Hansard Transcript 1997-Sept-30 vol. a | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr Alex Cullen (Ottawa West): Last night over 7,500 teachers in Ottawa-Carleton met to discuss the Harris government's most recent attack on education, Bill 160.

These teachers, from public and separate school boards, from elementary and secondary schools, French-speaking and English-speaking, joined thousands of other teachers across Ontario in their condemnation of the Harris government's plans to cut $1 billion more from classrooms in this province. They are even prepared to go out on strike because they believe so strongly that the Harris government's plans are bad for education, bad for children, and ultimately bad for taxpayers.

These are teachers, professional people, custodians of our children's future, being compelled to act as a result of the Harris government's compulsion to find $1 billion more in cuts to education. These teachers have already seen the effects of cuts to education made to date by this government: the elimination of junior kindergarten, the increases in class size, the cuts to special education for children with learning disabilities, the cuts to adult education, the cuts to children's safety -- the list goes on.

Teachers realize that Bill 160 will gut our education system even further and they're not prepared to accept any further damage to our educational system any more.

The Minister of Education has succeeded in creating yet another crisis in education. He has succeeded in polarizing teachers in our community and threatening the future of our children's education. I call on him to withdraw Bill 160 and to work with educators and parents so we can improve our education system to better serve our children, not gut it with an ill-conceived income tax cut.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): Today and yesterday Ontario's Environmental Commissioner, Eva Ligeti, was visiting the Windsor area. I am pleased to see that she is in the area because residents in Windsor-Riverside certainly take their environmental concerns seriously.

You will recall the commissioner's annual report last year that was very critical of this government's actions with respect to the environment. No longer is Ontario a leader in environmental protection.

It's a good thing the commissioner is doing the outreach she is doing in our communities because with cuts to the Ministry of Environment and Energy budget of 36% and of cuts in staff of over 800, including half of the staff in the Windsor regional office, we can be assured this government is not going to take environmental concerns seriously.

As a result of her visit there is a couple in our area who are making an application under the Environmental Bill of Rights. Jean Bertrand said, "Look at the fire in Hamilton -- [this] plant is in the middle of our town and we're concerned about a fire." They're making an application because there's a similar plant in the Amherstburg area.

The Environmental Bill of Rights was passed by the NDP government. We appointed Eva Ligeti as the commissioner and I was proud to play a role in that, but it certainly wasn't our intention that she assume the whole job to make up for the destruction of the Ministry of Environment and Energy.

OWEN SOUND SALMON DERBY

Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie): On August 30 I had the distinct pleasure of travelling to Owen Sound to participate in the Sydenham Sportsmen's Annual Salmon Spectacular Fishing Derby. This was the third consecutive year my son and I trekked to Owen Sound in pursuit of the mighty Chinook salmon. Despite the fact we have yet to make the leader board, thanks to our crafty charter boat captain, Gerry Karn, we never come home empty-handed.

The Owen Sound salmon spectacular is without a doubt one of the finest examples of the wise use of natural resources in our province. The 10-day derby is the brainchild and result of the hard work of the Sydenham Sportmen's Association, a club boasting a membership of over 600 Grey-Bruce anglers and hunters. The association is constantly involved in stream enhancement projects, community wildlife involvement programs and community fisheries programs. They've won numerous conservation awards for their efforts.

Since 1982 the club annually raises and stocks literally hundreds of thousands of Chinook salmon, Rainbow and Skamania. The most popular hallmark of the derby has to be the Saturday night fish fries, where a team of volunteers organized by my colleague from Grey-Owen Sound, Bill Murdoch, cooks and serves delicious local salmon to over 6,000 hungry guests.

I would encourage all fishing or sight-seeing enthusiasts to mark the last weekend in August on your calendars. I know my colleague from Grey-Owen Sound would be more than happy to arrange your charter boat and put you to work at the fish fry. My thanks and congratulations to the Sydenham Sportsmen --

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Statements. Member for York South.

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTRUING

Mr Gerard Kennedy (York South): I rise today to bring some comfort to the patients of Ontario, that finally there is some indication that the hurt they've been experiencing, the hardship they've seen in the hospitals around the province, is starting to get understood. In fact we've had two reports in the last week which ought to be available to every member of the back bench of the governing Conservative party because they show conclusively that the cuts made by the Harris government are hurting patients.

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce says $604 million was taken away from hospitals; those are independent figures. The government tried to disguise this, tried to say there was reinvestment, but the bank says differently. Similarly the Ivey school of business reviewed 12 hospitals coping with changes -- in fact the 12 hospitals that were most advanced -- and they said only two of them were even having a chance of dealing with this.

It must bring great distress to the back bench to know their government has had these figures all along, to know this government went ahead cutting hospitals when they had their own report determine in January of this year that they could only hurt patients. Now we have the Ivey school of business saying the cuts can't continue. Instead of having a reaction by the government that agrees, we have a sloughing off again, unfortunately, of the kinds of very conservative findings which were put forward by this organization.

We know the $1.3-billion cut to hospitals has damaged patients. We know patients now are starting to hear their voices being reflected in what's being heard across the province. What we don't have is any proof or any reason to believe that this government is finally going to listen, unfortunately.

GOVERNMENT'S RECORD

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): Last night in this House we were in debate around Bill 149, the property tax assessment bill, the very same bill in which the Conservatives have decided to impose market value assessment on the city of Toronto and others. In that debate yesterday it was quite interesting to listen to the comments of some of the government members, and one member, whom I will not name, because I want to be fair-minded about this --

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Name names.

Mr Bisson: Name names? The member for Quinte yesterday said in his speech that a government knows it's doing a good job if everybody is mad at it. Well, I'll tell you, this government takes the cake. They're certainly doing a wonderful job based on all the complaints and criticisms I've heard from people across society.

Who's mad at this government? Police officers are mad, firefighters are mad, ambulance attendants are mad, doctors are mad, the small business community is mad, the teachers are mad; almost everybody is mad at this provincial government. It makes me wonder what their caucus meetings are like. Can you imagine? The member goes into a caucus meeting and Mike Harris says, "Don't worry, if everybody is mad at us, we're doing a good job." Then the caucus members come to caucus and say: "Mike, there's another group mad at us. We're doing a better job, Mike. We've got another group mad at us."

It was truly a revealing comment made in the speech from the member for Quinte yesterday. I'll let them know there are still a few groups to be mad at them, so you're not doing a perfect job at it yet.

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RED HILL CREEK EXPRESSWAY

Mr Trevor Pettit (Hamilton Mountain): I would like to take this opportunity today to inform the House that this coming Sunday, October 5 at 10 am, a long-awaited event will take place in my riding high atop Hamilton Mountain. This Sunday our community will celebrate the official opening of the east-west portion of the Red Hill Creek Expressway. This section of the expressway will be referred to as the Lincoln M. Alexander Parkway or the Linc, named after one of Hamilton's finest citizens and a former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario.

The importance of the Red Hill Creek Expressway project to the economic growth and development of the region cannot be underestimated. This project will provide a vital transportation link for Hamilton businesses and citizens. In my riding of Hamilton Mountain, small and medium-sized businesses have been waiting for this quick access route to the 403 for over a decade. Many of them located their businesses on the mountain in the 1980s on the assumption that they would have a good transportation route for their goods.

In June 1995 the Progressive Conservative Party of Mike Harris promised the region of Hamilton-Wentworth that it would help fund the completion of this important project, a project that the previous NDP government had stalled. I am pleased to say that this government has lived up to its promise and the Red Hill Creek Expressway will be completed.

I invite everyone to come out this coming Sunday and join myself and all our regional and provincial representatives as we celebrate the first half of this key infrastructure project, a project that will help bring jobs and economic growth to our community of Hamilton-Wentworth.

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): With the Harris government in full retreat on almost all fronts this month, it is time for the Conservative government of Ontario to reverse itself on the slashing of hospital operating budgets by restoring the funds it has already chopped from the hospital field.

The hospital restructuring committee established by the Niagara District Health Council brought forward its drastic recommendations based upon the fact that deep cuts have already been made in local hospital funding and further cuts amounting to over $40 million would be required in the next few years. As a result, the committee recommended the closing or substantial change in operation of five Niagara region hospitals: Hotel Dieu, West Lincoln Memorial, Port Colborne, Douglas Memorial and Niagara-on-the-Lake.

The withdrawal of adequate hospital funding in the operations field by the Harris regime has brought about the inevitable confrontation between supporters of hospitals in St Catharines, and this slashing of the hospital budget allocation has forced hospitals to reduce service to a point where the provincial government hopes that local people will accede to a closing of one of our hospitals.

The fact is that we need all of our hospitals in St Catharines, the General, the Hotel Dieu and the Shaver, and we need them funded adequately to provide excellent service to our residents.

I intend to hold Mike Harris to his election commitment which he made during the leaders' debate in May 1995 when he said, "Certainly I can guarantee you, Robert, it is not my plan to close hospitals."

EDUCATION FINANCING

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): I have to tell you that I have profound concerns about what is happening in the educational system and concerns about mon ami M. Snobelen, the new Frankenstein of our educational system, who has done more to destabilize the educational system than anyone before him. Perhaps it is under the guise of privatizing some of our schools. Who knows? But he has done a hell of a lot to demoralize teachers, he has done a hell of a lot to panic trustees and to simply send them away from public service and he has done a hell of a lot to confuse parents about what is going on in the educational system.

I know that the member for Huron yesterday and mon ami M. Snobelen talked about how they don't want to burden our children with debts down the line, and the member for Huron talked about not wanting to mortgage our children's future. What about their income tax cut that does more to take money out of the system than anything else? What about the evisceration of funding for our public and Catholic school systems and university system? They have eviscerated funding unlike anybody before. How does that square off with their concern about not mortgaging the future of their children? Teachers and people who are concerned about teaching should fight back against this agenda, and that will happen.

TELEPHONE SERVICES

Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): Recently one of Toronto's daily newspapers reported the results of a leaked Bell Canada internal report. The phone company interviewed 3,414 people, by telephone naturally, to find out what people think of Bell Canada.

They discovered that people are frustrated that it's getting more and more expensive to make a local call. There have been five increases in two years, raising the average monthly rate from $14 to $25, an 80% increase, while inflation has been less than 4%. Small wonder that, according to the survey, people are looking forward to the opening up of the local telephone market to competition next year and that they are planning to cut back on added costs such as call display and call waiting.

With every increase in local rates, every family in my riding of Scarborough East and all across Ontario, from the poorest on up, must make a decision, that they continue to subsidize Bell's huge profits or do without the lifeline of phone service.

Bell Canada's employees are tremendously dedicated at providing the best service they can for their customers, but in 1996 Bell Canada's parent company, BCE Inc, surpassed General Motors to become the most profitable company in Canada, with a total net income of over $1 billion.

Ontarians should be afforded the greatest possible choice at the lowest possible costs. Competition is healthy, indeed it's critical, in a growing economy. I know that residents all across this province are looking forward to competition in the local phone sector and I agree with them wholeheartedly.

VISITOR

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): I would like to inform the members of the Legislative Assembly that we have in the Speaker's gallery today Major Singh Uboke, member of Parliament for the riding of Tarn Tarn in Punjab, India. Welcome.

ORAL QUESTIONS

MUNICIPAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr Joseph Cordiano (Lawrence): I have a question of the Minister of Municipal Affairs. By now, no one in this province believes that your downloading exercise will be a revenue-neutral exercise. People just don't believe your assurances that social services, the cost of roads, highways, GO Transit, ambulances, public health, child care and social housing will not cost municipalities any more money. No one believes you any more. What people do believe is that municipalities will be saddled with an additional $670 million worth of costs. Municipalities fear they'll either have to raise taxes or cut vital services.

Minister, I'm going to ask you today, will you come clean and tell the truth about what the impacts of downloading will be on municipalities? Will you stand up and tell the truth about that today?

Hon Al Leach (Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing): To the member of the opposition, we told the municipalities a year and a half ago, in fact in 1995, that we were going to eliminate the municipal support grant. We took it from $1.4 billion down to $900 million, this year down to $667 million, and then we told them that would be eliminated as well. Most of the municipalities have been able to deal with that reduction without any problem, and most have assured us that they can deal with that again without any additional problems.

One of the opposition's own members, who is now running for regional chair in Ottawa, has stated that he intends to have his whole three-year term without any tax increases as a result of the separation of services. The candidate for the new city of Toronto, Mayor Lastman of North York, states that he will not have any tax increases as a result of the separation of services.

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Mr Cordiano: I want to tell the minister that one of his friends and allies, the mayor of Mississauga, Hazel McCallion -- remember her? -- had a thing or two to say at a press conference this morning. She released the results of an Environics poll that showed that the majority of the people in the regions, in York, Halton, Peel and Durham, believe that as a result of your downloading, property taxes will go up. A majority believe as well that social services should be paid for from income taxes, not property taxes. Interestingly enough, two thirds of the residents of that area have more trust in their mayors than they do in the Premier in receiving information about municipalities.

Minister, it's clear that you and the Premier have a credibility problem. No one believes you any more. Why should they? You haven't released any of the numbers. I want to ask you today: Release the numbers that make the case that this will be a revenue-neutral exercise.

Hon Mr Leach: I don't know where the member opposite has been for the last month. On August 6 last, we gave all the upper tiers the numbers. We also made a commitment to the municipalities that this exercise would be revenue-neutral.

The member opposite talked about the polling that was done by Peel region. I have it right here in my hands. The question is, "Predicted net effect of downloading on the quality of services," and 61% say it would be better or no change, as a result of the separation of services to the municipalities. I don't know if it can get any clearer than that. The member opposite should do a little bit of homework before he sticks his foot in his mouth again.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Final supplementary.

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): Minister, Hazel McCallion doesn't believe you. She believes you've got the data now and that you're intentionally holding it back until after the municipal election. When are you going to release those figures? We want to know when you're going to release those figures.

Let me just remind you of what you stated at the general government committee two weeks ago. You said, "On October 6, each municipality will be presented with the exact figures they need for the separation of services." We would like to know, are you going to release all the figures on October 6, as you said at the committee two weeks ago?

Hon Mr Leach: I really have to thank the members of the opposition for these questions. I think David Lindsay must write them for them.

We said two weeks ago that we would release the numbers on October 6, and the numbers will be released on October 6. We fully intend to provide every municipality in the province with their numbers. We also intend to meet with every upper tier, with their local members and their separated cities to go over those numbers. We said we would do it on October 6 and we intend to keep that promise. I intend to be in Sudbury on October 6, speaking to the regional chairman and the county wardens, where I will outline the process we're going through.

What did we say we would do? We said we would release the numbers. What are we going to do? We're going to release the numbers on October 6. We have said that this exercise is going to be revenue-neutral, and it will be revenue-neutral.

TEACHERS' COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): My question is for the Minister of Education. You say you have talked to teachers. You say you have understood their concerns. You insist that teachers are not going to go on strike. I don't know what teachers you've been talking to, because you're hearing something that nobody else is.

Last Thursday, hundreds of teachers told you they were prepared to strike in defence of public education. Last night, 6,000 teachers in Ottawa, more than 2,000 teachers in Sudbury and thousands more in St Thomas, St Catharines, Parry Sound, Northumberland and Red Lake all sent you exactly the same message. They believe your government is about to cut funding, lay off thousands of teachers and destroy public education. They know that's what you plan to do when you take total control of education. They are going to do whatever they can to stop you.

Minister, are you still so determined to ram through your agenda, with teachers as the latest target, that you will force this confrontation with Ontario teachers?

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Education and Training): I have talked to a number of teachers over the course of the last couple of years. I want to let the member know that the teachers I've talked to are in favour of having a system of education that promotes the best student performance in Canada, not the middle of the pack as we currently have, and a system that supports them to do that.

They're in favour of a system that's funded in a way that every student in Ontario has an equal opportunity to a high quality education, which is not the current circumstance with the general legislative grant program. They're in favour of having class sizes capped so they don't grow, because the teachers in the classroom have to deal with that phenomena. It may be negotiated at a bargaining table, but they have to deal with it. They're in favour of having class sizes capped, and not grow and grow. They're in favour of spending more time with their students, because the teachers of Ontario are professional people who want to honour their responsibility with their students.

That's the bottom line. That's why they're in favour of this agenda.

Mrs McLeod: Hear teachers. Hear what they're trying to tell you. They do not want to go on strike. They want to teach. They want to work with their students inside and outside the classroom. They want to be well prepared so they can do their job well. That's what teachers want to do and it is what teachers have always done. But you are making it impossible for them to do that any longer with your cuts to budgets and your need to make even more cuts by cutting teachers.

Here's what one teacher, Louis Guertin, who teaches at Osgoode township high school in Metcalfe has tried to tell you about his concern. He says that he'll be walking -- not only for the sake of his students but for his own children who are seven and nine -- because if your changes go through, he will not want his children in the public education system and he can't afford a private school.

Louis Guertin is determined to do whatever he can to stop you. Will you tell Louis Guertin, not just as a teacher but as a parent, how taking another $1 billion out of education and laying off thousands of teachers will benefit either his students or his children?

Hon Mr Snobelen: I agree with the member for Fort William on one count; I disagree with her on another. On the count I agree with her on, she just said, and I agree with her, that teachers don't want to strike. I agree with that; that's what I've been saying for two months. I'm glad the member for Fort William finally has the message.

Regarding the withdrawal of funds from this system, the member for Fort William has ignored the fact that the gross spending on education has gone up year over year over the last year although enrolment has gone down, and has ignored completely this government's commitment to spend whatever it takes to make sure that every child in this province has a right to a high-quality education, to fund at that level, and is going through the process of asking experts exactly what our young people need so we can provide that funding. For the first time, the province will be able to guarantee that to the students of this province. I think it's a major breakthrough in the quality of education and so will teachers when they see it.

Mrs McLeod: For just one minute this afternoon, will you please focus on what is happening in education now, today? You and Mike Harris, hand in hand, have taken education to the edge of a precipice and you are now getting ready to push both teachers and students over the edge.

Mike Harris has said he's prepared to talk. So far your talking has been nothing but ultimatums: $1 billion more out of education and the laying off of thousands of teachers. You have said you're willing to meet with teachers. You said this morning you're prepared to cooperate for the students' sake. But you haven't called teachers, you haven't written to them, you've made no overture at all since you last laid down your ultimatum.

You can prove today that you are prepared to cooperate for the sake of students by doing three things: retreat from your intention to cut another $1 billion from education; retreat from your plans to cut as many as 10,000 teachers out of education; and withdraw Bill 160 so there can be a reasonable resolution to the conflict with teachers and so there will not be a province-wide strike. Will you do these three things today?

Hon Mr Snobelen: You cannot withdraw from an intention you don't have, and the member for Fort William knows we do not have those intentions. We have said day in and day out and spelled out very clearly what our intention is.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): I appreciate all the advice the member for Scarborough East offers. Minister.

Hon Mr Snobelen: Once again, and no longer surprisingly, the member for Fort William has said something today that is just not backed by fact. I wrote to the Ontario Teachers' Federation last week and asked them for a meeting. I wrote to them again last night and asked them for a meeting, because I think it's important we discuss these issues for our students.

Lastly, let me be very clear to the member for Fort William: We are certainly standing hand in hand, my colleagues and I, on a breakthrough on our schools in Ontario so that our students will no longer be middle of the pack, so our students will rise to the top of the class, so our students' performance will be the best in Canada. That's what our objective is and we're moving forward on that step by step by step, building a better education for the young people of this province. I am proud of that.

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CHARITABLE GAMING

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): I have a question for the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations. It concerns the mess surrounding the government's casino policy and the conflicts of interest which are beginning to be obvious.

I want to quote from the Canadian Gaming News, because it has another report about the connection between Domenic Alfieri, the former president of the Ontario Casino Corp, with the Trillium group, one of the lucky eight high-powered casino operators picked by your government last week to own and operate your government's charity casinos.

Then there's the article that relates that Paul Burns, a former adviser to one David Tsubouchi, is now with RPC Anchor, another of the successful bidders. As Canadian Gaming News says, some people are questioning the fairness of the process. It is very difficult for anyone. When are we going to see your conflict-of-interest legislation, Minister?

Hon David H. Tsubouchi (Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations): I think the question with respect to the conflict-of-interest legislation or rules would be better served going to the House leader, who is involved with that actual process, but let me speak to the issues the leader of the third party raised.

This actually came up, probably several months ago, in a similar question, and I wish I had the Hansard for my reply to him. Mr Burns left my office --

Interjections.

