the word "perhaps" -- been the most competent and effective Solicitor General this House has seen in the past nine, nine and a half years.
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I said during a media interview the other week that he and I have had some pretty heated debates in this House on occasion, but that has never diminished my respect for the job he's done. I think it's especially difficult given the ideological bent of many of his colleagues around the cabinet table. I think some of the initiatives he's brought forward, although modest in nature like this one -- although the Minister of Municipal Affairs is carrying this, I'm sure the SG had some role to play here -- and the ammunition bill --
Hon Ms Churley: Hey, what about me, Bob? What about me?
Mr Runciman: I like you too. There must be an election coming.
I simply wanted to put on the record that I think he's done an effective job, and I know it's a challenging one, especially challenging because of people like the member for Nickel Belt.
In any event, I want to conclude my remarks with those favourable notes about the Solicitor General. I wish him well with whatever the future holds, because we may not have this opportunity again to say this sort of thing.
The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments?
Hon Floyd Laughren (Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance): I was not going to enter the debate, and I even thought twice about it, given the rather jocular ending of the comments of the member for Leeds-Grenville. But I must say I was disappointed in his earlier remarks and what one could read into them, about concern by all members of this assembly when someone gets killed, whether it's a policeman or whether it's someone else. I found that truly regrettable. I don't think there is a single member of this Legislature from any party who feels any differently about security of persons in our society. I don't know of any and I don't think anyone's got the upper hand in that regard.
I do know, however, that when there is a lot of concern out there in the community at large about security and about personal safety, there are those who will exploit that. I regret that and I expect that will happen. It's become clear in this session that the Conservative caucus appears ready to do that, and I regret that very much, because I certainly have not met any member of the Legislature, either now or in previous years, who didn't feel as concerned as any other member about personal security and about the lives of policemen as they go about their very difficult, and in some cases very dangerous, task.
So I regret very much that the member for Leeds-Grenville has seen fit to cast his remarks in such a way that actually does cast aspersions -- well, they certainly did. His comments about the shooting of Mr Lawson certainly had me squirming in my seat just listening to those remarks. I don't normally squirm when it comes to partisan debate, because I enjoy the cut and thrust of partisan debate, but I just found they went a little beyond the pale.
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I've had a long day. I didn't intend to enter this debate, and like the Minister of Finance, I rise more in sorrow than in anger. But I do feel, on behalf of my colleagues present and past, that I have to say something about the tenor of the remarks just made by the member for Leeds-Grenville.
I have to say that people like David Peterson, Ian Scott, Joan Smith, as the Minister of Finance said, like all members of the Legislature, irrespective of their party politics, in my experience over 20 years, each and every one of those members has shown a sympathy, a concern, due regard not just for police officers and other peace officers but certainly for victims of violent and other kinds of crime.
I do not think it behooves any of us to cast the kind of aspersions we heard 15 or 20 minutes ago. I do not find it in any way edifies or advances the important work we all have to do here tonight.
I want to say on behalf of my colleagues how deeply disappointed I was to hear my colleague from eastern Ontario, the member for Leeds-Grenville, make some of the comments he made. Upon reflection, he might want to perhaps withdraw some of the comments and certainly some of the implications that were contained therein.
Mr Tilson: I'd like to congratulate the member for Leeds-Grenville, who is the critic for the Conservative Party with respect to the Solicitor General, and I too echo his support of the Solicitor General in looking at what he has done since he has taken office. As to this particular bill, although we do criticize it, generally speaking we will be supporting this piece of legislation, and we congratulate him for the response he's had to a very difficult situation.
I must say, I do support the member for Leeds-Grenville with respect to his cynicism about the Liberal Party. They had an opportunity, going back as far as the Offer report, which was in 1987, I believe; they did have that opportunity. Lyn McLeod, the leader of the official opposition, who was a member of the cabinet at that time, had the Offer report, which made certain recommendations, and yet the Liberal cabinet chose to do nothing. That's something the member for Leeds-Grenville was certainly trying to put forward.
He has also talked about the problem we have with respect to this whole issue, which is one of enforcement and not regulation. Although we do congratulate the Solicitor General and the ministers of Consumer and Commercial Relations and Municipal Affairs, all three ministers, for their part in this bill, I think he is correct that the problem is enforcement and that the bulk of this legislation seems to be on regulation. He has emphasized time and time again in this House that the problem is very few police officers to cover the province and to provide the security we need, yet that issue seems to continue to be ignored: the injection of funds to bring up the police that are needed to cover a concern that the people in this province have, which is the security of this province. So I congratulate the member for Leeds-Grenville with respect to his comments.
The Deputy Speaker: Further questions or comments? If not, the member for Leeds-Grenville.
Mr Runciman: I have no apologies for the comments I made earlier. I think they were quite valid and still hold true.
I understand in some respect where the Minister of Finance is coming from. I was very critical of one of his colleagues following the shooting death of Constable Joe MacDonald of the Sudbury police force and I made those comments in the House in a very emotional way. People who have been around this place know that I tend to get emotional when we're dealing with these kinds of issues, especially when a police officer's life has been lost. I was critical of one of the members from Sudbury for getting up and making a statement in the House following the death which was in no way related to the tragic death of Joe MacDonald; it was related to a very trivial matter. I know the minister was somewhat upset by that, but I think he also has to appreciate my genuine concern about what occurred and the emotion I felt at the time.
In respect to the Liberal cabinet ministers attending the funeral of a man who had been shot by police in a stolen car, I make no apologies about drawing that to the attention of the House and the public. It's an unbelievable situation where those Liberal cabinet ministers, for I think purely political reasons, attended that funeral. I wasn't chastising individuals of this House about their concerns about policing and the dangers police face but the political crassness of that move and the message it sent out to police officers right across this province.
The member for Renfrew North was chastising me, but I only have to remind him of the speech he gave in this House some months ago, which was perhaps one of the nastiest pieces of business I've ever witnessed, related to the Conservative Party and our position in the by-election in Victoria-Haliburton.
The Deputy Speaker: Any further debate?
Mr Mammoliti: I too would like to take the opportunity to thank, in this particular case, my boss. It's not because I'm his parliamentary assistant, but because I really believe he is, if not one of the best, probably the best Solicitor General who has taken office in terms of how he deals with problems as they come up. For me, it's important to mention that because he does take issues on when they come up and tries to deal with them in an effective way. In this particular case, the ministers of Consumer and Commercial Relations and Municipal Affairs both have done that as well, and I would like to thank all three of them for dealing with this effectively.
The reason I want to talk about the legislation is because it has been an ongoing issue in Yorkview, my riding, for quite some time now. The issue of after-hours clubs in and around Yorkview has been a nightmare for some. There are currently about seven or eight establishments that open up on a regular basis and that do pose a problem in the community for not only the police but the community, obviously, and the problems that might come out of it.
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One of the ways I've tried to familiarize myself over the last little while with the problem is by taking a ride with a police cruiser. At about midnight one night I decided to take a shift with a couple of officers. During the night we encountered a lot and I learned a lot about what our police people experience in Yorkview, the types of incidents they deal with on a regular basis and of course the after-hours clubs and what those mean to them. Along with witnessing that, I saw an attitude from the police department that was not only professional in the way they deal with problems as they come up, but they also had a number of recommendations for me as their local member. They were not shy about talking to me over the course of the night about some of the problems they would have liked to see resolved in the way of after-hours clubs as well as other things that had come up.
Together with 31 division and Inspector Griffiths at 31 division, we called a meeting with not only a number of foot patrol officers and some of the other officers who have been assigned the duties of going into these after-hours clubs and dealing with some of the problems that might arise during the night in these places, but also the owners of some of the bars in the area and the owners of some of the nightclubs that might be considered by some as the after-hours clubs that we're debating here tonight. We met a few months ago and we talked a little bit about what our community wants and what our community would like to see as a solution to the problem that exists. During the round table discussion with all, we came to, believe it or not, a number of agreements that they asked me to bring to the attention of the government.
Some of those issues would include a number of things we've already tackled, and I'll get into them in a second. But one of the issues that the community still feels is a problem is defining what an after-hours club is: What is an after-hours club? Some members have talked a little bit about some operations being lumped into it and feeling like they are going to suffer with this legislation. That is the sentiment. It's a feeling within Yorkview that some of the owners of the bars and some of the owners of the establishments have. They don't believe they're an after-hours club, even though they are open after 1 o'clock and serve the juices that somebody else had been talking about. They don't believe they should be lumped into that category because they believe a booze can is a place that opens up as a fly-by-night establishment, that applies for the permits on a regular basis, every weekend, perhaps changes its location. And who gets blamed, of course, but the other organizations, like some in Yorkview, that decide to open up because they attract a certain clientele who like to dance and because they like to play a particular type of song or music that people could dance to?
They had asked me very clearly to come here in the Legislature to bring forward the fact that a definition needs to be established in the minds of not only us as legislators but the constituents out there as well. While I know we're working on that, I'm not sure we're actually there in terms of a definition. That's something that I really needed to bring up today and that I hope we can talk about at a later date.
Of course a number of other issues came up in that meeting. One issue I've already mentioned is the fly-by-nighters who just decide to take out a special-occasion permit. The main issue at the meeting was the fact that anybody can get one. There is a feeling out there -- anyway, the individuals who were with me that day felt -- that anybody could apply for and receive a special- occasion permit for anywhere. They wanted us to get a little tougher with that. I see that in this legislation, I see us dealing with that problem that has come out in Yorkview. I'm glad we have dealt with that in this bill.
One of the others of course is fines. They felt it's important for us to talk about trying to deter people from applying for these permits if their intentions aren't that great. The way to do that is to charge a little more for the permits. This was brought up consistently by everybody at the meeting. Again this piece of legislation deals with that, and I'm glad to see that.
The police brought up a number of concerns. One of the most important ones, and somebody touched on it earlier, was the fact that they couldn't just go into an establishment and deal with a problem if they believed there was one. This legislation allows them to do that through a warrant. It allows them to get in there. One of the recommendations at that meeting was to establish a better process to allow the police department to go in when it feels there's a problem, to make it a little easier. Again, I think we've dealt with most of that concern in this legislation.
A very important component to this that I haven't heard yet, a very positive component, and this is another item the police department brought up, is that after the legislation gets passed, an individual can't just go to another area of the city or the province to apply for a special-occasion permit. Now they have to apply within their community. What that means to the police department is that they, believe it or not, have some control as to who gets a special-occasion permit.
In the past, individuals who have for one reason or another not been accepted at the local branch in getting their special-occasion permits could have gone somewhere else where they are not known, where they are not known by the police department, where they are not known by anybody else, and probably have received a special-occasion permit for the community they wanted to go into. Of course, the police department had no say. There was no way for them to prevent it by talking to somebody, or of knowing, for that matter, that somebody was in the process of doing that.
Now, this particular provision in the act would mean the police department could actually keep tabs, in a sense, on who's applying and who isn't. If they want to give their opinion on whether somebody should or shouldn't be accepted, that is a step we should all be grateful for. I think we can all see the benefits this could actually have in terms of alleviating problems within the community and ongoing problems with individuals. That, for us in Yorkview, is important.
Earlier I made some comments and I just want to reflect on those comments somewhat, because some members will agree with me and some members won't, both on this side and of course in the opposition.
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One of the things talked about at the round table discussion in my particular neck of the woods was to consider a pilot program, a six- or seven-month pilot program, to allow bars to serve liquor a little longer. Some will advocate and will argue that there's no way we should be doing this, that we shouldn't even be talking about it.
