L249b - Mon 24 Nov 1997 / Lun 24 Nov 1997
The House met at 1831.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
FAIRNESS FOR PARENTS AND EMPLOYEES ACT (TEACHERS' WITHDRAWAL OF SERVICES), 1997 / LOI DE 1997 SUR LE TRAITEMENT ÉQUITABLE DES PARENTS ET DES EMPLOYÉS (RETRAIT DE SERVICES PAR LES ENSEIGNANTS)
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 161, An Act to provide fairness for parents and employees by providing remedies relating to the province-wide withdrawal of services by teachers between October 27 and November 7, 1997 and to make a complementary amendment to the Education Act / Projet de loi 161, Loi favorisant le traitement équitable des parents et des employés en prévoyant des recours à la suite du retrait de services par les enseignants à l'échelle de la province entre le 27 octobre et le 7 novembre 1997 et apportant une modification complémentaire à la Loi sur l'éducation.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): This bill is necessitated by Bill 160, and to discuss this bill without making many, many references to Bill 160 would be doing a disservice to members of this House, so I may make the odd allusion to Bill 160 in my remarks.
What we have happening here with Bill 160, which brings about the necessity of Bill 161, is we have a government which has gone wild in its efforts to make revolutionary changes in the province without considering the consequences of those changes. I suspect some of the more moderate members on the government benches --
Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): Jim, you mean me.
Mr Bradley: I will not say who I'm looking at today; not the member for Kitchener, I assure you -- must be extremely concerned at the direction in which the government is moving.
First of all, even people who agree in a general sense with the direction in which this government is bringing the province believe the government is moving far too quickly, far too drastically and not assessing carefully the consequences of its actions. There have been some initiatives in the field of education which have been forthcoming from previous reports, most recently the Royal Commission on Education, which was initiated under the NDP government. There were some suggestions there on changes and improvements to the education system, and some of the suggestions were positive and I think received the endorsement of people of all political backgrounds.
The government, however, has selected or cherry-picked, as we say, a few of those recommendations and in isolation has endeavoured to implement them and, in doing so, has launched a major attack on teachers and trustees in Ontario. A lot of people forget that the trustees as well have been under assault. These are people who have dedicated themselves to education at the local level. They're from all political parties. I suspect if you looked across the province, a plurality of those who are trustees might well be adherents to the Conservative Party. That would be a guess. I can't quantify that, but that would be my guess. Yet we've had the Premier and others in the government launch attacks on these individuals as though they were some evil beings out there to ruin the education system and bankrupt the province, which is simply not true, and of course they have launched an attack on teachers, suggesting that somehow they have a very easy job and shouldn't you, as people in Ontario, be resentful.
I remember one of the presentations. I was just going through some of the material. One of the presentations was made in St Catharines by a representative, in this case, of the Catholic school system. She wrote as follows:
"We are here to speak to you this afternoon about the proposed implementation of Bill 160 which, instead of harnessing and utilizing the power and strength of our professionals, is sterilizing them.
"The government is burning bridges instead of building bridges.
"This government is looking for simplistic answers rather than working in partnership with stakeholders to solve problems together.
"This government has gone on record as saying that education in Ontario is broken and needs to be fixed. The minister wanted to create a crisis in a system which is recognized worldwide for its excellence. The crisis is here. Our teachers and students are at the centre of the crisis, although we did not create it."
She goes on to say, and I think this is particularly telling:
"The demeaning of teachers as a special interest group is an insult to the teachers who have devoted their lives to the education of our children. Teachers are professionals who have knowledge, skills, experience and integrity.
"I'm proud to be a principal of a large Catholic elementary school. Every day I see professional teachers demonstrating their commitment to excellence in our school.
"Despite the constant barrage of insults and insinuations about the lack of quality in education, the teachers with whom I work come to our school filled with enthusiasm for their young pupils.
"Every day:
"I see my fellow teachers arriving long before classes begin. They work long before the day officially starts, running extracurricular programs like cross-country, volleyball practices, to meet with parents about student progress and concerns, to name a few.
"I see teachers remaining at school long after school has ended. They stay at school to provide extra programs for students in need, craft clubs, chess clubs, to practise for the choir and drama presentations, to plan to implement ministry programs.
"I see teachers giving up their lunch-hours to run Rainbows programs for students in need.
"These are typical happenings in any school in the province.
"These activities are carried on by the free choice of teachers in any school in the province. Teachers are committed to providing the best, well-rounded education possible for their children.
"What benefit does this teacher-bashing serve when we have the committed people in the schools?
"Teachers readily accept a multitude of roles: That of educator, curriculum planner, decision-maker, counsellor, social worker, coach, adviser to parents, the list goes on and on.
"One of our grave concerns about Bill 160 is that it would allow uncertified, unqualified people to assume these critical roles."
It goes on and discusses many of the concerns about education. But I guess the point I wanted to bring out was that this is typical of teachers. I was over at Lakeport high school on Friday afternoon. I wanted to catch a girls' basketball game of a senior girls' basketball championship in our city, Governor Simcoe against Lakeport. Subsequent to that was Governor Simcoe against Eden high school, another high school in our area, where it was volleyball.
Here's what I ran into. Coaches who were coaching at this time had been coaching all week long, coming in in the morning, staying after school at night and coaching both volleyball and basketball, and both the coaches from this particular game, one from the girls' basketball game and one from the boys' volleyball game, immediately were leaving the school to go to Hamilton, to Bishop Ryan, to coach boys' midget basketball teams, in this case in a tournament in Hamilton.
These are people who had been out all week working with these students, and I said rather wryly to one of the people, "I suppose you've put in your so-called three hours and 15 minutes today, have you?" I'll tell you, the response was -- I wouldn't say bitter because they're more than happy to do so to work with the students, but they were very resentful of the remarks of the Premier and of those ads that are appearing on television nightly, the ads about which Elizabeth Witmer, the Minister of Health, the former chair of the Waterloo Board of Education, the former secondary school teacher, has made some reference and not in particularly complimentary terms, and others, I'm sure, are somewhat embarrassed if they're not part of the right-wing rump of the Conservative Party.
The Reformers in the party, I'm sure, would feel perplexed and concerned about the nature of those ads, paid for by all taxpayers in Ontario, not by the Conservative Party, not by the individual Conservatives, but by all taxpayers, using taxpayers' dollars to attack others and have concern about the general tone of this government as it approaches some of the confrontations in which it has engaged.
First of all, they didn't like the rules in this Legislature because they allowed the opposition to debate for a longer period of time than the government liked or allowed a few bargaining chips, if you will, for the opposition to try to get more hearings across the province or some concessions from a government with an 82-seat majority government. What they did was they changed the rules. Unilaterally, they embarked upon a course of action to change the rules of this House so they would be able to grease the skids for the revolutionary program in Ontario.
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I say this is not good for all members of the House -- not just the opposition, not just those against the government who may be outside of this House, but not good for the democratic system. If there's going to be one general condemnation of this government, it may not be found in any one of the particular bills, though they are offensive to many people within our society, but rather the intimidating, bullying approach and the stacking of the deck and changing of the rules to allow the government to get its way on all occasions, not even consulting moderate Conservatives, middle-of-the-road Conservatives who want to build a consensus in this province. Instead of having a consensus, instead of having compromise, all we have is confrontation after confrontation after confrontation with everyone in the province.
The Deputy Speaker (Ms Marilyn Churley): Questions and comments?
Mr Len Wood (Cochrane North): I agree with the member for St Catharines that Bill 160 is very destructive to the education system in Ontario. Some of the comments he has been making are going to come back to haunt not only the cabinet ministers and the Premier but some of the backbenchers, as the campaign starts to gear up for the next election. There's no doubt about it that the parents, teachers and students are not going to allow the attack that has been brought by this government against all the kids right across this province. It's not an education improvement act; it's the destruction of the public education system as we know it in Ontario.
There are petitions going out and being circulated all across this province. As our leader mentioned during the opposition day, 700,000 names on a petition should be enough to force this government into a referendum. Even if Bill 160 is passed, it should be repealed and forgotten about forever, to let the next government rebuild after all the destruction that is taking place.
As the member said, it's not only an attack on the teachers, the parents and children, it's an attack on the trustees. Trustees out there are seeing their number dwindle and being blamed for what Mike Harris says is poor-quality education. When he's over in Europe he brags about how Ontario is open for business, we have a good trading system and everything is well in Ontario, yet when he comes back he deliberately goes out and attacks, through TV campaigns, advertising campaigns and one thing or another, completely bashing everything this province has stood for in education over the last number of years. It's not called for; it's a deliberate, unnecessary attack on the education system.
Mr Bart Maves (Niagara Falls): I want to make some quick comments on the member for St Catharines's speech on 161. I note that the member did not at all tell us what his position was on Bill 161, or for that matter on Bill 160. Instead he talked about television ads and propagated myths about government comments about teachers. Many of the comments he attributed to the government have never been uttered by government members.
It would have been more interesting for me to find out his opinion on Bill 161. Does the member opposite support making payments of up to a maximum of $40 per day per family to the parents of school-age children to help alleviate the impact of the strike? We don't know what his position is on that. We don't know if the member opposite agrees with protecting employees who had to care for the children during the strike. We don't know if the member opposite agrees with the bill which protects teachers who refused to participate in the strike from union reprisals.
It would have been nice if the member had taken his 40 minutes that he used Thursday and another 10 minutes that he used today to at least touch on some of these issues and let us know what his position was. I know it's very easy to play on people's emotions, but I guess it's not so easy for Liberals to tell us what their actual position is on some of these issues.
I was here on Thursday for the first part of his speech. You didn't tell us then either. You didn't tell us, when you talked about Bill 160, whether you agree with the removal of school boards' powers to set or increase education property taxes. Twenty-four studies have told us that since 1950, that education shouldn't be on property taxes. We still don't know the member's position on that.
We eliminated the pay and benefits of school board politicians, replacing them with a smaller honorarium. We don't know what the position is on that. We're requiring fair and non-discriminatory funding of public and separate school boards. We don't know the member's position on that.
Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-Walkerville): I'm glad to speak after my colleague from St Catharines, who I think said clearly and unequivocally what his views and the views of the opposition are about education. For one, we do have to have a fairly funded education system. Like my colleague from St Catharines, I've seen what can happen when the education system is not properly funded, and like my colleague from St Catharines, I don't support a government that says one thing and does another, that says it wants to improve the quality of education yet cuts more than $1 billion out of our children's classrooms.
I support my colleague from St Catharines when he says that morale is down in our schools, not only among our teachers but among our students. I too have been to schools. I've been to Catholic Central in my riding, I've been to Lowe, to Walkerville, to Riverside, to Brennan, to Herman, to Kennedy, all these schools. What is the great problem? It's a morale problem. We're tired of the falsehoods that are propagated by a government that has no understanding of education, by a government that says one thing and does another, by a government that's more interested in spending money on propaganda than it is on spending money on good education.
I think the member for St Catharines was clear and I think he was eloquent when he said we should be committing to education, we should be committing to making our classrooms work. The real issues are about funding. The real issue is not about this or that or some small thing; it comes down to funding and it comes down to control, two issues which this government has a conception of, a conception that's all wrong. The member for St Catharines is right when he says the government's record is nothing but a record of falsehood.
Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): I was watching and listening to the member for St Catharines on closed-circuit television here. I've got to tell you, he and I in Niagara region have been very lonely. There are six MPPs in Niagara region, and the member for St Catharines and I have been quite lonely, albeit enjoying each other's struggle against Bill 160.
Mr Maves: Be careful, Peter. I have had an empty chair beside me with your name on it.
Mr Kormos: I'll tell you this: People across Niagara region know full well what Bill 160 is all about, and they know what 161 is all about. They've been robbed; they've had $667 million to be pulled out of education in this coming fiscal year alone, and what does the government do after taking almost $1 billion in one year alone away from their kids' education? The government tries to buy them off with a crummy $400.
You know what? Each and every one of those families, every single person who wants to apply for that $400, deserves it after what this government has done to them, not just with respect to education and Bill 160. Lord knows, there was enough money pulled out already last year. After what this government has done to them, a little bit of recompense in the amount of $400 nobody quarrels with. But the fact that it's being done to try to buy off people who simply will have no more of this government's cruel anti-child, anti-woman, anti-senior, anti-student, anti-sick person agenda, that, I tell you, is shameful.
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Mr Bradley: The best way to respond to the responders is to read a letter from the Synod of the Diocese of Niagara, Anglican Church of Canada, to Mike Harris:
"Dear Premier Harris:
"This letter is sent out of profound concern for our province and especially for our children in all our schools. We wish to join our voices to that of a very large group of citizens in Ontario who are very upset about Bill 160 and the whole manner in which your government is handling this hugely important issue. We are the more concerned when we discover that a chief aim of your government on this matter is to effect a huge financial savings from education so general tax cuts can be funded.
"As bishops in the Anglican Diocese of Niagara, we speak for every member of our 117 congregations in registering profound concern. We know that differences of opinion regarding solutions to problems of public education exist within our congregations, but we are certain of everyone's deep anxiety that a fair, equitable and just solution be the goal driving all parties involved in this critical discussion.
"We cannot discuss Bill 160 in detail in a letter but we now register particular concern regarding one section. The removal of responsibility from local authorities and the placing of almost exclusive authority for all aspects of education in the hands of one person, namely the Minister of Education, is alarming and dangerous in our estimate. Our Anglican experience tells us that authority is healthier when it is shared and when it is dispersed among several or many bodies rather than concentrated in the hands of one person.
"We urge you, Mr Premier, to do two things:
"1. Delay the passage of Bill 160 so that more public discussion can take place across the province....
"2. Examine again the whole thrust of Bill 160 to see that a more democratic and dispersed system of responsibility is built into the legislation."
This is most of the letter. It is signed by the Bishop of Niagara, Walter Asbil, and I must say I agree with the Anglicans in Niagara on this score.