Hon Mr Tsubouchi: I'll answer the question again, because we had to answer this before in the House. Mr Burns left my office prior to the release of the RFP. He had discussed his departure with the Integrity Commissioner, who advised him that at that point in time he had no concerns that Mr Burns would be violating any rules, as long as he left prior to the release of the RFP. So we have had this discussion before.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Answer, please.

Hon Mr Tsubouchi: If I might comment with respect to the process, we clearly indicated that the process is to be an independent, arm's-length, transparent process --

The Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): Minister, let me put this together for you. Your government, to get its way on its gambling initiative, is willing to put a significant number of small businesses off the block, threaten charities with loss of their revenues, bribe communities with a promise of money, and now your government officials are jumping into bed with big American gambling interests. Just how much of a pimp are you willing to be on behalf of these interests?

The Speaker: I didn't hear the very end of that question, so I will offer the answer to the minister, unless you stand and -- if I had heard you correctly, I would have asked you to withdraw, but I'm not certain I did.

Mr Martin: I can put it differently, Speaker, if you like. How much is your government willing to prostitute itself for, for big American gambling interests in this province?

Hon Mr Tsubouchi: Since the honourable member had two cracks at asking the question, perhaps I have a little bit of leeway in terms of answering the question. With respect to the way the member asked the question in the first place, I can only say if that's the case, then the bed was warmed by you guys first.

The selection process that was followed by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario was very similar to the process followed by the previous government in terms of awarding the contract to the permanent commercial casino in Windsor. The process was clearly one that was independent. We wanted to make sure it was independent of political involvement and therefore the decision was made and evaluated by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario. The committee consisted of representatives from the Gaming Control Commission, the Attorney General's counsel, the OPP, and the outside experts from Deloitte and Touche and Coopers and Lybrand.

This clearly had absolutely no input from either our ministry or the rest of the government. That's why we wanted to keep it independent. I might add that I understand of the firms selected by the board, seven have a Canadian equity component and six of the eight have at least a 50% Canadian equity.

The Speaker: Final supplementary.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): Minister, yesterday you were talking about compensation to municipalities as part of your charitable casino initiative. I want to remind you of the experience in Windsor-Riverside that I'd like to share with respect to those municipalities that may be tempted to take up this government's bribe to locate charity casinos in their municipality.

Before the last election, Mike Harris promised our community 10% of the revenues from the Windsor casino, but after the votes were counted, suddenly the selection priority was not a priority any longer. People are asking two years later, "Where is the money?"

My question is this: If you have no intention of fulfilling your promise to the city of Windsor to share 10% of the revenue, why should municipalities in Ontario believe you when you're offering them bribes to take charitable casinos now?

Hon Mr Tsubouchi: First of all, the municipalities have indicated to us, certainly over the last several months, that they had a concern in terms of resources needed to be used to monitor the effects of both the charity gaming club and the video lottery terminals, but also to have discussions within their own communities to determine what's best for their own communities. This is simply compensating back to municipalities. We've put it in writing to them. Everyone has had it in writing from us that this is $1,500 per video lottery machine.

But I might say that not everyone agrees with the honourable member in terms of the effect plus the positive aspect it can bring to your community. I might ask you to turn to your right a little bit and to the member for Cochrane South, who indicated he was pleased with the recent announcement because it will mean jobs in the Timmins area. Certainly this means between 200 and 300 jobs --

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker: Those comments were never made by myself, and the minister knows that. I ask him to withdraw.

The Speaker: I have no idea and I don't want to get involved in that. You may correct your own record. The minister's record is his to correct.

Hon Mr Tsubouchi: Mr Speaker, I'm sure the member gets the advantage of having the press clippings as well. They indicated over the weekend on CJQQ radio that the reports were that this was the case. If it wasn't, I certainly agree that it's a good-news scenario for Timmins, because it will mean 200 to 300 jobs in the area.

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TEACHERS' COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): I have a question for the Minister of Education and Training. A week ago the Premier said very publicly, in an effort to head off a potential clash with teachers across the province, that he would be willing to meet with the leadership of the various teachers' federations to discuss some of the issues of concern. Can you tell us, please, what the Premier has done over the last week and if he has met with any of the leadership of the various teachers' federations to discuss the issues of concern.

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Education and Training): I can tell the leader of the third party what I have done as Minister of Education to promote some discussions with the teachers' federations. I think they would be useful and fruitful. I understand the Premier thinks the same way.

I wrote to the president of the Ontario Teachers' Federation and asked a week ago for a meeting, for the fourth time, to discuss the proposal we've had to have an early retirement package available for teachers so we can keep young teachers in the teaching profession. I wrote again yesterday to the president of the Ontario Teachers' Federation and asked for a meeting so that we can discuss the issues surrounding the bill that we recently put in the House and other issues that may be of concern to the teachers' federation.

We have taken those steps and we have a track record of having fruitful conversations with teachers' federations and being able to alter the legislation that's before the House now because of those negotiations and consultations. I look forward to having more in the future. I think it's useful.

Mr Hampton: The answer is incredible. The fact of the matter is that the Premier has done absolutely nothing. Despite his public statements, he has done absolutely nothing to meet with the leadership of the various teachers' federations.

The minister refers to what he has done. I want to refer to what the minister has done as well. The first thing he did when he became Minister of Education was to say to ministry staff that the government needs to create a crisis in education. The second thing he did, after the government promised not to take any money out of classroom education, was to take $800 million out of the classroom on an annualized basis.

But it doesn't end there; it goes on. You are the minister who publicly across this province started to refer to our educational system as a broken system and you are the Minister of Education who on a regular basis started to talk about Ontario's students as mediocre. Your response is simply to write a letter now.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Question, please.

Mr Hampton: I want to ask you again: You are the person who has promoted this crisis. What is the Premier doing? Who has he met with in order to head off --

The Speaker: Thank you. Minister.

Hon Mr Snobelen: I won't go through a line-by-line response to all the things in the leader of the third party's preamble. They're obviously not accurate, and I think that's obvious to the leader of the third party.

I will say this. We had meetings coming out of the Bill 100 review with teachers. They expressed their concerns. We had meetings with them before we tabled the legislation. They expressed their concerns. They expressed their concerns about the right to strike, and we met that concern. They expressed their concern about the Bill 100 review that suggested that they lose their monopoly in representing teachers. We said that teachers expressed no problem with that, and so we respected what they told us. They told us they wanted to make sure that principals remain part of their community, remained in the bargaining unit, because they felt that would be the best environment in a school for learning and for the students, and we respected that submission.

We have a track record, unlike your government when it was in power, of talking with people, discussing things with them and bringing legislation forward that meets their concerns. We will continue to develop that track record in the interests of our students.

Mr Hampton: Minister, you say you have a track record. You do indeed have a track record, and let me continue reading from it. You are the Minister of Education who hired your personal lawyer to do a review of teachers' collective bargaining. A bit of a conflict of interest? You are the person who began over a year ago mumbling from one end of the province about how you wanted to take a further $1 billion out of the education system, and then you are the Minister of Education who in your legislation has attacked the very thing that teachers care about most. Teachers do want to be able to engage in discussion and negotiation about class size, because their working conditions affect children's learning conditions. You are the person who has introduced in the legislation an attempt to take away teachers' preparation time.

The Speaker: Question, please.

Mr Hampton: From the beginning until now, you have done everything you possibly can to force a confrontation with teachers. I want to know what the Premier has done about his promise --

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you.

Hon Mr Snobelen: Let's be very clear about track records. Your party is the party that left our students with fuzzy standards on a three-year basis so that no one understood, grade by grade, what was expected of them. We are the government, sir, that has brought in grade-by-grade standards. We are the people who have brought in a province-wide report card. We are the people who are fixing --

Interjections.

Hon Mr Snobelen: Let's be clear. You left our students with an unclear curriculum. You left our students stuck in mediocrity in terms of their performance on pan-Canadian and international tests. The leader of the third party --

Interjections.

Hon Mr Snobelen: You left our students with a $41,000 debt each. That's what you left our students with: a poor-quality education and a high debt. That's what you did to diminish their futures. We are working hard to repair the damage you have done, to repair the problems you created for our students. We'll continue to work hard to do that, because we believe the future of this province and the future of those young people depend on our hard work to improve the quality of education they get right across the province. I and my colleagues are committed to that goal and will continue to be committed to it.

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PROPERTY TAXATION

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): My question is to the Minister of Education and it is around Bill 160. One of the most amazing parts of the bill to many of us is that it gives Mike Harris the power to unilaterally, all by himself, set property tax rates to collect over $6 billion of property tax. For the first time in Ontario's history, it can all be done with the stroke of a pen, with no debate, in private, by the Premier, by what's called regulation. Mike Harris, alone, can set $6 billion of property tax. He's the $6-billion tax king with this bill.

My question is this: Why does Mike Harris want this bill to give him the power to unilaterally set $6 billion of property taxes in the province?

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Education and Training): I'm sure it won't surprise the honourable member that I take exception to the way he has represented the bill.

But I can tell him this: If he wants to go around and talk to property taxpayers in Ontario, property taxpayers who have seen the education portion of their property tax expand by 120% in the last decade while enrolment went up not nearly that amount, while inflation was not nearly that amount, if he wants to talk to the people who are paying those property taxes that are out of control, he'll find out why the people of Ontario think it's finally time for someone to take control of that, for someone to cap the costs they're paying through their property taxes for education. They've been asking for that for some time. It fell on deaf ears with your government, sir. It has not with this government.

Mr Phillips: Perhaps you don't understand the bill or perhaps you just don't want to answer it. But I want to say on behalf of Ontario that this is unprecedented. It is undemocratic. The Premier, with the stroke of a pen, no debate -- nobody from the public can have any input in this. This will be done at the cabinet table by the Premier, setting $6 billion of property tax. It is unheard of, and the people of Ontario want an answer from you. Do you understand, Minister, what you are doing? You are giving Mike Harris the unilateral power, unprecedented, to personally set $6 billion of property tax rate.

My question to you again is that this is undemocratic. Do you not agree that it is wrong? Do you not agree that the people of Ontario deserve an opportunity to have a discussion and a debate and some input before you set their property taxes? Do you not agree that it is wrong to give Mike Harris those unilateral powers? Will you agree today to change the bill so the people of Ontario will have some input before Mike Harris sets their property taxes?

Hon Mr Snobelen: We have done some broad consulting before this bill arrived in this Legislature. I'd suggest the honourable member do some consulting with the people of Ontario, because he will find they are frustrated and angry and fed up with rising property taxes to education. If he talks to the mayors from around Ontario, they'll tell him that they are tired of taking responsibility for collecting that, because they keep getting hit by their constituents that their property taxes are going up because of the school boards.

What we have done is that we have answered the request of AMO, we have acted on the reports that have been submitted to previous governments that fell on deaf ears.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Order. Minister?

Hon Mr Snobelen: During the proceeding of this bill through the House, during the debate on it, I'm glad that the member opposite will be presenting to the people of Ontario the opportunity of continuing to pay escalating property taxes. My colleagues and I will be proud to go them and say their property taxes for education will be cut in half because of this legislation.

ONTARIO HYDRO

Mr Floyd Laughren (Nickel Belt): I have a question for the minister responsible for Ontario Hydro, the Minister of Energy. The minister will know, I hope, that today the select committee on Hydro begins its hearings and that next week we'll be hearing from Mr Carl Andognini, the American whiz kid who's going to turn Hydro around.

The problem is that Mr Andognini, it seems to me, has a credibility problem. I have a copy of his application to the Atomic Energy Control Board that he made last spring -- he was applying for a five-year licence -- in which he said:

"A longer licence renewal regime would allow the licensee to more effectively manage its nuclear operation while proactively and expeditiously addressing necessary analytical work. As you are aware, licence periods in excess of 10 years for nuclear facilities are granted in other countries."

This is what Mr Andognini said to the AECB last spring. Then, a month or so later, he declares there's a crisis in Hydro's nuclear plants. Do you have any insights or inside information on which Mr Andognini will be appearing before the committee?

Hon Norman W. Sterling (Minister of Environment and Energy): Actually, both Mr Andogninis will be appearing.

Mr Laughren: It's a very good thing the select committee consists of some of the more experienced members in this assembly or we wouldn't be able to deal with that.

Mr Andognini's application to the AECB is full of all sorts of upbeat statements, but as I say, a month later it was a crisis at Ontario Hydro in their nuclear division. In it he says, this is to the AECB, "By defining good operation, monitoring performance and taking action to drive continued improvement, we ensure that the highest station priority, safe operation of the operating units, is being maintained." A month later it's a crisis situation.

What's bothering me is this is the person who is the chief of the nuclear division and you obviously must have some confidence in him or he wouldn't be there. I'm asking you today, do you find it as breathtaking as I do that Mr Andognini is making these statements?

Hon Mr Sterling: I think the member will find that as he goes through the select committee hearings, this problem and the context in which Mr Andognini is making the particular statements he refers to are very different with regard to the reason those statements were made. I guess what is very difficult for the public to understand and for members of the committee to grapple with is that the AECB, Ontario Hydro and Mr Andognini have said the reactors are operating safely at the present time.

The conundrum, of course, is to operate these reactors safely at a much higher efficiency; in other words, instead of being up 55% of the time, being up 80% of the time. That is the real question that is going on here and what Mr Andognini is trying to address.

That is why we have struck the select committee, so the public will have the answer to --

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): New question, member for Hamilton Mountain.

HOME CARE

Mr Trevor Pettit (Hamilton Mountain): My question is to the minister responsible for seniors. As you well know, many of my constituents on Hamilton Mountain are seniors, and during this time of health care restructuring they're deeply concerned. Their reliance on home care services makes them particularly vulnerable. My seniors have told me they need to be able to rely on support workers who serve them where they live -- the nurses, homemakers, therapy services and other home care workers. Without the assistance of these services, many people who now live independently would be in hospitals or long-term-care facilities.

In Hamilton right now the responsibility for home care services is being transferred over to community care access centres or CCACs. Minister, would you please explain to the seniors of my riding what makes the CCACs a superior method of service delivery versus the status quo, and how will they improve the care being offered to my constituents?

Hon Cameron Jackson (Minister without Portfolio [Seniors Issues]): I'd like to thank the member for his question and advise him and all members of the House this government is very proud of the 43 new community care access centres it has implemented across this province. This is overcoming previous problems of seniors and the disabled having to phone three or four different phone numbers, and also they'd have multiple assessments being done on them for a whole range of services. This one-window access to home care is more sensitive to their needs, more cost-effective for taxpayers, and therefore we'll be able to provide more services. So far, I'm pleased to report, we've started up 41 community care access centres across this province and seniors are very enthusiastic about the new moneys that are coming in.

I know members on all sides of the House have raised questions about the deficit in Hamilton-Wentworth. I want to assure members that what's changed in Hamilton-Wentworth is that we have community members serving on a board, with higher standards of accountability for service agreements. Business plans are now being signed for the first time in Ontario's history and we're very proud of that.

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Mr Pettit: What especially worries my elderly constituents is the transitional period when the system is changing from the current community providers to the new CCAC structure. They worry that some services could fall by the wayside as the system and the administration are realigning themselves. I would ask the minister to assure the seniors of Hamilton Mountain and the province that the restructuring will be competently managed and they will continue to receive the same high quality of care during this period of transition.

Hon Mr Jackson: I can assure members that CCACs will be delivering the highest-quality services available in this province. I'm pleased to report, having visited almost every one of these CCAC centres across the province, that the transition period has gone very smoothly. There has been no disruption of services. We have provided additional equity funding, they have signed their business agreements and we're very pleased the transition phase has worked very well. In fact, on Friday I was in Sudbury meeting with all nine northern CCACs to discuss and resolve any of the difficulties they might be experiencing.

The bottom line is that seniors and the disabled have waited 10 years, through three governments, to have this form of service delivery for seniors and the disabled in this province. We're very proud that we have been able to provide it, that it is increasing accountability at the local governance model level in communities, that we are having a common assessment tool so that seniors, whether they're in Hamilton or in Thunder Bay, are getting equal treatment, and finally, that we are bringing quality assurances for the first time in home care to the province.

PROSTITUTION

Ms Annamarie Castrilli (Downsview): My question is for the Attorney General. You are part of a government that proudly proclaims it is fighting for law and order and common sense, yet ironically while you are busy imposing a whole range of user fees on the people of Ontario, it seems you are not willing to allow men who purchase sexual favours to contribute a $500 fee towards john school, a program that helps them to deal with the consequences of their behaviour.

The proponents of the fee argue that the $500 fee would be in the nature of recouping administrative costs for the Salvation Army and Metro Toronto, and go towards StreetLight, which is a program to help rehabilitate prostitutes. They argue that it is the johns, not the taxpayers, not the community, who ought to pay for these costs. Your ministry is stonewalling. Would you not agree that common sense dictates that you charge the appropriate people, the johns, and not the communities?

Hon Charles Harnick (Attorney General, minister responsible for native affairs): I appreciate the important question from the member. We have been working with the StreetLight organization to develop the program that now exists by way of the john school. Certainly we have worked with that organization and indicated an administrative fee would be reasonable in terms of funding the actual john school program.

Unfortunately, the cost of the recommended $450 or $500 fee is considerably more than the cost of running the program. I'd like to tell the member that similar programs are running in Hamilton, Ottawa and St Catharines where the administrative fee to be involved in these programs is roughly half that suggested by StreetLight. So we are working with StreetLight to come up with an administrative fee that will cover the cost of the program. That's the way we want to correct this situation.

Ms Castrilli: StreetLight is quite a different program. StreetLight is a program that rehabilitates prostitutes, but john school is what we're talking about. It is the fee for the john school that right now the province is refusing to allow, to pay for Metro Toronto johns. As you pointed out and indeed as Metro councillor Judy Sgro, the chair of the Task Force on Prostitution, has indicated, there are jurisdictions in Ontario which charge for the services that are rendered. Really the question is: Why is it that in other jurisdictions in Ontario they are being allowed to levy a charge, and here in Metro Toronto that does not seem to be the case? Why the discrimination, why the delay, and what are you afraid of?

Hon Mr Harnick: I thought I had answered that question, and the answer is quite simply that we are prepared to allow an administrative charge to fund the john school program. The problem we have is that the administrative charge suggested by those who now operate the program is not only to operate the john school diversion program, set up pursuant to section 213 of the Criminal Code, but it is to do more, it is to fund more than just this program.

The difficulty we have is that this is not the way other programs in Ontario have been set up. What we are inclined to want to do is set up the program to be consistent with those others to pay for the john school, because that is what the diversion program was set up to do. We are trying to develop an administrative fee that will do that and that will be consistent with other administrative fees so that we can run this diversion program properly.

DOMESTIC ABUSE

Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): I have a question for the Minister of Community and Social Services. I have here a letter from one of your parental support workers to a woman dependent on family benefits. The woman in question is a victim of spousal abuse. She lived for a time in the women's shelter and counselling services in Huron. Now she is on her own and is attempting to put her life together, but the letter she received from your ministry told her that it is her responsibility to ensure that here ex-partner, her abuser, be present at the benefits meeting.

The letter goes on to say that she is also responsible for ensuring that her abuser complete and forward a financial statement. "Failure to do so will require you to retain legal counsel and make an application for support," says the letter. Minister, are you aware of the kind of danger that puts a victim of spousal abuse in?

Hon Janet Ecker (Minister of Community and Social Services): Yes, I am very aware of the danger. If the honourable member would very kindly provide me with the details, I'll look into it immediately.

Ms Churley: You need to understand the position of abuse victims. Minister of Community and Social Services, this letter constitutes nothing more than further abuse. Bill 142 gives unprecedented powers to your family support workers. If anything, you are making the situation worse.

We all understand the need to ensure that non-custodial parents pay their obligation. As you can see, Minister, I'm very upset by this, but your government is not enforcing support orders. It appears as though you have given abuse victims that responsibility. In your haste to make changes, you have forgotten some of the important details; in this case it is the lives of abuse victims. Where is the screening process? Why was this woman put in this frightening situation? Will you make sure that it doesn't happen again?

Hon Mrs Ecker: With all due respect to the honourable member, and I appreciate the need for confidentiality in this, it's going to be a little difficult for me to follow up when I don't have the information of the individual who is in this circumstance. I would very much like to get that information so we are able to ensure that procedures were followed appropriately and that no one was put in danger.

The other thing I would like to say to the honourable member is that one of the things we are attempting to do in Bill 142, our welfare legislation, is to make sure we have parental support workers whose job it is to help women who have moneys owed to them by other parents who are not paying child support. One of the things we are attempting to do is to assist them. If procedures have not been followed, I will certainly look into this. I repeat to the honourable member that some information would be very helpful to follow through on this.