There are others who talk a little about how that will alleviate some of the problems in the booze cans. I think all of us agree that the booze cans are a problem and perhaps we need to find a way of weeding them out. Many believe that if you take the clientele who usually go to the booze cans and perhaps incorporate a program, or two or three programs within a community, in a well-run, well-established bar, allow them to open up a bit later so that clientele might come into their establishment, you will get away from many of the problems that exist in the booze cans.
In the booze cans they have no idea, for instance, how many people are going to show up for their event that weekend or that night. If you talk to some of these owners, they will say they have distributed flyers everywhere, they have taken out ads in every paper, and there are 600, 700, 800, 900 people showing up at their door. They have no idea how to take care of a problem when it arises. I'm sure all of you can put yourself in that situation where there are 800 or 900 people in a particular room that's probably licensed for 200 or 300, or 400 in a lot of the cases: A fight breaks out or a problem breaks out and it's just chaos. There is no way of dealing with it because they're not equipped to deal with it. They are not professional people who have the means or the ways of dealing with it.
The argument that some people will give us is, attract some of that clientele, if not most of that clientele, into a number of different bars within the community and get rid of the problem that exists in booze cans. I think we need to be thinking about that, we need to be giving it a chance and we need to start debating it. In clause-by-clause I think we need to be talking about that as well, bringing that out into the open and talking a little about that. I think that's important.
Music plays a role in why people go to the booze cans. What are the reasons? These are questions I have asked in my community, and I have talked to a number of owners of these establishments. Why do people go to the bars and why do people go to the booze cans? In a lot of the cases, the reason they go to the booze cans is because they like the music, they like the atmosphere, they like the type of clientele that's there. In a lot of cases, culture might even have a role to play in this.
Speaking to some of the bar owners and asking them, "If given the opportunity to sell booze longer, would you incorporate a program to attract some of the clientele that currently exists in some of the booze cans?" the answer is yes. Chances are -- and these are experts -- that the person who goes for a beer or goes to have a drink in a normal bar or a restaurant will not be the same clientele who stay after 1 o'clock; that the clientele booze cans attract and that bars would probably attract are a different type of person altogether. What they have told me is that, yes, in order to make a profit and in order to make sure that there are enough people to generate a profit, they would incorporate a program within their facility that would attract that type of clientele.
So I say let's not close the debate on that, because I think we need to be talking about it. Let's not do what the Liberals are saying and say: "Let's close it off. I don't want to talk about it. I don't believe in it. We shouldn't be doing it." I think we need to be talking about it in the context of some of the problems that exist and alleviating and getting rid of some of the problems that exist with these booze cans. Yes, if we can close them down, I'd be an advocate of that as well. I think that's one step that might work.
In wrapping up, it's important to mention that I don't see eye to eye with the Conservative ideology. I don't believe we should have a police officer on every corner. I don't think they're prepared to tell us how we're going to pay for it. On one hand, they talk about it, and they're great at doing that, but on the other hand, in the Legislature every day they're saying we should be cutting and we should be slashing and we should be burning. None of the speeches in tonight's debate have talked about how the Conservatives would pay for a police officer on every corner, so I don't agree with that.
I think it's important for me to mention that in the United States they spend more on prisons than education and the social services. I would ask the Conservatives to think about their concept and about their ideology and figure out how that would play in reference to and in looking at what the United States has to offer in terms of crime. If you want to compare crime statistics and problems that occur in the United States, we are safe and we are a far cry from what they're experiencing there. So for me, to accept that argument is wrong.
I think I should close with that, Mr Speaker, because I know we need to get on to other bills in the House.
The Deputy Speaker: Are there any questions or comments? No questions, no comments? Any further debate?
Mr Eddy: I'll just take a few minutes because I wouldn't want to be accused tonight of political opportunism, although I'm certainly learning a lot about it from the seats to my left here.
I just wanted to clarify a point. When the member for Lawrence was speaking, he said very specifically that he was not opposed to extending legal drinking hours. That is a completely separate matter, we feel, from the matter of solving the problem of illegal booze cans. There may be some members who see that differently, but we haven't taken a stand on the matter of extended legal drinking hours. I don't think they're connected because I don't think it would be the same people involved.
I'll speak very briefly because it's important to get on with this bill and, as you know, our speakers have all supported it. The member for Lawrence, the member for St George-St David and now myself have all spoken in favour of the bill and we want to get on with it.
There is a concern about enforcement, and it has been mentioned by several speakers, the matter of enforcement in rural areas, in areas served by the OPP, because of reduction. I think that's a legitimate concern, and although some members may accuse anyone who speaks that way of wanting to spend more money, I think it's a matter of priorities. Law and order is very important. The safety of citizens is paramount to these members here and to the citizens themselves. You hear about it in most communities in which you travel, the concern for law and order and the vandalism etc that goes on. There needs to be a very strong push for law and order in our municipalities across this province.
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This bill, although it's been stated will not give the communities back to the citizens, certainly in some areas is going to almost do that. If you live in an area or in a neighbourhood near one of the illegal booze cans or the after-hours clubs, with what has been going on in some of them and outside some of them, as in the case of the recent shooting in front of an after-hours club in London, Ontario, you certainly feel and notice the difference and the deterioration of law and order in our society, and it's a very deep concern.
With those few words, I support the bill. Indeed, we need to get on with it and take the next steps in the next very few days, our last days before Christmas, to see that this bill is passed.
The Deputy Speaker: Questions or comments? If not, further debate?
Mr Tilson: As I've indicated in a couple of the responses I've had to previous speakers, I think our party will be supporting this legislation.
Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): Good. Thank you very much.
Mr Tilson: I'm glad you thank me very much for that support, although I will say, as I have in the past, that the bill doesn't go far enough. We do need further support for the police in this province, we need further support to make this piece of legislation work, and the way it is being set up now, it's doubtful that it will.
At the same time, we certainly congratulate the various ministers for the work they have done in responding to this piece of legislation. This legislation was, as we know, as the member for Fort York indicated, brought forward to this House in June of this year. Mr Marchese introduced his bill, Bill 180, for first reading, and Bill 180 was intended to give the Metro Licensing Commission the authority to issue, suspend, revoke or impose conditions on a licence if it believed the licensee will not carry on business in accordance with the law. One condition would be hours of business.
To give the member for Fort York his credit, it was as a reaction to after-hours clubs, which were certainly popular in urban areas for late-night partyers who would like to socialize and dance past the hours of operation for bars. These have been described as booze cans, after-hours clubs that sell liquor illegally.
Then in October we had the tragic deaths as a result of shootings in after-hours clubs or booze cans in the province, one specifically in North York and one in London. I might comment that at that time, the Leader of the Opposition, Lyn McLeod, in her usual attempt to score political points off personal tragedy, stood in the House in November 1994 and asked the Premier for legislation to regulate booze cans.
Mr Eddy: There must be an election coming. They are getting dirty like they usually do.
Mr Tilson: That's not true. We are simply stating the way you've conducted yourself in the past. When you were in power, the Offer report made certain recommendations and you ignored that. The Leader of the Opposition had an opportunity to take action when she was in power and she chose not to. Now she's coming along and asking the Minister of Municipal Affairs what he's doing, and of course on November 24 he introduced this bill which incorporated Bill 180 and stated that the government is giving back communities to the people who live there.
The bill amends two pieces of legislation, basically: the Municipal Act and the Liquor Licence Act. We've gone through some of those things, and I guess I would like to repeat some of the comments I made with respect to those two pieces of legislation.
They do add more regulation. The Municipal Act of course gives the municipalities power to do certain further things. The Liquor Licence Act is amended to allow the police officers to do certain things. This is going to require funding. It's going to require funding for the municipalities for further bureaucracy, and I don't know whether the government's going to assist the municipalities, the regional municipalities specifically, in taking this on. I have heard no information from the Solicitor General about whether additional assistance is going to be given to the Ontario Provincial Police force with respect to their enforcing this piece of legislation. It's a wonderful thing to set forth this bill and the pieces of legislation, but it's quite another thing to enforce it. It will be interesting to see whether the police will be able to do that with the personpower they have.
There has been certain cynicism specifically with respect to the RIDE program. That's been a program we have supported on all sides of this House, yet there are many municipalities -- I have one in my riding -- where they're saying insufficient funding has been given by the province to enable them to operate the RIDE program. It may be operated, but not in the fashion and in the way it should. Generally, the Ontario Provincial Police are doing it, but the smaller municipalities are having a great deal of difficulty.
Again that's an example where you set up regulations or laws -- and that's a fine thing, and I laud specifically the Solicitor General for his part in this, although it's Municipal Affairs that is carrying the bill -- but at the same time you do have to have police officers to enforce these things. That's been one of the major issues in this province: law and order.
I've commented on how Mr Runciman, the member for Leeds-Grenville, has several times chided the Solicitor General to enforce laws, to provide the tools to the police officers to do certain things. I know what you're saying, that there's a difficulty of funding, but there is a priority when we have these tragedies, two tragedies in London and in North York, and our reaction is this bill. I don't mean it like that, because I'm sure it has been in the works for much longer than that.
I won't go through outlining the various amendments of the Municipal Act and the Liquor Licence Act. I hope all parties support those amendments.
The Solicitor General, the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and the Minister of Municipal Affairs had a news conference on the morning of its first reading, and all three of you agreed that the legislation would help to increase community safety and battle the problem of illegal booze cans, and I'm sure that's the general intent of your legislation. The Minister of Municipal Affairs said that the government acted quickly to bring in the legislation, although Michael Thomas -- I'm sure he knows who he is -- of the Downtown East Residents' Association said they proposed this legislation back in September 1990. It's something you've acted on, but you could have acted much sooner; you've chosen to wait until now, after two unfortunate tragedies, to take that step.
The Solicitor General said in his comments that it would be nice if the government could give a blank cheque to get more police officers and other such things, but he said that was impossible and that this legislation would give the police officers more power to use their authority and not their force. I get back to that: The major concern of enforcement is that if you don't have the bodies, the police officers and the equipment -- I think the Ontario Restaurant Association has made a draft submission to most members of this House talking about the equipment that's needed with respect to assisting police officers and those who are issuing the licences to check on past records of people who have been making applications, that that is a difficult thing to process. If that funding is not made available, which is the second part of the equation, the problem is still going to continue.
The position of the Progressive Conservative Party, as has been stated by the member for Willowdale, is that we've been concentrating on the enforcement issue, almost pleading with you to take more action on the enforcement issue, not just in terms of this particular issue but all issues of law and order around this province, the tools the police and liquor inspectors need. We need the resources for them to do the work you want them to do under this piece of legislation.
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I must return to the issue that the Liberal Party in particular was almost urging the Minister of Municipal Affairs to take action. The Leader of the Opposition, when she was in government, after the Offer report came out in 1987 -- at that time the Offer report recommended that action be taken against booze cans and she did nothing, she did absolutely nothing, at that time. It's only now, seven years later, that this government is doing something. They were asked to do something in 1990. The Liberal government had an opportunity to do something and it chose not to do anything.
Our position as well is that you can't regulate something that's illegal. The fact is, all these things that are going on now, all these booze cans, are illegal, and we have laws to deal with those things.
Mr Hayes: Tell us a little more about the Liberals. I want to hear about the Liberals.
Mr Tilson: Yes, and I'm not chiding you for the bill. I'm simply saying that we have an illegal activity that's going on now. The police simply have not had the personnel to deal with that particular issue. So I can't emphasize our concern more than by simply saying that we need to give police officers more resources to do their job.
