Hansard Transcript 1998-May-13 vol. a | Legislative Assembly of Ontario

Mr Michael Gravelle (Port Arthur): I am once again standing here to plead with the Minister of Health to recognize that we have a crisis in the delivery of mental health care in northwestern Ontario and to call on her to take immediate action to deal with this situation.

The facts are clear. We have a severe shortage of psychiatric beds in our region and not enough psychiatrists or family doctors to deal with the present caseload. The 24-bed psychiatric unit at Thunder Bay Regional Hospital may have to close because of the doctor shortage, with these beds probably being transferred to the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital. Yet the hospital, even with these additional duties, is still scheduled for closure in March 1999. Community supports promised by the minister are not in place and neither is the 12-bed adolescent treatment unit promised two years ago. The northwestern Ontario mental health agency, which was to coordinate the delivery of mental health in the future, is nowhere to be seen.

Minister, the crisis is real and can be ignored no longer. You must take action.

First of all, cancel the proposed closure of the Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital next March. The deadline is totally unrealistic and is causing enormous stress and confusion. Next, set up the northwestern Ontario mental health agency and give them the funding envelope to recruit the psychiatrists we need.

Free up funds immediately so the outpatients in our community can receive the help they need. Assertive community treatment teams are up and ready to go. They simply need approval from you to get to work so we can avoid the future tragedy of psychiatric patients being thrown in jail because no one was there to help them in a time of crisis. Minister, please help.

AIR QUALITY

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): According to a report released yesterday by the Ontario Medical Association, Windsor has the worst air in the country. Deaths from heart disease and respiratory problems are higher in our community than in any other. This is a health crisis we can no longer ignore.

One thing we can do is reduce the sulphur content in gasoline. Harmful emissions of sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds would be decreased and peak ozone levels would be lowered. I join with the OMA and others, like the Citizens Environment Alliance, in calling on the Harris government and the federal Liberals to enact strict measures to reduce the sulphur content in gasoline.

I am also asking that both levels of government do more to deal with transboundary air pollution. This summer Detroit Edison plans to restart the Connors Creek generating station. This is a 50-year-old coal-burning plant that is lacking in modern pollution control equipment. The operation of this plant will contribute to environmental and health problems in our community, and no doubt increase the up to 1,800 deaths per year in Ontario that are attributed to air pollution.

The deregulation of Ontario Hydro will lead to the startup of more dirty coal plants in the US, to the detriment of our health and our environment.

Is this the price the Ontario and federal Liberal governments expect us to pay so that their corporate buddies are assured cheap energy?

FISH KINCARDINE SALMON DERBY

Mrs Barbara Fisher (Bruce): I rise today to bring to the attention of all members of this Legislature a very special event taking place in my riding of Bruce from May 22 to May 31. May 22 will mark the launch of the 13th annual Fish Kincardine Salmon Derby in the town of Kincardine. This derby has attracted fishing enthusiasts from across Ontario and the northeastern United States to the scenic shores of Lake Huron since 1985.

Last year saw 953 entrants, who brought in over 15,500 pounds of fish to the derby's weigh stations. Last year's grand prize winner, Marvin Pitz of Kitchener, drove home in a Ford half-ton truck of which he had the use for one year to pull a 15-foot fishing boat with motor and trailer which he won by catching the winning 20.64-pound salmon.

This year it is estimated that the cash and prizes will total between $70,000 and $80,000. The grand prize is a 17-foot fishing boat, complete with motor and trailer, valued at over $22,000.

Profits from the derby are used by the Lake Huron Fishing Club's Kincardine Brown Trout Hatchery, which annually returns over 100,000 healthy trout into Lake Huron.

Many people have worked very hard to make the Fish Kincardine Salmon Derby the continued success it is today. The derby is truly an excellent event, and I invite all my colleagues in the Legislature to take part and visit Kincardine, "where you're a stranger only once."

FRENCH-LANGUAGE SERVICES SERVICES EN FRANÇAIS

Ms Annamarie Castrilli (Downsview): Yesterday we were scheduled to debate Bill 108, an act that will give municipalities authority to prosecute certain provincial offences.