Ms Churley: It's a form letter, Janet. It's a form letter that your ministry is sending to victims of abuse. Will you admit it?

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): The member for Riverdale, come to order. I'm warning the member for Riverdale to come to order. Minister.

Hon Mrs Ecker: If a procedure has been adopted that is not appropriate for these circumstances, we will certainly change it. I would like to thank the honourable member for bringing it to my attention.

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TEACHERS' COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Mr Tim Hudak (Niagara South): My question is to the Minister of Education and Training. The big issue in the riding this weekend when I was back home was clear. It's about the possibility of an illegal teachers' strike across Ontario. In fact, students were here today from Ridgeway and Crystal Beach High School. Mr Neigh's class and Mrs McCallum's class joined us in the gallery, and the students were very clear that they don't want to see an illegal strike in Ontario. I don't think in my heart of hearts that the classroom teachers want an illegal strike.

But every time I turn on the news or read the papers, unlike the students and unlike the classroom teachers, it seems like the leaders of the unions keep talking about pushing for an illegal strike across the province. I think it's very clear that the students, parents and classroom teachers want the children to stay in school, but the unions are playing a different tune.

My question to the minister: What is he doing to try to avert the possibility of an illegal teachers' strike?

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Education and Training): I thank the member for Niagara South for the question. I share his view that the teachers in Ontario's classrooms have a great respect for their students and a wish to honour their obligations to those students and to their contracts. I agree that they are certainly not eager to do anything illegal.

I wrote to the president of the Ontario Teachers' Federation a week ago and asked for a series of talks. After publicly saying that I would be open for consultation, we wrote last night and suggested that that would be useful at this time. I'm looking forward to a response in the affirmative from the teachers' federation some time in the very near future.

Mr Hudak: I'm pleased to hear that the minister is open to these discussions. I'm sure the parents and students and the average classroom teacher out there are very pleased to hear that. The question I think they would have me ask is: What will be the issues the minister would discuss in these meetings?

Hon Mr Snobelen: I certainly wouldn't want to constrain the talks by setting parameters, but I can tell you I would be very interested in discussing with the teachers' federation how useful it would be for teachers and for students to have a cap on class sizes. I would be willing to talk with them about how elementary school teachers in Ontario have the same amount of time in class as their counterparts in other provinces, and yet our secondary school teachers have less time with their students than teachers in other provinces. I think it would be useful to have that conversation.

I would like to talk with them about how we could have a retirement package put in place -- we put $250 million in the last budget for this purpose -- to make sure we have young teachers coming into the system. I think it would be useful for us to have a conversation about that.

At the end of the day, as I have been for the last two and a half years, I'm interested in hearing their input on how we can meet what should be our common goals, I believe: to have the highest student performance in Canada by Ontario students and to do this at the best cost possible. I think that's what we owe our students and I'd be willing to work with the federations to do just that.

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I have some issues to raise with the Minister of Education regarding our post-secondary students in Ontario and the lack of support your government is giving to them. There are some facts that don't add up.

The number of students who need to borrow to finance their education has gone up this year by 53% since the 1991-92 year. Over the course of that time, your government has taken $20 million out of student job plans. You've raised tuition by 30%. You have put Ontario last on the list of funding per capita out of all other provinces. You've put us 10th out of 10. Your government is on the verge of implementing no rent control for students, who tend to move considerably more than others. On top of this, you have no real solution to address the skyrocketing debt that our college and university students are facing.

Your proposal of an income-contingent loan repayment plan has been severely criticized. The model is unworkable. It doesn't meet the needs of students. It will discourage qualified students from applying, knowing that their debts will be $25,000 or more. You've slammed the door on those students.

Why won't you sit down with the primary stakeholders, the students, to work out a better plan to deal with student debt than you have created?

Hon John Snobelen (Minister of Education and Training): I'm pleased to report to the member for Scarborough North that I have met with student associations over the last couple of years, working on the very difficult issue of how to support students in paying their fair share of their education costs. Most people recognize there is a fair share, but they also recognise that students will have a difficulty in meeting that fair share of their costs.

To do that we have encouraged our federal counterparts to work on an income-contingent loans package. It makes sense to us to allow students to repay their fair share over the productive course of their career, so that the repayment would be tailored to the amount of money they were earning after graduation. We understand students sometimes don't have high-paying jobs immediately after graduation, so an ICLP would allow us to meet their needs.

We also have taken several other actions that the member for Scarborough North would be aware of to help our students, particularly our students who are most in need. We continue to move forward to an income-contingent loans package that will help us meet all those needs.

Mr Curling: Your lack of financial support is threatening those institutions in a way that ensures Ontario will stay last, as I said to you before, in funding, out of all the provinces. We should be supporting a well-educated workforce, but this government is not committed to that.

Your proposal lacks consideration with regard to grants, an interest-free period from graduation during periods of unemployment, an improvement of the current OSAP situation, like not penalizing students who have to work part-time to meet the costs not met by the current loans formula that you are trying to propose.

Minister, what you have done is slammed the door on further education. I suggest to you that you are listening to only those you think are advising you. Will you consider our proposal that would give encouragement to those students who want to be further educated, and not penalize those who have a smaller income, by having a longer time to pay off those debts? Will you do that?

Hon Mr Snobelen: Obviously this government has continued to work with groups to help our students and help accessibility to excellent-quality programs in the post-secondary sector in Ontario. We think that's important to the future of Ontario.

If I can point out to the member for Scarborough North, recently his federal cousins in the throne speech presented a couple of programs I think will be useful for post-secondary that were based on, or at least followed the example of Ontario, where we last year put in place the Ontario merit scholarships, which will help our best-performing excellent students in the province, and the Ontario student opportunity trust fund, a trust fund for the students most in need in the province, that has exceeded expectations and now sits at some $500 million.

These are programs your federal cousins have looked at and said, "These make sense for the students right across Canada." We'll continue to work hand in hand to get a better environment for our young people.

PETITIONS

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE FOR THE DISABLED

Mr Gilles E. Morin (Carleton East): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the government of Ontario has introduced Bill 142, An Act to revise the law related to Social Assistance by enacting the Ontario Works Act and the Ontario Disability Support Program Act, by repealing the Family Benefits Act, the Vocational Rehabilitation Services Act and the General Welfare Assistance Act and by amending several other Statutes; and

"Whereas Bill 142 and its regulations will have a direct and substantial impact on the lives of many people with disabilities and their families;

"We, the undersigned, respectfully petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"To urge the government of Ontario to release the proposed regulations related to Bill 142 immediately, so there can be meaningful public discussion of the changes that will result from this legislation and to ensure that Bill 142 and its regulations are subject to extensive and public hearings across Ontario so that the people who are affected by this legislation and the related regulations are given adequate opportunity to be heard."

I have signed this petition.

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ANIMAL WELFARE

Mr Tim Hudak (Niagara South): I have approximately 200 names on this petition. It reads as follows:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas ownership of a domestic animal or pet is a responsibility, not a right; and

"Whereas owners have a responsibility to treat their domestic animals with care and utmost concern for their wellbeing; and

"Whereas cruelty to animals should be punished and sanctioned with fines, penalties and/or bans on animal ownership; and

"Whereas inspectors of the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should not be obstructed from carrying out their duties to investigate abuse or neglect;

"We, the undersigned, support the amendments to the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act."

I affix my signature.

EDUCATION FINANCING

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): This is a petition regarding Bill 160 to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. I know the Minister of Education will want to hear it.

"Whereas education is our future; and

"Whereas students and teachers will not allow their futures to be sacrificed for tax cuts; and

"Whereas students, parents and teachers will not allow the government to bankrupt Ontario's education system; and

"Whereas we cannot improve achievement by lowering standards; and

"Whereas students, parents, teachers want reinvestment in education rather than reduction in funding; and

"Whereas students, parents and teachers won't back down;

"Therefore, be it resolved that we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to withdraw Bill 160 immediately; and

"Further, be it resolved that the Legislative Assembly of Ontario instruct the Minister of Education and Training to do his homework and to be a cooperative learner rather than imposing his solution which won't work for the students, parents and teachers of Ontario."

I affix my signature to this petition.

FIRE IN HAMILTON

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have a petition to the Minister of Environment and Energy and the Premier of Ontario.

"Whereas a fire at a PVC plastic vinyl plant located in the middle of one of Hamilton's residential areas burned for three days; and

"Whereas the city of Hamilton declared a state of emergency and called for a limited voluntary evacuation of several blocks around the site; and

"Whereas the burning of PVC results in the formation and release of toxic substances such as dioxins as well as large quantities of heavy metals and other dangerous chemicals;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to hold a full public inquiry on the Hamilton Plastimet fire; and

"Further, we, the undersigned, request that the Ministry of Environment and the government of Ontario take responsibility for the immediate cleanup of the fire site."

On behalf of my constituents, I add my name to theirs.

PUBLIC SERVICE AND LABOUR RELATIONS REFORM

Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia): "To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the Progressive Conservative government has failed to address the root causes of waste, duplication and unnecessary administration in our health care system; and

"Whereas the provincial government has introduced Bill 136, the Public Sector Transition Stability Act, that makes it easier for employers to reduce the number of front-line staff and to lower their salaries and benefits and thus causing further deterioration in quality patient care; and

"Whereas Bill 136 also erodes the democratic process by tampering with collective agreements and potentially interfering with workers' choice of bargaining agents;

"We, the undersigned, therefore petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to withdraw Bill 136, the Public Sector Transition Stability Act, and restructure the health care system in a safe, coordinated and rational way."

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): I have a petition which is much like the last petition you heard from the member for Sarnia and deals with Bill 136. It's to the Honourable Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"We, the following undersigned citizens of Ontario, beg leave to petition the Parliament of Ontario as follows:

"Whereas Bill 136, the Public Sector Dispute Resolution Act, 1997, will not meet its stated objective to facilitate collective bargaining in the event of mergers and amalgamations; and

"Further, if enacted, Bill 136 will interfere with free collective bargaining, impose a new bureaucratic and dictatorial regime, remove the right to fair and impartial arbitration of disputes and the right to strike; and

"Whereas the Ontario Labour Relations Board has a long and successful history of mediating labour disputes;

"Therefore, in the interest of maintaining and enhancing quality public services provided by dedicated public employees, we hereby petition the Ontario government to withdraw its proposed Bill 136 legislation and support a fair and workable system that will not disrupt the supply of public services to the community or the livelihoods of thousands of Ontarians."

I agree with this petition and I have signed it accordingly.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas workers' health and safety must be protected in the province of Ontario, especially the right to refuse work which is likely to endanger a worker, the right to know about workplace hazards and the right to participate in joint health and safety committees; and

"Whereas the Occupational Health and Safety Act and its regulations help protect workers' health and safety and workers' rights in this area; and

"Whereas the government's discussion paper Review of the Occupational Health and Safety Act threatens workers' health and safety by proposing to deregulate the existing act and regulations to reduce or eliminate workers' health and safety rights and to reduce enforcement of health and safety laws by the Ministry of Labour; and

"Whereas workers must have a full opportunity to be heard about this proposed drastic erosion in their present protections from injuries and occupational diseases;

"Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to oppose any attempt to erode the present provisions of the Occupational Health and Safety Act and its regulations. Further, we, the undersigned, demand that public hearings on the discussion paper be held in at least 20 communities throughout Ontario."

On behalf of my NDP colleagues, I sign my name to theirs.

HUNTING AND FISHING

Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): I'm pleased to present a petition sent by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, 121 people from across this province, including two in my riding, supporting the hunting heritage in Ontario. I'm pleased to enter it to be a record of the Legislature of the province of Ontario.

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): "To the Legislature of Ontario:

"Whereas the undersigned residents living in the city of Thunder Bay in northwestern Ontario are in need of a new regional acute care hospital situated in the city of Thunder Bay to provide the said residents with quality health care services in a modern and up-to-date acute care hospital; and

"Whereas the partial renovation and restructuring of the existing Port Arthur General Hospital, a 65-year-old outdated and antiquated hospital building, proposed by the health services review commission and the Minister of Health for the province of Ontario will not be suitable, adequate or proper to provide such quality health care services to the said residents; and

"Whereas the undersigned residents endorse and support the Thunder Bay Regional Hospital and the trustees of the hospital board in their vision of a new centrally located hospital to serve the northwestern Ontario region;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature of Ontario to reverse the decision and direction of the health services review commission and the Minister of Health to have all acute care services for the city of Thunder Bay and northwestern Ontario region delivered from the renovated and restructured site of Port Arthur General Hospital and to endorse and approve capital funding to build a new centrally located acute care hospital in the city of Thunder Bay."

Once again, this is signed by several hundred constituents in my riding, and I've affixed my signature in full agreement.

FIRE IN HAMILTON

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have a further petition regarding the need for a public inquiry into the Plastimet fire in Hamilton. It's signed by constituents in my riding in the streets of Picton West, Hughson Street North, Bay Street North, Victoria, MacNab and Macauley. It reads as follows:

"We, the undersigned, request the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Energy and Environment Canada jointly: (1) to conduct a full-scale public inquiry into the Hamilton Plastimet fire to determine the complete nature and extent of the pollution it has caused, the health effects on firefighters and others attending the fire, as well as residents in Hamilton and farther afield; and (2) to ensure safe, speedy and complete cleanup of the fire site, plus residential and all other areas where chemicals from the fire have fallen out."

I add my name to those of my constituents.

COURT DECISION

Mr Bob Wood (London South): I have a petition signed by 44 people.

"Whereas the courts have ruled that women have the lawful right to go topless in public; and

"Whereas the Liberal government of Canada has the power to change the Criminal Code to reinstate such public nudity as an offence;

"We, the undersigned, respectfully petition the government of Ontario to pass a bill empowering municipalities to enact bylaws governing dress code and to continue to urge the government of Canada to pass legislation to reinstate such partial nudity as an offence."

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TVONTARIO

Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): The people of Ontario are very concerned about the threat of privatization of TVOntario and petitions are coming in from all across the province calling for public consultation before any decision is made. The petition reads:

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas TVOntario is owned by the people of Ontario; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government has opposed public support for maintaining TVO as a publicly owned and funded educational broadcaster by putting TVO through a privatization review; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government has not confirmed that full public participation will be part of this privatization review;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to hold open and honest public consultation with the people of Ontario before making a decision on the future of TVO."

This is sent to me by Susanne Marquardt from Thunder Bay. I am very grateful for that and I am very pleased to sign my name to that petition.

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia): I have a further petition.

To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the Progressive Conservative government of Ontario has decided to reduce taxes by 30%; and

"Whereas this government has proceeded to reduce the level of public health care service through the hospital restructuring committee; and

"Whereas complementary legislation such as Bill 7, Bill 26 and Bill 136 are turning the negotiation process into a one-sided sham; and

"Whereas the morale of these front-line health care employees has hit rock bottom;

"We, the undersigned organized staff in the Sarnia-Lambton health care sector and members of the carpenters' Local 1256 and users of health care, do petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

"To withdraw Bill 136 and to re-establish the funding and level of service in the health care sector."

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): I have a petition signed by a number of people from the west end of Toronto and it's addressed to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It reads as follows:

"Whereas the Ministry of Health has started to charge seniors and social assistance recipients a $2 user fee for each prescription filled since July 15, 1996; and

"Whereas seniors on a fixed income do not significantly benefit from the income tax savings created by this user fee copayment or from other non-health user fees; and

"Whereas the perceived savings to health care from the $2 user fee will not compensate for the suffering and misery caused by this user fee or the painstaking task involved to fill out the application forms; and

"Whereas the current Minister of Health promised as an opposition MPP that his party would not endorse legislation that will punish patients to the detriment of health care in Ontario;

"Therefore, we, the undersigned residents, strongly urge the government to repeal this user fee plan, because the tax-saving user fee concept is not fair, sensitive or accessible to low-income or fixed-income seniors; and lest we forget, our province's seniors have paid their dues by collectively contributing to the social, economic, moral and political fabric of Canada."

Consequently, I am proud to affix my signature to this document.

ABORTION

Mr Bob Wood (London South): I have a petition signed by 253 people.

"Whereas the Ontario health system is overburdened and unnecessary spending must be cut; and

"Whereas pregnancy is not a disease, injury or illness, and abortions are not therapeutic procedures; and

"Whereas the vast majority of abortions are done for reasons of convenience or finance; and

"Whereas the province has the exclusive authority to determine what services will be insured; and

"Whereas the Canada Health Act does not require funding for elective procedures; and

"Whereas there is mounting evidence that abortion is in fact hazardous to women's health; and

"Whereas Ontario taxpayers funded over 45,000 abortions in 1993 at an estimated cost of $25 million;

"Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to cease from providing any taxpayers' dollars for the performance of abortions."

ORDERS OF THE DAY

FAIR MUNICIPAL FINANCE ACT, 1997 (NO. 2) / LOI DE 1997 SUR LE FINANCEMENT ÉQUITABLE DES MUNICIPALITÉS (N^O 2)

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 149, An Act to continue the reforms begun by the Fair Municipal Finance Act, 1997 and to make other amendments respecting the financing of local governments / Projet de loi 149, Loi continuant les réformes amorcées par la Loi de 1997 sur le financement équitable des municipalités et apportant d'autres modifications relativement au financement des administrations locales.

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I rise at a very turbulent time in the life of this particular government, the Harris regime. Over the past two weeks we have seen major retreats on issues. In fact, the other day when the Premier stood in the House with a lot of bravado and bluster and denounced what he called the union bosses, and then the Minister of Labour got up and capitulated to all of the demands which had been made, legitimately, by representatives of working people in this province, I wondered whether I was looking at reality. But what I could hear in the background was the bugle of retreat sounding, the white flag flying on the other side of the House.

A lot of people would condemn the government for that. I don't condemn the government for capitulating on this very significant bill. They brought in a bill which had a lot of very tough provisions. The Premier went around the province telling everybody how he was going to put labour in its place. Various members of the government went around the province and they were telling their friends in the big business community and the contributors to their campaign how at long last here was a government that was going to put those public service workers in their place.

What the government found out was that the people who work in the public service have neighbours and friends and relatives and family, and people recognize the significant role they play in our province, and the government began to see itself diving in the polls. Every one of the public opinion polls saw the government diving in support. So despite the hard-line, right-wing Conservatives who support the Reform Party federally and who are very concerned about this issue, the Premier totally capitulated, and I want to compliment the Premier. I don't often compliment the Premier in this House, but I want to compliment the Premier on his total capitulation to what he calls the union bosses. I don't call them that. I, of course, call them the elected representatives of working people in this province, but the Premier calls them union bosses.

He reminded me the other day of -- the members for Oakville South and Wellington won't remember this because they're too young, but the Minister of Agriculture might remember -- Phineas T. Bluster. Mr Bluster, they called him in the TV show called Howdy Doody. I hear it's coming back now. Phineas T. Bluster would be all bluster. There really wasn't much substance there, there really wasn't much backbone there, but Phineas T. Bluster would get up and bluster all the time. That's what I thought I saw a week ago Thursday. I was flabbergasted, because I saw the Premier get up in as tough a stance as I've seen --

Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): On a point of order, Madam Speaker: This is not Howdy Doody time; it's debate on Bill 149. I have yet to hear, in four minutes of debate, any reference to the bill. I was wondering if you could bring the speaker on topic.

The Acting Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Thank you for your help. I would remind the member for St Catharines -- the rules are very clear on that -- he should speak to the bill.

Mr Bradley: I always like to put this in context of the total government program, and it's always nice to have the YPCs, the Young Progressive Conservatives, the most right wing of the right wing, those who are aspiring to be in the cabinet, rise to point out the fact that perhaps a speaker on the opposition side isn't as much on topic as he might be. The problem is it's usually, as the member for Fort York will agree, when an opposition member is making a salient point, is really revealing to the public of Ontario what's going on.

I'm just wondering, having seen the government do a full retreat on Bill 136, whether it intends to do the same on Bill 149, the so-called Fair Municipal Finance Act. I'm not convinced yet, but I see some evidence, and I hear the beeping of the truck moving backwards, because you want to signal when you're backing up. I hear some evidence that in this municipal field, the government may be backing down as well.

The relentless questioning by members of the opposition has taken its toll on the government ministers and on the Premier. I know that. All of our colleagues at the municipal level of government, some of them good Conservatives, have been attacking this government for attempting to download responsibilities which legitimately are those of the provincial government on to the local level of government. The government is obviously feeling that heat and I suspect we're going to see some capitulation. Indeed, with these special kitties they've put aside, these special funds, no doubt they will be coming forth as benevolent uncles, giving money to Brockville, Ontario, where they're closing down the psychiatric hospital.