The "integrity and honesty" provision in the bill, to which some members have referred, is questionable, and I'm surprised that more time hasn't been spent on that. We don't know what the basis of the decision will be, and I don't know whether any of the three ministers would be able to comment on that provision. During the press conference the ministers held, one of the reporters asked if criminal records would be used as a basis for the refusal of the licence and the Minister of Municipal Affairs said yes, but he really had no other comments to add about that provision of integrity and honesty.
Fines already exist under the Liquor Licence Act for illegal liquor sales, after hours or without a licence, yet that hasn't been working. Why? Because it's been difficult to get these people. Again it boils down to personnel. The operators, as I understand it, under both the new legislation for infractions of municipal bylaws with these fines and under the Liquor Licence Act for selling alcohol illegally, face a fine of up to $100,000 for an individual and $250,000 for a corporation.
That is a brief summary, as we see it. Again we congratulate the ministers for taking action -- it's a bit late -- but we feel much more work needs to be done.
I would like to comment briefly on comments that have been made by the Ontario Restaurant Association, which presented a paper anticipating committee hearings on this particular bill, and I assume this has been distributed to most members of the House. They do make some interesting observations which I'd like to refer to very briefly. This is part of a draft brief:
"While Bill 198 is intended to address the issue of illegal after-hours clubs and legal clubs in which illegal activities are occurring, it instead has its focus on legally run businesses and will have far broader ramifications. We fear this legislation will hurt the good guys and continue to ignore the bad guys.
"The continuing problem of illegal after-hours clubs is one of enforcement, mainly due to the fact that the existing legislation is not being properly nor adequately enforced. We must keep in mind that we are talking about an illegal activity."
That's something we should not forget in terms of what we're trying to deal with. We're trying to deal with something that is already illegal, yet we're now going to have new legislation dealing with that same illegality and we're not providing sufficient police officers to deal with that. We're not providing it now and there don't seem to be any signs that we're going to be doing it with this legislation. We have a bill which puts forward wonderful guidelines with respect to licences and enforcement, and we support that, but we don't seem to be having the bodies to enforce that legislation.
Continuing with what the restaurant people say:
"Regardless of how much one tries to regulate an illegal activity, it remains just that, 'illegal.' Only after enhanced enforcement of existing laws and a better explanation and understanding of the causes of after-hours clubs will we be able to get to the root of the problem. More regulation by itself will not be an effective solution."
We support those comments. They question whether this legislation will solve the serious problems we're facing and whether there is a more efficient or effective way to address these problems.
I think we should take a long, hard look at comments such as this. I would hope that in due course all three ministers, particularly the Solicitor General, will be advising us what sort of funding is going to be made available to municipalities and the Ontario Provincial Police to enforce this specific piece of legislation.
The other comment which the restaurant association brings forward and which has been referred to by Mr Harnick, the member for Willowdale, has to do with the lack of a computer system. The Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations indicated that they're working on that, but I haven't heard too much detail. One of the concerns the restaurant association had, and I'm referring to its report, was:
"Since the LCBO does not track SOP applications on a computer system, it is very difficult for law enforcement officials and issuing LCBO officials to detect any SOP applicants which have had problem events in the past."
In other words, if someone has had illegal activities in the past or has contravened the law, there's no specific way of keeping records for the purpose of granting licences, so that problem could continue to exist.
"The ORA believes that the current problems surrounding the issuance of" these permits "are therefore a human resource issue," and I heartily support that.
One of the issues which the restaurant association has raised and which I would like to hear more about -- quite frankly, I don't have a firm opinion one way or the other, but I think it would be useful to hear more about it -- is the recommendation that one of the options to reduce the proliferation of illegal after-hours clubs is to allow licensed and controlled restaurants and bars to remain open later.
One of the problems we have is that people hanging around from 12:30 to 1 are downing alcohol, with the difficulty of impaired driving and all of that business. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that has come forward from any of the reports I've seen that these after-hours clubs, if they are run legally and allowed, would create more problems on the highways. Maybe they will, but I haven't heard any facts about that.
There are other jurisdictions that have the extended hours, whether it be the United States or England. It would be interesting to hear some of the government representatives talking about that specific topic. Ontario appears to be the only province in Canada which has 1 am closing hours and it is the province with the greatest problem with illegal after-hours clubs. That's an issue I would like to hear the government respond to, the fact that other people are doing it and yet this province has the greatest problem. Perhaps that should continue to be looked at.
The restaurant association has certainly called upon the government and I know the three ministers, specifically the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, to adopt extended hours for a province-wide six-month term. That may or may not be a good thing. I would like to hear the pros and cons from the government before we proceed with this issue any further.
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The Ontario Restaurant Association was concerned about several other issues, one of which I referred to in a response to one of the earlier speakers, that is, that Bill 198 is flawed in that its focus is on the establishment where an illegal activity is occurring, regardless of whether or not the proprietor is involved in the activities. In other words, someone in the club or in the establishment could be conducting illegal activities and that may have an effect, as a result of this legislation, on the overall operation. Mr Harnick, the member for Willowdale, referred specifically to section 4, which says:
"Where an owner is convicted of knowingly carrying on or engaging in a trade, calling, business or occupation on, in or in respect of any premises or part of any premises without a licence required by a bylaw passed under this act, the court shall order that the premises or part of the premises be closed to any use for any period not exceeding two years."
His question was that it didn't say whether it's the owner of the business or the owner of the building, in other words, the landlord of the building, who may have absolutely nothing to do with this specific business. That presumably will be rectified by the government.
Not only that, if it is an illegal booze can and they simply close down those premises for a period not exceeding two years, there's nothing to preclude that business from moving somewhere else. They're closing down that particular establishment. That is one section of the brief I heartily agree with.
There is another section of the bill I'd like to briefly mention, subsection 9(6), which says:
"The council of an area municipality may by resolution require the regional council to investigate an alleged contravention of a licensing bylaw passed under this section by the regional council and to report to the area council."
There are different types of sections like that throughout the bill. There is no question that this piece of legislation is going to have an impact on the municipalities with respect to cost, with respect to administration. As well, different municipalities may pass different types of bylaws, so there may be different rules in one particular municipality as opposed to another. We could have something that goes on in Peel and something that goes in Durham and something that goes on in Metro which are quite different, and some municipalities may take action and some municipalities may not. That's another issue, the issue with respect to costs and the different laws that could be passed.
The report of the Ontario Restaurant Association continues by saying:
"Bill 198 will not necessarily punish the person who is committing an illegal activity; rather, it will punish the establishment as a whole, by revoking, suspending or imposing conditions on the business licence."
In other words, the establishment may be doing nothing that is illegal, but as to the activities that are going on, whether it's drugs or alcohol or anything else, those people will not be affected by this legislation.
The restaurant association has stated that it feels, "This will impose a severe burden on small business operators, who under Bill 198, will be punished by the actions of their customers." That may or may not be the case, but I can see that it is something the ministry should be looking at.
"Bill 198 states that a business operator who is believed not to be operating with 'honesty and integrity' will have a hearing before a council or police services board, before any decisions are made regarding their business licence."
This is a concern again on the topic of honesty and integrity. The burden will be on the businesses to establish all this, and this will be rather costly and expensive to those particular businesses.
So although I do support the legislation and will be supporting it, as will members of my caucus, I say that with the reservations I've indicated. Whether there'll be an opportunity for the various ministers to add their input to make the changes that have been made by members of the opposition remains to be seen.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Questions or comments? Seeing none, further debate?
Hon Mr Philip: I want to thank the members for their contribution to this debate. I want to thank the opposition parties for supporting the legislation. I particularly want to thank the chiefs of police of Ontario, the community groups, the municipally elected colleagues who have been so laudatory of this legislation and of course my colleagues, the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations and her staff, the Solicitor General and his staff, and my own staff, who have worked long hours creating a bill which I think strikes a balance between the right of individuals to run businesses in a responsible way and the right of communities not to be bothered by the activities that may be illegal in some of those establishments.
I particularly want to thank the member for Fort York. He pioneered the original bill that I think showed the way, and he has been tireless in his efforts to try and protect his community. If there is someone who deserves credit for this legislation, it's the member for Fort York.
Some of the issues raised tonight I'll be happy to answer in committee, some of them I did in fact answer; some members came in after my opening statement on second reading. But I appreciate the support of all members and I look forward to the committee hearings tomorrow and to the discussion in committee.
The Acting Speaker: Mr Philip has moved second reading of Bill 198. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.
By unanimous consent, this bill will go to the standing committee on finance and economic affairs.
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POWER CORPORATION AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR LA SOCIÉTÉ DE L'ÉLECTRICITÉ
Mr Wildman moved second reading of the following bill:
Bill 185, An Act to amend the Power Corporation Act / Projet de loi 185, Loi modifiant la Loi sur la Société de l'électricité.
Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): I'm pleased to have this opportunity to tell you why the government is introducing the Power Corporation Act, 1994, for second reading. The act proposes three changes for the customers of Ontario Hydro, residential and industrial. This will mean a more cost-efficient service and a more cost-effective operation.
The first amendment will allow municipal electrical utilities to expand their service areas more easily. The change to the act comes after extensive consultation with members of the Municipal Electric Association and the unions involved and has the association's wholehearted support.
In general, Ontario Hydro distributes electricity to customers in the province's rural areas and municipal utilities distribute electricity in urban areas, but 66 municipalities are served by both. That's because it's too costly for local utilities to provide people in the less-developed areas of the municipalities with electricity at a reasonable price, so Ontario Hydro in the past has stepped in.
Today, those areas are developed and municipal electric utilities want to serve them, but the utilities are hamstrung because, under the existing act, they must extend their service areas to the boundaries in one step, something few can afford to do. The first change proposed this evening would allow the utilities to expand in stages. This change will benefit the customers in two ways. It will help to end the inequity of some customers paying different hydro rates, and it will help to improve service throughout those municipalities because one, not two, utilities will serve the local residents and businesses.
This is enabling legislation, I want to emphasize. Municipal electric utilities do not have to expand their service areas to the municipal borders but, if they want to do this, the act allows them to do so at their own speed. This enabling legislation has been sought by a number of municipalities for several years.
The second amendment responds to the contracts negotiated between Ontario Hydro and its employees. The change will allow the corporation to reduce its contribution to the employee pension fund in 1994 and 1995, saving some $67 million. The Power Workers' Union, the Society of Ontario Hydro Professional and Administrative Employees, and the corporation agreed to this reduction and to improved job security in their 1994 collective agreements.
The third amendment gives the government the flexibility of choosing either Ontario Hydro's chairperson or president as its chief executive officer.
These three disparate changes have one common thread. They benefit the consumer by rationalizing service, lowering costs and providing for a more effective management.
I look forward to the cooperation of all MPPs with regard to these amendments which have been carefully developed with the involvement of a broad range of interested groups.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Noble Villeneuve): Questions or comments? Further debate.
Mr Ron Eddy (Brant-Haldimand): It's nice to have the opportunity to speak to this bill very briefly. At the outset I will say we do support Bill 185, particularly sections 1 and 3 of the bill.
We support section 1 of the bill because it is an amendment to amend a previous change, changes to the positions of chair and CEO. I have some headings here: the Marc Eliesen affair, the Marc Eliesen fiasco, the Marc Eliesen escapade, the Marc Eliesen ransom, and some other terminology, but I don't want to go into that except to say that it was a very expensive adventure for the users of Ontario Hydro at one time. But I'm sure we'll hear more about that.
Section 2, changes to the Hydro pension: We do have some concerns about that, as we do of course about the teachers' pension fund. We have been assured by the Minister of Finance on many occasions that everything is fine, is being done in a correct manner. However, we in this party do share the auditor's concerns about particular transactions with those funds, and I know that will be spoken to in a few minutes by other speakers.