Mon parti, avec l'Association des Juristes d'expression française de l'Ontario et l'Association du Barreau canadien, ont toujours dénoncé le projet de loi 108 parce qu'il ignore les droits des francophones et donc viole nos lois et même la constitution du Canada.

Municipalities are not bound by existing French-language legislation, and the Attorney General has consistently refused to clearly spell out such guarantees in Bill 108. Yesterday we were ready to debate such flagrant omission. The government chose instead to eliminate any discussion.

Bill 108 has been outstanding for some time. It received first reading on January 20, 1997, and has been the subject of valid criticism by legal experts, the Department of Justice, the official languages commissioner and the francophone community ever since. It's time for the government to do the right thing.

I am today introducing an amendment that will remove any doubt as to the obligation of the government in this area.

La motion que j'introduis aujourd'hui déclare que «le défendeur a le droit d'obtenir une audience équitable» et que ça doit inclure les droits aux services en français. Ces services «comprennent les droits en vertu de la Loi sur les tribunaux judiciaires et la Loi sur les services en français».

This amendment is consistent with provincial laws, with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with the aspirations of Franco-Ontarians and with the expectations of the people of Ontario.

The government must never jeopardize the rights of Ontarians. I urge them to incorporate our amendment now.

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POLICE SERVICES

Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): With this Tory government there's always a catch and inevitably the catch-22. Why just this morning, Mr Harris's crime control commissioner, Jim Brown - someone to never confuse the issues by mentioning the facts - was down in Niagara talking about this government, with great fanfare, how they announced they were going to put money into policing. Mr Brown, Mr Harris's envoy, is down there to explain to people in Niagara region that it's matching funds.

Mr Harris, you've already gutted Niagara region; you bled it dry. Your downloading has resulted in massive property tax increases and new user fees that are going right through the roof. There is no money left in Niagara region as a result, very specifically, of your policies. Niagara Regional Police Force is already down 80 officers, shy 80 officers of what should be its full complement.

This government's much-fanfared announcement means absolutely nothing to the welfare of police officers in Niagara region or to the public safety of residents of Niagara region. This government wants to talk a big game when it comes to crime, wants to talk real tough, but it never delivers and hasn't once again.

Premier, you're putting police officers' welfare at risk and you're exposing the people of Niagara region to great risk and endangering the public safety of those communities by your refusal to properly fund policing and police forces across this province.

WELLINGTON COUNTY FESTIVALS

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): Again this year, Wellington county boasts three of the most exciting cultural festivals in Ontario, offering people a wealth of live theatre and music choices: the Drayton Festival Theatre, the Theatre on the Grand in Fergus and the Elora Festival.

The Drayton Festival has seen phenomenal growth since its first season in 1991 and community support for the festival has been outstanding. Stage 2 of a $1.5-million renovation to the theatre has just been completed, and in less than two years, $1.2 million has been raised through audiences, members and fund-raisers. Tonight, May 13, is opening night and a new musical, Show Stoppers, written by Carl Ritchie and Drayton Festival artistic director, Alex Mustakas, will be premiering.

The Fergus Theatre on the Grand has several sold-out performances already and has seen an increase in its subscriptions of 30% from last year. A $750,000 fund-raising campaign has been launched under the able management of Bruce Lloyd to enable the purchase and renovation of the Grand Theatre building. Through an intensive corporate sector partnership and the generosity of the town of Fergus, which contributed $75,000, 25% of the capital project target has already been reached.

Theatre on the Grand will open its 1998 summer season on June 11 with the world premiere of The Foursome by leading Canadian playwright Norm Foster and directed by the Theatre on the Grand's artistic director, Chris McHarge.

The Elora Festival has a showcase of musical performances every summer and is in its 19th season. Proudly Canadian, the Elora Festival will be featuring three international Canadian guest conductors. The Elora Festival runs from July 10 to August 2.

There is definitely more to discover in Wellington. Our music and theatre festivals are renowned. We invite everyone to experience them this summer.

BETHLEHEM PLACE

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): Friends and supporters of Bethlehem Place are gathering in St Catharines to celebrate the 10th anniversary of this transition home which has played such a significant role in the lives of troubled individuals in our community.