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I well recall the statement of a good friend of mine in this House, Bob Runciman, who is the member for Leeds-Grenville and the Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services. I read in the paper what his mother had to say about the closing of that hospital. I can't think of anybody who was more accurate in her assessment of what this government was doing. I'm glad to see that she wouldn't be intimidated by the fact that her son -- I'm sure she's very proud of him, and should be -- is in the cabinet. In fact there are some in the government benches who suggested that her son wrote the statement. I can't believe that. I will not believe that.

Hon Noble Villeneuve (Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, minister responsible for francophone affairs): It's not true.

Mr Bradley: Noble Villeneuve says it's not true -- I'll take his word for it -- that the member for Leeds-Grenville actually said that about the closing of the psychiatric hospital.

I vary from the topic. I'm mindful of the member for Nepean, who wants to keep me on topic now that he has reduced my speaking time to 20 minutes on any particular bill. Through his prompting of the government, through his effort to ingratiate himself with the Premier, he has had the rules of this House changed so that the government can whistle through its legislation in record time.

What you have to watch with this as well is that it must be taken in the context of all the downloading. I was talking to someone in St Catharines the other day who has a child on a travelling team or an all-star hockey team. That person said that just to get on the ice now it is some $800. The Speaker, the member for Etobicoke West, mentioned a figure in the amount of $1,100 simply to be able to get on the ice. That's for all-star hockey. What this means is that if you're the child of a rich person in the province, you're going to be able to play all-star hockey, but if you are the child of a person with a modest income, the people this government has forgotten, then it's just too bad.

I don't believe we're going to be able to provide a Cadillac for everybody. I don't believe you can provide a $5-million mansion for everybody to live in. I don't think people can all wear -- what is it they wear? -- $2,500 suits or something like that. This suit here is far less than that, I can assure you. I don't think you can do that, but I do believe we should have equal opportunity for youngsters in our community to make it.

I am fearful that when this bill passes, not just by itself but in the context of the major downloading taking place, we will see a further division in our province, with the rich, the powerful and the privileged receiving the great benefits and the rest simply having to make do with the minimum of benefits that might be available to people in this province.

That's most unfortunate, because while I think Ontarians want to see everybody who can do so working hard to be able to move ahead, to be able to provide for themselves -- I think all people agree with that -- they are concerned when they see that people who are unable to do so are shunted to the sidelines.

I mentioned in a statement yesterday that I attended on Saturday, along with the member for Welland-Thorold, at Club Social on East Main Street in Welland, a forum sponsored by People First Welland. It had people from all over the province. These are people with disabilities and these are people who are extremely apprehensive about some of the legislative and regulatory changes they're seeing in the province.

This government would miscalculate if it were to do damage to these people in any way, because while I say there may not be sympathy out there for those who are unprepared to look after themselves and are capable of doing so, there is a good deal of empathy and support for people who are disabled in some way or other and are trying to cope with that disability or are trying to overcome that disability. "Every time we put a new user fee on people, that is a tax." Who said that? Well, I didn't say it. Mike Harris, the now Premier of Ontario, when he was leader of the third party, the Progressive Conservative Party, said to the people of this province, "A user fee is a tax."

On that basis this government has probably been responsible for several thousand tax increases in this province since it came to office, since these user fees have been increased both by this government and by municipalities that have had no other choice except to raise user fees. If you are wealthy, if you are privileged, if you are powerful and if you don't have a social conscience, if you are in all those categories and you don't have a social conscience, then that means you should be happy with this government.

I am always amazed at the number of government members, the family coalition caucus, I call them, the family values caucus, who walk out of church on Sunday morning with their pious faces and say, "I am a moral and good and ethical person," but when it comes to implementing that which has been taught in church in a variety of fields, they sometimes forget the rest of it, that it is not simply living the pious life that is important, the moral life that is important, but it is also important --

Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): Madam Speaker, on point of order: If you were paying close attention to what the member for St Catharines was just saying, I think he's impugning motive.

The Acting Speaker: I have to admit I didn't hear what he said. I was distracted here for a moment. If the member has anything to apologize for, I would ask him to do so. If not, there's nothing I can do. I didn't hear him.

Mr Bradley: I was not at all impugning motives. I thought that anyone this applied to might get up to object, but others out there, I'm sure, would not worry about it. Anyone who didn't get up to object would say that it wouldn't apply to them. I'm sure of that.

I'm really perturbed by this because I simply ask how it is that people can come out -- we all know the teachings of the churches. We have had the letter from Bishop Asbil of the Anglican Church, the Bishop of Niagara, who wrote an open letter to the Premier expressing his objection to the way the Premier was dealing with social issues in the province. I read that letter into the record. I happen to know Bishop Asbil and I have a good deal of respect for him. People from the other churches have put out letters expressing concern about what the government is doing, what its agenda is all about.

The point I'm making is that you can't simply wear the label of churchman or churchwoman and then come out and not live that life, not remember that which is taught in church. I think that's important. There is a service, an empathy for others that is learned through the teachings in various churches in this province. I think it's important that those who wear the family values label are able to also remember those who are less fortunate than themselves, because it's really very important for all of us to remember that we do so.

When I see the downloading that is part of this total platform -- and the member who intervenes, I remember when he intervened when they were going to close his hospital -- St Mary's hospital was it? I think it was. He said he was very thankful to that hospital for saving his life. I know there are many people around this province who have hospitals they feel equally strongly about, that they believe should not be closed. That's why I know he will join me in holding the Premier of this province to the promise that he made during the 1995 election campaign, when he said, "Certainly, Robert," referring to Robert Fisher of Global TV, "I can guarantee you it is not my plan to close hospitals."

I join my friends from the Kitchener-Waterloo area in fighting to keep that hospital open. I commend the member for speaking out on that and I join him in wanting to keep his hospital open.

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Interjection.

Mr Bradley: My good friend from Lambton intervenes and mentions the words "video lottery terminal."

Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton): No, no, no.

Mr Bradley: I heard an interjection from someone who mentioned it. Let me say, this bill mentions charities occupying industrial or commercial lands. I don't know if that refers to charity casinos or not, but I do know that in the realm of assessment and taxation -- the Speaker wants me to be on topic -- the Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations, faced with over 50 municipalities that said, "We don't want the electronic slot machines in our area," said: "If you take them, I've got a deal for you. I've got $1,500 per machine for you, so you might get over $200,000 and your charities will benefit." The Minister of Municipal Affairs said, "Woe betide those municipalities that don't accept these charity casinos," because they're not going to get the so-called benefits of them. I see that in this bill. I see a reference made in this bill to it.

I know that our municipality, St Catharines, has said: "We'll have none of the hush money, we'll have none of the conscience money, we'll have none of the blood money that comes with the installation of video lottery terminals, electronic slot machines, that prey upon the most vulnerable people, the most desperate people in our society, the most addicted people to gambling. We'll have none of that. Even though we're experiencing a downloading of responsibility and millions of dollars of additional costs for municipalities to assume, we don't want those machines. We don't want machines that will prey upon the most vulnerable people in our society."

Conrad Black won't be playing video lottery terminals if he comes into one of the ridings where there's video lottery terminals. Trevor Eyton isn't going to play them. Conrad Black isn't going to play them. Bill Gates, when he comes to Canada, won't be playing them. But people who are desperate, people who are not well connected to the rich and the powerful and the privileged, who don't have the same opportunity as others, in desperation often turn to gambling when the opportunity presents itself.

By extending that opportunity, by escalating and expanding the gambling avenues in this province, this government is encouraging that. It is doing so to make up for the loss of revenue that exists in the budget because you are giving an income tax cut of 30% which will benefit the most wealthy in our society to the largest extent.

I hear government members say: "The revenues are still coming in. Boy, you should see the revenues coming in." I'll tell you where they're coming from. They're coming from gambling. The price we pay socially, the price we pay in the tearing of our social fabric through this constant escalation of gambling opportunities, is a price which I believe is too high to justify the money which will come into the coffers of the province.

I find this bill to be part of the general agenda of this government, which is why I felt it was necessary to expand beyond the specific confines and provisions of this bill, to put it in the context of the total government program which is being presented to this Legislature in record time.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?

Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): Responding to the member for St Catharines, I appreciate his understanding of the need to put this, and quite frankly any other piece of legislation that has gone through this Parliament since Bill 26, in the broader context. These are all pieces of a puzzle and this government had better start to understand that the image contained in that puzzle is starting to become more and more apparent to more and more people across this whole province.

Just this last Saturday, Jim Bradley, the member for St Catharines, and I were down at the Club Social in Welland where People First, an organization, a movement, I tell you, of persons with disabilities had organized a conference. There were people there from all over Ontario gathering down in Welland at the Club Social. They were people who spoke on behalf of themselves, on behalf of their families, on behalf of their communities about their concern and their intimate familiarity with the serious impact this government's downloading is going to have on people's lives in Welland and Thorold and Pelham and St Catharines and Niagara-on-the-Lake, Niagara Falls, Fort Erie, Port Colborne et al across this province; how this government's abandonment of community is going to hurt communities, is going to hurt families and is going to hurt individuals, and as often as not the most vulnerable of individuals, people who historically and systemically have been marginalized, who have been struggling with great courage and tenacity to find their rightful place in the mainstream, who now find themselves being shoved off to the side once again.

Property taxpayers in Welland and Thorold, across Niagara, understand that this government's downloading is going to result in property tax increases of literally hundreds of dollars. This government's abandonment of social housing, of non-profit housing, of co-op housing, which has been so successful in Niagara region and so important for so many families and so many mothers and their kids and working people and, yes, the unemployed and seniors, is going to be thrown to the wolves, is going to be thrown to the private sector.

This government's abandonment of community and family is a tragedy that will take decades and generations to overcome, but my people in Welland and Thorold are ready for that --

The Acting Speaker: Thank you. The member's time has expired. Further questions and comments?

Mr Tim Hudak (Niagara South): I'm pleased to rise and bring the debate to Bill 149. The members for St Catharines and Welland-Thorold will know about the very important thing in this bill, the item in terms of international bridges and tunnels. In fact, when we came to Port Colborne to talk about these measures in the finance bill, we realized how important it was to allow for the expansion, in fact the twinning, of the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie, a $200-million expansion plan on track.

If the government hadn't acted courageously -- I think a theme of this government is to make decisions that have been left on the back burner for decades. Previous governments -- the Liberal government under Peterson, the NDP-Howard Hampton-Bob Rae government, and even the PC governments before that, to be fair -- didn't act until you had a hodgepodge of taxation systems. Each bridge and tunnel was taxed differently from the next.

The Peace Bridge faced a great deal of tax uncertainty; they didn't know what their taxes were going to be from one year to the next. Certainly, if you're going to be raising a $200-million capital plan, you can see the jeopardy in which that would put that project. By acting decisively in clearing up that entanglement, we've seen that the bridge will now be paying its fair share, its full share, of municipal property taxes and it's going ahead with that project.

The member for St Catharines is well aware that one John Lopinski, well known in Liberal circles, in fact a former candidate in Niagara South, has been praising the government for its decisive action on this issue. It's allowing for the bridge to expand, and when the bridge expands that means more trade, more tourism and more jobs for Niagara. By acting, it's a good thing coming to Niagara. When you hear John Lopinski, of all people, talking about the importance of this bill and that it's a good bill -- I know his son, Bob Lopinski, works in the Liberal back offices and makes a lot of the calls. I think Bob will convince the member for St Catharines and the rest in the House to listen to the wisdom of his father and support this bill.

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): The value of the comments of the member for St Catharines is that he was able to take the few strands that are in Bill 149 and show how they relate to the entire agenda and the tax policy of this government.

The member for St Catharines, though, has quite rightly indicated that it's a little bit difficult for us to debate a Conservative Mike Harris government bill on taxation because they keep changing their definition of taxes. How do we talk about the entire agenda of the Harris government on taxes? The member for St Catharines remembers that Mike Harris used to say a user fee is a tax, yet we see no concerted policy to control the increased taxes through increased user fees -- just the opposite. We see constantly escalating user fees.

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I remember when Mike Harris used to say there's only one taxpayer in Ontario. Quite clearly he's forgotten that because his sole focus for any of his so-called reforms is to deliver a tax cut on the income tax side, and in order to do that he is prepared to dump millions of dollars on to the property tax base. Beyond that, Mike Harris is proposing to tax property directly for educational purposes, something we've never seen before.

I think the member for St Catharines quite rightly asks, "Who benefits from the income tax cut?" It is the people who have the largest incomes, the most well-to-do. They're the ones who are going to get the most money in their pockets. But how about that other taxpayer, the property taxpayer, the one Mike Harris is going to dump on? Who is going to be hurt most by the dumping on property taxpayers? It's going to be the seniors whom the government is going to offer some short-term protection to and have them incur debt, which is going to be extremely troublesome to seniors. It's going to be that middle-income family struggling to buy and to hold on to a home of their own. They're the ones who are going to pay the price for the property tax dump along with those who are paying the price of the tax grab through gambling that the member for St Catharines has acknowledged.

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): I listened to the presentation made by the member for St Catharines. He's perfectly right on a number of points, but particularly when it comes to the one-taxpayer argument. This government, the Conservative Party of Ontario, in the last election and prior to that made the argument, I would say convincingly, that there was only one taxpayer, and that we had to respect that taxpayer at all costs. With this bill, along with its companion bill that we passed previous to this -- I think it was Bill 106 -- this government is allowing municipalities, because of what they're doing in downloading -- not "allowing." It's not even the right word. This government by way of Bill 149, by way of Bill 106, by way of Bill 126, the omnibus bill, by way of all of the downloading, by way of the cuts to transfer payments to municipalities, is offloading a whole bunch of costs on to municipalities. Who's going to pay for that in the end? It's going to be the municipal taxpayer.

We've listened, as the member for St Catharines has, a number of times when the ministers of the crown and the Premier stand up and try to make people believe in this assembly, as they're trying to make the people of Ontario believe, that people's municipal property taxes will go down. I listened intently with surprise when the Minister of Education today stated in this House that as a result of his government's actions, property taxpayers would see their bill go down by 50%. What planet is this Minister of Education living on?

We know what's going on. The residents of municipalities across Ontario know what's going on. Mayors and councils know what's going on. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario knows what's going on. You guys are in the biggest downloading exercise this province and this country have ever seen and it means in the end that municipal ratepayers will both lose services and see their taxes go up. When the government argues that there's only one taxpayer, what a twist of fate that was in that particular promise.

Mr Bradley: I thank all the members for their contribution. The member for Welland-Thorold recounted the Saturday afternoon we spent listening to people with disabilities and the many challenges they have to face and how they see user fees and other changes in government policy as potentially being detrimental to their wellbeing.

When the member for Niagara South rose, I thought for sure he was going to mention the Port Colborne hospital and the Fort Erie hospital, Douglas Memorial, both under threat of closing because this government has cut so much in the way of hospital operating funding. I truly expected him to get up to speak about that because I know in his heart of hearts he probably shares my concern about that. But you know what happens: When you preach the Mike Harris revolution, part of the Mike Harris revolution is closing those hospitals and saving money so he can give a tax cut to the most wealthy people in our province.

I also want to thank the member for Fort William, who understood my speech very well and the context in which it was delivered. She recognizes, as I do, that the problem with dumping these responsibilities financially on to the property tax is that both the property tax and user fees do not take into account a person's ability to pay. So lower-income people, whether they like it or not, are stuck paying these huge fee increases or property tax increases. Or if a person who has been doing all right happens to have a couple of bad years because of bad health or something or is unemployed, that person is going to have to pay those huge increases in property taxes.

I am amused when I hear the Minister of Education say that municipal property taxes are going to drop by 50%, because I remember it was the Premier who said that as a result of all this reshuffling we would see a 10% decrease in taxes. Now it's up to 50%.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Rosario Marchese (Fort York): It's always a pleasure to have a couple of minutes to speak on any bill this government introduces. I recall that this government is introducing almost a bill a day. This is a party, this revolutionary party, that never sleeps. It is a party that never ceases to continue working, and I tell you it's a problem for us, because if you don't have the time to reflect on what you're doing, you're likely to cause a hell of a lot of chaos in Ontario. They're doing that daily.

Mr Douglas B. Ford (Etobicoke-Humber): Look who's talking.

Mr Marchese: Look who's talking? I'm talking about you. I'm talking about you and your government and the haste with which you proceed to pass these bills daily in this place. This bill, like all your other bills, claims to be a Fair Municipal Finance Act. This bill too, like Bill 106, claims to be fair. This fair bill is going to whack everybody again in Ontario like Bill 106, which gave a big whack and they'll feel that whack as they reassess property taxes. A system they call actual value assessment, commonly known as market value assessment, is going to whack a whole lot of people in the province.

This comes from a minister, mon ami M. Leach, who before the election in 1995 said, "No way are we ever going to introduce a system that's market value." So they introduced a neat thing. They called it "actual value assessment" so M. Leach and M. Harris can claim: "We're not introducing market value. That's not what we've got. Look at the bill. It says `actual value assessment.'"

That's not it at all. We know that is a hoax. We know it and other people have told them as much. You've got to give them some credit. These people are unwavering and they speak with a straight face. I know the Minister of Labour does it all the time. She speaks with a straight face. She's always so concerned about workers and she's working on prevention. The poor woman never tires of talking about how she worries for all the people she is hurting on a daily basis.

Remember Bill 106, and we've got to bring it in context. It is always a critical thing to do, because this government likes to isolate bills. There's a fine thread that is attached to each and every one of them. Bill 106 calls for the reassessment of all Ontario properties by April 1998, the largest single reassessment ever imagined in North America. Some of the people in the ministry said, "We are very worried." It was the assistant deputy minister who said, "The ministry is aware that the division cannot deliver the reassessments in the time frame set by the government and still carry out day-to-day assessment operations with its current permanent staffing level." This poor deputy realized that they don't have the resources to deal with the reassessment of four million properties. But this government in its haste, because it's a revolutionary party without a pause, doesn't care about consequences of its policies. It just, with its fast train, goes along those tracks and never wavers. The poor deputy says: "We can't do it. We've got a job to do in our own system, and to take other people who are doing this reassessment of so many other things we're doing -- we can't do this job." But the government doesn't seem to care about that.

What has the ministry done to protect itself? It has hired close to 500 temporary staff on short-term contracts to keep up with the additional load. Many of the workers have little experience in the assessment field. That's part of the danger, that as we hire a whole lot of people to do this work, we are not sure of the quality of work we're getting. This contracting out, in my view and in the view of many, puts the reassessment quality at risk as untrained individuals are hired to do that job. Contractors who are hired receive only one day of training from the ministry, after which they may hire and train inspectors to do the work.

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Look at the kind of qualifications that are asked of these people. "Residential data collector: We require a highly organized, self-motivated individual to complete resident inspections in the Halton-Peel region. The successful candidate must have excellent communication skills, neat appearance and a reliable car. General knowledge of residential home construction required. Contract position. Send résumé immediately." That's the extent of the knowledge that is required of these poor people.

The ministry has decided to spare no expense in its haste to do as many reassessments as possible in a short time frame. We're risking a lot of quality work as we hire people who don't know how to do the job of reassessing properties.

In addition to that, what have we done? Ostensibly to free up staff for the work of reassessment, the government then contracted out the municipal enumeration. On January 31 of this year the contract for the job was awarded to a consortium of three companies led by Amex Canada -- American Express. There have been to my knowledge no public discussions of what it means to hand over enumeration records to one of the world's leading credit card companies. But this Conservative government has no problem with things of that nature. They don't mind hiring companies of this sort. They don't think through the consequences of the actions they take.

We looked at the business occupancy tax, and we need to speak about this because everything is in the context of what they are offloading and dumping on to municipalities. Recall that the business occupancy tax takes $1.6 billion out of the system. It will wipe out that amount of money in municipal revenues in one fell swoop and leaves the responsibility of that shortfall on the municipality. I'm not sure if some of the people on the other side understand what that means. It means the municipality is left with a big burden. In Metro Toronto alone, it means $600 million of that $1.6 billion has to be recovered in some way. That's a problem.

If you recall, and we spoke about this in the past, yes, this might be outdated, given that it was something that was introduced in 1904, but it's difficult to explain why they would get rid of a system that was progressive in nature and replace it with something that we have no clue about how it's going to be repaid.