The Deputy Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Bud Wildman (Algoma): I am pleased to rise to join in this debate on Bill 161. I must say, though, that I've had some difficulty determining what the position of the government is and the reason for its position on this bill. I want to analyse the bill on the basis of the context of this whole issue and what led the government to introduce such legislation.
Initially when the Minister of Education and Training announced that the government was going to give $40 a day -- actually, the government wasn't going to give $40 a day; the government was going to take $40 a day from the school boards and transfer it to the parents who had children in the system because of the disruption in classes. I thought, "I suppose this makes sense, because a lot of these parents would have additional expenses related to child care, particularly for very young children, if they were both working outside of the home and were not able to look after them themselves."
So initially I thought, "Okay, what's going to happen is that the government is going to say to parents, `If you incurred additional costs as a result of the disruption in classes, this money will be used to reimburse you.'" I assumed, of course, that the parents would have to keep their receipts from the child care and they would at some point submit these receipts -- I've now found it would not be to the provincial government but to the school board -- and they would be reimbursed for that portion of their additional costs which would fit under the criteria in the legislation.
I looked forward to the legislation to see how this would work because, frankly, it made sense to me that if there were parents who had children under the age of 13, which is the arbitrary number used, but that's fine, who had to get child care for their children during the disruption of classes, they should have their expenses covered, or whatever portion of those expenses it would be possible to cover under this program.
But I must say I was nonplussed when I saw the legislation and heard the first interventions in the debate by members of the Conservative Party, because the first thing I was informed about by the new Minister of Labour when he got up to speak was that there are no receipts required to receive this money. In other words, an individual can just apply. The parent does not necessarily have to have incurred any additional costs; they can just apply.
I wondered how on earth a government that seems to pride itself on fiscal responsibility could suggest that they were just going to give $40 a day away to parents with no requirements for justification. I gleaned from the comments of the government members in the debate, however, that the government is attempting to justify this giveaway of tax dollars to parents not on the basis that they incurred additional costs during the disruption, not on the basis that they had to pay out money to look after their children, which I think would be quite justified. If people needed to spend money to get additional child care and we're going to reimburse them, that's great. But no, this isn't for that. The government members said: "No, no, no. It's not related to additional costs for child care. This is compensation for inconvenience." They didn't define what "inconvenience" meant. It wasn't additional cost; it was inconvenience. Any parent of a child 13 years of age or less in Ontario who felt inconvenienced could get this $40 a day. I know it's hard to believe that a government that, again, prides itself on fiscal responsibility would be so irresponsible as to say they're just going to give out $40 a day if I happen to feel inconvenienced, but that's what they're going to do. That works out to about $400 for any parent who feels inconvenienced.
I'm wondering what happens if it happens to be a person who is a stay-at-home parent; that is, a parent who does not work outside of the home. I suppose such a parent could argue that he or she was inconvenienced by having the kids at home, that this was an inconvenience. I have never seen my children as an inconvenience. As a matter of fact, I think my children are a blessing, and I know my wife feels exactly the same way. If she had her children at home with her, she wouldn't consider that an inconvenience. The question then is, would we qualify for this $40 a day? No, we wouldn't, because my older children are over 13 and my little girl is not yet of school age, so we couldn't argue, I guess, that we were inconvenienced. We wouldn't qualify for this. But I guess a stay-at-home parent who is normally at home but doesn't have the kids at home during the day because they're at school could argue that she or he was inconvenienced by this disruption and therefore they qualify for $400.
I've really tried to analyse this, because I couldn't believe that the Minister of Labour, particularly the minister who I've heard speak prior to his appointment to the executive council and who has been very vehement in talking about getting rid of the deficit, eliminating wasteful spending, who has said we must have fiscal responsibility, we must have fiscal accountability, would actually get up and say, "We're giving away 400 bucks to anybody who wants it, as long as you have a kid under 13 or you have a child who is older than that who happens to be disabled and is a special-needs child."
I couldn't believe it, so I really tried to think about this. I came to the conclusion that this is really conscience money. The government feels bad that they've put themselves and the rest of the province, the people of Ontario, into such a terrible situation, that we had such a disruption of classes, and the government is trying to make itself feel better; it's trying to assuage its guilt for having caused this disruption of classes. By doing that, it's giving out $400 to anybody who asks for it, as long as they have a kid who's 13 years of age or younger, because they were "inconvenienced."
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The question is, why would this government feel so guilty that the government would feel it has to give out this money to people to try and make up for what they've done? What have they done that has caused them to feel so responsible for the disruption in classes that the government has decided it has to give $400 away to people? That's when I said obviously we have to look at the context of this situation.
What has the government done that has led to this disruption of classes? Why does this government believe it is responsible for having caused inconvenience and that it has to compensate people for that inconvenience? I add the caveat of course that the government is compensating people for this inconvenience with other people's money, not with their money. It is taxpayers' money, but it is taxpayers' money paid to the school boards, not to the coffers of the province of Ontario. So in a sense the provincial government is expropriating the money from the school boards to be transferred to the parents, and of course it goes to parents. I thought if it really was just conscience money and trying to pay people off, trying to make themselves feel better, they might be prepared to compensate anybody, not just the parents. Surely a lot of people in this province were inconvenienced by this disruption, not just people who had children under the age of 13. I think it's interesting that they don't allow teachers who are parents to claim for this money.
Was it in York where they had the legal work stoppage during the teachers' political protest one week? Get this. The parents in York are only going to be allowed to claim for one week, so they'll only get 200 bucks, they won't get $400, because apparently this government doesn't feel the government was responsible for the work stoppage in York. If they did feel they were responsible for the work stoppage in York, they'd be compensating those parents as well. But no, they're only going to compensate them for half of it, because I guess they feel they aren't responsible.
What has the government done to make itself feel so responsible that it has to try and make itself feel better by giving away money to people?
Over the last two years, this government has engaged in a concerted attack on public education. The reaction to that has been so severe among the teaching profession that it produced this work stoppage, and that's why the government feels so guilty.
Keep in mind that in the election campaign, the Conservatives had said they would not remove any money from classroom education. They made that commitment to the public. But what happened of course is that after they came into government, the then minister, Mr Snobelen, set about removing $800 million. Actually, it was $400 million; on an annualized basis, it works out to $800 million to $1 billion. They set about removing $800 million from the education system and the government argued that this would not cause any problems in the classroom.
They got a shock, though, because not only did it mean that many school boards had to eliminate junior kindergarten, and even in some school boards where they didn't eliminate junior kindergarten, the boards had to change it substantially -- sometimes they went to a full-day junior kindergarten every other day, alternating with the kindergarten, so they would save money on transportation -- but they also found that certain school boards eliminated adult education, because the government of course cut by 50% the funding for adult education.
The government was prepared for this. The government was prepared to see these programs cut. They were prepared for that. Keep in mind, to be fair to the Conservatives, that they had said originally that they thought junior kindergarten should be optional. They didn't think it should be required. If the Conservatives really believe that junior kindergarten should just be optional, I suppose we can't fault them for saying they're going to take money out of it.
Of course, their cuts to adult education don't work that way. Obviously you would think this government, which claims to be in favour of people improving their life skills, their knowledge, their information, that wants them to become more productive and to care for their families and to help contribute to society, would be in favour of people getting back to school and upgrading themselves, giving themselves more tools with which to be able to compete in the workplace, to get jobs. You would think this government would be in favour of that, but they're not. They're not in favour of adult education. They don't think adults should go to high school during the day. They don't think that's the right way to do things. They think adults should just go to school in the evening for night classes, for continuing education. Of course, that means it's going to take them much longer to be able to upgrade themselves and get their diplomas and perhaps go to college or to get into the workplace.
Let's leave for the moment junior kindergarten and adult education aside because, on the one hand, the Tories did say they intended to make cuts to junior kindergarten and they thought it should be optional. On the other hand, they say it's okay to discriminate against someone who's over the age of 21 because even if they need the education, they're over 21; they should get it themselves. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the taxpayers to fund it. Okay. It's a problem, of course, because it means there are going to be more and more people continuing on social assistance, but again they've covered that out because they cut the social assistance payments by 21%. I guess it all fits together.
However, keep in mind that the Conservatives said they weren't going to hurt classroom education. The last time I checked, junior kindergarten and adult education courses took place within the four walls of a classroom. Innocent as I am in Tory affairs, I would have thought this counted as classroom education. Junior kindergarten takes place in the classroom, adult education courses take place in classrooms; therefore that would be classroom education. But I'm trying to understand the workings, the analysis that the Tories go through. I understand that junior kindergarten and adult education for them are not classroom education; they don't count. Okay. I'll accept that. I don't quite understand it, but I'll accept it.
But what about classroom education? What did this government do, when taking $800 million to $1 billion out of education, to classrooms? Perhaps the worst result was what these cuts meant for special-needs children and special-needs classes. In many, many boards across Ontario, the education assistants who have assisted classroom teachers in providing education to special-needs students have been eliminated.
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Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): That was the boards' fault.
Mr Wildman: The government says that's the boards' fault. Now, the boards were in a problem, of course. On the one hand, they got less money in grants from the government, and on the other hand the Minister of Education and Training was saying to them, "Don't raise taxes." When some of them had the gall to raise taxes, they were roundly criticized by the Conservatives.
The arithmetic doesn't work. If you don't have enough money and you can't raise more revenue, then what do you have to do? You have to cut somewhere.
Mr Preston: Cut the fat out of the board.
Mr Wildman: Many of the Conservative members, in the give and take in this House, find it enjoyable to make these comments.
But what are we saying about these special-needs kids who are no longer getting their needs met? That is a serious problem. The fact is, we now have situations where we have classes of 25 or 30 students, sometimes more, and maybe as many as three or four are special-needs students within that classroom and the teacher does not have an education assistant to help with those special-needs kids. The teacher has a choice to make. The teacher either has to spend more time with the special-needs students or she doesn't spend as much time with them as they might need in order to meet the needs of the other students. In either case, a significant number of students within that classroom, special-needs students or other students, are not having their needs met by the teacher. That is a result of the cuts of the government and the fact that the government didn't want more money collected in property taxes. I understand the arithmetic. Many of the people on the other side don't. All I can conclude is that they need remedial math.
What else has happened? I think the worst example is what has happened to special-needs students. That's my most serious concern. In my own area, in the central Algoma board, all the education assistants have been cut. That didn't happen before the election. Those special education assistants weren't cut before 1995. They were all cut after 1995. There are no special-needs kids with educational assistants in the central Algoma board any more. They've all been cut; all the education assistants have been cut in that board. That was done last year as a result of the cuts in grants. That happened after 1995, not before.
The question is, what's happening to those kids? They're either having their needs met and other kids in the class are not getting their needs met, or they aren't and they're acting out and they're affecting the atmosphere in the classroom and they're adversely affecting the performance of the other kids. In either case, they're both losing.
What else has happened? We've seen where boards have cut the number of times they clean the classrooms, clean the buildings. We've seen the situation where boards have cut the number of resources they pay for for classrooms and in some cases, many cases, teachers are having to make up the difference. They're paying out of their own pockets to buy pencils and paper and paints for their classes. Why is this happening? It's happening because the boards don't have enough money.
What else has happened? First off, they don't have enough textbooks for the kids, so the kids can't take them home to do homework. In many cases they are quite old and they are obsolete. For instance, most of the textbooks in use in the high schools and elementary schools today were printed long before the political changes in eastern Europe. All the geography books and history books are out of date, and they haven't been replenished. The boards can't afford it.
What has happened in other parts? Now this, the government argues, is not classroom education, because they make this artificial division; they say libraries aren't part of the classroom, so therefore they can make cuts to libraries and it's not affecting classrooms and it's not in any way going back on the commitment they made. That's silly. The resources, the books, the videotapes, the other educational resources that are kept in and catalogued in libraries are there to assist the teachers and the students in their educational program in the classroom. It's part of the classroom education, but this government says no, it isn't, it's not part of classroom education, and therefore it's okay to cut there. So boards did cut there, and they've cut substantially.
Other programs that have been adversely affected are ones that I guess the government doesn't see as core programs in education. There have been cuts in phys ed, which I think is really shortsighted. It's a basic tenet of education that a healthy body and a healthy mind go together. If we don't ensure that children get good and adequate exercise, they're not going to do well physically and they are not going to do well intellectually either.
What else has the government changed? Thanks to the cuts the government made, we now have significant cuts in music programs in schools. In the elementary schools the music programs have been eliminated altogether in many areas, less so in the secondary schools. In many cases the instruments available to the music programs need to be replaced but haven't been, and so on. These are cuts to education, cuts to classroom education.
This has happened because the government took the position it did, that it was going to cut the grants to the boards and it was going to advise boards that they shouldn't raise taxes, and where the boards did, as I said, they criticized boards.
I think that begins to explain why this government feels so guilty. The evidence is there. They wouldn't be handing out this conscience money, without any requirement that someone be able to show they actually incurred expenses, unless they felt guilty, because they believe in fiscal responsibility. They wouldn't do this kind of thing unless they felt guilty.
They feel guilty because they broke their promise. They promised they weren't going to cut classroom education and they know they did. There's still lots of bravado out there where they say, "No, no, we didn't affect the classroom, and if there were any cuts, it's not our fault; it's the school boards." They say that, but deep down they know the truth and deep down they're very guilty. They feel responsible for the adverse effects on education for our students. That's why they're going to give out this money, to try and make themselves feel better. It's to assuage their guilt. That's the whole reason for it.
What else has this government been doing over the last two years, particularly the previous Minister of Education and Training? He set about systematically undermining the morale of teachers and of the whole education system. We've heard a lot about his speech about creating a crisis and so on; I won't go into that again. But we know what he said in this House, what he said publicly, what he said right across the province. He criticized teachers. He said there was all sorts of waste in the education system and it centred on teachers. He said teachers are overpaid and underworked, that they don't have enough to do, they only work a few hours a day, they have too much preparation time, they have too many holidays, they have too much time off. To top it off, the Premier at one point said both the teachers and the boards couldn't be trusted to provide quality education to the students of Ontario.