It's down to sections 3 and 4 that I will comment about, and that's regarding municipalities' boundaries. I'd like to say at this time that we wholeheartedly support these sections of Bill 185. Work on this part of the bill has been going on, as we know, for several years. Many stakeholders, including the Municipal Electric Association -- and we have representatives of that association in the gallery to suffer the debate on this bill tonight, at this early hour, because we had expected it would be somewhat closer to midnight; however, we'll rush on. Also involved in those discussions were Ontario Hydro and various unions that are involved in Ontario Hydro services.
Sections 3 and 4 of Bill 185 are commonly called the boundary legislation because they allow municipal electrical power commissions to adjust their boundaries and allow entire municipalities to be served by an electric utility other than Ontario Hydro. This will be news to some members, perhaps, who are not familiar with the provision of hydro, a very important service for us in the country. I well remember when we threw the switch after the war and, behold, the lights came on, and we could convert to electric milking machines and we got other useful household articles as well.
There are 56 municipalities across the province, the minister said, served by two electrical suppliers: Ontario Hydro and the municipal electric corporations. Currently under the Regional Municipalities Act, when a municipality expands, the municipal electric utility must either expand its service to include the new service area all at once, and we have examples of that, or it must continue to serve the area it previously served, and I do have examples of those in my particular riding, four to be exact. These 52 or 56, I believe the minister said, electric utilities --
Hon Mr Wildman: It's 66.
Mr Eddy: Oh, 66? The number is growing. These 66 electric utilities across the province do not serve their entire municipal area because it has not been economically feasible for all these utilities to expand their service to the new municipal boundaries all at once. In these municipalities, electrical service is provided by both municipal electric and some areas by Hydro, and that's the case in my own municipality. Customers residing in a municipal area but receiving electrical service from Ontario Hydro pay Ontario Hydro rural rates.
Hon Mr Wildman: Fifteen per cent higher.
Mr Eddy: It's a concern, yes. They are 15% higher than the rates charged by the municipal utility. Municipal utilities have long argued that it is unfair for residents of the same municipality to be paying different hydro rates.
Bill 185 allows municipal electrical power commissions to expand their service areas incrementally, giving municipal customers now serviced by Ontario Hydro fairer and lower rates. "Incrementally" is very important, as we know, because some of these Ontario municipal hydro utilities are very small utilities and serve very small areas and therefore their income is quite small.
When expanding, municipal electric commissions will take over facilities now used by Ontario Hydro, as well as some Ontario Hydro staff. I'm pleased that this is a negotiated situation.
We believe electricity must be available at a price which ensures that the province has an attractive environment in which to live and a competitive environment in which to do business. The municipal boundaries legislation will make intramunicipal rates lower and fairer. We therefore support Bill 185 and will be voting in favour.
This is another bill that probably should have been before this Legislature in former years, but it's here now and it's a good move. It's important for municipalities across Ontario, especially the rural areas. They're very much in favour of it and we welcome its presentation.
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The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments? If none, then further debate?
Mr Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): I'm very pleased this evening to join in this debate, because we support this bill. Our main criticism, if you want to call it that, is that it's just coming at this time. As you know, it started back in 1988 and before that, but for some reason the Liberals weren't able to deal with it. I'm pleased that now the government is dealing with it.
I think one of the reasons there was difficulty in dealing with this bill was to get something that was acceptable to all three parties, although I have some questions on that relative to my riding in particular, and perhaps in other areas of the province, regarding joining or bringing together employees of different utilities. As you know, in my riding I have many utilities that have what they call employee associations; I have utilities that do not have any employee associations -- the employees deal on a direct basis with management because of the number of employees in the utility; and then of course I have other utilities that are in organized labour.
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): What were you, Leo? Were you union or management at Hydro?
Mr Jordan: On my way up, if I may answer the member for Renfrew North, I was part of an employees' association. It was after I was there, in later years under Doug Campbell, who seems to be a friend of my colleague from Renfrew North -- the employees' association at that time was very effective but, as with everything, you have to be ready for change, and change we got. Now we have in Ontario Hydro, as everyone knows, the Power Workers' Union, and in many utilities we have CUPE, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and the IBEW, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
So there is that mix there of organized labour, and anyone who has had any dealings, whether with an association or with an organized, recognized labour movement, knows it takes considerable negotiating and understanding on both sides to bring the different issues together. There are many things that affect the employees: their pensions, their sick leave, their employment security, contracting out. All these things become part of the coming together of these employees.
First of all, I would just like to spend a few minutes on the explanatory note of the bill, because I think it's pretty well written out. "The bill provides the framework" -- and I think that's important -- "for municipal electrical power commissions to add to the areas that they service and to accept a transfer of facilities and staff from Ontario Hydro with respect to these added areas."
It's quite clear what the intent of the bill is, and we certainly support that, because it's necessary to give the customers the service they should have and give them some stability in rates.
The process involves the municipality and is triggered by a bylaw of that municipality so that there's the coming together of the utility and the municipality and an understanding of the need for this change.
There is another important aspect of this. Take, for example, in my own riding, the township of Goulbourn, and that utility with Richmond -- perhaps the minister is better familiar with it than I am. They're the core utility at the present time and they would like to expand out into Goulbourn but perhaps are not ready to take the whole township. This will allow them to take it in stages or phases.
The issue that comes back -- and I just want to mention these items. The Power Workers' Union has initiated an action. I want to bring this to your attention. I know there are members of the utilities here and I believe a representative of the Municipal Electric Association -- I'm not sure -- and I think it's fair to bring this to their attention. I'm personally interested in the people in my riding who are going to be affected.
The Power Workers' Union has initiated an action at the Ontario Labour Relations Board to be recognized as the union representing the employees of Innisfil Hydro on the basis that there has been a sale of business, as defined in Bill 40, from Ontario Hydro to Innisfil Hydro. I don't think this is the case, but it's before the board. I just want to bring that to their attention. Innisfil Hydro disputes the claim.
A four-day hearing was held in September. The issue is whether or not there has been a sale of business. You have to think about that; that's the issue. Is there in fact a sale of business? If there is, successor rights under the Labour Relations Act come into play. If they come into play, you have to honour the agreement under the Power Workers' Union or whatever union was representing the employees you acquired with your utility.
This is going to be very interesting, the result of this case, because all the restricted-area commissions wishing to expand their service under the proposed boundaries legislation and any commission involved with a municipality's amalgamation could be affected by the outcome. The boundaries legislation includes salary and job protection clauses which could be negated if successor rights are applied.
As long as the utilities involved in this -- 52, I believe it was, or 66, however many are involved here -- understand that this issue is still up in the air and really hasn't been settled. My personal opinion is that the utility that's acquiring the staff from Ontario Hydro will have control of the utility and that it will not be the buying of another business that was under Bill 40 in the successor rights.
Mr Conway: I'd stay out of that one, Leo.
Mr Jordan: Well, when you stay out of things, it's too late. You've stayed out of it since 1988, and look at the mess we're in now. Is that not correct, sir? This has been before legislators for half a dozen years now, or more, and it is time we dealt with it.
Under this bill, "Provision is made for Ontario Hydro to provide financial assistance to a commission and the method of calculating the amount is set out."
I would like to go on at greater length about some of the things I see here relative to the transfer of personnel and their pensions and so on, but it would seem to me that the negotiations to date have really taken these issues into account and that the utilities under the MEA, the Power Workers' Union, Ontario Hydro and the ministry have come to an agreement on how this coming together should be.
"Provision is made for determining which Ontario Hydro employees should be transferred to a commission." Think about that for a while: "Provision is made for determining which Ontario Hydro employees should be transferred to a commission. This includes a system that allows some employees to be designated to receive an offer of employment and others to voluntarily enter into the employment of that commission. Ontario Hydro's obligations and the commission's obligations are set out."
I'm still a little on the murky side about who and under what conditions they say these employees shall go with the annexation, if I can use that word, to the new commission. The new commission has the right, I understand, to interview these new employees and they have the right not to hire even though they've been recommended to go with them.
Looking back over the last four years, there's a certain amount of unrest out there and a certain amount of lack of confidence in the whole thing, and it's too bad, because over these four years we've had four ministers of energy, we've had three chairmen and three chief executive officers. Take that and apply it to any company, apply it to your own household. It won't work; it just won't work. You can't switch that fast that many times and get some continuity of thought, some continuity of policy, some continuity of finances.
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Mrs Yvonne O'Neill (Ottawa-Rideau): Take it from an old guy, right? Take it from an old guy who really knows.
Mr Jordan: Right, thank you.
Mr Conway: Only Yvonne can get away with that.
Mr Jordan: He accused me the last time I was speaking here at this hour of the night of having a well-lubricated talk, he said, and he can't deny that because I read it in Hansard.
Mr Conway: I take it back.
Mrs O'Neill: He's drinking water. He wants us to know that.
Mr Jordan: But think about that. I speak to the minister and I know that he's well aware of that change of command. I remember crossing the province with Bill 118 and I was fighting like so to try and keep the government from getting that much control of Ontario Hydro. That's a lot of control.
It used to be that, "The minister shall recommend to the board," and then under Bill 118 it said, "The minister shall direct the board" to do so-and-so and so-and-so. Of course the minister now knows very well that the pros and cons of the last four years are sitting right in his ministry, because he did have the power to change direction. If they did it and it was good, fine. If they did it and it was bad, they also have to take the responsibility for it, and that's the responsibility of government.
But I'm afraid that over the years government interference in Ontario Hydro has to take responsibility for some of the debt we're facing today. I've talked to an awful lot of people, not only in Ontario Hydro but outside of Ontario Hydro, and there are facts and figures available that say at least $6 billion at Darlington can be attributed to what we might call political interference, by all three parties.
Hon Mr Wildman: Oh, really?
Mr Jordan: Really. You take two years and put a moratorium on a project like that, you lose your contracts, you lose your expertise, the interest on the loan goes on, the money is there, and the thing is that now we have Darlington spinning away making all kinds of money and we never hear a word about it, not a word. It's one of the most efficient nuclear plants in North America and indeed in the world, and it's recognized the world over.
As I said the other day to the Premier, "Why don't you make up your mind, Mr Premier? You're over to China telling them that we've got the best in the world and they're going to buy it, but it's like that man in England wanting to buy the tea: Only in Canada?" The Premier is saying anywhere but in Ontario we can have this Candu reactor.
Hon Mr Wildman: Are you saying we should build more nuclear reactors?
Mr Jordan: We're talking about the research that was ongoing in the nuclear field, and I'm telling you that any electrical utility that doesn't keep up the research and the research staff in that area is going to lose out.
You know, the chairman had the nerve to come out and say, "We made money this year."
Hon Mr Wildman: We did.
Mr Jordan: Yes. You know why he said he made it? He said we had cold weather in January so we sold a lot of kilowatt-hours.
Hon Mr Wildman: Well, we did.
Mr Jordan: Then he said we had hot weather in June and we sold another bunch of kilowatt-hours.
Hon Mr Wildman: That's true.
Mr Jordan: You know what he forgot to say? "If I'd had a marketing staff on the other 10 months, I'd have sold a lot more kilowatt-hours." That's just common sense, for God's sake. You're going to depend on the weather, for God's sake, for your market. Come on, get with it. Get out there. You've got the expertise to make the product. Get out there and market it. You can't sit back waiting on the weather, for God's sake. Lots of people are -- well, I won't say it, but it's very depressing in my riding to think that the people --
Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Walkerville): -- tell everybody to open their windows?