What do I mean by a system progressive in nature? The business occupancy tax assured us that those who were making money, like banks, were paying a higher rate of tax than someone who owned, let us say, an abattoir or a barbershop. That's a progressive tax system, as outdated as it was. But these people take that away and then say to the municipality, "We are leaving this responsibility to you to fix."

The province looks good with the banks, good corporate friends of these guys over there, these Tory guys, but leaves an incredible burden on the municipality to find a way to replace that money. There are only two sources: the residential property tax base or the small retail, the little business people that these people here claim to represent. One of the members there laughs smugly.

Mr Ford: Propaganda.

Mr Marchese: Propaganda? Member from -- where are you from? Let me find you. Douglas Ford, Etobicoke-Humber. The propaganda doesn't come from me --

Mr Ford: From your results -- $55 billion, answer that question, over and above the budget.

Mr Marchese: I don't know. I'm talking about the business occupancy tax and he's mumbling about something. I don't know what it is.

I'm saying to you, you've got to answer to that, because you are the fine people who said that people are overtaxed and that you had to relieve these taxpayers of the burden of other governments. Well, you fine Tory members are taking out the business occupancy tax and leaving a big burden to municipalities which then have to pass on that cost to somebody else.

Hon Al Palladini (Minister of Transportation): Oh, say it like it is, Rosario.

Mr Marchese: M. Palladini, mon chère ami, that's a fact. M. Palladini, mon ami, what are you saying? M. Villeneuve, talk to him. Am I wrong in my assessment of this?

Hon Mr Palladini: Ask the businessmen in your community.

Mr Marchese: I asked the businessmen in my community, to Mr Palladini, my friend, the Minister of Transportation. Business people in Toronto are worried that they're going to be whacked with your fair tax bill. Either they are wrong or somehow you haven't communicated to them how they are wrong. Perhaps in your communication package you haven't had an opportunity to be clear with them. Clear it with them; you don't have to clear it with me. It is business people all over Toronto whom I am connected to who are worried about picking up the cost of the business occupancy tax. You might think I'm inventing this. That's all right for you to believe that, but you have to square this off with your small business friends. We're worried about the impact it will have because it will force many of the small business people to leave.

Look at the download bill, Bill 152. What an enormous burden to place on municipalities and what a burden to leave to the taxpayer. These guys talk about the taxpayer all the time. This municipal download is going to hurt a whole lot of people, because look what they're picking up in the disentanglement process. I don't think they understand the word, because in the download bill they have confused it all and there is no disentanglement.

That's perhaps why they don't use the word, because I don't believe they understand it. They haven't disentangled a thing. In fact they have downloaded a whole lot of things to the municipalities. They've downloaded libraries completely. They've downloaded social housing completely to the municipal taxpayer, community police financing, the integration of the farm tax rebate, the homes for special care, community ferries, municipal services, fire services and sewer and water inspections, social assistance program partnerships, child care services. All these things are downloaded to the municipal taxpayer, homeowners who are taxpayers, friends of these guys. They've got to pick up a big load to pay for the burden that these fine people are passing down to them, all the while claiming that the taxpayer somehow is going to save money.

There is no savings in this. There is no logic. There is nothing but lunacy in these policies, because to pass down these costs to the municipal taxpayer isn't lunacy; it's beyond lunacy. These are responsibilities of provincial governments that raise money through a progressive tax system, as progressive as it can be in a capitalist system where those who've got a whole lot of money know how to hide the money, which means that the middle classes, your taxpayer friends, who can't escape paying taxes are stuck with the burden. The working class and the working poor are stuck with the heavy burden of social housing, social assistance, child care, libraries, ambulances and on and on. The list is endless.

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Then they come up with a bill, this fair bill, that's going to whack a whole lot of people, whack municipalities. Let me give you an example from this bill in terms of how they're doing it. It speaks of rebates to charities and similar organizations:

"A regulation-making power is added to the Municipal Act to permit local municipalities to give rebates to eligible charities and similar organizations to give them tax relief."

Why would this government do that? It sounds like a good idea. They're doing that because the provincial government has eviscerated funding for all charitable organizations. It is diminishing daily, and because they recognize that the government is being assaulted for taking the social structures away plank by plank, they have come up with a solution that says to municipalities, "You can give rebates to some of the charities." Why? Because the provincial government is no longer helping them out. The provincial government is dumping on municipalities, which will dump on the municipal taxpayer, the residential taxpayer. As a result of removing their support for charities and similar organizations, they are saying to municipal governments, "You can give rebates."

The rebates, Speaker, through you to these fine people, have to come from somewhere, don't they? Where do rebates come from? It isn't something you give as tax relief to somebody for free or for nothing. Someone has got to pay. Isn't that right, Mr Villeneuve?

Hon Mr Villeneuve: It's the $50 million you've left behind that we've got to pay.

The Acting Speaker: Member for Fort York, speak to the Chair.

Mr Marchese: Through you, Speaker, to Mr Villeneuve, municipalities have to find the money somewhere, don't they? If you give a tax rebate, are not the property taxpayer and the tenants who pay taxes the ones who end up having to foot the bill for a tax rebate to an organization or an eligible charity? Of course they pay, and they've got to pay through what system? Property taxes.

Remember, these are the same people who are going to set the mill rates for education. These are the people who are going to centralize what those property tax people are going to pay, including tenants, by the way, who pay a whole lot of taxes, but very few people realize that.

Interjection: Far too much.

Mr Marchese: Far too much, yes. Yet they are downloading all these responsibilities, the load of financing for all the things I mentioned, from child care to housing to ambulances to social assistance to community health to libraries. They're downloading all of this, including saying to municipalities, "You can give a tax rebate," and they will limit what they can raise through property taxes for education purposes and other purposes. There is a limit to what the property taxpayer is going to bear. There is a limit when you download so many services --

Hon Mr Villeneuve: When did you realize that?

Mr Marchese: Mr Villeneuve, please, I'm telling you that you haven't disentangled anything. You're passing down to the municipalities incredible costs.

Hon Mr Villeneuve: Tell us about your disentanglement. Tell us about that.

Mr Marchese: I'm talking about you because you're a well-paid minister. I'm talking about you because you've got the big, fat wheels. You're in charge. I'm talking about you because you folks were going to be different. I'm talking about you because you said you were going to give your taxpayers a break. I accuse all of you of not giving that tax break to your friends the taxpayers, who no longer, by the way, are holding on to that friendship that you thought was there.

You people know that, and that's why you backtracked on Bill 136, pretending you're listening. You're backtracking because you're afraid that you're losing your friend the taxpayer. You're losing the friend who's a taxpayer because that taxpayer is realizing that you people are hurting them too. It was all right when you were hurting the poor, the marginalized, the homeless, women and children. It was all right to do some of that other stuff. Welfare may not have touched some of these taxpayers, but people are beginning to realize that your hospital cuts and your education cuts and your cuts to social services are hurting them and they're fighting back. They're not going to take the hurt that you people are laying on them, and this bill is not fair at all to anyone.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?

Mr Bill Grimmett (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): I'm pleased to provide some comments on the speech given by the member for Fort York. He's always entertaining and today he's at his entertaining best, maybe a little long on entertainment and a little short on content. I'm sure, though, that he has read Bill 149 at length and that is the reason why, after reading it, he has little to say about the bill, because it's a very strong bill and, combined with Bill 106, it's going to provide a new system of assessment province-wide.

Bill 149 contains a lot of additional measures to what were in Bill 106 to provide relief to sectors in our society that need relief when it comes to assessment. He would know that Bill 149 provides measures to assist small business. He would know that it provides assistance to farmers and to the owners of rights-of-way properties and especially to the very competitive theatre industry in Toronto. I'm sure that in his riding of Fort York the theatre owners are very happy to see Bill 149 and the benefits it brings.

He touched on the issue of chaos. I'm sure he was referring to the chaos that has existed in assessment law in Ontario for 20 or 30 years now. It has been the failure by previous governments to address that that has brought us to recognize in Bill 106 and in the current bill, Bill 149, that there is a need for reform.

I am pleased that he brought up the issue of the province-wide assessments that have been carried out by the ministry. Yes, the ministry has hired some private sector experts, some people who are expert at assessing properties. There is a one-day training program so that those people can get used to the forms the ministry uses. They don't need the training to assess properties because they're already experts in that field. I'm glad the member brought that up and I'm sure he recognizes the expertise involved.

Mr Michael A. Brown (Algoma-Manitoulin): I am certainly pleased to comment on the comments of the member for Fort York. The first thing that I find is extremely problematic is the title of the bill, which talks about the Fair Municipal Finance Act. The first thing I would like to say is that the word "fair" should be declared unparliamentary. "Fair" means, in the parlance of this place, hold on to your wallet. If you see "fair" in the title it means it's coming after your wallet. "Fair" in that context, as the member for Fort York appropriately pointed out, is probably the most misused word in this place.

I want to talk a little about my own constituency and about what this doesn't do. In the downloading there are huge services being required now to be paid for by the municipalities. I want to give you one instance. Now municipalities are going to have to pay for ambulance services. One might have thought that the Ministry of Health was where health should have been looked after, but not in the Harris regime.

I asked the Minister of Natural Resources the other day at estimates: "There are huge expanses of crown land within many of the municipalities I represent. Are you going to pay taxes?" "No." The government of Ontario doesn't pay taxes, so I don't know who pays to service crown land. They're not paying taxes. That's the kind of thing that makes people in my constituency wonder about the fairness of any of this.

This act will require the municipal taxpayer to pay for many services that at present they don't, at least through the property tax.

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Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): I want to commend my colleague from Fort York, who, in his usual colourful way, has described exactly what this bill is about, and of course, Bill 149 is really the son of Bill 106. You have to take the two of those together, along with the offloading, downloading, dumping that this government is doing now to municipalities, because it's all part of a package. If we talk first about the collection work and the reassessment work going on right now, the member made it very clear the type of qualifications that were being asked for, and I'm really surprised that the Conservative back bench would think one day of programming was going to be enough to do this important work.

Let me repeat what the qualifications were when this was posted in Hamilton: "We require a highly organized, self-motivated individual to complete residence inspections in the Halton-Peel region. The successful candidate must have excellent communication skills, a neat appearance and a reliable car. General knowledge of residential home construction is required."

That was the sum total of the qualifications needed under this private sector contract for the people who are supposed to carry out this reassessment. What we have here is drive-by assessment services. That's what we've got going on here. Do you think the public will have any confidence whatsoever in the final figures that this private sector company provides to the government about reassessed values? Goodness. Give your heads a shake. What kind of qualification is that? What kind of a qualification is a one-day training session? You're talking about very important work, thousands and thousands of Ontarians who will be affected, and the people who are doing this, I'm sorry, based on this, are not qualified to be doing that kind of work.

Mr Baird: I would say of the member for Fort York, you can disagree or disagree with him, but at least he had read the bill and attempted to put his remarks to it, which was different from the speaker who preceded him. I would at least congratulate him for that. You can agree or disagree with the member for Fort York, but you can certainly respect that his opinions are heartfelt.

I wonder, do I get all this time to speak? The clock hasn't started yet. I guess I do. I'll just go ahead. I'll read a full 20-minute speech.

In Ottawa-Carleton, we changed our property tax assessment some years ago. We changed the property tax assessment because there were some people in some neighbourhoods of our region living in $400,000 or $500,000 homes and paying the same amount of taxes as people living in a $150,000 town house. There was an incredible amount of inequity to that. To ask a young family starting out for the very first time, buying their own home, to pay for someone who owns a $500,000 or $600,000 house in another part of town, what an incredible burden that put on middle-class families. Equally so in parts of my riding, in Cedar Hill Estates, in Orchard Estates, there was a 1988 value ascribed to their properties, and some of these properties had gone down in value by as much as 50% or 60%, and they were still required to pay enormously high property taxes, which were completely beyond the value of their homes.

The honourable member for Sudbury East said this was the son of Bill 106, and it certainly has a strong relationship. It builds on the fairness that Bill 106 brought in. It will help small business, and the member opposite knows that small business is where we create jobs. In my community we haven't been as good at attracting jobs to Ottawa-Carleton, but we're very good at building up small businesses. The Premier was in Ottawa-Carleton just the other day, and I accompanied him to a business that was started in 1987 as a very small business. This summer they announced 4,100 new jobs in that business, Newbridge Networks. That small business which started in 1987 is now a company with revenues of more than $1 billion.

The member opposite didn't talk about the assistance this bill will give to the agricultural industry. The Minister of Agriculture is here listening attentively because this is an important bill for rural Ontario, and the Minister of Agriculture has done a tremendous amount for the economy in rural Ontario. The agrifood industry is a big industry in Ontario. This bill will help that industry, and it's very important to recognize that.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): The member for Fort York has two minutes to respond.

Mr Marchese: I appreciate the comment the comments from all the members -- Georgian Bay, Algoma, Manitoulin, Sudbury East and Nepean -- and I also appreciate the fact that the member from Georgian Bay finds my speech to have an entertainment value and discounts the content value. I appreciate that from the government member. He needs to do that. He needs to undervalue what I might have to say but at least values the entertainment part of my presentation; similarly with the member for Nepean, who appreciates that part but also spoke to the notion of content, so there is some disagreement between the two.

But really, on the whole issue of this bill and Bill 106 -- do you remember the mythical character Hydra? -- it's a multiheaded monster. They emerge and re-emerge, and they have some similarity. They come together. Hydra, multiheaded -- think of 106 and 149. They come together to symbolize the evil nature of this government and its policies. Remember, these guys, M. Harris and M. Leach, said no market value assessment. Well, actual value is the same thing. So what have you got to say about the veracity of those statements, I ask you. I didn't say it; they said it.

The download is going to add to the municipal tax base a whole load that they will not be able to cope with, all the while pretending these people are helping out, that they're all for fairness. These guys like fairness, and that's what Bill 106 is all about they say, the same people who said there will not be any tax increases any more with this government. But that's what Bill 106 does, and I tell you Bill 149 does very little to help their taxpayer friends.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Wettlaufer: I'm very pleased to participate in the debate on Bill 149, the Fair Municipal Finance Act. Contrary to what some of the previous speakers said, it is about fairness. The member for Algoma-Manitoulin should know all about fairness. His government, in the 1980s, spent like drunken sailors and took away --

Mr Michael Brown: You're insulting sailors.

Mr Wettlaufer: No, I'm not insulting sailors. Your government was far worse than sailors. I'm talking about drunken sailors.

I think an example of the fairness question that we're discussing here is how we are going to treat seniors and the disabled. Municipalities now will have the flexibility to phase in property tax increases, to make any changes to suit their local needs. They can defer them or they can phase them in. The municipal portion will be the municipality's responsibility. School boards will reimburse the municipalities for the education portion of the taxes, and the province then will reimburse the school boards. We're talking about low-income seniors and the disabled who need some help, and this is about fairness for those people.

Why should taxpayers in Kitchener pay more than taxpayers in Toronto for equally valued properties, or conversely, why should taxpayers in Toronto pay more than taxpayers in Kitchener for equally valued properties, or why should a taxpayer on one street in one municipality pay more than a taxpayer on another street for equally valued property, or why should a taxpayer with a $200,000 house in the city of Toronto pay the same amount in taxes as a taxpayer with a $1-million house in the city of Toronto? These are the things that are presently going on.

Part of that is due to the fact that assessment in the city of Toronto as an example, but in many other municipalities as well, was done in the 1940s. If it was done in the 1940s, how up to date can it be? Obviously you're going to have some inequities in the taxation system.

We have another problem with the business occupancy tax. Again, it was outdated. Can you imagine a tax system enacted in 1902 being used for taxes today? In 1902, women still washed clothes using washboards, houses had no closets, most houses had no indoor plumbing, Henry Ford had not yet invented the Model T, but the opposition parties think it's okay to use the business occupancy tax. We've had many improvements in the last 95 years, and one of the things that we are attempting to do here is to modernize the tax system. The business occupancy tax was clearly outdated and we have determined that it should be eliminated. Under Bill 149, the Fair Municipal Finance Act, it is. The business occupancy tax never took into account the income or profit of a business. It was an unfair tax that discouraged employment.

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I'll come back to that in a minute, but I want to say that there are several business groups which have endorsed many of the measures in Bill 149. The Ottawa-Carleton Board of Trade, the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce, the Windsor and District Chamber of Commerce, the Toronto board of trade, have all responded quite favourably to the measures in Bill 149, measures that we know will result in tax fairness, economic growth and jobs.

Additionally, as an aid to small business, which creates most of the jobs in this province --

Applause.

Mr Wettlaufer: That's right. Thank you, to the member for Nepean. He applauds that, and I applaud small business as well.

Municipalities will now have the flexibility to establish lower taxes for lower-valued commercial properties like strip malls and restaurants, again, to encourage jobs.

International crossings is a very interesting subject. International bridge and tunnel structures would be exempted from taxation but would be subjected to a special payment prescribed by the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Land and buildings of bridge and tunnel operators in the immediate vicinity of the crossing would be liable for municipal taxes but not school taxes. This provides consistency with the municipalities on the American side of the bridge, and the legislation will provide for tax adjustments so that in any year, the total property taxes paid by a bridge owner to a municipality on the Canadian side of the bridge are not less than the school and municipal taxes paid by bridge authorities on the United States side.

The reaction to this has been so positive that the Peace Bridge Authority in Fort Erie has recently announced phase one of a $200-million capital expansion project. That means jobs; not just jobs to construct the bridge, which are many of course, we know that, but jobs in the concrete industry, jobs in the steel industry and jobs in the trucking industry. All of these products have to be trucked from one place to the construction of the bridge. Many jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs. We were elected on a promise to have the private industry create jobs.

I know the opposition parties don't like to hear that we have created -- no, sorry -- that through a positive environment that we've created, we have enabled private business to create 210,000 net new jobs so far this year. That's positive news, but the opposition parties don't like to hear that. Now, they should like to hear it.

From time to time, we hear criticism from members of the opposition parties that some of those jobs are minimum wage jobs. You know, the man or woman who is unemployed doesn't really care. They don't really care if they're minimum wage jobs, because by getting back into the work force they have a sense of accomplishment, they have a sense that they belong, they have a sense that they mean something. That minimum wage job, they know, is a step to gain experience, to move up and to gain a better job.

Land held for development and still being farmed is another area affected by Bill 149. This industry has 267,000 employees in Ontario alone. At one time, prior to the previous government, they had another 83,000 but --

Mr Michael Brown: Those were the days.

Mr Wettlaufer: Yes, those were the days. Those were the heady days.

Not only do they have 267,000 jobs, employees, but for every employee that they have, there's another one and a half employees in other sectors of the economy. This is a very delicate industry. Do you know that from the time a subdivision plan is filed it can take years, sometimes decades, before the development is completed and people have moved in? It can take years or decades before a house is built.

Anyway, we have a subdivision draft plan. It then moves to another stage, to the stage of the subdivision plan being registered. Then it moves to another stage where a house is built, and a second house, and another house, and then we have a stage where that first house is sold. For this period of time -- years, decades -- the subdivider has spent a lot of money. He has invested a lot of money and he has not received one penny in return until that first house is sold. It was pretty obvious that something needed to be done to ease some of the tax problems.

There was a situation, the Amoco case, in which there was considerable concern as to whether or not the zoning would affect the taxes, or the use would affect the taxes, so it was important that we take all of these things into consideration and we allow the taxes to be put on at certain stages. There are three subclasses, and there will be a difference in taxation in each one of those subclasses.

I had them but I seem to have lost them. No problem.

The important point to remember is that the developer will not have to pay the full amount of the tax when the subdivision plan is filed. Part of it will be paid when it is registered, part of it will be paid when the houses are built and part of it when the houses are sold. I will conclude with that.

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The Acting Speaker: Comments and questions?

Mr Michael Brown: I'm certain we're all in favour of fairness but, as I said, usually that means reach for your wallet. There will be in this bill a large number of people in Ontario who will pay a lot more in property tax. That's a fact. What is quite amazing is that Mike Harris will impose, in some cases, nearly 50% of the property taxes in Ontario through setting education rates. Business people have to understand, and I think they should understand, that, yes, the business occupancy tax is gone, but the education tax for businesses is still there. That wasn't removed, that wasn't cut in half, that's still there.

Mr Allan K. McLean (Simcoe East): It's 30%.

Mr Michael Brown: No, it's 100% for businesses. It's the same. Mr Harris will decide that somewhere, down here in the cabinet room, and businesses will still pay that. They will also pay for all the downloaded services.

I think there are some bean-counting magicians somewhere trying to figure out how they can keep these tax rates somewhat in line. We know the government has a bunch of funds squirreled away to mitigate the initial problem here, but that's a short-term solution. It will get you through to the next election but the problem will still be there.