This is a basic insult to the people who care about education in this province. This government has set about insulting people right from the beginning. Again, it's self-defeating. If the government really wanted to reform education, they should know that the people who have to implement the reforms are the very people they are insulting and hurting their morale. It doesn't make any sense.
I think these people across the way are fairly intelligent and it's finally dawned on them -- it took them a long time but there was a glimmer of light and it's finally coming through -- that they're at fault. They're the ones who caused this problem. They're the ones who made the teachers so angry and so demoralized that they walked out and disrupted the lives of so many people in this province and caused the inconvenience that this government now feels it has to compensate.
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I think it starts to explain what Bill 161 is about. If the government members didn't feel so guilty about what they've caused the teachers to do, if they didn't feel so guilty about what they've done to education in this province, they wouldn't be throwing away this money without any accountability and no requirement for receipts. That's why they're compensating for inconvenience, because they know they caused the inconvenience and they feel they must somehow compensate people for it.
What else have they been doing over the last two years? The first major piece of legislation that the government introduced on education was Bill 104, the Fewer School Boards Act. This was a piece of legislation that cut the number of school boards almost in half. What it meant was that we now have one of the largest school boards in North America in Metropolitan Toronto, with enormous numbers of students, and then in other parts of the province, in rural and small-town Ontario, we have enormous geographic boards. In my own area, the Algoma district school board number 2 is now the largest school board in the province geographically. It is completely unworkable. There is going to be chaos in January when these new boards come into effect.
Mr Kormos: On a point of order, Madam Speaker: My apologies to the member for Algoma. What he has to say is far too important to be heard by less than a quorum.
The Deputy Speaker: Clerk, is there a quorum?
Clerk at the Table (Mr Todd Decker): A quorum is present, Speaker.
The Deputy Speaker: Member for Algoma.
Mr Wildman: I appreciate the fact that there is a quorum present, but I do understand why my friend from Welland-Thorold would wonder if there was. Obviously, it might be understandable that many Conservative members would not like to hear about their guilt and don't want to hear why they feel this way. They don't want to understand that this is why they're going to throw away this money without any requirements for receipts and without any requirements to show that people actually spent the money.
In my opinion, any parent who didn't apply for this is nuts. This is a great Christmas bonus. You'll get the money in January to help you pay for Christmas. It has nothing to do with whether you actually incurred costs during the disruption of classes. It just is because the government feels so guilty, they want to pay you off. Well, okay. If it makes the Tories feel better, take the money.
We were just beginning to talk about Bill 104, where this government amalgamated school boards and cut the number of boards in about half and produced very large boards: urban boards with very large numbers of students, and in my area, district school board number 2 in the Algoma district, the largest school board in Ontario now -- completely unworkable. There's going to be complete chaos in the education system in January, and it's going to be impossible for the needs of the students across such a wide area to be served.
Bill 104 means there's almost no local control over education any more -- the school boards will not be able to set curriculum, will not be able to determine taxation levels -- and Bill 160 completes that process. There's not going to be any local accountability over the education of our students. Things are going to be centralized at Queen's Park.
Again, I'm trying to think of how a Tory might feel about this. I know that Tories generally have been known to be in favour of getting most of the decision-making as close to the people as possible, making local decisions locally, wanting to have local accountability so that the local taxpayers and voters can ensure accountability. Bill 104, of course, goes in the complete opposite direction and Bill 160 finishes the job. It centralizes things at Queen's Park.
Most Tories, considering their philosophy, will feel very guilty about this. They won't feel happy that they've gone against their own philosophy. They're emulating eastern Europe rather than democratic approaches, because they want a command system. They want a system that can be controlled centrally, where their orders will be sent out to the hinterland, and the people living in the small communities across Ontario will have to take their orders from Queen's Park. They feel guilty, they feel bad about this. They say: "As a Conservative, how do I make myself feel better about what my government is doing? I'm being forced to support it against my own philosophy." They came up with an idea: "We'll give away money to people and say we're compensating them for the terrible things we're doing. That way we'll feel better." They'll bring in Bill 161, which says, "Here's some money." Of course they've got the problem that there's no accountability in this: People don't have to provide receipts and don't have to show that they actually needed the money. They're just compensating them for their inconvenience.
What happened next? Bill 104 didn't finish off the job. The government, the Tories, haven't completely centralized everything yet, so what do they have to do? They still had a situation where school boards could in fact, if they wanted, go against the wishes of the government and perhaps even raise some taxes locally. They didn't want that to happen. That would be allowing elected officials at the local level to make decisions about taxes, and they don't want that. So as part of the Who Does What process the government initially announced they were going to take over all the costs of education, and through that negotiation process with the municipalities, they agreed to take over 50% and they would set the taxation levels here at Queen's Park.
Now we have a situation where we have before the House a major piece of legislation which will allow the provincial government to set property taxes. This is unprecedented in Ontario history. Going back to the 1830s, the provincial government has never been involved in property taxes. The provincial government has never set property tax rates, never confiscated property tax money for provincial purposes. This has always been local, for municipalities and school boards.
The other reason the government wants to centralize control over education at Queen's Park is because the $1 billion it has already taken out is not enough. The Tories made another commitment when they ran in the 1995 election: They said they were going to give a tax break, a 30% tax break to the public. They feel guilty about this, because deep down they know that 66% of this tax break is going to go to the top 10% of income earners in the province, people who don't need it. The Conservatives know that: "They don't need this money, and we're giving it to them. Is there some way we can make the other people, the rest of the public, feel better because we're giving away all this tax money, this tax gift, to the wealthy? There's one way of doing it: We'll give $400 to everybody at Christmastime in 1997. They can collect it in January 1998 and pay off their Christmas bills, and everybody will feel better. They'll think we're nice guys, the Conservatives; we gave $400 to all these people. Some of them needed it, some of them didn't. They didn't have to have receipts to show they needed it. Okay, so we'll just give it out. It will make them feel better, because they've got the $400, and it will make us Conservatives feel good because we were able to give out some largess."
Mr Wayne Wettlaufer (Kitchener): Everybody is watching Wheel of Fortune now, are they?
Mr Wildman: In many ways, Bill 161 is like Wheel of Fortune. Everybody here has just spun the wheel, and they're getting $400 gratis, no receipts required. You just get it as long as you have a 13-year-old or younger child or you have a child with special needs above the age of 13. You don't have to have actually spent the money on child care. There's no requirement at all. All you have to do is say: "I feel inconvenienced by this disruption of classes, and I want the money. Besides, I've got a lot of bills for Christmas I have to pay off." So it is like Wheel of Fortune.
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Under Bill 160, the reason the government wants to centralize control, of course, is that they want to take another $1 billion out. The billion they've already taken out of education wasn't enough, because they want to pay for the tax break. The government can't trust the school boards to do this bidding, to take this money out. There's a major problem, as I think I indicated a little earlier, because 70% of the school boards' budgets are salaries. If you're going to take this much money out, the only way you can do it is by cutting staff.
The teachers' federations have said this will be 10,000 fewer jobs in Ontario for teachers. I suspect that is a little high. The former Minister of Education and Training said it was 4,200 jobs. The current Minister of Education and Training said it was 7,500 jobs. I think it's probably in that neighbourhood somewhere. We're going to have maybe 6,000 to 8,000 fewer jobs as a result of the concentration of power here at Queen's Park and the cuts that the government is making.
But the government, keep in mind, because of its Orwellian Newspeak that it uses in naming bills, is trying to convince the public that this is about improving quality education. They want to take $1 billion out. They want to cut somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 teachers' jobs. They say they want smaller classes -- no, they don't say that, sorry. They say they want to cap average class sizes. But anybody with a shred of knowledge of mathematics knows that if you take $1 billion out and you cut the number of teachers, you can't lower the class sizes. It's impossible. It doesn't work. The math doesn't work.
Deep down, the government knows that they aren't being frank, they aren't being honest with the public, and so they feel guilty again. They still feel guilty. This is really all about guilt.
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): Mr Speaker, on a point of order: Is it okay to generalize and make dishonest comments?
The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): That is hardly a point of order, generalizing. Member for Algoma.
Mr Wildman: That's evidence of the guilt they feel. They're trying to assuage their guilty consciences. That's what this is about. This is about conscience money: "We'll give out some money, make everybody feel that we're nice people, that we really do care about their needs and their concerns, and therefore it will be okay. We'll feel better, and those people who get the $400 will feel good too."
The Premier, of course, set the whole agenda during the disruption of classes. The Premier is the one who said, and his staff behind the scenes: "We will not back down. We will not make any changes to Bill 160, no significant changes. Sure, we'll make technical amendments, but no major changes. The basic tenets of Bill 160 will remain. The government will have central control over curriculum and taxes and grants. The government will have control over the number of teachers. The government will have control over the number of minutes a teacher has with students each week. The government thus will control prep time for teachers. The government will set the whole agenda centrally at Queen's Park. We aren't going to change any of that."
And in a fit of pique, because so many principals and vice-principals were out of their schools during the disruption of classes, the Premier ordered the new Minister of Education and Training to bring in another amendment removing principals and vice-principals -- principal-teachers and vice-principal-teachers -- from the federations. This was actually quite punitive, quite vindictive, and the minister didn't like it very much, but he was under orders from the Premier's office to do it, so he had to do it.
This has caused a tremendous amount of disruption and will cause such disruption. The principals and vice-principals now, according to this bill that's before the House, Bill 160, have between January and April to determine whether they want to remain principals and vice-principals or if they want to go back into teaching full-time. If many of them go back into teaching, the schools are going to be left without experienced direction.
For those vice-principals who already teach part-time and decide they want to remain vice-principals, the minister has no answers at all; he doesn't know how this is going to work. How could a vice-principal be a member of the federation in order to teach half-time but not a member of the federation in order to be a vice-principal half-time? The current Minister of Education and Training doesn't have any answers for that. He doesn't know, so of course he feels very guilty about this and he doesn't understand how he's going to make himself feel better and all of the people who are upset about what has happened to the principals and vice-principals feel better.
Most people in this province have a basic sense of fairness, and they know that this amendment on principals and vice-principals is essentially unfair. It's punitive; it's vindictive. So they feel angry, and that anger causes the Conservatives to feel guilty, so again they're looking for a way to assuage that feeling of guilt, to make themselves feel better. The Premier won't allow them to move the amendment out, to forget about it and say, "Okay, we're not going to proceed with this amendment about principals and vice-principals." The Premier is rock-solidly opposed to them. He wants to get them. They can't do anything in that way, so again the Minister of Labour comes forward with a bill that says, "We'll give out money to the people who feel angry at us and make them feel better, and maybe that will help us all feel better."
Of course, the government has a particularly difficult problem with a number of people who are concerned about Bill 160 over the educational issues but are even more angry about the government's attitude towards democracy. When you look at Bill 104 and Bill 160, this government is taking away local control of education. It's centralizing control of education at Queen's Park.
It means that someone who lives in Hornepayne, in the north end of Algoma district, two days' journey from Toronto, is going to have to have decisions about schools and students' education made at Queen's Park rather than locally. The people in Hornepayne know that going into this disruption of classes, yes, according to the polls, about 52% of the population were apparently on the side of the government. They know that the latest polls indicate, coming out of this disruption of classes, that about 60% of the population is opposed to the government and opposed to Bill 160, because they've been educated by the teachers. We know that parents across the province and other people interested in good-quality public education have rejected Bill 160, or at least major parts of it, and want the government to back off.
This means that this government which was elected in 1995 knows that the majority of the population opposes the government, opposes Bill 160, is in favour of protecting quality education, and yet this government is determined to move forward. So is it surprising they feel guilty? Of course not. Most of them -- I would hope all of them -- believe in democracy, and they know they are denying democracy by proceeding with this bill, so of course they feel guilty. They feel upset. They feel: "I'm being forced into this by the Premier. I've got to support the Premier." Sure, the Premier says it's a free vote on Bill 160, but that remains to be seen. I would really be surprised to see very many members on the government side exercise their responsibility to represent the concerns of their constituents by voting against Bill 160. They're being forced to support the government, no matter what the Premier said.
It appears that many of the people behind this whole process, the people behind this Bill 160 agenda, have a basic disrespect for democracy and the democratic process.
Mr Tom Froese (St Catharines-Brock): Who does?
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Mr Wildman: The people behind this Bill 160 agenda.
In a democracy, obviously you have to make decisions. Governments have to make decisions. Sometimes they're very difficult. But they also have to take into account the views of the public, and the majority view of the public is opposed to this legislation.
We made some suggestions as to how the government might move forward which would help to alleviate this problem. We suggested splitting the legislation into three. The government could proceed now on those parts of Bill 160 that have to be implemented in order to finalize the setting up of the new school boards, the new administrative structures, by January. They could do that now. Then the government could move on the financial changes later, and on the other changes related to collective bargaining at another time. This would give us far more time to consult widely in the province, to negotiate with the teachers' unions and to have a real democratic process.
But the government said no to that. The government members on the standing committee on administration of justice voted unanimously against such a reasonable proposal that was put forward by myself in the legislative committee. I'm surprised they voted against that because it gave their government an out, but I'm not surprised they feel guilty about having rejected that reasonable proposal. Now they want to assuage that guilt by handing out money with no receipts required.
If the government really believed in democracy, it would take the opportunity to accept the proposal made by my leader at the behest of a number of parent groups in this province and call a referendum on Bill 160; not proceed, but wait until the public has spoken.
I remember serving on the Legislative Assembly committee with my friend from Brampton South, the new Minister of Transportation. At that time he was the parliamentary assistant to the Premier. The member for Brampton South brought before the legislative committee a white paper prepared by the Premier himself which dealt with referenda. In that white paper, the Premier said that Conservatives support the idea of referenda on significant matters of public importance, that the Conservatives believe that if one tenth of the electorate petition for a referendum, the government should have to call it, and that the government should live by the results of the referendum and implement it.