I recall vividly the momentous day when the groundbreaking ceremony was held and the hope and goodwill that existed in the hearts and minds of its founders on that day. With strong support from the church community and others who are generous of spirit, a dream was transformed into reality when this special home opened its doors to those in need of help and understanding.

Bethlehem Place provides not only a physical home for its residents but also the kind of counselling and support which has allowed people to turn their lives around. Bethlehem Place helps people set individualized goals and tries to offer programs where people can develop what they need to achieve them.

Despite a significant reduction in provincial government funding in 1995, the directors and supporters of Bethlehem Place have embarked upon extensive fund-raising efforts and managed to maintain its ability to meet a need in our community.

To those with vision and a desire to assist others and to those with the sense of commitment and dedication to carry on despite difficult challenges, we owe a debt of gratitude. There is much to celebrate at Bethlehem Place today, a building which offers a haven and a helping hand.

DAVID SAWCHUK RIDE FOR CAMP TRILLIUM

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I rise today with great pride to advise colleagues in the House of a great Hamiltonian who is setting out on an exceptional journey for an outstanding purpose. Don Sawchuk will begin the David Sawchuk Ride for Camp Trillium. In Don's own words, he says:

"David was my younger brother, my closest friend and someone I will always love. On July 9, 1991, my life changed forever. David died of cancer.

"When I reflect upon my memories of Dave, I remember his genuine love of life, family and friends. I remember his warm compassionate smile that persevered in light of his struggle with cancer. I remember watching a frightened child develop into a strong young man. In many ways, he remains a profound source of strength in my life.

"These memories of Dave have deeply changed my perceptions of life. My brother left me a sacred gift: the insight to look beyond my own fears and the courage to pursue my dreams and aspirations that would have, perhaps, been overlooked....

"I have decided to call this campaign the David Sawchuk Ride for Camp Trillium because in many ways, he encouraged me to become involved with Camp Trillium.

"In May 1998, I will be leaving for McMaster University on my mountain bike, and riding to Camp Trillium, Rainbow Lake, which is located in Waterford, Ontario. From there, I will commence a 5,000-kilometre ride across Canada to the University of British Columbia."

I know that all members would want to wish Don Sawchuk success in his campaign to raise money for Camp Trillium on behalf of his younger brother Dave.

POLICE SERVICES

Mr Douglas B. Ford (Etobicoke-Humber): This week I had the pleasure of hosting a breakfast to express appreciation to the hardworking members of police divisions 22 and 23 in Etobicoke.

The men and women of these two divisions answer many calls from my constituents. I have a great deal of confidence in these police officers for their ability to respond effectively, and I know the people in my riding share that view.

Also joining me to express his gratitude was our province's Attorney General, Charles Harnick. The minister and I listened carefully to the feedback from those in attendance and shared what our government is doing to promote safety in Ontario's communities. This includes additional money made available in our recent budget for the community policing partnership program. It will result in the hiring of up to 1,000 new front-line police officers in order to increase police visibility and presence and help target high-crime areas in neighbourhoods where they are most needed.

The provincial government views justice and community safety as a strong priority. We will continue to do our part and hope the federal government will also demonstrate responsibility by addressing any necessary changes at its level, for a most effective justice system.

I look forward to maintaining a positive relationship with the police in Etobicoke and look forward to continuing to hear their views on making communities safer across Ontario.

There were approximately 50 policemen and policewomen there.

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

Mr Jerry J. Ouellette (Oshawa): I beg leave to present a report from the standing committee on administration of justice and move its adoption.

Clerk at the Table (Mr Todd Decker): Your committee begs to report the following bill without amendment:

Bill 6, An Act to amend the law with respect to Partnerships / Projet de loi 6, Loi visant à modifier des lois en ce qui concerne les sociétés en nom collectif.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Shall the report be received and adopted? Agreed.

The bill is therefore ordered for third reading.

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INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

ROSS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL ACT, 1998

Mr Stewart moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill Pr14, An Act respecting the Ross Memorial Hospital.