Mr Jordan: No, we don't tell them to open their windows. We told them to use it and use it wisely, and they did it, but they used it and they were told the many efficient ways to use it. Your curve per load has a peak and a hollow, and a peak and an off-peak period, and any utility that doesn't have a marketing program to fill those valleys shouldn't be in business. They should be closed up. They shouldn't have direction from any minister of energy. He should cancel the utility.
Hon Mr Wildman: Cancel it?
Mr Jordan: Wipe it out. They shouldn't be allowed to form a utility if they don't know enough to get out there and market and fill those valleys of power, because their cost of power is based on their peak demand. A lot of you don't even know that. You don't even know that. The rate that I'm going to pay for my power in my utility is based on the peak demand.
Here I am with all these off-peak hours and I say, "Well, I'm sorry, I've got nothing to do with the power in those hours, so I don't use it." We've got a lot of shift workers in my riding. You give them a dual meter on the house, let them pay for it, 350 bucks or whatever it is, they'll buy the meter. Let them have a dual rate. They come home from work at midnight, they can do their washing, do their laundry, do their drying at the lower rate, at the energy that we're dumping over the dam because we have to keep these steam plants running. It doesn't matter what they're fired with, coal, gas or --
Hon Mr Wildman: Or nuclear plants.
Mr Jordan: No, steam plants. A steam plant is a steam plant. The only difference is how you make the steam. So whether you're going to heat it through fission or nuclear fission or whether you're going to heat it through natural gas or whatever, you're still going to make the steam and drive the turbine and generate the electricity.
So any steam generator, once it's up to power, leave it there, let it run. A hydraulic generator, you can open and close your gates, bring it on for peak periods, close it down, shut off the water, build your head back up. Instead of running then with a 35-foot head, you back up to a 40-foot head or whatever it might be, and when the peak hits again, you've got that extra horsepower again to come on and cover the peak.
That's what you call managing the production of power. It was always done. But now there's nobody marketing the off-peak power. It's not being marketed at all. I don't know of another product that is so flexible as electricity.
When you think about electricity coming here to that lightbulb, there's nothing there at all. All you've got is a generator spinning, a north pole, a south pole, around a group of windings making alternating current. But that lightbulb goes out 60 times a second. How many in here would believe that that bulb goes out 60 times a second? That's alternating current. When we had 25-cycle current here, you could see it going out because it only went out 25 times a second.
What we call the conductor is aluminum wire or copper wire that leads to the light, and that's what the generator is doing, causing the electrons in that conductor to create the light or create the electricity. So it's a very unique energy.
Why you need a marketing staff, for one reason, is to explain to the customer what he has in his house or what he has in his small business or small commercial plant. I can remember on power factor alone, I had many customers running -- you know, we were billing them on about 90% power factor. You know what their power factor really was? It was about 66%.
So we put in capacitors to shift the angle of the load. What you get is KVA, and they call that wattless power. In other words, it doesn't do anything. You have to pay for it the same as a kilowatt, but it doesn't do any work. What you do then is you put in a set of capacitors and you shift the angle of the phase so that you do have watt power, you do have power that's going to do work, and you get something for your bill.
I think to bring in a new chairman, as you did -- what did I say? -- three times or whatever and then make that chairman the chief executive officer -- and this bill, by the way, allows you to make either the president or the chairman the chief executive officer. From my experience, I would say very often it would be more wise for the president, depending on his qualifications and so on, to be named chief executive officer, but that's not always the case.
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I'm not really critical of the government having the right, subject to the board, to appoint the chief executive officer. There can be many reasons and it's nice to have maybe that flexibility there, but it is a change again. You know, the Liberals brought in the fact that the president would be the chief executive officer. They amended the Power Corporation Act to say that. So now we're back, we want it both ways.
Out in Ontario, out with the customer -- as my colleague knows, the customer is the man who pays the bill -- what he's saying is: "What is wrong with Ontario Hydro? What is wrong with the Ontario Hydro I used to know?" Really, the problem is that there's really not that much wrong with Ontario Hydro.
Do you remember the 25-year demand-supply plan? I think it was Bob Franklin who brought it in. He went straight across the province with that. I remember he went to every little municipality. He went to county councils. Everybody had a chance for input. Of course, it was based on an ongoing increase in demand. There was no consideration. The confidence was so high at that time in the province of Ontario that no one ever dreamed of the load curve dropping off.
Now you have to plan, remember, 15 years ahead to meet your load demand, so he was right and the commission and Hydro were right in planning ahead to meet that demand. The only thing in planning, they had to commit a lot of money and they had to get some footings in the ground.
Other companies were caught the same way. Real estate firms bought up large acreages of land, thinking that the building boom was going to continue. Well, it didn't continue. They weren't stuck in the same situation as Ontario Hydro was, but Ontario Hydro, as described by many, looked like a monster. Out of control, they said. "Look at what they've done. They've got all this extra generation and they have no market for it."
Well, why did they not have a market? There were two reasons: There was a change of government, and with the change of government came a different attitude towards the security in the province of Ontario. As you know without listening to me, energy was one of the main attractions to this province.
Hon Mr Wildman: Reliability.
Mr Jordan: The price of energy, and not only the price but the sustainability of it and the dependability of it and the reliability of it, as the minister says, was there.
I'm familiar with some of the areas in the neighbouring province of Quebec and I can tell you, sometimes there was no energy there for 15 days or more. But there wasn't that same commitment to service that there was in this province and the utility was not as close to the people. There were no utilities as represented by the Municipal Electric Association. It was Quebec Hydro right to the meter at your house, Quebec Hydro all the way. The people just accepted what they got because their only contact back to the source was through their member or through their minister of energy. It became a case, and is a case, of "We're doing the best we can, and this is the service," and they're used to it now. I wouldn't want to see the province of Ontario go that route really, I don't think. Mind you, there are arguments for it.
Hon Mr Wildman: This bill goes the other way.
Mr Jordan: This bill goes the other way, yes, it does, and we're not fighting that either.
But there are some arguments for Ontario Hydro right to the meter too. I haven't got any details on it, but I've listened to some people speak on it and the arguments basically are cutting out levels of administration.
Speaking of administration, I can remember having bills brought to my desk for signature for a job that was done for a customer, and everything seemed to be in order until you came to the last item and it said, "Head office overheads." Head office overheads, and you know what happened? The bill became so ridiculous you were ashamed to send it out to the customer. You'd phone up these so-called office people at head office. "How did you ever arrive at this percentage for me to apply to this bill?" "Well, this is the formula, this is how it's done, and that's the percentage that you have to add." When that 700 University Avenue was built it was supposed to house all the administration staff for Ontario Hydro for years to come.
Hon Mr Wildman: Wasn't that some guy named Moog?
Mr Jordan: No, no, that was a good deal. He invested the money, and we rented the building, you see. We didn't have to put out that capital. They put up the capital, we rented the building and we ended up with ownership.
Mr Ron Hansen (Lincoln): He has never listened to your speech.
Mr Jordan: Sorry? Mr Speaker, I can't hear the opposition there. I want him to get used to being the opposition, because his time is running out.
The issues with Ontario Hydro can be very complicated or they can be very straightforward. In the province of Ontario, 75% of the customers are served by these utilities here, and here we are trying to blame, if you will, Ontario Hydro for the present situation. You have to remember that these utilities always had the right of input of ideas, so they have to accept some responsibility.
I see the representative for the MEA looking way up here to the lights, but they --
Hon Mr Wildman: They share some of the credit, not the blame.
Mr Jordan: Credit, yes, okay.
The new chairman and our most recent one, Mr Strong, I'm not aware of any great policy that he has enacted outside of cutting the staff to the required levels under the economic status at this time. Outside of that --
Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): What about buying out employees?
Mr Jordan: That's what I'm coming to. Thank you.
Outside of that, what has he done for that big salary, outside of spending millions of dollars buying out employees who, in my opinion personally, should have been retained? The ones over there that he's looking at now should have gone first, and the ones 55 and over should have gone first. I'm talking to employees of Ontario Hydro who are 40, 42, 45 years of age. They said the package was so rich they couldn't afford not to take it. Excellent employees. Ontario Hydro spent millions of dollars out at Orangeville and other places training these people. They're expert in their field.
They're saying, "Oh, we've got a great chairman." All he's done really, in my opinion, is reduce the staff in line with the economic status of the province and the requirements of energy relative to that today.
What he's done along with that, he decided: "Yes, we've got a $34-billion debt, but so what? I'm going to play a little game of investment here. I'm going to Peru and I'm going to spend $74 million." Then the minister sits down in his cabinet and approves up to $200 million. It was brought out by the Ontario Energy Board today. So he has really only started his foreign investments. I'm telling you, if he spends another nickel in foreign investments --
Hon Mr Wildman: You said you wanted to have those experts doing something.
Mr Jordan: Yes. Rather than lay them off, he's going to buy some foreign utilities and keep them busy, and he's buying them on borrowed money, let's face it. The people in my riding are saying, "Leo, if they spend another nickel on foreign investment, you're going to see one of the biggest displays at Queen's Park that you ever witnessed from this riding."
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Now, think about it. Why are we sending money to Peru? Just a simple question, Minister: Why are we borrowing money and purchasing a utility in Peru? You know the terrorist movement down there; I don't have to repeat that. I've talked to the embassies and they told me how active these terrorists are, and this last attack, where they knocked down six transmission towers, let me warn you, is not the last one. It's not the last one, and that's just outside on the perimeter of Lima. In fact, Lima could be one of these utilities that, as we're doing here in Ontario, might want to annex that in the future if our investment in that utility was a good investment.
Well, where do we go from here with Ontario Hydro? That's the question. I say it's time to have a good, solid private and utility mix. What I mean by that is that private sectors and private companies should be allowed to build, especially cogeneration, where part of the usage is going to be for their own use and the excess is going to be sold to the public. That can be a very good arrangement.
We can have rural Ontario divided into large utilities. In my riding it would be the Ottawa Valley utility, and that utility would cut its cord to Old Mother Hydro, which should have been done some time ago. They would have their own commission or board. It would be called giving Hydro back to the people, and the people would not be responsible for irresponsible spending and marketing types of things that are sent into my riding that don't suit my riding. They're sent into Renfrew North and they don't suit Renfrew North, but you're expected to use them. The money is spent on them and you're expected to use them. So more localized authority, and your bill allows it, which makes it very acceptable to me and a lot of the people in my riding. Instead of having 300-and-some-odd utilities, we'd have those utilities still in place plus the rural utilities under the MEA.
Then we could have the grid, the power highways of Ontario, under an independent body responsible to the Ontario Energy Board, which would have more teeth to regulate and control, so that if I had private generation, I could use that highway of power to transmit my power from Smiths Falls to North Bay, to a customer there, over those existing grid systems, and Ontario Hydro would not be able to say: "No, no. We own it. You stay off there. If you want to go from there to there, you build your own." We would have a nice competitive system in Ontario and Ontario Hydro would be very much required, as the major utility for the province, looking after nuclear major hydraulic generation, the 500-kilovolt and those types of things that are better controlled by your ministry and the function of that board, and really --
Hon Mr Wildman: The ones with all the debt.
Mr Jordan: No, the debt would be shared with the utilities. Right today, each citizen would accept about $30,000 in their share of the debt. It's a mix. But it's very acceptable to the people, and still the people are guaranteed a reliable source of energy at reasonable rates.
With that, I think we've sort of laid out an outline of, if you will, a solution to the problem. Certainly paying big money to a new chairman who's just going to reduce staff and spend money on foreign investments is not the answer. I don't care if he reduces his staff to a dollar. He's feeling kind of guilty of conscience himself when he makes a move like that, and he makes it very difficult for the next person to follow when you get that type of thing.