The Legislative Assembly committee considered that proposal and made recommendations to the House. It's true the House hasn't acted on it, there hasn't been legislation introduced, but it seems to me that if the parliamentary assistant who advocated that before the committee on behalf of the Premier has now been appointed to cabinet, the government still believes that, and if the government still believes that, why not move on this?
But of course the Minister of Education and Training says, "No, no, a referendum is a stall." This is the first time I've heard a Conservative argue that a referendum is a stall. That certainly wasn't what the member for Brampton South said when he advocated referenda on behalf of the Premier, but the Minister of Education and Training says this is a stall. That's because the Premier has decided he wants this to go through no matter what, no matter how many people are opposed to it. Despite the fact that the majority of the people of Ontario are opposed to Bill 160, this government is going to go ahead and pass it anyway.
It's not surprising they feel guilty. It must gnaw at the conscience. I suspect many, many Conservative members are having a hard time sleeping at night, not just because their phones are ringing off the hook, not just because all of the people are calling them up and saying, "Look, we don't like what you're doing to education," but just because their conscience is bothering them. I've never seen so many unhappy looking people as I've seen in the last few weeks since we came back from the break. Some of the members over there look as if they've been hit by a truck. It's not because somebody has physically assaulted them; it's because they themselves have assaulted their own consciences. This government knows that it's in the wrong, yet it is proceeding. The members of the governing party know they should be backing off and listening to the public, yet they are proceeding, and so they feel guilty. They feel unhappy.
How do they resolve it? They want to make themselves feel good. We're getting close to the holiday season. It's a time for giving. So what do we do? We come up with a bill that gives away money without any requirements at all. It must give them a bit of a Christmasy feeling. Anybody can get $400 whether they incurred any expenses or not, as long as they have kids under the age of 13. All they have to be able to say is that they felt inconvenienced.
It might work. It might make everybody feel good and give them a warm feeling as they sign their Christmas cards. I suppose they'll sign their Christmas cards, if the postal strike ends, by saying: "Merry Christmas, and I hope you got the $400. Any questions, contact my constituency office." Signed, "Conservative MPP for" whatever.
I don't think it's going to work. I think many parents will collect the $400. They'll say, "Thank you very much," and it will help to pay off their bills for Christmas, but it's not going to change their view of Bill 160. It's not going to make them feel happier about this government, and I don't think it's going to make the members of the Conservative Party feel good, because many of them, even perhaps a majority of them, actually believe in fiscal accountability. They're going to say: "What on earth are we doing giving away this money to people who don't even have to submit receipts? How can we justify that?" And you say, "Well, you justify it by saying that they were inconvenienced."
But some poor, innocent member is going to come along and say, "Surely they need to be able to show they had to spend money for child care during the disruption of classes." Then if anybody dares to raise that at caucus, there's going to be a chorus, just after they finish "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," saying: "No, no. No receipts required. Just apply and get your 400 bucks courtesy of the local school board, which got it from the taxpayers."
There are going to be some taxpayers who are parents who don't have kids under the age of 13 or there are going to be some taxpayers who are not parents, and they're going to say: "Wait a minute. How come these people get the 400 bucks without having to show they actually spent money and incurred expenses, and we don't?" They're going to feel angry. They're going to say -- I wouldn't encourage this -- "This is a parent payoff."
I'm saying, "No, no, it's not that at all." We all know that parents with kids under the age of 13 incur more expenses at Christmastime than people who don't have children under the age of 13, so they need the money more than those other people. Surely it's acceptable that we give them a Christmas bonus. I just suggest that the members of the Conservative Party, when they're signing their Christmas cards, make sure that the ones where they mention the 400 bucks actually go to people who have kids under the age of 13, because if they get them to the wrong people, they may run into more problems.
This is the first time I've ever seen this kind of a giveaway in the time I've been in the Legislature. I must say that it's a novel approach. A Christmas bonus is probably a good idea; it's a nice thing to do. To suggest it for everybody in the province, some might suggest, is a little extravagant, but it isn't for everybody. You have to have children under the age of 13; you have to be inconvenienced. But you don't have to have actually spent any extra money during the disruption of classes. You don't actually have to have had any extra costs.
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Where did fiscal accountability go? How can any Conservative who calls himself or herself a fiscal conservative support this kind of suggestion, unless it's just out of the Christmas spirit? I suppose Christmas spirit is a wonderful thing. This'll help to make everyone feel better, but it's not going to change the way they think about Bill 160. Most people will say: "Thanks for the money. I'll pay off as many bills as I can in January when I get it from the school board. But you better ensure quality education for my kids. Giving me $400 doesn't do that."
This government is not going to be able to assuage its guilt. It is destroying public education in the province. It's been quite systematic about it in the last two years. I know why it feels guilty, but the members are going to continue to feel guilty. This issue is not going to go away. Giving $400 to parents who will mostly accept it will not change the basic situation and the opposition to Bill 160.
The Speaker: Questions or comments?
Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): In response to what the member for Algoma had to say, I know he started off with Bill 161 and spoke about Bill 160. I think Bill 160 is today a far better bill as a result of the public hearing process. We heard during the public hearings that class size and prep time and outside professionals shouldn't be determined by regulation. The fact of the matter is that as a result of the public hearings, that is now put into the body of the legislation. That proves the public hearings process has worked.
Also, people had concerns about the removal of duly elected trustees. What Bill 160 does is actually limit the powers that currently exist from the Municipal Affairs Act of 1935 and put those powers to the Minister of Education. But except in the case of Bill 160 he cannot remove a duly elected trustee. We have listened on Bill 160 and we're listening today on Bill 161. The amendments show it. It's a far better bill, as I said.
The member spoke about the use of referendums. I wonder why his government didn't come to the people of Ontario when they hiked taxes 32 times in this province and drove jobs away. When they talk about referendums, they ignored the people in the city of Toronto in 1994 when those people voted in 1994 to do away with the Metro level of government.
What I found most interesting about the member's comments tonight was that he spoke about the fact that Bill 161 is about Wheel of Fortune. When his government was in power, it was the wheel of misfortune, or perhaps a better game show for their government would've been Jeopardy.
Mr Alex Cullen (Ottawa West): I want to commend the member for Algoma for showing very clearly the linkages between this bill, Bill 161, the teachers' strike compensation bill, and of course Bill 160 which prompts this bill, Bill 160 dealing with all the changes the government has to extract $667 million out of our education system.
The member for Scarborough Centre talked about how much the bill had been improved because they had four days of hearings where they heard from, I believe it was, about 80 presenters. Think how much the bill would have been improved if they were able to hear all 1,200 or so who wanted to come and speak to this very extreme change to how education was going to be delivered in our community.
One of the issues that clearly impacts on, as a result of this bill, is the compensation that's going to be given to parents because of the teachers' protest. That will come from the reserve that's going to be established by law through the funds that weren't expended on teachers' salaries. They go into a reserve. By law, that reserve is there. Traditionally when school boards have these reserves going into their next budget year, they are able to use these reserves, sometimes to renovate schools.
I know in the Ottawa Board of Education we have inner city schools. One school a year has to be renovated. They're below the building code. Children are studying in substandard conditions. Take, for example, my friend from Nepean who has a growth community there, who has been lobbying for some time to deal with the portables that are in his community. Unfortunately what happened with Bill 160 is that these moneys go out to pay for our child care subsidies for these parents. When the moneys are not fully expended, as has been pointed out, they will revert to the government. The government will be able to shave back its grant to school boards because these reserves are there. I say that's absolutely wrong.
Mr Kormos: I feel so much concern that I have to register some disagreement with my colleague from Algoma. My colleague from Algoma speaks of this as money in response to a sensation of guilt or a feeling of guilt. I understand why he and a whole lot of other people would reach that conclusion. But just as with the sociopathic personality that cannot feel guilt but can only manipulate and deceive one's way to achieve one's ambition, I suspect this government is incapable of guilt. It's demonstrated it's incapable of any shame. It's demonstrated it's incapable of any empathy. It's demonstrated it's incapable of any compassion. Well, compassion, yes, for their very richest of friends.
The member for Algoma talked about the tax break being funded by your kids' education. Your tax break is being funded by this billion bucks plus that will have been pulled out of education by the end of 1998. There's obviously a strong affinity with the 10% of the wealthiest people in this province who are going to appreciate two-thirds of that tax break, which is, to the largest extent, what Bill 160 is all about. But guilt, no.
There's no guilt here; there's no shame; there's no sympathy; there's no empathy; there's no pity. There's just a hard and cold and driven ambition to make the sick in our society, to make the elderly in our society, to make the poorest, to make the kids, to make their single mothers, pay for this government's commitment to a tax break for its richest of friends. This government has sold out the communities of this province so as to fulfil that promise to their rich Bay Street buddies.
Mr Gilchrist: It's a pleasure to respond to the member for Algoma. It's always a little trying to sit through one of his speeches over here, although I'll give him credit this time that he stayed more or less on topic, which I believe is a first in the last two years. It was somewhat circuitous at points. He touched on Bill 160 and other bills that aren't before us here today. But once again the general tone and tenor was to suggest to everyone watching at home that there's nothing but doom and gloom outstanding in this province, that there's nothing redeeming about the pieces of legislation going through this House, that somehow the 82 government members who are charged with the responsibility of picking up the pieces, of reforming the system you left in such disarray at the end of your five-year mandate -- we are charged with that responsibility and we take it seriously. You have a problem with that.
We bring forward pieces of legislation such as the one before us here today which is purely and simply in response to the needs of the people of this province who were faced with extra day care costs as a result of the illegal strike taken by the teachers in this province, forced by their unions, without any kind of democratic vote. This is a responsible reaction to an unfortunate situation.
You continue to perpetuate the myth. Our government passed only 10 bills last year and gave 720 hours of hearings. We aren't ramming things through; you rammed them through. We're listening to people more than you. Your best year was 689 hours of hearings. We listened for 720 hours. This bill is no different. It is typical of the fact that we are responding to the genuine needs and concerns of the people in this province, not pandering to special interest groups, not appeasing our union boss friends, as you did. The fact is that this bill is necessary, an unfortunate response to an unfortunate situation with the teachers.
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Mr Froese: And the Speaker agrees.
The Speaker: Do not put any words into the Speaker's mouth.
Mr Wildman: I want to thank the member for Scarborough East and the members for Welland-Thorold, Ottawa West and Scarborough Centre for their comments. I just want to say, in response to the member for Scarborough East, that I am optimistic. I'm optimistic as a result of the fact that the public has become informed and has rejected Bill 160. It's an indication that an educational effort on the part of the teachers and others about the effects of Bill 160 has been successful and we have an informed public. That makes me very optimistic about our educational system.
To suggest that this is a responsible response to the needs of parents ignores the fact that the government is not going to require receipts for child care expenses. This is just a giveaway. It is, as I said, a Christmas bonus. It has nothing to do with costs incurred.
The member for Welland-Thorold takes a harder line than I do, which is not unusual. He basically says this government is incapable of guilt, that it demonstrates a sociopathic personality, that it's only manipulative and is prepared without any remorse to fund a tax break to the rich on the backs of students. I think I'm persuaded, actually.
The member for Ottawa West indicates that the committee couldn't hear all the presenters and that this is expropriating schools boards' reserves, and it's quite true.
The member for Scarborough Centre argues that the bill has been improved but he doesn't explain why the government doesn't want to have a referendum on this. He argues that we should have had a referendum. We didn't advocate referenda. This government is the one that came across with that proposal. He also suggested that our government was the wheel of misfortune and it jeopardized things. Frankly, this bill, Bill 160, is a misfortune for the province --
The Speaker: Further debate.
Mr Maves: I'm pleased this evening to stand in support of Bill 161, the Fairness for Parents and Employees Act. I'd say that during the two weeks of the province-wide teachers' strike, the parents of this province and their children were forced to take unexpected measures to deal with inconvenience and disruption. Additional burdens were placed on working families' shoulders because many teachers chose not to go to work. Children were denied access to their schools, to the education they're fully entitled to, the education paid for by their hardworking parents and the taxpayers of Ontario. Many parents had to stay home with their children or find other means of caring for them during school hours. Employers were required to work around the child care needs and responsibilities of their employees.
If you will remember, at the beginning of the two-week, province-wide strike by the teachers the government made a promise to the parents of Ontario that we would provide some relief to them for the disruption of family life and the disruption of the education of children caused by the strike. How would we do this? We said we'd introduce a bill that would make payments of up to a maximum of $40 per day per family to the parents of school-age children to help alleviate the impact of the strike, by protecting employees who had to care for the children during the strike and by protecting teachers who refused to participate in the strike from union reprisals.
Bill 161 fulfils these promises. It is a demonstration to the people of Ontario of the commitment of this government to working families, to employees and to children. This is important legislation that, if passed by the House, will provide fairness to the working families of Ontario that were adversely affected by the province-wide strike, provide some financial relief for the hardship experienced by parents and guardians during the strike, prohibit the dismissal or discipline of parents and guardians who missed work to care for their children during the teachers' strike, and protect those teachers who chose to stay in the classroom from reprisals by their unions.
The member from Algoma, when speaking about this bill, made a couple of comments that I think need to be addressed. One of the comments he made quite frequently, actually, was, "Why are no receipts required?" I'll tell you, from our point of view the government trusts the parents and the guardians of children in Ontario. His party may not trust the parents of the children of Ontario -- I don't know -- but we do. We determined that we were going to exercise and show that trust by not allowing receipts. There are some reasons why we don't think receipts are going to be possible and why it would be unfair if we only compensated those people with receipts. For instance, unlike the members opposite, we're not interested in establishing a huge bureaucracy to administer and therefore waste more taxpayers' dollars poring over reams of receipts -- what's legitimate, what's illegitimate, what counts, what doesn't count. We don't want to set up that bureaucracy, and by making it an entitlement we can avoid that.