What I'm saying is have a look at this entire package of downloading these market value bills and then check out your tax bill. You're not going to be pleased.

Mr Marchese: I realize my good friend from Kitchener has, as a good soldier, a duty to mythologize about the good things you people are doing. You are all hell-bent. You've got a duty to perform. You've got to invent something that makes it appear like you're doing something good for the taxpayer.

Mr Wettlaufer: And you have a duty to oppose.

Mr Marchese: And we have a duty to expose the mythology. You guys have the big bucks. You guys have the millions of dollars at your disposal that come from the taxpayers, so you can spin it in the way that is appropriate to you. I tell you, if you lose the taxpayer, you people are in trouble.

What is the problem with all this? The income tax cut is the real problem here. With the income tax cut, 60% of all those billions of dollars that are going out are going to 10% of your wealthiest, rich citizens of Ontario, by and large your friends. Because a couple of billion dollars is going out and nothing is coming back in, what you poor people have to do is centralize control and decentralize the burden down to the municipalities. Bill 106 and, in part, Bill 149 are designed to do just that.

The poor municipalities have to take on the burden. I tell you, I wouldn't want to be a municipal politician these days with you people in power. They have a hell of a responsibility having to cut services while not being able to increase property taxes. That's the main job they've got. They will be caretakers for these guys, for this government, to deal with the download, the whacking that you people are giving to your taxpayer friends.

Mr McLean: I'd like to comment on the member for Kitchener's statement in the House this afternoon with regard to Bill 149. He raised the subject and touched many issues affecting farm land, small business, vacant lands, theatres. Small theatres are an issue that a lot of people have not talked about, where small theatres with less than 1,000 seats would receive the same property tax exemption afforded to their publicly owned counterparts. I don't hear the opposition mentioning some of the good things within this bill.

The member talked about the relief that seniors are going to get with regard to Bill 149. Bill 149 extends tax relief to the education portion of their property taxes. This government didn't want any education taxes on the property taxes in the first place until AMO came along and made a deal and said, "We still want 50% left on." For many years, I fought as a municipal politician, hoping to get all of the education tax off the property tax. We gave in to AMO. This is a government of consultation which listens to the people, listens to AMO and listens to the members from across this province with regard to the very issues that are important to the people of this province. For our government to listen and to implement these changes I think is an excellent way to go.

For small business it's 30% of the full commercial rate for commercial properties and 35% of the industrial rate for industrial properties. In the city of Orillia the industrial rate is about 30%, 35% above the residential rate. There has been some discussion and a need to draw industry to a municipality. They have to have a competitive tax rate. We don't have that in certain municipalities. Bill 149 is going to allow this to happen. I say to the member for Kitchener, your words of wisdom should be listened to by the opposition.

Mrs McLeod: I believe the member for Kitchener has said we really need this bill -- in fact it's a series of bills; let's recognize that this is just one in a series of bills the government is bringing in to try and deal with the mess that it keeps compounding in the whole area of property taxation -- to deal with the tax problem. I suggest to the member for Kitchener that that was not what property tax reform was all about from the beginning.

The member for Simcoe East was a little bit closer when he talked about it serving the purpose of taking education off the property tax. That was to have been the original message, to get control of educational funding and be able to say to the public, "We have taken education off the property tax." That was residential taxes only, let's stress that fact, never business, which was always going to continue to pay 100% of its share for education. But they were going to try and take it off the residential tax.

I hope the members opposite haven't failed to recognize that they didn't achieve that end, that they've had to retreat from that goal and that their own government is now going to have the unprecedented power, without legislation, power of cabinet, to impose educational taxes on communities. I'm not sure how this fixes the problem that the member for Kitchener might have thought existed with property tax to begin with. It seems to me we have compounded the problems of the poor, beleaguered property taxpayer when you have the provincial government coming in and imposing taxes directly, by fiat, by cabinet regulation, without any public debate or decision about what that tax should be.

Our colleague the member for Scarborough-Agincourt and the critic for finance says there are no less than 25 different taxes, new taxes, that can be imposed directly by the government through regulation. This is incredible. How have they simplified? How have they made the property tax system more fair when this government can now, through cabinet, impose 25 different taxes on property taxpayers?

I say to the member for Simcoe East who says, "Look for the good parts," why do seniors need protection if your property taxes aren't going to go up?

The Acting Speaker: The member for Kitchener has two minutes to respond.

Mr Wettlaufer: I'd like to thank the members for Algoma-Manitoulin, Fort York, Simcoe East and Fort William for adding to this debate.

It was interesting that the member for Fort York said that the opposition members had a duty to expose. I might say that they have a duty to oppose, and that's exactly what they've been doing every step of the way, every time this government tries to do anything that will create jobs.

Part of the reason for this legislation is to make municipal governments accountable. All governments are supposed to be accountable to the taxpayer, but it will be incumbent on municipal governments to be accountable to the taxpayers for the local property taxes.

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The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mrs McLeod: I'm happy to participate, although very briefly, since we're past the seven-hour mark and down to 10 minutes' participation per member in this debate. But I'm happy to participate because I recognize the significance of this piece of legislation as one relatively minor set of the parts of the property tax proposals coming from this government.

Our critic for finance, the member for Scarborough-Agincourt, recognized that Bill 149 was the second of two major bills on property tax reform and that this will be the most dramatic change in property tax in the history of Ontario. So it is significant. I agree it's a major reform. What I don't agree with is that it has been very well thought out. You might wonder why the government couldn't have given us one act to encompass all of their property tax reform proposals. The fact is, they didn't get their act together. In fact, their act has been changing so regularly that it wouldn't surprise me if we have to see further pieces of legislation.

Actually, I should maybe retract that statement because it seems to me that between Bill 160 and Bill 149 the government has given itself so much power to set taxation through regulation, certainly the power to set education taxes through regulation, and as our finance critic has said, some 25 other areas in which they can set taxation through regulation, that I guess they won't actually have to bring in any more acts to do with taxation. They'll just do it all by cabinet fiat, so that property taxes will be increased, as the government may see fit in the future, to pay for its income tax cut. Those taxes can be increased without there ever being a debate in the Legislature and without there ever being a vote in the Legislature.

I can't say more strongly how abhorrent that should be to every member of the Legislature. This is such a violation of democratic process. It is such a violation of the basic democratic concept of no taxation without representation, that that representation should be turned over to the control of the few members of cabinet who will be making these decisions, that I suspect it is unconstitutional. We, as opposition members, do not have the financial resources to launch a constitutional challenge, unfortunately, but I suspect others will when they realize how huge the powers are that have been taken unto cabinet through Bill 149 and through a relevant piece, Bill 160, in which the government takes over control of education taxation.

I want to argue very strongly that this Bill 149, the second part of the legislative proposals on property tax reform, is not really about property tax reform at all. I go back to something which the member for Simcoe East perhaps inadvertently referred to as the starting point for all of this, and that was the government's desire to take over education funding. In order to take over education funding, they had to take over education taxation. Clearly they wanted control of education funding because they needed to get $1 billion out of education to pay for the tax cut, and that is absolutely factual. The government has said publicly that they want $1 billion. Mike Harris has said publicly he needs $1 billion.

The first step, and I remind members: Take us back to the scene that this government tried to set for its property tax reform. You remember mega-week? I think it was back in January. I ask the member for Algoma-Manitoulin for confirmation of that. I think it was back in January. But I remember clearly that the first day of the week was Monday and the first announcement of mega-week was to be the great announcement --

Mr Marchese: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: With all apologies to the member for Fort William, there is no quorum in the House. Would you check?

The Acting Speaker: Would you check for a quorum, please?

Clerk at the Table (Ms Lisa Freedman): A quorum is not present, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk at the Table: A quorum is present.

The Acting Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Fort William.

Mrs McLeod: I was just at the point of reminding members that the first announcement of mega-week, which was the prelude to the set of announcements about property tax reform, was to say they were taking education off the property tax. I say again that was because the government had a need to get control of education costs and to be able to make the cuts, which the Premier has publicly said he needs to make in order to pay for his tax cut.

The government then went on for the rest of mega-week to do the downloading part, which is the foundation of their property tax reform. The government, of course, has had to retreat from that. We keep asking for numbers. Members keep talking about this being more fair. I don't know how we can determine what is fair when we don't know what is actually going to happen to property taxes in different communities. We haven't seen those numbers from the Minister of Municipal Affairs. I've asked the Minister of Education to give me figures on what's going to happen when the government applies its residential tax for education. They've said, "We don't have those figures, but maybe the Ministry of Finance does." How can we know what's going to be fair until we see what a uniform mill rate for educational purposes does to communities across this province?

I don't think it's any surprise that the government isn't giving us numbers. I suspect it's because the government still doesn't have the numbers. This government has spun around so many times, so fast on the aspects of its downloading that it does not know what is going to happen to property taxes. Remember, one of the major retreats was on the issue of long-term care. Thank goodness they retreated on that. It was one of the most horrendous of the dumps of social programs on to the municipal property tax base.

I go back to some fundamental principles about property tax reform: the whole concept of disentanglement. It was never supposed to be downloading. It was supposed to be disentanglement. The fundamental principle was that the people who are responsible for making decisions about programs should as much as possible pay for those programs. The second fundamental principle was that property tax should not be used as a basis to pay for social programs because social programs are intended to provide some equity from community to community and therefore social programs should be the provincial government's responsibility.

As you disentangle, the idea was that the province would pick up more and more 100% of the responsibility for the social programs, which it would then manage, make decisions about and pay for. But that is not the kind of property tax reform which we have here. We have a great mess of re-entanglement and we have greater sharing on the part of the municipalities and the property taxpayers for social programs. This is what the David Crombie panel, the Who Does What panel, said is absolutely unacceptable. Thank goodness the government retreated from some of the worst parts of that dumping of social programs.

The government is still trying to convince us that this is revenue-neutral, as they keep changing the numbers and changing the numbers and it's still not revenue-neutral. It still constitutes some $667 million in net offload on to the municipalities and the government won't talk to us about what that's going to do in terms of impact on property tax. Add that download on top of the uniform mill rate and let's ask what's going to happen to property taxes. The government hasn't guaranteed, I don't think, that there'll be no property tax increase anywhere. The Minister of Education has not said that every community is going to see a 50% reduction in its residential assessment for education. They made that clear. It's 50% on average across the province, and then they're going to come in with a uniform mill rate and some day we'll see what it's actually going to mean community by community.

I can tell you, when it comes to the commercial tax for education purposes, that small businesses in my community are getting very concerned. They know they have to pick up the downloaded costs from this government on to the property tax base. They know they also have to pay 100% of the costs for education and they have no idea how the provincial government is going to come in and levy those taxes.

It's quite clear that their taxes cannot go down; they must go up. It's quite clear that relieving businesses of the business occupancy tax, which the municipalities may have to put back in order to make up for the fact it was their revenue the government took away -- even if they do have that business occupancy tax relief, it's not going to make up for the fact that they're still paying 100% of their costs for education and their share of the downloaded cost on to municipalities. So businesses in my community are getting very worried. They want to know what their taxes are going to look like, and in this area, not only do we not have numbers from the government, the government has no plan.

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Last week I asked the Ministry of Education, what are you going to do about the commercial tax for education? They said, "We haven't decided yet." This government is making up its tax policy literally on a day-by-day and week-by-week basis, and when something doesn't fly or the numbers don't add up they step back a bit and then they take another step forward and try and sort it out.

Ten minutes go very quickly, especially when you get a quorum call in the middle, Mr Speaker. Let me end with just one question. I think it is important to have protection for seniors from any property tax increase, but if this government insists that property taxes are going to go down under this bill, and we've certainly heard that, I wonder why in both bills they've had to provide protection for seniors from property tax increases. Tell us at least which of those seniors are going to need that protection and then let's debate about whether protecting seniors from property tax increases and leaving them with a deferred debt is really offering them very much protection at all. It seems to me what we really need is property tax reform that works to take costs off the property tax base.

The Acting Speaker: Comments and questions?

Ms Martel: I want to reinforce what the member for Fort William has said with respect to the business occupancy tax. As much as the government in some of the speeches that were made today would like to try and say, "We're only talking about this particular bill," it is true that 149 flows directly from 106 and those two things flow directly from the Who Does What panel, which also includes all of the download that municipalities right across this province are going to have to cope with beginning January 1.

With respect to the business occupancy tax, the government has clearly tried to argue that it's an archaic form of tax and therefore we're much better off because we wipe it out entirely. The government forgets to tell the public that by doing that, you take $1.6 billion out of the system and communities right across this province have to make up for that. Municipal governments have to find some way to bring that revenue back into their coffers because that revenue was paying for services already in those municipalities. While the government members might like to say this was archaic, at least it was a progressive form of taxation because it recognized that companies with higher profits, like banks, would have a different tax rate assessed to them. So you would have a bank taxed at a 75% rate and a small mom-and-pop shop or a barber shop, for example, assessed at 30%.

The position the municipalities are going to find themselves in now with respect to this is that they're going to have to go back either to the residential property tax base and whack homeowners to try and make up this difference or they're going to have no choice but to go back to the small businesses in our communities, the mom-and-pop shops, and hit them as well. The estimate in the city of Toronto alone is that some of the bank tower folks are going to save $3 million and a lot of those small businesses, because of those changes in tax rates, are going to pay a heck of a lot more than they pay now. That's the effect of that change.

Mr Grimmett: I'd like to take a couple of minutes to make a few comments on the speech by the member for Fort William. I'm surprised that the member, being from northern Ontario, didn't refer to the sections of the bill that relate to some issues of great significance in the north, such as the way the bill treats rights of way. Rights of way are a very important assessment issue that's been lingering for a long time in Ontario. For years now we've had this patchwork of rights of way across the province that were treated differently under all the different assessment regimes that exist throughout the patchwork quilt that has been building in Ontario for decades and decades. Rights of way have become a problem in terms of how they are going to be dealt with from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Companies that own these rights of way expressed their concern to the provincial government over the years and said, "Will you please straighten out the assessment situation for rights of way across the province so that in some of these large areas in northern Ontario we know from one year to the next how much we're going to be assessed?" So what we tried to do in Bill 149 is provide some certainty to the owners of rights of way. We've tried to provide some certainty so that there are nine different geographical regions in the province, and in those regions the province will set the rate so that the assessment will be based on acreage and on a fair distribution of assessment so that these companies that have rights of way know that from one year to the next there won't be dramatic shifts in the assessment they'll have to deal with. That's a very important issue in northern Ontario.

There's another important issue as well, and that's payments in lieu. Up until now, my friends in municipal government tell me, payments in lieu have been an issue for negotiation between municipalities and the province where the municipal leaders who are able to get in and talk to the provincial leaders get the rates they want and maybe others don't. We're trying to set up a system whereby it's right there in the regulations. They will know from one year to the next what the payments in lieu will be for each municipality.

Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): I want to comment on the points made by the member for Fort William. As usual, they were well thought out and researched and of course given. One of the common themes throughout the member's speech was that the government doesn't know. If the government does know, then it's not telling us. We've asked them for impact studies -- no impact studies. We asked them what their intentions are in one area of taxation -- well, they really don't know, but the next day it may be something else.

I'm concerned, like the member for Fort William said the small businesses are concerned in her area, that small business, business in general, can't plan on the future. We're only three months away from a year-end. We're three months away from the year-end of municipalities. We're told by the assessment division of the finance ministry that they can't possibly be ready to have the rolls in the hands of municipalities so they can budget for the next year. I can understand why there's a lot of concern, worry and in some cases maybe even some suspicion on the part of government.

I suggest that there are warnings in all of this. The business occupancy tax has been discussed by several members. Well, it's very nice of the government to give away the revenue of municipalities, but how's it going to be replaced? If you give away a dollar of revenue that had been allocated to the municipalities, they're going to have to make it up on the residential tax.

In the area of seniors, it's going to essentially become a lien on their home if they have to go to the municipality and ask for any deferment of tax.

Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): I listened with interest to the comments of the member for Fort William, albeit interrupted by a quorum call. The government once again was not able to keep a quorum in the House. It's too bad she had to be interrupted, but I listened with great interest because I know she's particularly interested these days in the education bill and has been speaking I think quite eloquently on that bill. It's clear that she's done a lot of analysis in terms of the implications. I listen closely when she's talking about educational matters and I think it's important.

When government members say, "Just speak to the bill; you're not speaking to the bill," quite often these bills are interrelated and I find it distressing that government members often don't see that. When you take one of these bills in isolation and think that's it all by itself and it's only going to impact in its own way in that particular direction, that isn't so. As the member for Fort William was saying, as you look at the complexities and the cumulative effect of all these different taxation bills on our communities, it's going to have a severe impact on some.

As the member for Fort William was saying, one of the biggest problems is that the government doesn't know. We are unable to go back to our communities and, like the businesses in Fort William, I am hearing the same thing. Small businesses in my community are quite terrified about what's going to happen to them because they don't have any idea. They ask me how much they're going to be paying. I have to say: "I don't know. The government will not tell us. They don't know what the commercial education tax is going to be." This is all going to happen in a couple of months. They don't know how the business occupancy tax change is going to affect them. They don't know how this is going to affect them yet.

This government is moving too quickly again, and yet another bill.

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The Acting Speaker: The member for Fort William has two minutes to respond.

Mrs McLeod: I thank all my colleagues for their comments. I suggest to the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay that when I'm allowed only 10 minutes to address an issue that the government considers to be of some significance, I am going to focus on the parts of the bill or in fact the parts of the government initiative that I consider significant, although I agree with the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay that the rights-of-way issue in northern Ontario is going to become very significant indeed if the government decides it's going to come in with a uniform mill rate for commercial assessment and impose that on all those areas across northern Ontario.

What for me is most significant in the government's so-called property tax reform is the dumping on the property taxpayer. The government will argue that it's not going to lead to an increase in property taxes in the first year, particularly if municipalities are able to find that 2% in efficiencies, which means cuts in services that municipalities need to provide to their residents. If they can find those cuts in services and if the government buffers them with their onetime funding, we may not see immediate increases in our property tax.

But I'm concerned about the fact that municipalities are going to have to go cap in hand to get any relief from this government's offloading, making application for the one-time-only funds. I'm probably even more concerned if the one-time-only funds go on in this way, as sort of a charitable handout to municipalities, because we'll be right back to old-style porkbarrelling politics where you have to be well connected before you're get the kind of dollars you need to deliver the services to your residents.

I'm really concerned that what's going to happen is that the funds will be one-time-only and that we are going to see increases in property tax down the road. I believe it is completely unacceptable for this government to dump on to property taxpayers the burden of providing social programs which are going to grow in cost so that this government can provide a $5-billion cut in income tax. I think they are providing the cut to those who need it least and punishing those who need help most.

The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Ms Martel: It's a pleasure, in the short time I have, 10 minutes, to participate in this important debate on Bill 149. The bill has to be taken in context with its companion piece of legislation, which this House already passed, Bill 106, and also with the download, the dumping, the offloading that this government is handing to municipalities, because of course it's all part and parcel of the same thing. It comes from the Who Does What recommendations and facilitates how the government will steal revenues from municipalities and how the government will also at the same time dump any number of new, enormous costs on to those same municipalities and force them to cope with the cut in services, the huge increase in property taxes and/or both which will occur as a consequence.

To look at Bill 149 and focus first on the gross receipts tax, I want to give members in this House some examples of the loss of revenue that some of the communities in my riding are going to face. They have a particular concern, given all the other dumping that's going to occur, that not only do they have to assume enormous new costs, but the way of bringing in revenues to cope with some of that is also being taken away from them.

The bill says very clearly in the explanatory note: "The percentage of the existing gross receipts tax for telephone and telegraph companies in areas with municipal organization, which is currently set at 5%, will be prescribed by regulation. Starting in 1998 the tax will be paid to the province." We would be better to say, "The tax will be grabbed by the province," because the fact is that this is one of the areas in the download where the province grabs back some of the revenue that used to go to municipalities and forces them into an even more difficult position than they are already in.