I think when a chairman gets to that point, whether he's chairman or chairman and chief executive officer, it's time he moved on. His purpose has been served and perhaps his interests have become more foreign than provincial. You read the Maclean's magazine two or three months ago. I can see the poor chairman sitting out there with that cowboy hat on, much like the one the member for Renfrew North wears on his day off when he's bringing that old truck into Barry's Bay.
He complains about the price of gas, he complains about all these things and there's no transit system up that way. He has to use the transportation there and pay that price for gasoline.
Mr Pat Hayes (Essex-Kent): Thank you, Leo.
Mr Jordan: Sorry?
Mr Hansen: Thank you, Leo.
Mr Tilson: He's got another hour yet.
Mr Jordan: Ladies and gentlemen, I thought it was near midnight, but it's not, so I might as well go through the rest of this here. I see the MEA representative giving me some funny looks over there. I'm sure they've heard this before. Really, I want to leave you with the message that there's a really great future for electricity as an energy in this province, and this negative marketing has to be discontinued.
Hon Mr Wildman: What about conservation?
Mr Jordan: We cannot depend on the weather in January and June. We've got to get out there and tell the people about our product, and we'll not only have good moneymaking projects in January and June but we'll have them year-round.
Hon Mr Wildman: And forget about conservation.
Mr Jordan: Wise use.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): I thank the honourable member for Lanark-Renfrew for his contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments.
Mr Hansen: I'm going to make it very short. I only have two minutes. I think we should be moving ahead; we shouldn't look at the past history. This province should be moving ahead, and I think this legislation will move it out of the Dark Ages and finally the member can turn on a light over there.
I can tell you that just in Lincoln alone, with this bill being passed in six months, the residents of my community will save $250,000 -- just tonight a resolution's been passed to go ahead -- and over $3 million in the next five years.
Mr Jordan: Don't take it out of context. What about the density of the customers?
Mr Hansen: I could tell you that where I live it's a rural area, the Pelham area, but I pay Ontario rates and I would love to pay the rates that the residents in Fonthill pay. I have to say that this has been around since 1975. This isn't something that just developed in the last year.
Mr Jordan: Since 1988.
Mr Hansen: The member says 1988, but it's been there since 1975 and it's about time that we got on with the business here in Ontario to make Ontario competitive and a place to live for everyone paying the same rates and fare.
I don't agree at all with the member knocking what happened in the past. It's his government that set this up. We're a government that is changing and what we're doing is actually going down to the communities and letting the communities decide and not letting Ontario Hydro decide here in Toronto what our rates will be.
I have to say that I'm going to point to a member from my riding, John Alton, who's the head of the hydro commission in Lincoln. He's spearheading this to make sure that Ontario winds up being competitive and that the residents of Lincoln have a chance for a fair bill.
The Speaker: Further questions and/or comments? Seeing none, the honourable member for Lanark-Renfrew has up to two minutes for his reply.
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Mr Jordan: I don't understand why the member for Lincoln feels that we're looking back at what's happened in the past. I have never heard as many complaints as in the last four years on hydro bills, on hydro policies.
My whole time when we had control of this government Ontario Hydro was respected across this province. I met just the other day with representatives of major industries. If you listen to them, you don't have to be any genius at all to have policies that will give you the stabilization of energy in this province. You don't need any great advisers; they're all there. Listen to the users. By gosh, you listen to the users. They will not only tell you what's wrong, but they will also give you a good guideline for new policy to correct the situation.
I mustn't forget to remind the minister again that the small businessman and the people with the electric heat and the electric water heaters are depending greatly on new technology that's available here. We can have the electric water heater in service; this new technology knocks it out during peak periods. We used to do it years ago with lesser technology than we have today. We have technology that will knock out the electric furnace; three parts of the furnace will be off during peak periods. The temperature in the house wouldn't drop one degree because that is the built-in capacity of that unit. But you have the difference of 20-kilowatt demand on the utility versus five, just through a little bit of technology.
The Speaker: Is there further debate? I recognize the honourable member for Renfrew North.
Mr Conway: I'm pleased to join my colleagues from Lanark-Renfrew and Brant-Haldimand and Lincoln in this debate tonight. It's always enjoyable following my neighbour from Lanark-Renfrew because he understands the microcosmic application of this Hydro policy far better than I will ever understand it. The member reminds us that all politics is local. I was just glad there wasn't a test about the intricacies of electricity. I remember a grade 11 physics class. I thought then, as I do now, it's one of the great mysteries of the world in which I live, so I'm always happy to have some of this --
Mr Hayes: Bring out the positive.
Mr Conway: Well listen, the member for Lanark-Renfrew spent how long, 35 years, working for Ontario Hydro? So he knows this in far greater detail than I do.
I know the member for Essex-Kent would probably be in this category, but it's hard to explain perhaps to a lot of members who live in urban communities just how important Ontario Hydro is in counties like Lanark and Renfrew and the Algoma district and Oxford and places like that, because it is certainly very much the face of the Ontario government. I can't think of a responsibility, perhaps with the exception of health care and education, that is more sensitive in terms of my electors, and I'm sure I speak for most of the rural members.
I want to begin by saying I support Bill 185. We have five visitors tonight. Now, the hour is late, but as I looked at the bill, having had some experience as a minister, I know the work that goes into this. There's been some commentary tonight, perhaps even some recrimination, as to how long it has been and who among us is responsible for the delay in bringing forward Bill 185. I understand that the member for Lincoln is kind of right, that it's been around for a long time and I guess we all share in some of the blame for the delay in getting here. But it's here and it is supported on all sides and I think that's the important thing.
If you look at the bill, I'm sure members --
Hon Mr Wildman: The pension commission, for one.
Mr Conway: That's right. The minister says, "The pension commission." There have been a lot of oars in this water and when you read the bill and you understand what's going on here, it's not a surprise. There are major stakeholders and key issues involving particularly employment for a lot of people, to say nothing of rates for a lot of Ontario ratepayers.
But I want to pay tribute tonight to the five people here. I'm going to name them because I think they should go into the Hansard of this debate. If you look at this bill you'll understand just how much work would have to be done, not just by people at the Municipal Electric Association, as the umbrella organization representing these utilities, but people in the departments of Energy, Municipal Affairs and Finance, to name the three major ones from the Ontario government. This kind of legislation is very intricate and involves a great deal of commitment in time and energy and patience.
Andy Frame is over there; some of you will know him. Andy worked for the Ontario government for many years as a policy adviser in the Ministry of Energy. With him is Jim Richardson, the general manager of Innisfil Hydro, to which local commission some reference has been made earlier by my esteemed friend from Montague township; John Alton, referred to by the member for Lincoln; Roger White of Lincoln Hydro; and Kevin McGuire from the MEA staff here in Toronto. They are five people who are here tonight as kind of proxies for the hundreds and the thousands out there who will be saying, "Please, please let this pass," for the very good reason that the member for Lincoln has indicated: that this bill will provide very substantial benefits to thousands, tens of thousands, of Ontario residents who are currently paying rates higher than they will when this bill is passed and made effective in their jurisdictions.
There are three items in this bill and I want to deal with them in the following order: There is the boundary question, and that's the one I think clearly has most interest in the gallery here tonight, if not in the House; the second issue is the whole question of the chief executive officer for Ontario Hydro; and the third issue concerns Ontario Hydro's pension contribution for the years 1994 and 1995.
I'd like to take the first question for a moment and simply say that the boundaries issue is overdue. It is extremely important to all those municipalities that my friend from Brant-Haldimand, among others, mentioned tonight, and as has been indicated by others. I don't have this experience because none of these municipalities is in my constituency, but as has been commented by a number of people, it is clearly vexatious for people in the same municipality to be paying two different electricity rates. Those of us who hold elected office can appreciate how it would not be a very happy meeting where one was called to explain that differential. This bill provides an opportunity for that situation to be alleviated on a permissive and case-by-case basis. I think that is very good policy, it is overdue, and I want to congratulate the minister and these good people and all the others who worked on this to give birth to this child some 20 years in gestation. Enough said on the boundaries question.
I want to deal with the third item, and that is the issue around section 2 of the bill, which basically reads as follows: "Despite subsection (4), in respect of each of 1994 and 1995," Ontario Hydro "shall contribute towards the cost of pension benefits under the Ontario Hydro pension and insurance plan" a different amount than that which is called for in section 24 of the Power Corporation Act, and it is essentially a reduced amount.
Hon Mr Wildman: Negotiated.
Mr Conway: Negotiated. That's right. The minister is right. We had a very interesting negotiation back in the spring, and this part of the bill concerns itself with that arrangement. It is to give Ontario Hydro a reduction in the pension contributions which it must make for those two years, as I understand it, because of course salaries have been frozen for that two-year period and there's some room in which to manoeuvre.
Well, I just want to say this about that: I have to believe what I'm told, that there is room in which to manoeuvre --
Hon Mr Wildman: For job security.
Mr Conway: -- and for job security and for all the good reasons cited, but over the years here, I have grown somewhat sceptical about these kinds of assurances. I have just seen too many ministers of finance and too many legislatures come with their proverbial tails between their legs saying: "Well, you know, that deal they cooked back in 1975 for the teachers' pension plan," or the deal that was cooked in 1982 for some other public service or parapublic service plan, "well, it just didn't quite work out the way it was supposed to have worked out. There wasn't quite the room to manoeuvre and now we have this unfunded liability."
Now, it may not happen here. I have no evidence to suggest that it will. But I'm from Missouri on this question and I will await to be convinced, though I probably won't be here when these chickens come home to roost, if they ever do.
Ms Evelyn Gigantes (Ottawa Centre): Sure you will.
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Mr Conway: The member for Ottawa Centre says sure I will. She knows more about my future than I do, but I'm happy to have her confident prophesies about that. But it is very vexatious to the taxpayers to see these kinds of arrangements not work out the way they were supposed to work out.
It's not that many years ago that the Ontario Energy Board had some rather colourful things to say about the Ontario pension plan. Now, I know some of us in the assembly tonight are closer to that fund than others --
Mr Jordan: Some have contributed more than others.
Mr Conway: I have never said anything about contributions, I say to my friend.
Mr Jordan: Oh, no, you wouldn't say anything about that.
Mr Conway: I cast no aspersions on my friend and neighbour the member for Lanark-Renfrew.
It is just a caution. I raise it tonight because if this isn't quite the good arrangement that is now being advertised, it will fall to a subsequent Legislature, but it will none the less fall to the ratepayers, the people of Ontario. My sense is that they're getting awfully tired of picking up these downstream liabilities that some of the architects were perhaps a little more familiar with at first instance than they ever advertised.
I remember that happy experience I had with the teachers' pension fund of just a few years ago. The now Minister of Agriculture -- I was then employed by the Hastings County Board of Education -- probably had a view at the time; he never really expressed it to me. But there wasn't a teacher around who didn't feel that we weren't robbing the plan. All I knew was that by 1988-89 there was a mess. There was an unfunded liability running in the billions, and it was absolutely clear to me in 1988-89, that when that deal had been cooked 15 years earlier the architects of the scheme knew that they had constructed a house of cards and it was going to fall down but it wouldn't fall down for about 10 to 15 years. In fact, they could have predicted it with absolute accuracy, and it did fall down. It fell down in the late 1980s, and a very messy bit of surgery had to be performed.
I say again, I have no evidence to suggest that this in fact is the case here, but I raise a concern and I raise a caution about that, and I just hope and pray that all of the assurances that have been given are to be credited not only today but some years down the road from this point.