Also, it's very important to note that there are situations where self-employed people had to forgo work or working hours. People on commission had to forgo work and therefore potential income in order to care for the kids. These people won't have receipts. Some people may have driven their kids many miles to drop them off with grandparents or someone else to help with child care. Those people wouldn't have receipts. Because of these examples and others like them, we chose to trust parents who say they've incurred expense and apply for the $40. We asked the boards who have this money from retained teacher payments to pay those people for their expenses. That's a key part.
Another part is that Mr Wildman, the member for Algoma, suggested that there are no controls on payments. This is completely false. If he looks at page 3 of the bill, I think it's subsection 3(9), it says, "A person who knowingly submits false information on an application for payment is guilty of an offence." So just in case there are some unscrupulous folks out there who will try to take advantage of this $40-per-day payment, we say in the bill that it is an offence to knowingly misapply.
Another thing the member for Algoma stated, again which is incorrect, is that teachers would not be entitled to payment. In fact, those teachers who were at work upholding their responsibilities to students, parents and taxpayers during the illegal strike would be able to make a claim.
Those are just a few of the things that were directly related to 161 that I want to make sure are clarified for folks.
There were a couple of other things the member for Algoma stated that I have to take exception with in his wide-ranging speech. He talked about special-needs funding in this province and that special-needs students had less over the last few years. The reality is that the special-needs funding in the education envelope has increased every year since this government has been in office, and I think that's important for the people of Ontario to know.
Another thing that I think needs some clarification is that the member opposite talked about, "There are teachers in this province who have been paying for supplies out of their own pockets." I'll tell the member opposite that when he was in government several years ago my wife was a teacher in this province and my wife then took money out of her pocket to pay for stickers, supplies and paints and many other things.
The problem we're looking at is that the money that's been in education -- there has been more and more money put in every year. If you look back, say, to 1985 to 1993, grants from the province actually increased to boards pretty much every single year. Despite the fact that the money going from the province to the boards was increased in those years, school boards still increased taxes, so there was a lot of money going into the system back then. What did it go for? The problem is that it didn't go into the classroom for paints and books and supplies. It went into board administration, it went into buildings. Drive through Niagara, drive through St Catharines and you'll see some beautiful buildings just off the Queen Elizabeth Way. Despite that, they still had a lack of supplies and the boards built themselves some nice buildings, but kids were still in portables.
Right now, as our finance minister said several days ago, we spend more than we did in 1995 on education. A lot of that money doesn't go to school boards for spending in the classroom. A lot of that money now is in the teacher pension plan; it's part of the whole compensation package. But it's a large amount of money, a lot larger than in 1995, that goes to teachers' pensions. That's part of the whole education envelope and it must be realized that that's where a lot of the money is going.
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Those problems were under the previous government, they're still under this government, and hopefully by better targeting dollars, by reducing the amount of money spent on board buildings and on administration, we can better target it for the classroom.
I must mention that the member opposite talked about the member for Nepean and that he was in a high-growth area, and he certainly is in a high-growth area. The member for Nepean should be commended as often as we can in this House because on behalf of his constituents, when this government invested $600 million in the capital program for new schools to get kids in this province out of portables, the member for Nepean was very successful in getting two new schools, both a public and a separate secondary school, funded for his riding. The member opposite mentioned the member for Nepean, and I think he's right to do that because the member for Nepean deserves to be commended for getting a piece of that $600-million investment that this government made in capital spending in Ontario.
Throughout this whole process we've had a lot of myths come about. In fact, as has been mentioned in this House several times, the Ontario Catholic School Trustees' Association was concerned enough about the number of myths and misinformation out there that it put out a press release and a small paper on a lot of these myths that are out there right now. I think that's significant. Some kids are leaving school and they have a lack of information, a lack of appropriate information about what's in the bill. Some of these made the trustees' association nervous enough that they said, "Hey, we've got to set the record straight on some of these things," and they put out a paper about that. I think that's extremely significant.
If I could address a couple of these myths, one is that Bill 160, the government's proposed legislation, would cut education funding. The two aren't related, and actually the Liberal government today finally admitted that in this House. When they put forward a resolution about Bill 160, they admitted that Bill 160 is separate from the funding of education. The current Education Act does not dictate levels of funding. For decades, governments haven't been able to set, increase or reduce funding by regulation. Just as the current Education Act, the government's legislative proposals do not set funding levels.
I think it's important that we get rid of that myth, that Bill 160 does not set funding levels. They are two separate things. As I say, the Liberal Party today in the House admitted that indeed they are two separate things, and I think that was an important step towards the clarification of some of these issues.
A very important myth that needs to be put to rest is that the government hasn't consulted about the proposed changes to education. We have said several times and we continue to say that there have been 24 separate reviews of education finance and governance since 1950, including two royal commissions, 10 commissions and committees, two fact-finding reports, two panels and many, many meetings.
The Ontario School Board Reduction Task Force received public input in 1995 and issued a report in 1996 making recommendations on how to reduce the number of school boards and trustees. The Paroian report reviewed the effectiveness and efficiency of the process prescribed by the School Boards and Teachers Collective Negotiations Act in addressing the interests of students, parents and ratepayers. In his report to the Minister of Education on October 31, 1996, Mr Paroian made recommendations on the effective and efficient conduct of collective bargaining for teachers and school boards in the current economic climate. One of his recommendations was that indeed principals and vice-principals should not be in the bargaining unit.
When this government came to office, school boards for many years had asked governments to help legislate a reduction in secondary school prep time. They also asked for flexible staffing. This is a constant request. Everyone can recall the toolkit that we talked about for many months and in that toolkit we didn't legislate these things. Instead we put together the Education Improvement Commission, headed by former NDP education minister Dave Cooke. Mr Cooke went out and studied these issues and he came back and said indeed the government was in the right direction.
To say that the government hasn't consulted is incorrect. As I said, since 1950 there have been 24 studies that have said, "Take education off the property tax." We're finally doing that 47 years after the first report. Mr Paroian has looked at the collective bargaining system that's out there right now under Bill 100 and the Education Improvement Commission has looked at issues like class size, secondary school prep time. All of that consultation has come before the government acted, and I think it's important to lay that myth to rest.
One of the myths that, in my view, has motivated a lot of people --
Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): On a point of order, Speaker: I don't believe we have a quorum.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): Would the table check and see if there's a quorum.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Clerk at the Table: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Niagara Falls.
Mr Maves: Another myth that continues to come forward in a lot of different publications that alarms quite a few people, and a lot of people who say they're concerned about the bill put forward this myth as what concerns them, is something that actually the member for St Catharines brought up earlier in his speech. He referred to a letter from some clergy in the Niagara area. While they didn't want to talk too much about the details of the bill, they said they were concerned about section 257. This is something that a lot of people have been concerned about. It has been purported by opponents of Bill 160 that's there a new power that the government has to take over boards and to fire school board employees for not listening to directives and so on and so forth.
It's important to note, and I'll try to clear this up a little bit tonight, that there is a power right now existing and that has been there since 1935 for the provincial government. Sections 19, 47 and 48 of the Municipal Affairs Act already allow the government to step in and manage a school board in extreme financial difficulty. This or a similar provision has been in the statute books since at least April 15, 1935, as I said before. The government merely proposes to move these provisions to the Education Act where they properly belong.
You should note also that under the Municipal Act when a school board reports its financial statement to the minister, if there's a deficit or if there's evidence of financial mismanagement, the minister can take over the board. Once the ministry then operates the board, the board employees need to listen to the people who are now their bosses who now have authority for running the board. If they don't, yes, there can be some disciplinary action taken. If they misappropriate funds, if they don't have permission to spend funds from the authority that is operating the board at that point, yes, there can be some punishment. But everyone leaves the point out that before any of that can happen there has to be evidence of severe financial mismanagement before the ministry can take over that board.
In fact it's my understanding that in 160 this government actually added an extra step. Right now, just upon the submission of financial statements, if there's evidence of financial mismanagement, the ministry can step in and take over the board. We added an extra step where the minister then must, after the initial financial statement, send in a new auditor to do another audit of the books, and only if that auditor recommends that the ministry take over the board because it's suffering from severe financial mismanagement can they do so. That has been something, obviously, as Mr Bradley told us earlier, that is what the clergy in Niagara were concerned about. If you don't have the full story about that section 257, the supervision of boards, you would be concerned.
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That now is coming to light; the misleading information that some have put out about it is now coming to light. A lot of people are starting to say, "Why, if they're so correct in their position of opposition against the bill, would they need to conveniently leave things out?" So a lot of people are now starting to be a little concerned and to look a little closer at things in the bill.
These provisions, as I've said, are not new. When I talked earlier about the separate school trustees' association, the paper they've put out, one of the things that Pat Daly, president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees' Association, said was: "I am very concerned when I hear some people in education in the province attribute machiavellian motives to parts of Bill 160 which in fact have either been in the Education Act or the Municipal Affairs Act for years." I think that concern led Mr Daly and the trustees' association to put out this paper to clear up a lot of these myths -- for instance, this myth surrounding section 257.
There are a lot of other myths out there surrounding this bill. It would take us forever to get through them all. There was a myth about the government wanting to reduce parents' input and involvement in the education system. We actually are enshrining school councils in the bill and are probably going to ask the parents to do even more and to have more input into education. We think that's vital.
There are just so many myths, for instance, "The government doesn't want students to have any input into the education system." Actually, this government in Bill 160, for the first time, has said that students will have a seat on school boards. That's also something that's vital to note.
As we go forward, as the bill comes up after it's been printed and as we have third reading, we vote on the bill and we move forward with education in this province, it's going to take a lot of time because there have been so many myths created, but I think reasonable people will begin to listen, read the bill, ask the appropriate questions -- not take little sections of the bill alone -- and I think the whole province will have a much better understanding.
I hope, as I said earlier when the member for St Catharines spoke about Bill 161 and 160 -- he never did say where he stood on a lot of these issues that Bill 160 has. He didn't say where he stood on Bill 161. He didn't say whether he thought the $40 payment to the parents who incurred costs was a good thing or not. He didn't say if protecting teachers who went to work from reprisals was a good thing or not. I hope that over the next few days the members opposite will start to talk about their positions on Bill 161 and Bill 160, and the many things it does for education.
The Acting Speaker: Comments or questions?
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): I find it interesting that the member for Niagara Falls, rather than really discussing Bill 161, made a concerted effort to dispel what he considered to be the myths about Bill 160, and in fact simply confused anyone who might be listening even more.
I am confused, for example, when I hear the member for Niagara Falls say, "The government is spending more on special education now than ever before." I just sat through estimates committee with the Minister of Education and Training. In fact, I've got the estimates book in front of me today. You cannot find any lines in there that will tell you that your government is spending more money on special education. Your ministers of Education keep saying, "Any decisions to cut special education are decisions of the school boards, because the government doesn't fund the special education directly," so how can you be spending more money on special education than has ever been spent before?
The reality is that this government's cuts to school boards have forced school boards to cut special education classes, and every parent of a special-needs child knows that full well.
The member for Niagara Falls has said, "We can find the cuts by simply cutting administrative waste," that old, "Push the magic button and we can solve any problem by cutting the waste in the system," the same as the Premier says, the same as the Minister of Education says. You might want to catch up with recent figures, because administrative costs across the province are less than 5% of the total budget. Do the mathematics. You could cut all the administration out of all of the school boards and still not find $657 million, the amount you plan to cut from education.
The member for Niagara Falls says, "There's a myth about the fact that there hasn't been consultation on Bill 160 or Bill 161." There hasn't been. They came right out of the blue. It's not consultation to talk about a study that was done in 1950. Maybe that's what you consider consultation. It's not consultation to talk to Leon Paroian, the friend of the ex-minister, who totally and deliberately distorted the realities of the system, or to act on the recommendations of the EIC over the wishes of every parent council in this province.
Mr Wildman: I am very surprised at the member for Niagara Falls in that oftentimes in opposition when we make a speech we're accused by members of the government of not talking specifically about the bill --
Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): He said that earlier, in fact.
Mr Wildman: The member himself said that. And yet he himself gives a speech which is not on the matter at hand as far as he's concerned. He talked about Bill 160 when in fact we're dealing with Bill 161. I don't like to hoist the member on his own petard, but I feel that I really should.
The other thing I was concerned about in listening to his comments about myths was that the member argued that somehow this government has consulted about this legislation. In fact, 1,200 people indicated they wanted to make presentations, but this government moved a time allocation motion which prohibited that. It made it difficult for us to do the job. It limited the amount of debate and it limited the number of hearings on Bill 160.
So there hasn't been adequate consultation on this massive change in education. We don't know what all of the impacts are. We know what the professionals are telling us about the effects this will have. To take this kind of money out and to lay off this number of teachers -- not to lay off teachers, but to eliminate their positions -- can only mean the quality of education is going to deteriorate in this province.
I would think that an individual who cares about young people, as I know the member must, would want to ensure that we are doing everything in Ontario to provide quality education, not simply trying to remove money to fund a tax break on the backs of the students of this province.
Mr Cullen: I feel compelled to come to the rescue of the member for Niagara Falls in his discussion on Bill 161, his constant reference to Bill 160. He's absolutely correct that without Bill 160, we would not have Bill 161.
Having said that, all the other points that have been raised I believe are fair game. When the member for Niagara Falls talks about the amount of public consultation that's gone on in terms of education policy in this province, and while he is absolutely correct, the only thing is that those public consultations, all those commissions and all those reports, dealt with the quality of education, and yet there is nothing in Bill 161 or in Bill 160 that deals with quality of education. That is the fraud that is being perpetrated on the people of Ontario.