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

SAFE SCHOOLS ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LA SÉCURITÉ DANS LES ÉCOLES

Mr Newman moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 21, An Act to promote Safety in Ontario Schools and create positive Learning Environments for Ontario Students by making amendments to the Education Act / Projet de loi 21, Loi visant à promouvoir la sécurité dans les écoles de l'Ontario et à créer des milieux d'apprentissage favorables pour les élèves ontariens en apportant des modifications à la Loi sur l'éducation.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour, please say "aye."

All those opposed, please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

A short comment?

Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): Ensuring safety in Ontario schools is an important objective for all Ontarians. This bill provides principals, boards and police with better tools than they have today to deal with at-risk students and make Ontario schools safer places to study and work. It provides much-needed provincial standards while ensuring that communities have the flexibility they need to design local programs that best meet their needs.

The Safe Schools Act, if passed, will be an effective tool for reducing violence in Ontario schools, because it was developed with the input of people who will use it in Ontario schools.

I look forward to the support of all members of this Legislature on both sides of the House for this important piece of legislation.

ORAL QUESTIONS

GAMING REVENUE

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): My question is to the Premier, and it has to do with slot machines and how you plan to spend the revenue from slot machines. We've been told that what you plan to do with all of the provincial government's revenue from slot machines, if it's $200 million, if it's $500 million, if it's $1 billion - by the way, you're estimating $500 million - is to spend it incrementally on health care. In other words, the quality of our health care in Ontario will now depend on how much revenue we get from slot machines.

My question is this: Can you explain to Ontario why we should be relying on slot machine revenues to determine the level of health care in the province?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): One of the reasons we are turning to an alternative source of revenue is because the Liberals in Ottawa cut us $2 billion and we're looking for every opportunity we can get to replace the Liberal cuts with money wherever it will come. So I can assure you that we will fund health care appropriately, we will deliver services appropriately, we will continue to expand health care, we will continue to increase the funding, and yes, we will look for new sources of revenue, given the over $2 billion in Liberal cuts. That's why.

Mr Phillips: I'd like to pursue the Premier a little more on this. You have indicated that you plan for the taxpayers of Ontario to lose about $1 billion in slot machines. You plan to take about $500 million of that revenue from slot machines, and what you have said to the people of Ontario is that whatever revenue you get from slot machines, you will spend on health care. So if it's $200 million, you'll spend it on health care, if it's $500 million, if it's $1 billion. In other words, without any question, the level of care in health in the province is now dependent on how much revenue Ontario loses in slot machines. To me it is absurd that you are going to determine the level of health care based on the amount of revenue from slot machines.

My question is very simple. You have approved this. What sorts of incremental health spending, what things do you expect to buy with the slot machine revenue for health care in the province? What specifically will you do with the money from slot machines that you wouldn't do if you didn't have the money from slot machines?

Hon Mr Harris: First of all, we don't plan to take any more money from Ontarians in gambling than has already been taken. We plan to divert, though, that money away from organized crime and into health care. We plan to divert some of that money away from organized crime and we plan to divert some of that money away from inefficiencies in the system that you left us, which was these roving casinos that were all over the place and very difficult to police. We plan to divert some of that money into charities. Perhaps we'll use some of the new money to do the right thing by the hepatitis C victims that the Liberals won't do either.

Mr Phillips: I want to continue on this issue, Premier. You have indicated that you will spend the money you raise from slot machines in addition to any other money you're spending on health care. In other words, if you don't get any money from slot machines, then health care spending will be lower. If you get money from slot machines, it will be higher to whatever extent you raise money. You said you were going to get $500 million from health care. I say again, without any question of a doubt now you have determined that the quality of health care in Ontario will be determined importantly by how much money we raise from slot machines.

I want a clear answer. You have said it will be incremental. Will you give us one specific example of what incremental money you will spend on health care as a result of raising $500 million from slot machines? Without a question of a doubt now, quality of health care in Ontario will be determined by how much money you get from slot machines.

Hon Mr Harris: What I can tell you is this: Not a penny of the roving casino money went into health care, and we plan to put some of the gambling money into health care, money that was going illegally, in the case of the charitable casinos, into organized crime and into inefficiencies. Some of the money clearly will go into charities and into community services.