I want to take, then, a moment to deal with the part of the bill that concerns the chief executive officer's responsibility. I was quite impressed, actually. The minister did this without even smiling. Well, he smiled; there was a crease of humour across his visage at the end.
I have to say that Bill 185 in this respect represents an about-face that is quite spectacular. The New Democrats have in this particular instance turned tail so rapidly that the starch has flown out of their shirttails in an almost dangerous way. I have here before me Bill --
Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Even you have to smile, Sean, come on.
Mr Conway: Well, I do smile. As my old friend Stephen Lewis would say on such occasions, section 1 of this bill is chutzpah on stilts. Here we have it, section 1 of Bill 185. This bill was introduced on November 3, 1994, and it says, "The Lieutenant Governor in Council" -- that's the cabinet, for our audience out there, those few people perhaps --
Hon Marilyn Churley (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): With nothing to do but watch this speech.
Mr Conway: No, I'm sure they're watching this. The cabinet, "after considering the advice of the" -- Hydro -- "board, shall appoint either the president or the chair" -- of Ontario Hydro -- "as the chief executive officer." I agree with that. That seems to me an eminently sensible position; it's the one I happened to be arguing for just three years ago, that day in June 1991 when the member for Peterborough representing this government came in here with Bill 118, which made it plain in section 7 of that bill that the chairperson of Ontario Hydro shall be the chief executive officer; no ifs, ands or buts.
She said in her statement at that time that of course this was an important change because it will make the corporation more efficient and more accountable. That was just two and a half years ago.
I want to be fair. They have learned that that position was too rigid and it wasn't sensible. They didn't have a revolution perhaps, although Marc Eliesen probably visited on the internal confines of the Rae cabinet something akin to a revolution, and we have now this bill tonight which reverses the decision of two and a half years ago and I think rightly gives the government the kind of flexibility it should have in this respect. But you would not expect me to have forgotten that just two and a half years ago you were lecturing this Legislature and the opposition and anybody else out there who didn't see the wisdom of your Bill 118, that it had to be the way you legislated it in that policy.
Hon Ms Churley: We surrender. It's 11:30.
Ms Gigantes: Speak for yourself.
Mr Conway: Listen, I'm not here to seek surrender.
Hon Mr Wildman: I don't surrender. I don't agree with what he just said.
Mr Conway: You don't agree with what I just said.
Hon Mr Wildman: That's right.
Mr Conway: I don't expect you to. I'm just simply pointing out that you have --
Hon Ms Churley: Sorry. Keep going.
Mr Conway: Well, you know, if you want to go home, Marilyn, the fact of the matter is that in a 20-day session, if we meet 20 days out of nine months, there are going to be a few night sittings. I'm quite happy to meet more days and get you home a lot earlier, but --
Ms Murdock: Is this an offer?
Mr Conway: Well, no. I want to say that in supporting Bill 185, I think in this respect the government has done the right thing, and I simply want to observe that we bury tonight yet more of the policy that was brought forward a couple of years ago with Bill 118. In fact, I was thinking as I prepared for tonight's debate how much of the Eliesen policy is now a dead letter.
This particular section that has been referred to by some others as the Eliesen section: Oh, that was so clever. I know there was a fight and it might have been in the view of the Premier absolutely necessary that that provision be written as it was in Bill 118. But I'll tell you, tonight, as we change that policy, we lay to rest a substantial part of the Marc Eliesen Hydro policy that the Rae government pursued in the first two and a half years of its mandate.
In that respect, referring now to those sections of the bill, really the one section of the bill that concerns who can be the chief executive officer, to talk a little bit about Ontario Hydro today and the current incumbent, the nominal CEO of Ontario Hydro, I guess the current chairperson of Ontario Hydro, Maurice Strong.
I think it was Andrew Coyne in the Globe and Mail, although I couldn't find the clip tonight, but somebody referred to the current chairman of Ontario Hydro as the Deng Xiaoping of Ontario politics, and I thought that was probably not a bad description.
Hon Mr Wildman: He's far more dynamic.
Mr Conway: Well, I don't know whether Deng would accept -- but, you know, it's just two years ago this week that we had Maurice Strong come to a legislative committee to tell the assembly why he would make a good chairperson and what he would do. I was re-reading his testimony.
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I thought that the appointment of Maurice Strong was an interesting appointment, and I said so at the time. I was impressed that Mr Strong was willing to make himself available to the Ontario Hydro corporation and to the public of Ontario in this respect. I think he has a very remarkable world view. He has a very interesting and remarkable mix of experience and I supported the appointment. I had only one concern and the concern was that he has a reputation of not sticking around. I don't think that was any secret at the time of his appointment, and I have been concerned that in his stint at Ontario Hydro he has in fact, I believe, let the Premier down.
When Maurice Strong came to that legislative committee, the standing committee on government agencies, on December 9, 1992, which is now almost two years ago, he said in part in his testimony: "Mr Chairman and members of the committee, you will notice that I am not wearing rose-coloured glasses. In fact what I seem to see, as I look upon Ontario Hydro today as an outsider, is a kaleidoscope of trouble. I see a company with high debt, high costs, depressed revenues and oppressive price increases. In short, I see a public corporation in crisis, certainly a crisis of public confidence."
Two years later, to give Mr Strong his due, he has initiated, with the support of the government, a number of measures that I think have been significant and important. My own feeling, and I have no great experience obviously as a senior executive, is that what Ontario Hydro needed was the full-time energies of someone like a Maurice Strong for at least a five-year period. Any of us who has been involved in public policy knows that it's all well and good to announce the change, but I'll tell you, program implementation is the tough part of the task, and I have been very concerned that Mr Strong, bright, remarkable, idiosyncratic as he is, has in fact not lived up to that commitment that I know he gave to the Legislature, which was, "I will give my full energies to this job for a period of approximately five years."
Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): And that's what we said.
Mr Conway: Well, the minister responsible for the OPP says, "And that's what we said," and I think the government has a right to be disappointed. I want to say again I think he was an interesting appointment, a significant -- a bit risky perhaps, because as I said then, he had this reputation.
The question I ask myself today is, "What is going on over there?" We know that Mr Strong is now the nominal CEO; that some weeks or months ago, I can't remember now, he essentially gave up his salary, all but $1, and turned over the basic running of the operation to Dr Allan Kupcis, who is of course the president.
Mr Tilson: He's busy with his hotel down in the rain forest.
Mr Conway: I don't want to quarrel with Mr Strong's international activities, although I think there are some that he has pursued at Ontario Hydro that give me pause. But I really want to say that I think there are very major issues ongoing at Ontario Hydro. I know the government, I know the Legislature is concerned about the fact that last year the utility reported a record high loss, something like $3.7 billion, largely occasioned by a huge write-down.
This year we are told, and the member for Lanark-Renfrew indicated that with the help of weather, the balance sheet's going to look a little better, significantly better I'm told, something in the neighbourhood of a billion bucks. Well, we'll wait and see.
Hon Mr Wildman: It's $800 million or something.
Mr Conway: That's right, and we all want to see an end to the red ink. But I look at what's been going on at Hydro these past two or three years. It's been mentioned earlier tonight. In the first restructuring, the corporation shed 6,000 employees. That, to a substantial extent, was to be expected with the completion of Darlington. I think with that shedding of 6,000, it probably brought us back to where we were just about the day Darlington began. The cost of that attrition is about two thirds of a billion dollars. I think it's 600-and-some-odd million bucks. I can't remember the cost per person, but it was very high.
We are now on the verge of another reduction, expected to be in the neighbourhood of 1,500, and that will probably cost another $400 million, I'm told. So we are going to have a reduction of probably 5,500 to 6,000 employees, costing the Ontario Hydro corporation and the ratepayers out there a billion bucks.
Hon Mr Wildman: But a saving in the long run.
Mr Conway: The minister says, "With a saving in the long run." Well, God hopes so. I know when the people from Hydro came to explain to me some of the red ink, they were telling me that these separation packages were costing a lot more than anyone expected, and in fact they were --
Hon Mr Wildman: More took them.
Mr Conway: Well, yes, more took them, and in fact the member from Lanark I think is right when he says it's very interesting who took what. We have lost at the corporation perhaps some of the people we did not want to lose.
But the point I want to make is that there are huge changes going on at Hydro, and the expectation one has is that there is going to be a CEO who is on a daily and an hourly basis superintending that change.
We know what that Hydro culture is like. We know what it has been over the decades. My, my, my, we need only to hear my good friend from Montague township to understand how deeply imbedded that Hydro culture is in many of its staff. And that's not a bad thing, but the ethic that is running the new Hydro is certainly not going to be the ethic that ran the old Hydro, and it concerns me when I hear that the man who was brought in to make and to implement these changes is now kind of retiring to some kind of supernumerary function and he's going to be one of those C.D. Howe dollar-a-year men who will just provide, from time to time, direction and he will surrender everything else to Dr Kupcis. I just want to raise that concern tonight, and I have to believe there are many in the government who privately share that concern as well.
I want to make a final point, because, as has been indicated by a number of other people, there are huge changes currently afoot at Hydro and many more to come. The utility business, the electricity business, is changing as we speak. Those of us who have grown up with the kind of Ontario Hydro that the member from Lanark describes more felicitously than I could ever hope to is going to be, is now being, replaced by a new Ontario Hydro. There is no doubt.
I don't think we've yet seen the final shape of that new Hydro. What I quite frankly expected about a year ago was that the minister, the esteemed member for Algoma, would bring to this assembly a white paper dealing with some of the key questions about a new Hydro. Who would do what? I know our friends at the MEA are busily at work on a look at a reconfigured electricity industry in Ontario. My friend from Lanark has quite effectively indicated what some of the possibilities are.
It will be very important, I believe, for this Legislature, and soon, to become seized of those main policy questions. There's a lot of worry around about some kind of wholesale privatization. That can't, won't and shouldn't happen. But the kind of monopoly we have known over the last 80 years is not going to continue. One looks at Bell Canada today and one sees some possibilities that just five and 10 years ago were scarcely imaginable, and we've got to anticipate some of those changes occurring in the electricity sector.
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We are going to have to, as legislators, irrespective of our political affiliations and our past, recognize that whether you are a farmer in Renfrew or a single parent living in an apartment in North York, you are going to be continuingly concerned about the cost of this gargantuan called Hydro.
The minister says, "We have lowered the rates by 0.7% this year," and he has. But for whatever reason, those rates were raised by nearly 40% in the early part of this decade.
Hon Mr Wildman: We have to remember the reason.
Mr Conway: Well, I'm not going to get into religion tonight, and it is, quite frankly, a religious, theological debate. When the New Democrats of today get going on about nuclear, I'm reminded about the late, sainted Bill Temple. Bill Temple, a great CCFer from High Park, thought booze was the devil incarnate. Some of these people, many of these people believe -- I think the minister believes -- that the nuclear commitment was evil incarnate. I can't debate that with them and I don't intend to.
But let me say in conclusion that we have important policy questions around the future of Hydro, and it is high time that we had a policy paper before a select committee of this Legislature to look at the new mandate: what kind of third-party access there will be to the grid, what kind of differentiation we can now have in transmission and differentiation between Ontario Hydro and the municipal utilities. I say, Minister, that we should, as a Legislature, get to that task as soon as we can, but in the interval, Bill 185 deserves to be supported, and supported by all concerned.
The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Renfrew North for his contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments. Is there further debate?