The member for Niagara Falls speaks of the position of the Catholic trustees' association in their recent pronouncements on Bill 160. I don't know if he has taken the time to read the brief that they presented on Bill 160. I know that their brief and briefs echoed by other Catholic separate school boards that were denied the opportunity to make a presentation to the standing committee dealing with Bill 160 said the same thing over and over again: that without equity of funding, without being able to provide for the kind of quality of education that they need to provide, this whole exercise is fruitless, is a lost cause. Quite frankly, when we know the government is taking $667 million out of the education system, it makes a mockery of the government's claim that it's going to bring equity to education across Ontario.
Mr Speaker, it is a beggar-your-neighbour approach, because look what happens when they take all that funding, all those property taxes, from the urban boards, and not a bit of it will go down to those smaller boards.
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Mr Len Wood: He spent 20 minutes talking about Bill 160 and we're supposed to be debating Bill 161 in the Legislature tonight. But at no time did he talk about the $400 Christmas bonus they want to give to all the parents who have children under 13 years of age.
When he was talking about Bill 160, why does he disagree with what the bishop of the Anglican church is saying in Niagara Falls and St Catharines? He is saying that Bill 160 is going to destroy education, that you cannot take close to $1 billion out of education last year and another $1 billion out next year and expect to improve education across this province, and at the same time eliminate all kinds of teachers' positions that are going to be eliminated. The quality of education is going to slip badly in this province. You have Premier Mike Harris going around the European continent, saying: "Ontario is open for business. We have a good training system in Ontario." Yet, when he comes back to Ontario, he takes all his energy, TV advertisements, newspaper advertisements, to bash the parents, bash the kids, bash the teachers and say that the education system is broken. It's broken so badly that he had to take $1 billion out last year and another $1 billion out next year.
The teachers, the parents, the kids in northern Ontario are completely frustrated with this government and they're saying they are going to do everything they can to make sure that 700,000 people sign this petition that is circulating around the province to demand that the Conservative government of Ontario have a referendum. They've talked about how they want to have referendums right across the province on tax increases and major changes. Now is the time to have a referendum, because there will be 700,000 signatures on this petition within the next couple of months. It's time for the government to withdraw Bill 160 and get back to doing what is supposed to be done: good quality education in Ontario.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Niagara Falls has two minutes to respond.
Mr Maves: I thank the members opposite for their comments, but I'm sad that they missed some of the opening comments which really were specific to Bill 161, especially with regard to the member for Algoma's comments, for instance, "Why no receipts?" It's because on this side of the House we trust parents to file honestly for those expenses incurred. The members opposite may not; we do, and that was something that was very key in talking about Bill 161.
While one of the members opposite said that one study in 1950 shouldn't tell us what to do, she missed our talking about the other 23 studies subsequent to 1950 that said the same thing: to take education off the property taxes. It wasn't one study in 1950; it was 24 since 1950.
The member for Algoma believes that the public hearings we had were inadequate on every single bill we've ever had in this Legislature, even though we've had way more public hearings than either of the two parties opposite had when they were in government. I must remind the member opposite that we had two weeks and we heard a lot of people on Bill 160. Bill 160 doesn't affect education finance. It's something separate, as the members from the Liberal Party admitted today. What the member for Algoma forgets to talk about is that with his social contract, which took over $500 million out of education, how many days of public hearings did they have on that? Not one day did they have in public hearings on that bill. I think the member for Algoma should really rethink some of those comments, especially when we reflect on the record of his government.
Mr Bradley: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I was just wondering, and you could help me because you were listening carefully to this, whether the member for Niagara Falls was denying the arguments put forward by Bishop Asbil and the Synod of the Diocese of Niagara of the Anglican Church of Canada. Were you able to determine that?
The Acting Speaker: That is not a point order. Further debate?
Mrs McLeod: I thought I'd do something which might seem rather unusual tonight. I thought I might speak to Bill 161, An Act to provide fairness for parents and employees by providing remedies relating to the province-wide withdrawal of services by teachers between October 27 and November 7, 1997 -- da, da.
I wanted to begin my remarks on Bill 161 by talking about the time at which the notion behind this bill, the $40 per day to families, was introduced and the manner in which the government chose to introduce the proposal. As I recall, this idea was introduced at a rather early stage of the teachers' protest. It was introduced at a time when the concerns of parents clearly were to have their children back in school. It was introduced at a time when this government should have been devoting all its time and all its energies and all its efforts to working to resolve the dispute, to getting our students back into school. Instead, this government's concern was to make a public relations statement: "Don't worry about your children being out of school. Your government will be there to help you if you should incur any child care costs or if you are inconvenienced."
I think having children out of school was much more than an inconvenience, but this government thought it could buy support for its tough stand against teachers by offering to help families financially. It didn't work. The government may have been trying to dismiss the teachers' very real concerns about Bill 160 and the Harris government's attack on education as unfounded, and their protest as simply the tactics of the union bosses, but that's not how parents saw it.
It's not how the general public responded, because the public saw something unprecedented in that withdrawal of services referred to in Bill 161. They saw people prepared to defend a principle and a belief, at personal risk and with personal expense, with clearly no personal gain -- just the opposite -- because of their genuine concern for students and for the future of education, and that proved to be far more persuasive than any of the government taxpayer-paid-for advertising spins or its public relations statement.
What the Harris government did right then and there was to demonstrate that they were not interested in resolving the issues. They didn't want to deal with the concerns. They had an agenda to deliver, they had a tax cut commitment to meet, and they needed the control Bill 160 would give them to make the cuts they needed to pay for the tax cut, so they couldn't back down in the face of concern. They couldn't even delay their bill long enough to sit down and try and resolve the issues. They couldn't even acknowledge that the concerns existed, and they still won't acknowledge that the concerns existed.
Besides, as I recall, at that particular moment in time I think the Conservative caucus had just had an annual meeting, and I think that some of the real Reformers were giving their own government a hard time and said: "You've got to be tough. You can't be seen to be a government that gives in. We did that on Bill 136. It doesn't matter if the legislation is bad. It doesn't matter what teachers or parents or students are concerned about. The bottom line: You'll be hurt politically if you're seen to back down, it's bad PR, so hold the line." This government settled down to hold the line, leaving the concerns unaddressed, the issues unresolved, the students out of school, but they offered families $40 a day for any inconvenience they might experience.
Remember that they could have prevented this protest before it began. There are parts of Bill 160 that the government needed for the amalgamation of school boards on January 1, and they could have taken those parts of the bill and proceeded with them, but there are parts of this bill which give this government unprecedented new powers to cut costs by cutting teachers. They wanted to take control. They wanted cabinet to have that kind of power so they could find their $667 million. They were determined to give themselves that power, so they were determined to proceed with Bill 160.
After all, this would mean that they would never have to come back to the Legislature with another bill: "We wouldn't have to have any more messy public hearings, we wouldn't have to waste time in debate and we wouldn't have to face any more opposition. We can just sneak these new powers we need into this bill that was supposed to deal with the transition to the new school boards. We can get it done now, and then we don't ever have to come back again. We can make all the cuts we need in time for the second instalment of the tax cut, due January 1." Remember, no coincidence between the $667 million needed for the second instalment of the tax cut, due January 1, and the $667 million in the deputy minister's performance contract, which she was to find to cut in the next fiscal year. No coincidence at all.
I probably shouldn't get into this since time is running down and I do want to speak to Bill 161. I found it interesting, though, that they were so busy trying to work their control into Bill 160 that they actually didn't deal with a lot of the issues around amalgamation that the bill was supposed to deal with. That's why there's still no role for school trustees in the bill, even though during the course of this withdrawal of services they had to stand for re-election and be re-elected, not even knowing what their new role was to be. No problem there, because the government can do all that by regulation too, as Bill 160 makes clear.
Nevertheless, I come back to the bottom line behind Bill 161: The government could have avoided the protest, they could have divided this bill, they could have proceeded with the parts they needed and withdrawn the parts that would give them unprecedented control to cut costs by cutting teachers. In the committee hearings on Bill 160 there was almost unanimous agreement that not only could that have prevented the withdrawal of services, but at any point at which this government agreed to divide this bill and take out those draconian powers that they needed to cut costs, our students would have been back in class. But that wasn't the government's agenda. The public agenda of the government and the private agenda of this government are always very different things. The public agenda was to manage the transition; the private agenda was to cut $667 million in time to deliver the tax cut. So our teachers and our parents and, most of all, our students, paid the price of the government's real agenda.
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The $40 a day per family does not make up for the price that was paid by everyone involved during that two weeks of protest. But even that price that was paid by everyone involved -- teachers, parents and students -- was small compared to the price that is going to be paid with the continued attacks of this government on publicly funded education. It is the future price to be paid that is the real concern to parents and to teachers, and it is a price that will continue to be paid by students. How tragic it is that this government thinks $40 a day to a family is going to answer those concerns. And that's been their sole response.
Let me turn to some of the specifics of the bill in the brief time I have left to address it. First, I want to address the punitive, gratuitous, offensive part of the bill which protects against reprisals taken towards teachers who didn't participate in the protest. I say "gratuitous" because teachers have given assurance that there would be no reprisals, and even if this government trusts teachers so little that it doesn't believe that, teachers will soon be under the Labour Relations Board and that will provide protection against any action taken against any individual teacher.
At our committee hearings on Bill 160 one of the members of the government caucus suggested, "There might be negative feelings directed towards dissident teachers." I suspect, if this government could bring in a bill that would give them control over the feelings of our citizens, they would bring in that kind of bill. Of course there are going to be negative attitudes towards colleagues who didn't participate in the protest. Teachers who went on that withdrawal of services took an enormous personal risk. They made a significant personal sacrifice. They did it because of their commitment to education. Given the strength of their commitment and given the depth of their emotion, do you really think they're going to be sympathetic to people who weren't prepared to share in their defence of what they believe in? You can't legislate against that kind of emotion and that kind of commitment. This clause in this bill is almost as offensive as the clause in another bill that took away the right to strike of firefighters who had never exercised that right in 50 years.
I only wish we could legislate against government reprisals against teachers: the reprisal that was taken by this government in the taxpayer-paid attack ad on our teachers because they dared to stand up and protest against this government's actions, and the Minister of Education dares to stand up and say he hopes there can be constructive talks in the future.
What about the reprisals against principals and vice-principals who dared to protest against what this government is doing to education? It is a vicious reprisal and it is dangerous in the effect it is going to have on education and on educational leadership. But this government isn't concerned about educational reform. It's not concerned about students. Its sole concern in that attack on principals and vice-principals was to get even and get control.
I do agree with one section of the bill; it might surprise colleagues on the opposite side of the House. I think it is important to protect employees who had to miss work to care for their children. I base my support for that on one case; it may be an isolated case, and I hope it was. It may be based on the one case I heard of, that employees maybe need protection against the provincial government when it is the employer. I know of one case in which the provincial government informed its employees that they were not under any circumstances to miss work in order to provide child care. It may be that this clause is necessary to protect the employees of the provincial government against reprisals by their employer.
Clearly the major thrust of the bill is to provide $40 a day to a maximum of $400 per family to compensate for any inconvenience or child care expenses incurred. If you think this government is actually interested in compensating parents for expenses, I think we have to clarify a couple of things. This is not $40 a day per child. I don't think there is any day care setting in the province that charges by the family rather than by the child, so obviously this is only going to offset the cost of care that might have been provided by a friendly neighbour.
Furthermore, as my colleagues have noted, there appears to be no requirement to produce a receipt that there were actually any costs incurred. I guess that's where the definition of "inconvenience" comes in. If a parent believes that he or she was inconvenienced, a claim can be made.
There is no clarity in the bill, but interestingly enough I found a clause in this bill that we find throughout Bill 160, and it's a clause that says, "The Minister of Education and Training may issue such directives to boards and establish such procedures as he or she considers advisable to carry out the intent and purpose of this section." So there doesn't need to be clarity in the bill, because once again the minister can do anything he chooses to do.
I think he may choose to clarify some of the issues about exactly how this payment works. For example, is it taxable or is it non-taxable? If no receipts are required, presumably no deduction is allowed for child care expenses. But if it is taxable and there are no receipts to prove it is a deductible expense, how much of a financial benefit does a family actually receive from the $400? If it is not taxable and there are receipts, is it possible that a family could get the $400 and still claim a tax deduction and essentially double-dip? There may be a few little questions about this that the minister may need to address through his new regulatory power. There are kind of annoying little questions that trouble a government that prefers to make public relations statements and figure out how things will work later.
That's why they keep putting into their bills total regulatory power for ministers, because their initial announcement, their whole agenda is public relations to camouflage their need to find dollars for a tax cut. After they make the public relations, they bring in the bill and they give the minister total control to figure out how to make it work. Except when it comes to something like raising $6 billion worth of property taxes by cabinet, they still haven't figured out how to make it work, and we will find that shot some time in the new year.
There are some other rather annoying questions that haven't been answered. How much is this bill actually going to cost? We've been calling boards, we've been trying to get a sense of what boards feel it will cost. Some people feel it may actually be covered by their savings on teachers' salaries. I know the Lakehead separate school board in my home riding believes they will face a significant shortfall of some $400,000. Even if boards break even on the payouts, they are still going to have to absorb thousands of dollars in administrative costs.
I find myself wondering how many textbooks you might be able to buy for schools in a district if those dollars could be spent on delivering what students need rather than delivering on the government's most recent PR move. Then actually I realized that if we talk about money spent on PR moves, you could buy a lot more textbooks with the money the government has spent on advertising than is actually going to be spent by boards on administering this program, so I guess it's a moot point. I would love to get all the advertising money back that this government has spent and spend that on textbooks to meet the needs of our students.
The bottom line: The government didn't know what this offer would cost. It cannot find out what it will cost because it doesn't have the data. It didn't care how much it would cost. This was a public relations move, and if it means education suffers even more, well, we'll just blame that on the teachers. And this is responsible government in action.