One of my small communities, the township of Casimir, Jennings and Appleby, has written to Minister Leach about this. It's part of a resolution that was put out by North York, I understand, calling on the provicial government to withdraw from this direction, to withdraw it from this bill. They said in particular, and I quote because they say it better than I can:

"Whereas as part of the downloading on municipalities the province of Ontario is grabbing the 5% telephone gross receipt tax paid by telephone companies for use of municipal right of way; and

"Whereas the taking away" -- or grabbing or stealing -- "of the gross receipts tax not only means an immediate loss of over $22,000 to our municipality but also has a potential impact because of the emerging fibre optics industry coming through our community; and

"Whereas the future demand for space in our right of ways could amount to hundreds of millions in future revenues to Ontario municipalities; and

"Whereas the province of Ontario will be grabbing" -- stealing -- "these revenues to reduce its costs instead of being used to offset property taxes, since it is the municipal right of ways which are being used;

"Therefore be it resolved that the province of Ontario not take away the gross receipts tax now collected by Ontario municipalities, or if they do do it, then the province of Ontario must allow municipalities to be compensated for the right to use our rights of way."

In this small community of 681 households, the revenue lost for this community is $22,000. Add to that the $570 per household that residents in this community will now pay for OPP policing; and add to that the cost of ambulance service which they will now cover a portion of, because in that part of the riding, that is shared among four municipalities; add to that the increased welfare cost, the increased child care cost, the cost of social housing this community will have to assume because it has a small seniors' apartment building now run by Ontario Housing which of course is going to be downloaded on to them, and you can see that the folks in the municipality of the township of Casimir, Jennings and Appleby are going to suffer a huge increase in property taxes and they are going to have their services cut as well. There is no way for them to cope.

The minister repeating again and again that this is a wash is totally ridiculous, totally out of touch with reality. It shows again that the government has had no regard for the fine details, the small print, the important details, and how all of the dumping is going to affect municipalities, particularly small ones in northern Ontario. That's the impact on one municipality.

The town of Nickel Centre in my community, a little larger: Their loss with respect to the province stealing or grabbing the gross receipts tax is a loss of $240,530 that this community would have normally received from Bell Canada, flowed to the province, then the province flowing to this municipality. That's why this community as well supported the resolution from North York calling on the government to either continue to give the money to the people it should go to -- the municipalities -- or to give the municipalities some compensation for that loss.

The mayor said, "Not only are these downloading costs and responsibilities on us, they are also taking away all of our sources of revenue." That was Mayor Stan Hayduk at the end of June talking to the media about how this municipality is going to try and cope.

The city of Sudbury has also calculated the loss it will experience because of the province stealing the gross receipts tax through the download exercise. In the case of the city of Sudbury, the loss of revenue is in the order of $600,000 annually because of what the province is doing, a $600,000 loss that they have to make up now through the addition of increased property taxes or by cutting services in other areas and flowing the money to cover the cost of other services.

Finally, the regional municipality of Sudbury: The loss to the region because of the province grabbing the gross receipts tax is a loss of $2.4 million that the region would normally receive from Bell Canada, flowed through to the province and then flowed on to the municipality -- $2.4 million. It's no wonder that the region as of last week -- and we're waiting for the new figures that will come when we have some new announcements on October 6 -- is looking at new additional costs in the order of $73.5 million because of the government's download, because of the government's dumping of all these new costs and services on to municipalities.

In this bill, the effect of the changes, with respect to the gross receipts tax and the province grabbing or stealing that, is a significant revenue loss in many municipalities, particularly in small northern municipalities which don't have a rich tax base and which have to rely on receiving this money from Bell Canada for use of municipal rights of way. The government is taking that money through this bill, and those municipalities are going to be forced to raise property taxes or cut services or a combination of both to make up the difference.

A second point in Bill 149 which I believe is going to cause huge discrepancies in terms of taxation right across the province has to do with the taxation of certain railway and power utility lands. The bill says: "New provisions provide for the taxation of railway roadways and transmission and power corridors for municipal purposes. The taxes will be determined under the regulations."

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The opposition has been trying to find out from the Minister of Finance whether this means there will be a uniform tax rate set for railway lands, set for Hydro, set for other utilities, and the reason this is important is that if you just take CN, for example, Canadian National -- and I come from a community where Canadian National is the single most important employer -- if the government applies a uniform tax rate through the regulations for CN property, that will affect my small community of 4,000 much differently than it will affect the city of Toronto, and my concern is there's going to be a great disparity if the government is going to use the uniform tax rate across municipalities in this province.

My community cannot afford to be taxed at a rate that might be applied on CN lands in downtown Toronto. We cannot afford that in our community of 4,100, with all the other costs the government is downloading, but we have no information from this government to date with respect to how the government is going to apply that tax rate or what the tax rate will be, because it doesn't appear in the bill. It appears in the regulations, which we haven't seen yet.

Finally, a third point from the bill relates to rebates to charities and similar organizations. The bill allows municipalities to give rebates to eligible charities and similar organizations, to give them tax relief. For goodness' sake, every municipality across this province is facing a huge download cost at the behest of this government, on behalf of this government. What municipality is going to be in any financial shape to give a tax rebate to a charity for anything? They are going to be looking at huge property tax increases, huge cuts to services or a combination of both to deal with the government offload. To have this in this bill is an insult to municipalities that are going to pay far more under this government's download scheme.

The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?

Mr Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): I'd just like to make a couple of comments on the presentation made by the member for Sudbury East. The majority of the presentation was on the elimination or the transfer of the gross receipt tax which presently is a municipal tax on services, as the member said, on municipal rights of way. The telephone lines from Bell Canada pay a percentage of their gross receipts in the municipality for the use of that right of way.

As the Who Does What panel looked at the issue, they came to the conclusion that that is not a tax on property as other properties. It's not based on the assessed value of the lines, it's based on income, and that should be an income tax. The Who Does What panel recommended to the government that, as we're looking at the realignment of services between the provincial and municipal governments, we look at transferring the gross receipt tax to the province in return for other services that would also go to the province, such as some of the costs of education.

I would also like to point out that the name of the act is the Fair Municipal Finance Act, and the part as it relates to payment in lieu of taxes by the province is a very important part of the bill, to make sure that the province pays fairly for the properties they utilize and own in the municipality. Presently, only properties that are owned by the province get payment in lieu. The new act will provide the ability of the province to grant in lieu on properties that are owned by municipal or federal governments but are occupied by the provincial government. We think that if the province is utilizing those buildings, they should pay their fair share.

It also allows the regulations to allow the payment of heads-and-beds tax on provincial facilities that are no longer in use but are still sitting there taking up space and using the services of the municipalities.

Mr Bradley: I enjoyed the speech, because it pointed out the ramifications of the downloading of responsibilities, both financial and physical, by the provincial government of Mike Harris on the municipalities of Ontario. I'm sure the member knew that the municipalities he represents were at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Toronto where they overwhelmingly expressed their disgust with the activity of the provincial government in downloading all these financial responsibilities.

Some of them are having to assume miles upon miles and kilometres upon kilometres of roads that were provincially owned and operated previously and will find this to be very onerous on those municipalities. Now the upkeep of those roads will have to be balanced against the needs in the community that are out there, the genuine needs that normally a municipality would have to meet. I'm sure the Minister of Transportation, if he had his way, would want to retain those roads under the jurisdiction of the provincial government, because that would be the fair thing to do.

I was also pleased to hear from one of my favourite mayors, Hazel McCallion of Mississauga, who today was denouncing the government for its downloading activities and the general way it's treating municipalities. I've always known Hazel to be very fairminded and very restrained in expressing her views. Once in a while she has to come out publicly and say what she thinks. I happen to agree with Hazel on this occasion again, that the downloading on municipalities and the treatment of municipalities is despicable and the government should be involved in another retreat.

Mr Marchese: I want to thank my friend from Sudbury East for again doing a good job of explaining the duplicitous nature of this government, because all the while this government proclaims to be a friend of municipalities. They proclaim their camaraderie with each other. "We're on your side," they say. They're dumping so much on the municipalities, who in turn are going to have to dump on the municipal taxpayers and tenants. Shakespeare has always been right in saying, "Fair is foul and foul is fair." You've got to be able to see it and many of the people in Ontario are beginning to see, through the small windows these people provide from time to time, the real nature of what these people are all about.

The member for Sudbury East had a number of petitions and other sources of information that speak about the gross receipts tax for telephone companies and the impact that would have on those communities such as Casimir. The petition explains there would be an immediate loss of $22,000. It may not seem like a lot to these guys over here but to a little community of 600 people it's a lot of money.

This is a tax grab on all municipalities, but the ones it will hurt are the tiny, little communities across Ontario where these people profess to be friends of these Tory communities and Tory councillors that are out there. These people are speaking out. These taxpayers are saying fair is foul and foul is fair, and we are seeing it. I want to thank the member for Sudbury East for bringing this to our attention once again.

Mrs Margaret Marland (Mississauga South): It's great to have lectures on what municipalities like and don't like about our government and think about what municipalities liked and didn't like about the former NDP government or the former Liberal government.

I remember very fondly the incredible response of the municipalities to the Liberal commercial concentration tax. I'm sure the member for St Catharines remembers the commercial concentration tax, the one most singular attack on small business in this province. It's small business that had to rent their office space in these big conglomerate offices, and the commercial concentration tax, guess what it taxed? It taxed the parking lot and the parking garage.

As far as the relationship with the municipalities, of course, the previous NDP government had a wonderful relationship from the time they passed the social contract legislation. The municipalities really liked that legislation and it helped everybody who was a property taxpayer within those municipalities that had to carry the burden of that legislation. I think before our friends across the floor get up and start saying what the municipalities feel about what our government is doing, they would do well to recognize that some of the things that our government is doing are the things that municipalities have asked governments to do for more than a decade, even going back to our previous government.

Finally, isn't it interesting, our government has had the courage to do them and to make the decisions that needed to be made, and I'm very pleased about that.

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Ms Martel: I want to thank the members for Oxford, St Catharines, Fort York and Mississauga South for their remarks. I want to say to the member for Oxford, it's all well and good for the government to view this as a transfer of gross receipts tax to the province. The fact is, it's theft, it's stealing, it's grabbing, it's ripping them off. It's taking away revenue that belongs to the municipalities because the rights of way cross those municipal lands, and the only reason the province was ever involved is the province acted as the vehicle to transfer money from Bell Canada to the province to those municipalities.

What you have now is the government just out and out stealing those revenues from those municipalities for use that Bell Canada makes of those municipal rights of way. That's what's happening here. It has nothing to do with the transfers. It's a grab of their revenue. You make it even more difficult for them to find the ways and means to pay for all of your dumping when you grab revenue like that.

Now with respect to the comments from the member for Mississauga South, who says their government is doing what municipalities have asked them to do for more than a decade, I would be very surprised to learn that the regional municipality of Sudbury asked for a previous government to dump $73 million of new costs on to regional taxpayers' heads.

I'm sorry. I have been a member for 10 years. I have never heard the regional municipality ask to have the costs of social housing, policing, ambulances, public transit, public health, assessment services, sewer and water inspections, libraries, child care, welfare, dumped on to the municipal tax base. Even Crombie in his report said we shouldn't be dumping soft services on to municipalities. This is a dump. It will result in huge property tax increases, loss of services and both in many, many municipalities.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Further debate?

Mr Jim Brown (Scarborough West): I'm pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the House today to support the Fair Municipal Finance Act, Bill 149.

In Ontario, there has long been a recognized problem with property and business tax assessment. My constituents in Scarborough West have paid too much realty and education taxes for decades. Older homes in Toronto with lower historical costs, pre-1950, have been getting a tax break and my constituents, with historic values of their newer homes, post-1950, have paid too much.

Until now, taxes have been based on historic costs. My constituents in Scarborough West have paid far more taxes than those people in Rosedale, Lawrence Park, Forest Hill and the Annex. The homes of the affluent have a higher market value but lower historical costs, upon which the tax rate has been based. Torontonians have been getting a big tax break and my constituents, both tenants and homeowners, have paid far too much. Scarborough West residents, like all of Scarborough residents, will have lower realty taxes, and that will be music to their ears. Even the Toronto Star predicted lower realty taxes for Scarborough residents.

Under these new rules in Bill 149, seniors, the disabled and small business will be protected from real estate tax increases, should they occur. We want to protect seniors and the disabled from having to sell their homes because they can no longer afford to pay the realty taxes. Many seniors have worked their whole lives to pay for a home and have lived their whole lives in their homes with their families. I applaud the commitment of this government to help senior citizens afford to stay in their homes.

The senior years already bear a lot of anxiety. Anxiety and stress leads to poor health. We want to relieve that stress and we want to ensure that seniors can stay where they have lived. Our tax policy should not institutionalize people and our tax policy should not confiscate life savings. Seniors have a right to enjoy their homes. They have a right to enjoy the benefits that they have paid for, for decades. I support seniors. I'll be one shortly. We must remember that these are the people who built this province and we must work to protect them. We're empowering municipalities to make sure that seniors are protected.

Disabled people have many challenges living independently. They have to deal with accessibility issues and have to develop unique ways of doing things to perform the household chores that many of us take for granted. They certainly don't need the additional challenge of higher property taxes. This government is showing its support for disabled Ontarians in trying to help them as they work against sometimes formidable obstacles to live a free and independent life. We are protecting the disabled from property tax hikes. We're allowing municipalities to have special tax status for the disabled.

Bill 149, the Fair Municipal Finance Act, also allows municipalities to protect small business. Small business is the backbone of the economy of Ontario. Some 80% to 90% of all new jobs are created by small business. Small business employs 80% of all people working in the private sector. Unemployment is down dramatically and we all have small business to thank for that.

For a big business it takes probably $100,000 to $200,000 in capital to create a job. For $10,000, small business creates two or three jobs. Putting people to work is usually taking them off welfare. The taxpayer wins twice. Welfare recipients, now with jobs, are paying taxes; we're not paying them. Small businesses are usually owned by Ontarians. They're going to stay here. Unlike multinational corporations that are going to leave at the least change in the economic wind, small business is going to stay in Ontario.

You know, you can't rent a commercial space in Scarborough over 50,000 square feet right now, but there are lots of vacancies for small operations and we have to do something to fill those industrial units and small offices -- small today, but big employers tomorrow. Knob Hill Farms was started by Steve Stavro with a small grocery store on the corner of Coxwell and Queen. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, the richest man in North America, started out as a small business.

For years, governments have introduced measures that are prohibitive to small business. New business owners often find themselves burdened with red tape and high taxes. This bill will give the municipalities the power to set up a multi-tiered system of business taxes. Basically, they will have the ability to help out small local business owners by giving them a lower tax rate.

Mr Marchese: Mr Speaker, on a point of order: Is there a quorum in the House?

The Deputy Speaker: Would you please verify if we have a quorum or not?

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

The Deputy Speaker ordered the bells rung.

Clerk Assistant: A quorum is now present, Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker: The member for Scarborough West.

Mr Jim Brown: You know, Bill 149 also recognizes the great work of charities in our Ontario communities. This bill gives the municipality the ability to give charitable organizations tax rebates on their commercial properties up to 40% of their tax bill. That's money that can go to many good causes. In my own community I've seen the work of Variety Village, the Lions Club, the Red Cross, Salvation Army and dozens more. These organizations not only improve community life, but without them, Scarborough wouldn't be a community. When people give money to Variety Village, they want it to go to disabled kids. They don't really want it to go to fixing roads and garbage pickup.

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It's unreasonable to expect a charity to pay the same taxes as a business that's out for profit. This bill recognizes that and sets a framework to protect our charitable organizations.

Overall, the Fair Municipal Finance Act addresses a number of inequities in the existing property tax system. Bill 149 provides the foundation for an even fairer and more flexible tax structure. This bill shows how caring and concerned for the most vulnerable members of society our government is. This bill will help charities do their important work. This bill will help small business flourish and grow. This bill will protect seniors. It is good for small business, and what's good for small business is good for Ontario. We're looking after seniors, the disabled, charities, the small entrepreneur.

I ask all members of this Legislature to support Bill 149, the Fair Municipal Finance Act.

The Deputy Speaker: Question or comments?

Mr Crozier: I want to take part of my two minutes to respond to the member for Scarborough West when he says it protects seniors. I want seniors and the disabled to understand very clearly that this protection comes at a cost, because if you apply to a municipality to have your taxes deferred, and not reduced -- they are only going to be deferred. They will have to be paid at a later time and/or your estate is going to have to pay. Many seniors are concerned about an estate that they've accumulated that they want to leave to their loved ones.

Let it be very, very clear -- and I hope to the government members -- that it doesn't protect them at all. All it does is defer the tax to a later date. You're going to have to pay it in the end.

Municipalities that defer these taxes still have ongoing expenses at the same time. What are they going to have to do? They're going to have to make up that amount of tax deferral because they have a cash flow problem with what this government is doing to them. They'll have to, as I say, make up for those taxes in the meantime.

As we've heard before, the government says a lot about, "We're helping small business; we're getting rid of the business occupancy tax." That's going to have to be made up as well. If this government is so generous and I'm the mayor of a town and I'm trying to balance a budget -- in fact I have to balance it by law -- then if you give some of my tax revenue away, I'm going to have to go to the residences. In fact, I'm going to have to go to those very charities, to those very elderly, to those very disabled to make up for the government's generous giveaway of the business occupancy tax.

Mr Marchese: To the member for Scarborough West, he too has a duty to build myths. That's what this is all about. He talks about seniors as if somehow they really care. I know everybody cares, but these people pretend that they really care about the people they're whacking with the fair tax bill.

Actual value assessment is like market value assessment and it whacks seniors, people who have devoted their lives just to their little home. Yes, they can defer their payments, but it's a deferred debt that these people are engaged in. They're not protected. Look at the user fee they apply to seniors on the prescription drugs. That was a whack on seniors. They did that.

Look at the business occupancy tax, the $1.6 billion that's taken away. Where banks used to pay more, now they get a big break. At what cost? The residential person is going to have to pay for that, or small business people. This guy claims that seniors and small business are going to get a break. With the business occupancy tax being removed, it's got to be made up somehow.

Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I believe that the member should be referring to people on either side of the House by the designation of their riding.

Mr Marchese: On the whole issue of the business occupancy tax, residents and small business are going to have pay. Yet this man from Scarborough West professes to say that he's a friend of seniors, he's a friend of small business. The social assistance reform bill that we're dealing with throws people out on the street at the age 60 to 64. A large number of these people are widows. He talks about rebates to charity. Somebody has got to pay. The municipalities have got to pay, and the property tax people, the taxpayers have to pay for that.

Mr Grimmett: I'm pleased to make some comments about the speech just made by the member for Scarborough West, a well-known, compassionate friend of seniors and charities and defender of small business. I know in his professional career he's had a lot of work to do with small business. I think it's important for the public to recognize that Bill 149 contains a very well created and well-planned section to deal with seniors and to deal with the deferral of taxes that seniors might have.

In my riding I've met with seniors who have come to me and shown me the plans that exist in other provinces. Prince Edward Island and British Columbia have similar plans to what's set out in Bill 106 and 149 for seniors. It's something that's been around for a little while in other jurisdictions. I don't know why we haven't adopted it in Ontario previous to now, but we're taking action to provide seniors with the right to defer their taxes. That's something the British Columbia government and the Prince Edward Island government have done for some time.

In both of those provinces they recognized that when there was a deferral, there was a need for a municipality to find that money elsewhere. That's why you can't simply say to municipalities, "You've got to provide a break for the estate." The estate will eventually have to pay these taxes. When the seniors speak to me about needing a deferral, they recognize that their estate is going to have to pay those taxes at some point. They simply say: "We're on a fixed income. If we're going to have significant increases in taxes, and that could or could not happen, from one time to the next," they want to be able to defer that increase to their estate if necessary. That's what they're permitted to do. The people who come to me realize they don't want a free ride. Seniors don't want a free ride. They want to have the opportunity to defer those taxes.

Mr Bradley: I was wondering whether the member was going to mention -- it's probably because of the new rules that restrict the member to 10 minutes -- when he mentioned seniors, the impact of the removal of rent controls on the various buildings. There is some suggestion that perhaps, with the change in assessment and with the change in the rent control rules, that any savings in taxes would be passed along automatically to renters.

My concern is that the member forgot to mention -- because I know he wouldn't deliberately do this; he inadvertently forgot to mention -- that this government is terminating rent controls. Many of the seniors I know in the province who voted Conservative are shocked and surprised today to learn that the Conservative Party is getting rid of rent control. The senior is faced with the position now of either being a prisoner in his or her own apartment or, if the person moves out, the rent control is lost on that apartment. They're probably going to have to move into a new apartment where rent control doesn't apply. This will be difficult for seniors. They're going to be as annoyed with that as they were with the new fee every time they get a prescription, and funds that have to be paid, all these drugs that have to be paid for now, because they didn't hear Mike Harris of the Conservatives talk about that in the election campaign at all. No mention was made at all of that.