Mr Tilson: Hopefully, all of us in this House support this bill. I know we in our party do. My comments are going to be very brief, simply to explain the urgency that came from a particular group in my riding, the town of Caledon, which has been looking for amendments to this piece of legislation for some time. I have some notes which I'd like to try and summarize. They were given to me by a town councillor and also a Caledon Hydro commissioner by the name of Peter Wylie, who explained to me -- and I'm sure this is typical throughout the province of Ontario. His comments are:
"Caledon Hydro services 2,500 customers with no opportunity for growth. 'Caledon Hydro' was 'Bolton Hydro' prior to the implementation of regional government. The operating area is still the limit of the old village of Bolton as it was at the time of regionalization.
"Due to development around the old village of Bolton, the urban area is now more than twice the size of the original village area. This means that there are instances where neighbours, literally next-door neighbours, are paying different hydro rates, because one is served by Caledon Hydro and the other is served by Ontario Hydro. Incidentally, Caledon Hydro rates are lower than those of Ontario Hydro even though the Ontario Hydro rates are subsidized.
"Current legislation prevents staged or partial expansion of Caledon Hydro service area boundaries. This means that any expansion under the current legislation would mean that Caledon Hydro would be required to service the entire town of Caledon, which covers approximately 270 square miles. This is an area larger than Mississauga and Brampton combined. With the exception of the urban area of Bolton, the town of Caledon is mainly rural. The Bolton service area is now approximately three square miles.
"For Caledon Hydro to expand to take over the entire municipality of the town of Caledon, it would involve borrowing approximately $20 million for the purchase of the Ontario Hydro infrastructure, ie, poles, wire, transformers, meters etc, that are part of the Ontario Hydro system within Caledon. This tremendous debt load would be carried by a total of only 14,000 customers, which would increase the hydro rates to an unacceptable level for the present Caledon Hydro customers."
The final point Mr Wylie makes is:
"A far more acceptable alternative is that which is provided by these proposed amendments to the Power Corporation Act. The amendments will permit a utility to expand in economical controlled stages rather than one large expansion to cover the whole town. Specifically as it relates to Caledon Hydro, it would enable the utility to expand to cover the area of foreseen or planned development in the Bolton area as an initial expansion. As time goes on, further economical controlled expansions would mean that Caledon Hydro would eventually service the whole of the municipality."
I'm sure this is typical of many municipalities around the province of Ontario and I would encourage all members to support the legislation.
The Speaker: I thank the honourable member for Dufferin-Peel for his contribution to the debate and invite any questions and/or comments. Is there further debate? Seeing none, I recognize the honourable Minister of Environment and Energy.
Hon Mr Wildman: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I want to thank my colleagues in the House for their participation in the debate and the support for the legislation on second reading. I am one of those rural Ontario Hydro customers who will not benefit from this legislation, but I do understand the points raised by my friend from Dufferin-Peel and others about the advantages of the changes in the boundary legislation to allow municipal utilities to expand on a staged and incremental basis.
I listened with interest to the comments made by my friends across the way with regard to their attitudes about the future, the present and the past of Ontario Hydro. I found it interesting that there seems to be a sort of schizophrenic view of the present chair of Ontario Hydro. The attitude seems to be, "Well, he may have done a good job but we're not sure, and we're not quite ready to admit that perhaps some of the changes that have been made in Ontario Hydro over the last period of time during his stewardship were indeed needed and should have been initiated before, perhaps even before 1990."
The fact is that Ontario Hydro faced a serious crisis and the government recognized that and came to the conclusion that we needed to have an individual at the helm who could indeed take difficult decisions and carry through on those decisions with the support of the government and the members of the House. I think all of us have to recognize that Mr Maurice Strong has indeed carried out that mandate and has fulfilled a role that very few individuals, even with his ability, might have been able to carry out without the support of this government and the recognition that there had to be major changes in terms of downsizing and making more efficient the operation at Ontario Hydro.
The suggestion was made that Mr Strong has somehow let the Premier down; I think that's what my friend from Renfrew North said. I think that is most unfair. On the one hand, the member for Renfrew North said that the chair should be using, I think he said, his full-time energies in the service of Ontario Hydro and the ratepayers of this province. On the other hand, he says that in doing that, Mr Strong has somehow let the Premier down. I just don't accept that.
He is quite right when he says the ethic of the new Hydro cannot be the ethic of the old Hydro. That is clear. But in order for us to be able to determine what the new ethic must be, we must be prepared to look at where we were and how we got to the crisis situation that we have now been able to deal with, and Mr Strong has been able to deal with, to the point where we have for two years running frozen rates and for the first time in 30 years lowered slightly the industrial rate.
My friend from Renfrew North referred to it as "religion" to refer to the reasons why we reached this crisis at Ontario Hydro. I don't think it's religion. I don't think it's ideology. It's a matter of economics. In 1975 and prior to that when the then Conservative government talked about the need to build a new major nuclear facility, there was a major debate not only in this House but across the province. We all engaged in that debate, and I know the positions taken by my friends from Renfrew North and Lanark-Renfrew with regard to nuclear. I understand their position; I don't accept it, but I understand it. But I think it's important to understand my position as well.
I come from an area which has employed many people for many years in the nuclear industry, in uranium mining. I've supported the work of the Steelworkers in improving the health and safety of those operations over the years and I've supported the Steelworkers in their efforts to protect their members in this new downsizing and changing of Ontario Hydro that has affected their communities. But I have always looked at nuclear not as a question of ideology or religion but as a question of economics. In 1975, when we were engaging in that debate, I did not believe, and I said I did not believe, that Darlington was economic and would serve the economy of this province well, and I didn't believe it when the Liberals came to power, and I still don't believe it. And frankly the evidence proves we were right.
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The fact is, when the Conservatives started talking about Darlington, it was estimated at $4 billion. Then it escalated to $7 billion. When the Liberals came to power and looked at it and decided, well, they would complete Darlington, it had escalated further, to the point where when it was finally completed, it was about $12 billion to $14 billion. The interesting point is that because of Ontario Hydro's accounting practices, we didn't pay for any of that until it came on stream, so suddenly we were faced with this enormous debt that we had to deal with, and then when we raise this, the members opposite say this is ideology or religion.
The fact is, it's pure economics. We had to deal with that debt. You didn't have to deal with it and you made the unwise decisions to build this operation. You didn't need it, we don't need it, Ontario doesn't need it, and now we're stuck with the debt -- an interesting point.
I listened to these gentlemen speak, Mr Speaker. The member for Renfrew North said it was religion. I suppose with my friend from Lanark-Renfrew it is a matter of faith.
Mr Jordan: It's good business.
Mr Turnbull: What did you sell to China?
The Speaker: Order.
Hon Mr Wildman: I didn't mean to be provocative. The members opposite --
Mr Turnbull: What did you sell to China? Just tell us what you sold to China.
Hon Mr Wildman: It's late, Mr Speaker, and we want to complete this debate. I do think it's important that there was a suggestion of a lack of confidence in Ontario Hydro. I think that's true. There was a crisis of confidence when, in the early 1990s, we saw the enormous rate increases related to the debt that came on stream, that we had to pay, for the construction of Darlington.
There were a lot of industries in this province that raised concerns about whether they would be able to remain competitive and whether there would be new investment in this province. We made the changes required to make it possible for us to end those escalations in rates and even, for the first time in 30 years, to have a slight decrease. We maintained the reliability of the system. And I want to make one thing clear. This government, and I'm happy to hear my friend from Renfrew North say the same sort of thing, is opposed and will remain opposed to the privatization of this great utility, because we have been able to make the changes to make it economic as a public utility. We will continue to operate it in the interests of the ratepayers of this province, and I'm proud to say we had the guts to make those changes.
The Speaker: Mr Wildman has moved second reading of Bill 185, An Act to amend the Power Corporation Act. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I declare the motion carried.
Shall the bill be ordered for third reading? Agreed.
ASSESSMENT AMENDMENT ACT, 1994 / LOI DE 1994 MODIFIANT LA LOI SUR L'ÉVALUATION FONCIÈRE
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 197, An Act to amend the Assessment Act / Projet de loi 197, Loi modifiant la Loi sur l'évaluation foncière.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): When we left off, I believe the honourable member for York Mills had the floor. He may resume his speech.
Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): Once again we get to rather an important tax issue, one which I can say that all parties in the House agree with, to the best of my knowledge. But it is --
Hon Bud Wildman (Minister of Environment and Energy and Minister Responsible for Native Affairs): Then how can you be speaking to it?
Mr Turnbull: I heard some noise.
We're getting to it at midnight, and it deserves some detailed study. Unfortunately, I will be closing down the debate a few minutes after starting it, as I did the other night.
Bill 197, the so-called mall tax, is what has been referred to as a brokered solution in that a court decision which was rendered last year would have moved some $14 million of property taxes from the large anchor tenants in some 22 shopping malls in Metropolitan Toronto on to the smaller tenants and would have undoubtedly driven them out of business. Some of the larger landlords recognized this and managed to broker a solution between the anchors and the small tenants.
But it's worth considering the background in terms of how this happened. Typically, a large landlord has offered an inducement to a large anchor tenant to come into a shopping mall, and it's not unusual for a shopping mall anchor tenant to be paying one tenth the amount smaller tenants pay on a per-square-foot basis. I would put to you that it seems rather ludicrous that the tax system should seek to extend that benefit that the landlord has given to the anchor tenant, because the services are quite equal in terms of the consumption of the services by the large anchor tenants.
In fact, when you look at shopping plazas with perhaps a food store, it can be argued that you will have more traffic on a per-square-foot basis in the food store than you will in some small dress shop and therefore there will be a greater consumption of services, use of police, of ambulances and so forth, and yet this flawed tax system that we work under would have extended that.
The compromise that has been reached is something between a square-foot tax, allocating the tax on a square-foot basis, and market value. The principle here is that one can allocate taxes on the basis of square foot as opposed to just market value. Market value works extremely badly in Metropolitan Toronto and to the detriment of a lot of businesses. We have seen a lot of businesses which have moved from Metropolitan Toronto to places immediately outside. In fact, a lot of unemployment is occurring because of that, and the city is experiencing a reduction in tax revenues for this reason.
The brokered solution moves some $8 million back to the anchor tenants of the $14 million that would have landed with the small tenants. What we need is fundamental tax reform, a tax reform which I had hoped we may have seen from this government because it in fact went into having the Fair Tax Commission. The Fair Tax Commission reported a year ago that education should be taken off property taxes, but the government has done absolutely nothing with that recommendation.
In fact, this is the government which used to pour scorn on the previous Liberal government, with some justification in that they took away all of the education support. The Liberals took away all of the financial support for education in Metropolitan Toronto that the province gave and moved the entire cost of education on to the poor property taxpayers.
The government suggested in the last election that it was going to come to paying 60% of the cost of education through the province. They have totally failed to live up to that promise.
I see, Mr Speaker, that you're eager to go home, so I will suggest that once again we will adjourn the debate and I will continue my words the next time we meet.
The Speaker: I thank the honourable member.
Is there a business statement? The Solicitor General.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Hon David Christopherson (Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services): Pursuant to stand ing order 55, I wish to indicate the business of the House for Tuesday, December 6.
On Tuesday, December 6, we will give third reading consideration to Bill 173, the Long-Term Care Act. Following that, we will give third reading to Bill 171, sustainable forestry; third reading consideration to Bill 185, amendments to the Power Corporation Act; third reading to Bill 107, Ryerson pensions; third reading to Bill 190, the Securities Amendment Act; and second reading to Bill 197, the Assessment Amendment Act.
The Speaker (Hon David Warner): It being past 12 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until later today at 1:30.
The House adjourned at 2401.