Then there is the little matter of the law. We have a letter from the Peel Board of Education written to the Minister of Education, and we have a similar question coming from the North York Board of Education because they noticed that in the Education Act, as it used to exist, if you had any money saved as a result of a strike by teachers, you put that into a reserve fund. You know what you did with the reserve fund? You were required by law to put the money in that reserve fund and give that money back to the local property taxpayers at the end of the year. It was in the law. The Peel board and the North York board are saying, "If we've spent this money already on the $40 a day, how do we give that money back to all of our taxpayers?" There is an answer. The answer, I say to the Peel board and the North York board, is quite clearly in Bill 160, because under Bill 160, would you believe, you don't have to give the money back to the local taxpayers any more. The government has taken that part of the bill out. Think about it.
I don't want to be too cynical, but it seems to me that if we should have a lot of strikes in the future, and the government takes the money that is put into the reserve, the dollars saved on teachers' salaries during the strike, and if they are not required to give that money back to the local taxpayers, that becomes a fairly ready source of cash to help the government with its books at the end of the day.
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If you don't think that's true, ask why the amendments are in Bill 160 that make it clear that the money put into a reserve fund no longer is to be returned to taxpayers at the end of the year. It is probably not even legal now to return that money to local taxes. The whole idea was, if there is a service loss in the area, the local taxpayers should have their dollars returned to them. Technically, you could still do it with the government's new funding model, but the government is saying legally, "We're not going to put ourselves in the position where we might have to return that money to the local taxpayers."
They're certainly not going to do the $40 a day per family in any future strike, that's clear, because they're not even going to let the York separate school board families have the $40 a day since their teachers were in a legal strike position for part of the withdrawal of services period. Quite clearly, the government in the future is going to use any money saved on teachers' strikes to offset its own financing of education.
Public school boards have had similar kinds of questions about how this is going to work, about the legality of it, about whether or not it's going to turn out to be cost-neutral, but I thought one of the most interesting questions from the Ontario Public School Boards' Association president, Lynn Peterson, was made right at the moment in which the government announced its plan for this $40 a day. She said: "You know, it's interesting because we've done the calculations and we spend $33 a day to educate a child in Ontario. Wouldn't it be a wonderful investment if this government, which is prepared to give $40 a day to families, was prepared to spend $40 a day per child to educate our children?" I thought that was a point well taken.
I can tell you there are some parents in my area who are going to make their claims and then donate the money back to their school to buy textbooks, and that's a movement that is going to grow. I have a letter here from Joanne Simperl from my riding who wants to start that movement because she wants her $400 to be used to buy textbooks for the children in her school.
I think that speaks to the concern that parents are feeling and that this government must understand. Parents believe that $32 million should be spent on education. They see more than $100 million cut from junior kindergarten. They don't think $40 a day is going to compensate for the loss of junior kindergarten if this government continues with its cuts. They see the cuts to special education and they know that contributing their $40 a day back to the school can't turn that around and can't stop the loss of more special education classes with more cuts. There are adults who are parents who know that $40 a day is not nearly enough to reverse the cuts to adult education and ensure that they'll have access to a program in the future.
These people are saying "No thanks" to the government's agenda on Bill 160 and on education. Some will say no to this government's $40. Some will take it and put it back where they think it belongs. Others will take it to offset some of the real costs that they incurred, but all will say "No thanks" to this government's agenda and to its attacks on public education because this government hasn't convinced anyone how they can improve education with fewer teachers and less money. They haven't shown how you can have equity without adequacy, they haven't shown how you can find $667 million in cuts by cutting waste and they haven't shown how they can bring in educational change when you make enemies of teachers and parents are saying "No thanks" to your agenda.
The Acting Speaker: Comments and questions? The Chair recognizes the member for Windsor-Riverside.
Mr Lessard: I want to commend the member for her comments on Bill 161. I noticed there were some government members earlier on who were speaking about the bill, but they weren't talking about Bill 161 and it's good that the member was concentrating her comments on that.
She talked about the attacks of this government on public education and how difficult it must be to be able to improve education while pulling out $600 million from the system, and I think that parents of children in school will understand that. They'll also understand that this move to pay $40 a day for parents who have children who were out of school during the teachers' protest is a move that is really fiscally irresponsible. This is a government that prides itself on fiscal responsibility, effective management of the economy, but it's a government that's prepared to give parents $40 a day, no receipts required, just submit this application, not to the government but to public school boards, and say: "Send the 40 bucks. Thank you very much."
It's really not fiscally responsible. It really amounts to buying the support of parents for Bill 160, which we know from polling that even the government itself has done is not being supported by parents, and it's really something that is to pay for the inconvenience of parents for the protest of teachers. That protest resulted from the total mismanagement by this government of education issues in Ontario. The parents' protest wouldn't have happened if this government had not totally mismanaged their dealings with teachers.
Mr Newman: It's my pleasure to rise in response to the member for Fort William. I know that she probably would have wanted to mention in her comments that as a result of the public hearings on Bill 160, we have a far better Bill 160 today because at the beginning of public hearings people talked about the fact that class size would be determined by regulation, that the amount of preparation time or time that teachers spend in front of the classroom would be determined by regulation and that outside professionals could be determined by regulation.
Many people are still saying that today, but the fact of the matter is, we listened during those public hearings and the amendments that were presented reflect what those people said during the public hearings. Issues of class size, issues of preparation time or time that teachers spend in front of the class or outside professionals are now actually in legislation, right in the body of the legislation and that proves that the legislative process through the public hearings and through this House have produced a far better Bill 160 for the people of Ontario.
Another comment that comes up a lot is the fact that decisions by the Education Improvement Commission are not reviewable by a court. If the Education Improvement Commission acts outside of the bounds of what they are allowed to do, of course that could be judicially reviewed in this province. The powers with respect to not being reviewable by a court are the same as those enjoyed by the Ontario Labour Relations Board, which was created in 1950. That's 47 years ago. It's the same powers of the Environmental Assessment Board of 1975 and it's the same power that the Social Assistance Review Board has, and that too was from 1975.
We've clearly listened to the people of Ontario and they said that Bill 160 needed to be improved. We've done that, and I think what we've seen here is that it has worked.
Mr Dominic Agostino (Hamilton East): I want to commend my colleague from Fort William for an excellent presentation. It clearly has outlined not only the flaws in Bill 160 but very clearly your attempt to bribe the taxpayers of Ontario with their own money through Bill 161.
Very clearly, the action that occurred was a result of this government wanting to pick a fight. They wanted to pick a fight with teachers because they felt they could crush teachers' federations. They felt they could crush teachers in this province, and you failed miserably. You didn't crush the teachers. You didn't crush the federations. You were shocked that parents actually understood the issue and turned against you. You had public opinion going into the fight, and as soon as parents understood what your agenda was, your game was up, they came after you and now you're trying a $40 bribe.
This is a government that believes that you improve the school system by attacking the people who are supposed to deliver this education. You feel it is important to attack teachers. You feel you benefit by discrediting teachers. You feel you can attack those who are responsible for the future of the children in this province and somehow that is going to lead to better education. Well, it isn't happening. You've attacked the teachers, you've spent the money and now you're going to be spending millions and bribing people with their own money.
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At the end of the day, though, you're going to lose this fight, and you know what? You're going to pass the bill in the next couple of days and you will win the fight with the bill right now, but you will pay a political price at the polls in two years. This bill, this debate, as you get defeated in two years, you'll look back and this will be the turning point, the beginning of the end for this government.
The public finds they're arrogant with their cockiness, the bully approach they've taken. You can mess with people, you can try to screw up people's lives as you have, but now you're messing with people's children, and this is the political price that you're going to pay. You sit here today surrounded by these walls and feel good. Face the public in two years and you're going to pay a price for what you've done to public education.
Mr Silipo: I want to commend the member for Fort William for her very thorough presentation. Not surprisingly, she linked the contents of Bill 161 back to what is happening throughout Bill 160. I can tell you, coming this evening from a meeting in one of the schools in my riding, St Sebastian Catholic school -- again typical of many other meetings I've attended as have many members here on this side of the House throughout the province -- of parents concerned about what all this is going to mean for their children in a Catholic school like that, where they were expecting that through some of the changes the government might make there may actually be more money for the Catholic school system, they are quickly realizing that they too will see cuts to the education of their children. It's just beginning to dawn on people more and more just what is coming, let alone what already has been done by this government.
To come back directly to Bill 161, I can't for the life of me get away from this thing that's in the bill whereby the government has now decreed that not only do you not need receipts to be able to justify the expenditure to get the $400, but those receipts aren't necessary because you don't have to have incurred the child care expenses. As long as you have children in the system you can simply make an application and you'll get the money. That may very well be the only justice that comes from the Mike Harris government, that at the end of the day parents will be able, if they fit those criteria, to get a little bit of money. Of course it's money that's going to come out of the school board's budget, and at the end of the day therefore that's also going to mean less money for school boards to spend in other services. But it's going to be there, and this fight certainly will continue.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Fort William has two minutes to respond.
Mrs McLeod: My colleagues from Windsor-Riverside, Hamilton East and Dovercourt will understand that the comments from the member for Scarborough Centre demand some response. The member has attempted to launch a defence of Bill 160, not Bill 161, by suggesting that after the committee hearings on Bill 160, the government acted to bring about a better bill, having listened to concerns.
The government listened to concerns all right. The government listened to concerns about the fact that the Minister of Education by regulation was going to be able to control class size, so they decided to enshrine their commitment to class size in the bill, not a commitment to smaller class sizes but the status quo, which means that our children will still be in classes of 36 and 38 and 40. When this government tries to implement even that, with reduced funding it is going to mean the gutting of the rest of the school system around those classrooms.
They enshrined in law the guarantee that we would have somewhere between 4,500 and 6,000 fewer secondary school teachers, which means we will have fewer teachers teaching more classes to more students, and that does not mean more time for students with their teachers. It means less time for individual students. They did take out the Henry VIII clause, reluctantly, because the Ministry of Education and Training said, "We're advised by the constitutional branch that this is not constitutional, but we think we need it anyway." But I guess the government decided they should take it out even if the Ministry of Education staff needed it.
Then they went on against everything we heard in the committee hearings on Bill 160 and they attacked our principals and vice-principals and destroyed education leadership for the foreseeable future as they leave principals and vice-principals out in limbo. They acted against the recommendation of every parent council representative and they made parent councils no longer advisory. They acted on the views of a few and they did not make this a better bill.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate? The Chair recognizes the member for Welland-Thorold.
Mr Kormos: Thank you, Speaker. Gosh, I know the rules have changed, but you had cut me down to a mere 10 minutes from the mere 20 to which I am entitled.
Mrs McLeod: You've got 20.
Mr Kormos: That's right, but it originally had said 10. It scared the daylights out of me. As it is, because of the rule changes, a mere 20 minutes is nowhere near adequate to fully discuss Bill 160.
I do want to mention that tomorrow morning down in Welland, high school students from across the community, from high schools from every quarter of the city of Welland are going to be demonstrating. We have invited them to use the front of our constituency office at the corner of King and Division. They are going to be welcome there. They are going to be protesting Bill 160, high school students like students at Notre Dame.
Mr Lessard: Where will they come from?
Mr Kormos: I anticipate students from Eastdale high school will be there, students from Welland high and students from high schools across the province -- Centennial.
It's the first time that they are going to be out there with placards, standing in solidarity with each other and with their families and with their teachers, protesting this government's imposition of Bill 160, protesting the demise of democracy here in Ontario, protesting this very direct attack on quality public education. If any of them are watching, they would be surprised to see this effort to divert attention away from what Mike Harris and his gang are doing to quality public education in this province with what is really kind of a silly bill in view of the fact that it came undoubtedly from the office of Mr Silly himself. I'm talking about the Premier.
I'm a little concerned because listening to the government members and reading the bill -- and it's not a tough one. Even if Mr Harris, the Premier, were to take the time aside, he might be able to work his way through it. It would be in tune because it's kind of silly; it's like watching those infomercials late at night, where you know there's a gap somewhere. Well, you do. It's not all that it appears to be. You know there's a hook there. There is. There's a gap.
I'm looking at some of the angles because I encourage every Ontario parent to submit an application. By God, submit early and submit often, as long as you don't breach the act. I think if Ontarians ever deserved reparation, it's from this government, as a result of what this government has done. The bill doesn't go far enough.
What about the single mothers whose assistance levels were slashed by 22%? Where's the bill giving them compensation? That wasn't just inconvenience; that was a matter of the difference between being hungry and going to bed cold, or having a somewhat more modestly acceptable lifestyle. That's what the 22% cut in social assistance meant. Where's the bill compensating them for their inconvenience?
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Can we take this government at its word? I recall when the Attorney General stood up in this House and promised the victims of his family support plan bungling that they'd be compensated. It was a matter of: "Just send me a letter. Send me the claim." You know what happened there as a result of what the Attorney General, co-conspirator of the Premier, did to the family support plan. As a result of shutting down the nine regional offices and terminating almost 300 professional staff, moms and their kids went hungry, had utilities, gas, hydro, shut off just before and during Christmas of last year, in 1996, had cheques bounce, had telephones shut off, had eviction notices served on them, had mortgages go into default. Where's their compensation? Because that went a little beyond inconvenience. It was a very painful and direct attack on the day-to-day welfare of those people. The Attorney General stood up and he promised they'd be taken care of. I'm not aware of one instance yet where the Attorney General and this government have lived up to their commitment to take care of those people.
What about the kids? What about the kids who have been denied junior kindergarten? This government, because it's got to pay off on its phoney tax break -- it's got to pay off its rich friends -- to help seize the money that it needs to pay off that tax break, cancelled junior kindergarten in this province. Where's the compensation for them? Again, that goes well beyond mere inconvenience.