I know that if the member had more than 10 minutes, he would have talked about the way the Mike Harris government is ending rent control, the way they're imposing new user fees on seniors, user fees that are going to be detrimental to the seniors in this province. I certainly will speak out on their behalf if the government members don't want to

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The Deputy Speaker: Further debate? The member for Essex-Kent.

Mr Crozier: Essex South, sir. That's where the tomatoes come from.

Ms Churley: And what else?

Mr Crozier: And me.

I welcome the opportunity, albeit so briefly under the new rules, to speak on Bill 149. Because of my municipal background and my concern about the municipalities in my riding and the seniors in my riding, I only wish I would have more time, because this is a very serious issue. It will be the most dramatic change in property tax ever seen in Ontario.

Along with that dramatic change comes a very narrow time frame. I've talked to employees of the finance department who are involved in the area of assessment and they say they can't possibly do an effective and accurate job in the narrow time frame they've been given, because this is going to come into effect January 1.

What else happens at the first of the year? Well, municipalities want to see their tax rolls. The government no doubt knows what the impact of these changes is going to be on those assessment rolls but they haven't shared those with us, nor have they shared them with the municipalities. That's going to cause a budget crunch when it comes to the finances of municipalities early in 1998. I suspect there is a possibility that even the collection of interim taxes will be delayed.

We haven't seen any of the new tax rates that are involved in this. Today the Minister of Municipal Affairs assured us that the Who Does What downloading costs will be shared by the government with the municipalities by October 6, but that's only the overall impact of the downloading and how much the municipalities will be shortchanged. So initially, around October 1 they're going to say, "We know we've been shortchanged but we don't know what effect Bill 149 is going to have on the tax rates of the municipalities because we won't have the assessment rolls."

I want to return for just a moment to the question that was brought up by the member for Scarborough West and also by my colleague from St Catharines when it comes to seniors and the fact that seniors can defer their taxes. One of the government members said that the seniors in his riding understand that. They understand that they're on a fixed income, that municipal taxes in their view may be as high as they can afford, although I don't know why they should be concerned. If they listen to this government, their taxes in fact are going to be decreased. I rather doubt that, but that's what the government is telling them. Anyway, these seniors say: "That's all right. As long as you let me defer my tax, I'll be happy with that. I don't mind that it's going to become a lien on my estate."

We have seniors who have worked hard all their lives. They've built a home for themselves, in many cases just a modest home. They've paid it off. They can think back to the day they paid their mortgage off. They may have even burned it because that's a great way to celebrate that you've paid it off. Well, you know what? The minute they ask that taxes be deferred on that property, they're going to owe just like a mortgage again. They're going to have a debt accruing against it. I'm not so sure that seniors are going to find that a pretty thing to look at; to think that they've worked all their lives, they've paid their mortgage off, they own their home free and clear, but suddenly a debt is starting to accumulate against it again. I haven't had a senior yet who tells me that's a happy prospect. I don't think they like it at all. In fact, many seniors have said -- and I guess we each in our own ridings have a range of seniors at different economic levels -- "I'm now in a position, having paid that debt off, where I can maintain my modest income, but I don't want a debt to accrue against that property."

Small business is another area where there's concern on their part because the province has said, "We're going to get rid of the business occupancy tax. It's unfair. You shouldn't have to pay it," but if I'm a municipal councillor and I'm a residential property owner in that municipality, I'm going to have to say, "Who's going to make up that business occupancy tax?" If the provincial government has been so kind as to give that revenue away, who's going to make it up? Well, of course, the residential taxpayer is going to make it up. That's who's going to do it, and in some cases it's going to be quite significant.

In some municipalities -- I've heard the figure mentioned earlier today that banks are taxed in the business occupancy area around 75%. Well, who wouldn't want to give the banks a break? I mean, after all, they're living in poverty, so we should give the banks a break. Any residential taxpayer in his right mind would say, "Yeah, I think the banks are being hard done by and I'd like to share with them and I think you should give them a property tax break so that my property taxes will then go up."

We all know that businesses can deduct their tax from their income, from their revenue, to arrive at their net income. But unfortunately home owners can't do that. So what you're taking is a cost off a business that can deduct it from their taxes and you're putting that cost on a residential homeowner who can't deduct that tax. Frankly, I don't think that's very fair. There may be fairer rates that you can charge business when it comes to business occupancy, but let's take into consideration that it's a legitimate business expense and that it's tax-deductible and that the people who are going to have to make it up, the poor residential taxpayers, are not going to be able to do that.

When my constituents come in and they want an explanation about this fairer tax plan, I point these out. If I only have the 10 minutes that I have here to speak to the Legislature, I obviously don't have an opportunity to explain any of what the government suggests are the good parts of this plan, so that's why I have to take the time --

Hon Mr Villeneuve: You never did that anyway, Bruce.

Mr Crozier: I always try to be fair. I don't mind giving credit where credit's due, but I also don't mind giving somebody a whack if I don't think they're being fair, and I think the word "whack" was used earlier. I think you're whacking the residential taxpayer in this case and I don't mind at all telling somebody that this government is making them share that burden.

I want to mention just for a moment, when I think of my municipal days, about the gross receipts tax. It was suggested earlier that the Who Does What committee said, "This is not really a tax on property used, it's a tax on revenue." That's the way the tax was arrived at, but those businesses, telephone companies in particular, have property that sits in that community.

I suggest they have garbage that has to be picked up. I suggest they have sewers that have to service their property. There's a large exchange building Bell Telephone has in the town of Leamington. I suggest it has a bathroom in it someplace, so they use municipal hard services like that. If there happens to be a break-in, I suggest the police have to investigate it. The tax may be based on revenue, but it's because that capital asset of theirs is sitting in the community and needs service. So what's the government do? The answer is to take the money away because it's gross revenue. I suggest to you if you're really being fair you place an assessed value on the building and tax it in the normal way that every other business is taxed.

There are different ways to do this. There are ways to make tax fairer, and I think we've all tried to look at that over the years. These are only a few of the things I think residents, particularly residential taxpayers, should be aware of. They should understand exactly what the implications are, and then, as one member suggests, if they're happy with it, that's fine. I won't argue with them. I just want to make sure that the net effect of this is explained to them completely, and I think the net effect is going to cost the residential taxpayer more.

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The Deputy Speaker: Questions and comments?

Ms Martel: To just follow up on some comments made by the member for Essex South with respect to the gross receipts tax, because earlier in my remarks I pointed out the loss of revenues that communities in the riding of Sudbury East and in the regional municipality of Sudbury are going to experience as a result of this particular piece of Bill 149.

The government can try and soften this any way they like. They can try and call it whatever they want to call it, but at the end of the day, the provincial government, through Bill 149, is going to grab, steal, take revenue that currently comes in to the municipalities that helps those municipal councils pay for other services in those communities, and that is the fact of the matter. It's another way that this province has manoeuvred to grab money back from municipalities while at the same time dumping more and increasing responsibilities, services and costs on to those same municipalities.

I'm not sure if the government backbenchers have any clear idea about what the cost is to municipalities in the areas that they represent, but in mine it's very clear. In one of my smallest communities, 681 households, the loss of revenue will be in the order of $22,000. That's at the same time as this government is dumping OPP costs on to that community, which in that district will result in an over $500 increase per household for that service. The same municipality is going to be hit with dealing with the cost of ambulance service, social housing -- because they have a seniors' complex in their community -- increased welfare costs, child care costs etc. This is a community that can't cope with the download as it currently exists, and now the government, through this bill, takes away yet another mechanism from that community to actually bring revenue in to try and help them cope with the download. That's happening in municipality after municipality across the province.

Mr McLean: I wanted to take the time to comment with regard to the comments the member for Essex South made in the Legislature this afternoon. He talks about a fair tax plan. I remember some time ago, between 1985 and 1990, when taxes increased in this province some 32 times. The same member's party increased the deficit of this province from approximately $26 billion to $49 billion. For the individual to talk about a fair tax plan, I remember the former Treasurer of this province who did away with the ad valorem tax of 8.5 cents a gallon and brought in the ad valorem tax which increased the tax so we now have some 14.7 cents on a litre of fuel.

So we talk about a fair tax, and now we're dealing with the market value assessment where municipalities will have the opportunity to deal with commercial assessment. They'll have the opportunity to deal with the 1,000-or-fewer-seat theatres that we have -- a tax break for many people who are involved in the theatre and arts in this province. I think that's a step in the right direction.

The previous administration brought in a bunch more taxes and increased our deficit from about $47 billion or $49 billion to almost $100 billion. We were paying $1 million an hour in interest. There are 8,760 hours in a year. That works out to over approximately $9 billion extra we were paying, the second-highest expenditure in the province of Ontario.

I commend the treasurer for bringing in and lowering the budget in this province, because if somebody doesn't do it, I don't know who will. I can say to you that the seniors of this province are going to enjoy Bill 149.

These are some of the things that the member for Essex South should have talked about with regard to a fair tax plan. I say that this Bill 149 is fair to all.

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): Let's get the facts on the table. During the Robarts and Davis years, the public debt in this province up until 1985 went to $40 billion. The previous Liberal government added $10 billion to that and the NDP government added another $50 billion to that, for $100 billion. What are you doing right now? You are increasing it from the $100 billion that it was in 1995 to $120 billion that it will be by the year 2000, and you're doing that because you're giving people a tax cut. You shouldn't be giving any tax cuts until the deficit is down to zero.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order. There's too much noise.

Mr Gerretsen: Let's talk about one other thing. I know of no senior in this province -- people who own their own homes, people who have paid off their mortgages, people who, generally speaking, live in older houses -- who wants to have a lien put on their property because of the tax increase this act is allowing to take place.

We all know that older properties are more likely to be assessed higher, as opposed to the newer properties. You are saddling the seniors of this province with debts they don't want. These people were born during the Depression or born before the Depression. They know all about the Depression and they don't want to be saddled with debt.

I see the minister laughing there. You won't be laughing when that senior citizen who has not had a debt over the last 20 years, who does not have a credit card in his pocket, all of a sudden will be saddled with an extra $1,000 in debt, in a lien against their property for the next five or six years. It's easy to say their estate can pay it off. These people don't want to leave their kids debts, and your action right here is causing that. You should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you, for implementing this on the backs of the seniors of this province.

Ms Churley: I'm glad to respond to the comments made by the member from the area where tomatoes grow. I've eaten tomatoes from Essex South and they truly are delicious.

Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I love them too.

Ms Churley: I'm glad to hear that.

I think in his 10 minutes he outlined many of the concerns that have been expressed by people here today and in the past when this bill has been discussed, and the members should pay attention. This is a legacy you're going to be leaving Ontario. You like to yell and scream about the deficit that the NDP government brought up. Yes, it's part of the legacy. I agree.

Perhaps some people don't agree with what we did, but I'll tell you something, we made a choice during the worst recession since the 1930s to try to keep people, absolutely in some cases, above destitution. We tried to help communities, small business. Perhaps it was wrong, but that was a choice we made. But we did not have to go out and borrow money to give people a 30% tax cut that mainly goes to the richest in the province, which is what this government is --

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order.

Ms Churley: I've only got two minutes here. Show a little bit of respect here. You'll have your chance.

That's what you're borrowing money for. Let's not joke about it, that is the reality. You're not just trying to deal with a deficit; you're borrowing money to give rich people a huge tax cut. That's the reality.

One of the aspects of this bill that really bothers me a lot, and I'll talk more about it in a few minutes, is that for the first time ever the province is going to be setting mill rates in our communities and municipalities. There's something very wrong with that and I'll be talking about it more in a few minutes.

The Deputy Speaker: Member for Essex South, you have two minutes to reply.

Mr Crozier: I too thank the members for Sudbury East, Simcoe East, Kingston and The Islands and Riverdale, and I thank the member for Riverdale for the commercial.

I'm really surprised. The minister said, when my friend from Simcoe East was speaking about debt, that it wasn't even anything I spoke about, and it wasn't. I was equally surprised that the member for Simcoe East would even have brought it up in the first place, but let's put it in very simple math since he has.

At the end of your mandate, according to your budget figures, the provincial debt is going to be at about $120 billion. Of that $120 billion, Conservative governments are going to be responsible for half of it. It's very simple math. You're going to be responsible for $60 billion of that debt.

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If I were the member of a party that was responsible for half the provincial debt, I'd keep it kind of quiet. The fact is that you go out and give a tax cut and you're borrowing every nickel of it. I can't imagine --

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Order. Can I ask the members on the government side, please come to order, including the Minister of Environment.

Mr Crozier: I'm surprised that you even brought it up. I'd like to go back, in the last 30 seconds I have, to the comments I made. I want to make it very clear that out of all this bill that we've talked about, those whom I'm most concerned about are the residential taxpayers. They're the ones who are going to take the hit for all the other things that you say you're giving away and making fairer. Of those residential taxpayers, believe me, in the end seniors and the disabled will be hurt the most.

The Speaker: Further debate?

Ms Churley: This is the second of two major bills on changes to property taxes and the way we collect them. Other people have pointed that out. What is really worrisome, and it should be to all the members of the government as well, is that we have no information from your cabinet yet, from your minister, from the Premier. It is incredible. Speaker, your Premier said on the day he was elected, I believe, that they were going to run -- I know you're neutral now. I'm speaking through you to the members.

Interjection.

Ms Churley: Let's not provoke them -- that they were going to run government like a business, but no business would ever, ever make such monumental changes without doing a full impact study, knowing what they're getting into. But because this government is downloading so many services and costs on to the municipalities, they don't seem to care about the impacts right now. They can just avoid looking at it. That is the legacy they're going to leave: a huge mess, huge costs to the municipalities.

We don't know. We can't tell our constituents about the impact of this and the other, the development charges bill. We cannot give them all the details, because the government admits it. When we ask them questions, "Give us more details," they say, "We don't have them yet." It's absolutely incredible.

This, the bill we're talking about today, is on top of the dumping of services on to municipalities, which include social housing, welfare, ambulance services, public transit -- it's probably going to kill public transportation in the Toronto area -- public health, libraries, child care, assessment services and soft services. That is all being downloaded on to the property taxes.

Then there is the elimination of the business occupancy tax. It takes about $1.6 billion out of the system. That's going to leave a shortfall to municipalities, which are having at the same time all these other services being downloaded, which is going to accumulate over time, have a cumulative effect, and we all know that in good times it's not such a problem.

I've been a city councillor, albeit for a very short time, and it was a good economic time, but even then I remember the pressures on the city, the government that at least used to be -- I don't know what's going to happen in Toronto now, with the megacity coming into being -- closest to the people, the incredible pressures on that municipality. We might be able to guess about the impact, as municipalities have -- they've had some impact studies done -- but in the long term when we go through another downturn in the economy, we don't know how that's going to affect the municipal tax base.

When you include the elimination of the business occupancy tax in this whole mix, you've got yet another $1.6 billion or so. Let's put that into some context. Let's look at the big banks. The big banks, which make incredible profits, are going to be saving, I believe the figure we were given, in taxes therefore about $3 million a year. Somebody else is going to have to make that up. That's the reality. Look at the people in your community. Think about the small businesses in your community, think about the seniors, think about homeowners and the lower-income and middle-income areas. Are they going to be the ones to make up for it? Somebody has to. Think about that. It's not so simple to say, "We're going to eliminate that." Well, of course, it is for this government, because they eliminate it. It's all handed down to the municipalities to deal with and then they don't have to worry about it.

While I'm on the subject of the elimination of the business occupancy tax, this government's approach to taxation, setting mill rates for the first time ever, which is absolutely incredible, and the effect -- and I don't think this has been talked about very much in the House -- on the business occupancy tax, I have several BIAs in my community, and I'm sure many other people do too. I've worked with them for years. You know how it works: The businesses get together and on a majority vote decide to form a BIA, a business improvement area. They pool their money. It's provincial legislation but the city collects the money. The local councillors sit on the board and they pool their money and improve their business areas together. It's made a huge difference in the small business areas in my community, as I'm sure it has for many.

These changes mean that now the businesses will no longer be paying that tax to the municipality, which they voted to do; the province will be collecting that tax as well. There is no mechanism to collect it from the business owner so what the government is saying is they're going to collect it from the owner of the building. I can tell you, in my riding that is not acceptable because there are a lot of absentee landlords who don't have -- some will, of course, but to even be able to find some of these people, to contact them, for them to have an interest, to get a majority of those building owners to invest in this, people are very afraid. The small business owners who have invested for years are afraid that they are going to lose that big benefit to their community.

I want to talk about another concern I have with Bill 149. I've mentioned before that the province is setting the property tax rates on hydro lands, utility rights of way and rail lands, and I'm going to mention again that for the first time ever the province of Ontario is getting into setting these mill rates.

We can't get any information about that either, but from what I understand, it's going to be a uniform tax across the province, which is ridiculous. The idea that you would charge the same amount for a chunk of land, an acre of land, in downtown Toronto as you would an acre in North Bay, for instance, is ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I believe the government once again doesn't have a clue what it's doing -- not a clue. I would ask that they take a second look at that. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Now let me get to education. I see the Speaker is counting here. I hope we have a quorum.

Interjection.

Ms Churley: No, he'd never do that.

Education is an area where the provincial government first of all said they were going to take it right over and they were downloading all of these services on to the municipalities. There was a hue and cry and they had to take some of it back. They decided to only fund half of education.

Then they said they were going to make businesses pay for that half. But businesses still don't have a clue what the mill rate is going to be. They have no information. They know they will be paying. Is there going to be a uniform rate across the province? How much are they going to be paying? They don't know. I know that businesses, mostly small businesses in my area but some of the larger ones as well, are scared to death. They don't know where this is all going to lead.

I want to end in the last couple of minutes and talk about seniors, because I believe this is a very serious issue. We hear over and over again, and in sometimes sanctimonious tones from members of the government, how much they care about seniors. "We're doing this for the seniors. These deferred taxes are going to help the seniors."

I can tell you, as other members have pointed out, I have seniors in my riding who have struggled and worked hard all their lives and managed to scrape together enough to buy a little property. Their kids are doing okay but they certainly haven't become rich and will not become rich. In this day and age, jobs for youth, especially under this government, are hard to come by.

I know these seniors would like very much and have planned all their lives to leave their little bit of hard-won property to their children, to their estate. Some of these people are devastated at the thought that, because they won't be able to afford to pay these taxes, they are going to end up -- okay, they can defer them, but you have no idea how important this is to seniors who have not accumulated a lot of wealth over the years but have struggled hard to get what they've got. I think every parent wants to be in a position to be able to leave something to their children, and for a lot of people that is now not going to be a reality.

There are very many flaws with this. When you look at the cumulative effect of these two major bills, plus all of the downloading on to municipalities, it's very clear the government has done no impact studies, does not know where this is going, has no idea and cannot answer our questions. Once again the government, in its zeal to move forward with this, moved too quickly, too fast, without doing the impact studies. They're making changes all right, but they're going to leave a terrible legacy down the road. We won't see it tomorrow, but we'll be seeing it, and I can tell you, it won't be good.

The Speaker: It now being 6 of the clock, this House stands adjourned until half past 6 tonight.

The House adjourned at 1801.

Evening sitting reported in volume B.

September 30, 1997

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

TEACHERS' COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

OWEN SOUND SALMON DERBY

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTRUING

GOVERNMENT'S RECORD

RED HILL CREEK EXPRESSWAY

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

EDUCATION FINANCING

TELEPHONE SERVICES

VISITOR

ORAL QUESTIONS

MUNICIPAL RESTRUCTURING

TEACHERS' COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

CHARITABLE GAMING

TEACHERS' COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

PROPERTY TAXATION

ONTARIO HYDRO

HOME CARE

PROSTITUTION

DOMESTIC ABUSE

TEACHERS' COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

PETITIONS

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE FOR THE DISABLED

ANIMAL WELFARE

EDUCATION FINANCING

FIRE IN HAMILTON

PUBLIC SERVICE AND LABOUR RELATIONS REFORM

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

HUNTING AND FISHING

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

FIRE IN HAMILTON

COURT DECISION

TVONTARIO

HOSPITAL RESTRUCTURING

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

ABORTION

ORDERS OF THE DAY

FAIR MUNICIPAL FINANCE ACT, 1997 (NO. 2) / LOI DE 1997 SUR LE FINANCEMENT ÉQUITABLE DES MUNICIPALITÉS (NO 2)

FAIR MUNICIPAL FINANCE ACT, 1997 (NO. 2) / LOI DE 1997 SUR LE FINANCEMENT ÉQUITABLE DES MUNICIPALITÉS (N^O 2)