I listen to the lines that have been prepared by undoubtedly high-priced spin doctors, the minions, the whiz kids, as they've been called, to try to peddle this stuff -- and I encourage people, if you're the parent of kids under the age of 13 who were in school, apply for it, by all means. Be careful, make sure you apply before the prescribed deadline. You see, that's in subsection 3(5). I said there are some gaps here and I suspect that might be one of them, within "the prescribed deadline." It makes reference as well to the appropriate form.
Mr Wildman: Where are those forms?
Mr Kormos: "Where are the forms?" Exactly. I've got a feeling this government, if this bill were in effect now, would be inclined to tell people that the cheque is in the mail. You know, the world's three greatest lies: "The cheque is in the mail"; "Your money cheerfully refunded"; and "Hi, I'm from the Harris government and I'm here to help you."
One of the remarkable things this government did, and I say "remarkable" not because it was fantastic --
Mr Joseph Spina (Brampton North): Sure it was.
Mr Kormos: Hold on -- not because it was worthy of celebration but because it was truly remarkable, worthy of remark, was that immediately upon the heels of slashing the assistance rates for the poorest in our society, for the unemployed, for single moms and their kids, they increased MPPs' salaries. Mike Harris and his gang increased MPPs' salaries so that the gross bill for taxpayers is now $3 million a year higher than it was before Mike Harris's Tory caucus backbench salary increase bill.
Mr Wettlaufer: Careful, Peter, you voted for it.
Mr Kormos: Mr What's-his-name here wants to suggest who did and who didn't vote for it. I want to tell you this government has been embarrassed by the criticisms of it from the day it appeared as a bill in this House. First they denied that it constituted a salary increase. They denied it outright. They played the little games and the sleight of hand and the legerdemain of suggesting, "This is a decrease." My friend from Algoma made reference to "Orwellian phenomena."
This government figured if you call black white and white black and if you deny that two plus two equals four, if you say it loud enough and often enough and frequently enough and if you spend enough money on full-page ads in papers across the province and have hokey TV commercials with the Premier arm-wrestling on a bookshelf of books that he's never read the titles of, never mind the contents, they somehow believe that if you spend enough money on that sort of stuff and say it often enough, people will believe it, that somehow it becomes truth.
This is why I say there's a gap here. There's something here that we're not quite getting the goods on. Just like the government wanted to insist that the Premier's salary increase for MPP backbencher incomes was a decrease when in fact the government's own budget, the government's own financial papers, show it isn't, the government now is trying to suggest that somehow it's compensating here. Oh, and it says it trusts the parents. It doesn't trust those parents enough to elect trustees to boards of education who have control over the schools within their bailiwick, because it stripped those boards of any and all real or meaningful power. So you see, it doesn't trust parents --
Mr Wettlaufer: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I've been listening to the member for Welland-Thorold for several minutes and I have yet to hear him speak about Bill 161.
The Acting Speaker: That is a point of order. I've also been listening to the member for Welland-Thorold, and let me tell you that he is sticking to Bill 161 as well as he sticks to any subject he discusses.
Mr Kormos: God bless you, Speaker. That's why you and I have such a good rapport here in this assembly, because we understand each other. I appreciate the comments from the fellow behind me here too.
Interjections.
Mr Kormos: I've got to catch up now. The problem with interjections like that is that I get distracted and I have to back up. I have to turn the page back, reading from this prepared speech as I am, and find out where we were interrupted.
I was talking about the fact that there's a gap here. There's more going on here. Was it a diversion? As I say, the students who are going to be out there on the streets in Welland tomorrow morning would be surprised. I'm sure they're saying to their friends and their family members sitting beside them in the rec room: "What are they doing discussing Bill 161? This government is gutting public education. This government is abandoning us to this government's golden calf of their Bay Street buddies."
I was up at the University of Guelph a couple of months ago. Let me tell this to you, Speaker. I was talking to a group of university students there, deathly afraid for their academic futures because of this government's increase in tuition fees and its defunding of education at all levels. I recalled what this government had to say in their blue book, their Common Sense Revolution. That's right. It used to be back in the 1960s it was Mao who was waving the little red book. Now it's zealous Tories waving Mike Harris's Common Sense Revolution.
I spoke with these students and I reflected on the fact that here I am -- I was born in 1952 -- and I was the first generation of children of, in my case, not only working class but also immigrant parents, those of us who were born in the 1950s, those post-war children, who could go to post-secondary college or university. Before my generation only the children of the very wealthy got to university.
I was speaking with these University of Guelph students. I was reflecting on the fact that here I am the kid of, again, immigrant and working-class parents and my great fear is that as a result of this government's gutting of public education and its abandonment of any sense of universality when it comes to access to quality education, the young people in university today may be the last generation of Ontarians who, as children of working-class parents, could ever dare dream of post-secondary education. That's the kind of vision this government has for Ontario and its citizens and its youth and its future.
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Regard what the Premier had to say just the other day about post-secondary education. He suggested there had to be a review of it because, by God, we have no need for those university programs that don't train people for jobs. He doesn't get it. He simply doesn't understand what post-secondary education is all about, what university education is all about.
Representatives of this government have talked about the problem of young people being overeducated. How in the name of Pete could you think about the prospect of people being overeducated? I understand it, coming from this bunch. But I reflect on my own opportunities. My parents and their parents, like so many others of their generations, worked too hard -- they did -- sacrificed too much, paid too big a price to build public education to ensure that, yes, even the children of working-class and other lower-income families can get to university, to let this government take it away in the course of a mere two or two and a half or three or three and half years.
Bill 160 won't abolish quality education. There's still going to be quality education in the province; I'm convinced of that. They're going to be called private schools. If families can afford the $10,000-a-year or the $15,000-a-year tuition to send their kids to those private schools, those kids will be getting half-decent educations. But for those other families, like most, who don't have that kind of spare cash sitting around because their tax break could be held in coins in one hand -- because they weren't the top 10% of income-earners that this government is a slave to -- their kids are going to be relegated to not just a second-class but a third-class school system; to classrooms that have been gutted, that have been torn apart; to classrooms whose teachers have been demoralized and placed under attack; to classrooms which don't even have qualified teachers, because that's part of what Bill 160 is all about.
This government is destroying in such short order what so many generations of Ontarians worked so hard to build, and they're surprised at the anger they're generating out there? They're surprised at the size of protests in terms of numbers and in terms of the vociferousness and the frustration and the despair across this province? They're surprised by that anger? When those same people -- teachers; 126,000 of them -- children who are in their care, families who send their children to those publicly funded schools, entrusting their children's future with those teachers, see everything that's been built being destroyed in such short order, damn it, you're darn right there's going to be anger out there.
People are prepared in this province to make sacrifices to preserve the public institutions like quality public education that so many generations sacrificed so much for in their own right; I tell you that. But finally, and at the end of the day, the public of this province is going to resolve this issue with the speediest dismissal of any government that we've ever seen, bar none, and I say that being fully aware of the history of the last --
The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. Comments and questions.
Mr Wettlaufer: It's always interesting to listen to the member for Welland-Thorold. I thought we were going to be listening to Bill 161, but he obviously doesn't know what it's about because he never commented on it.
He talked about tax cuts. He talked about lack of jobs. He talked about salaries and benefits. Tax cuts create jobs. We have ample evidence of it -- 235,000 new jobs have been created in the province of Ontario this year.
Mr Cullen: Is this the Royal Bank --
Mr Wettlaufer: It's really interesting to hear the mouthpiece from the back, have I listened to the Royal Bank. Yes, I have listened to the Royal Bank and the Royal Bank is predicting 495,000 jobs over the course of the next three years. I wonder how that happened.
Mr Cullen: In Canada.
Mr Wettlaufer: In Ontario.
The member for Welland-Thorold talked about salaries being increased by the MPPs here in this House. Salaries and benefits have a 5% reduction. But I understand that the member for Welland-Thorold can't calculate that because his government never could grasp finance, so it's quite easily understood.
He talks about the size of the anger and the size of the frustration. Well, in my office in Kitchener the phone calls I'm getting are numbering four and five to one in favour of our government's position on education.
Bill 161 has only come about as a result of an illegal strike. These people say: "Oh no, the judge didn't talk about an illegal strike. He didn't say that." Well no, he didn't rule on the strike; he only ruled that education hadn't yet suffered for --
The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. Further comments.
Mr Cullen: It gives me a great deal of pleasure to respond to the comments from the member for Welland-Thorold. I do have to remark that I believe the member for Kitchener had it right in terms of where Bill 161 sprang from. We have to go back to the weeks before the teachers' protest.
When the teachers were coming in and speaking with the government and trying to negotiate with the government, they saw very clearly the government's intentions were to take away the funding that created a good quality of education in our province. They begged the minister. They said: "Sit down. Let's take some time over this. Let's work out some of these things so that you can get part of your agenda and we can make sure that the quality of education in this province is protected." But the government said no. The government refused to listen and provoked a teachers' protest whereby we have here, after two weeks of teachers going out and losing money on their own paycheque -- they've gone out there. And then we find ourselves magically with Bill 161.
We could have avoided all this if we had talked to our partners in education, our partners who the government on the one hand says you can't trust the future of our children with -- we heard the Premier of this province say that -- but on the other hand the Ministry of Education says some time or another we have to sit down and work with our partners. How can you do that? You can't suck and blow at the same time. It's just impossible. Certainly the members opposite should recognize that.
Bill 161 is here solely as a PR product to deal with the outcome of the government's own intransigence in refusing to deal with the teachers of the day. What's going to happen in the very end? We have a bill, Bill 160, that has nothing to do with quality of education. We see the loss of local accountability, the loss of local tax dollars that provided for a good quality of education in our urban and suburban boards. It's all going to go up in smoke.
The Acting Speaker: The time has expired. Further comments and questions.
Mr Silipo: I realize that in this debate the line between Bill 160 and Bill 161 is crossed back and forth a number of times and in a number of ways. I just want to make one little observation. It's interesting that by the end of this debate, whenever this is over, we will likely have spent as much time in debate in this House on Bill 161, which is a relatively small bill -- three or four pages -- at the end of the day as we will have spent on 160, which is not only a huge bill in terms of size but which is, as we've been pointing out constantly, and as my colleague from Welland-Thorold has again done tonight, devastates the public education system in this province. Of course he would talk about that. Of course he would talk about the anger people feel out there. The member for Welland-Thorold was speaking about that strong and real anger that's out there and talking about how deep-rooted it is, particularly among people who, as he himself said, in his own generation were people who fought for their children to have the opportunity to go to post-secondary education.
He was best in the comments he made tonight and in pointing out, to the members opposite particularly, what kind of havoc they are wreaking with the changes they are bringing about in our school system. This bill, which is but a pale attempt at buying people's support and people's votes, is the kind of thing that should not even be dignified with any real response, even for a government such as this, which seems to have no limit in terms of how low they will stoop to cater to people's support and people's votes when it suits their agenda.
Again I congratulate the member for Welland-Thorold for hitting the nail on the head when he talked about that real anger that's out there, the real anger that people will not forget.
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Mr Newman: I'm pleased to comment on the member for Welland-Thorold's speech tonight. He spoke with a lot of passion during the Bill 161 debate, the Fairness to Parents and Employees Act, but the reality of the matter is that he didn't even say anything about Bill 161. In fact, I listened for the word "education" but I didn't hear it at all in his speech. I don't think he really dealt with this bill.
He spoke a lot about compassion and virtue, and I don't think he or anyone in his party has the monopoly on compassion or virtue. You would think they would, Mr Speaker.
Mr Cullen: A point of order, Mr Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: We'll take it after this.
Mr Cullen: Mr Speaker, a point of order has to be heard straight away.
The Acting Speaker: I want to hear this speaker.
Mr Newman: We were talking about compassion and virtue and people having a monopoly on it and listening to other members. If they truly had that monopoly on compassion and virtue, he would have wanted to know that while he was in government, his government brought about 32 tax hikes in this province, which drove away 10,000 jobs right out of Ontario, 10,000 fewer people working after their five years. Revenues were down, and what we're seeing with this government today is that by cutting taxes since we've been in office 30 times -- 30 tax cuts in this province, and the revenues are up. This has even been verified by the people in David Peterson's office. There was an excellent article in the Globe and Mail, I believe on October 8, 1997, by Patrick Monahan. He spoke about the fact that 33 tax hikes drove dollars down in this province, but our 30 tax cuts have actually brought more revenue into the province of Ontario and are bringing back more jobs. There are a quarter of a million more people working in this province today as a result of the tax cuts in Ontario.
The Acting Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Ottawa West on a point of order.
Mr Cullen: It is passing strange, Mr Speaker, that points of order are recognized after a speech. The rules of procedure in this House state it very explicitly. I merely wanted to draw to your attention that the time had expired, which is always in order to draw to the Speaker's attention.
The Acting Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Welland-Thorold for a response.
Mr Kormos: You know, I remember the years when there was a massive exodus of real jobs, of industrial jobs, from here in this province. It was the years following the Brian Mulroney free trade deal. It was the years of the impact of the GST. It was the years when the federal Tories wreaked havoc on industrial Ontario and created a scenario wherein the worst recession since the 1930s hit working people and seniors and the poor and sick here in the province of Ontario. I also remember the recovery, which began through 1994 and 1995, which has been stalled by the policies of this government.
We had a crisis in this country a month ago: Unemployment stood a chance of dropping below 9%. What did the Bank of Canada do? It raised interest rates, with the friends of the federal government.
When we've got governments in this province that think economic growth consists of minimum-wage jobs that are inevitably part-time and temporary, like Harris and his gang do, when they speak and think of McJobs rather than real, paying jobs with real incomes and real futures, when they devalue labour, when they drive down wages, we've got a government that isn't interested in developing an economy that's going to serve all of Ontarians; it's going to serve only that small group of their wealthy friends among whom wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated, with their approval and their support.
The Acting Speaker: It is the custom of this Chair to finish its business in a business-like way, so I would apologize for doing that.
It being a teensy-weensy bit past 9:30, this House stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 21:36.