I can assure you of this: In spite of the fact Liberals improperly funded the health care system, in spite of the fact that they mismanaged the health care system, in spite of the fact that it was their inaction over five years of wanton spending that led to a large part of the problem we are correcting today, and in spite of the fact that Liberals in Ottawa continue to slash and cut health care funding, we will continue because it's our number one priority to do the right thing.

TUITION FEES

Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William): My question is also for the Premier. We know that you are forcing students into more and more debt, but you are also taking more and more out of the pockets of parents who want their sons or daughters to have the chance to go to college or university.

Three months ago your Minister of Education announced that parents will be expected to contribute more to the cost of a child's education. You want to force another year of contribution on them. I want to give you an example of what this means to a family where both parents are working and have a combined total net income of about $60,000, a pretty typical middle-income family.

You expect those parents to contribute $8,000 a year to the cost of their child's education before you will even consider giving them any financial assistance. Now, if their child wants to go on to graduate work or to law or to medicine, you're going to force those parents to pay another $8,000 for an extra year's contribution. For the record, Premier, that $8,000 extra is six times the tax cut you gave to that particular family. Premier, do you think it's okay to take $40,000 out of the pockets of that family?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): I know the Minister of Education will -

Hon David Johnson (Minister of Education and Training): What I think it's okay to do: It's okay to open up more opportunities for our students at post-secondary institutions, opportunities they've been denied in the past. I think it's okay to give more assistance to our post-secondary students through the opportunities trust fund, as we have been doing, through a $600-million investment by this government into the post-secondary education system, by giving $29 million for certain universities which have increased access. I think those are okay things.

What I think isn't okay is that the federal government has reduced health and education transfers to the provincial government by over $2 billion. That's what I think is not okay.

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Mrs McLeod: The $40,000 that this government wants that middle-class family to contribute before they will lend the student anything is just the beginning. I'm sorry the Premier didn't choose to answer, because I wanted to extend my example.

Suppose that our student from that middle-class family is living in North Bay, for example, and wants to take a law degree at Queen's University. Nipissing doesn't offer law. The cost of a seven-year degree when you have to live away from home is at least $70,000. Queen's University now wants to charge the law student another $5,000 in extra tuition fees. So that North Bay student who wants to get a law degree from Queen's is now looking at more than $75,000 in costs. You already expect the parents to contribute $40,000. My question is, do you want the student to go into debt for the rest of the $75,000, or go back to the parents for more money on top of the $40,000 they've already spent?

Hon David Johnson: What we have to realize right off the bat is that the majority of university students do not need a loan in any given year, that the majority have no debt whatsoever.

The member opposite was on a government which allocated about $200 million to support direct assistance to post-secondary students. This government has felt that isn't enough. We have more than doubled that amount to over $500 million - $530 million this year to help post-secondary students.

We've also instituted the Ontario trust fund to help students and we've broadened the opportunity so that fewer students will be rejected from the course of their choice. As a matter of fact, there will be 17,000 new positions in high-demand areas. I think that is a voice for quality and excellence and opportunity.

Mrs McLeod: If the student doesn't need a loan, it's for one reason only, and that's because the parents have to pay the full $75,000 to put that student from North Bay through law school at Queen's. This government has just socked them with an additional $13,000, which must be about 10 times the tax cut they offered that middle-class family.

There are some pretty clear bottom lines here. Bottom line number one: Either the parents pay the $75,000 for the law degree at Queen's or the student goes into debt. You say the students will get all the assistance they need, and they can, but it is all debt. It is debt to you, it is debt to the banks, it is debt now to the universities. You say students will find the ways and means, but I tell you, Minister, when the ways and means mean more and more debt, students will say they can't afford it.

The bottom line for students whose parents just can't afford to pay the whole cost or indeed to pay any more is pretty clear: They won't be able to go to school, they won't be able to continue on into graduate work and that student from North Bay will not be able to get a law degree from Queen's. Do you and your Premier think this is fair?

Hon David Johnson: I don't know how the member for Fort William expects programs to be paid for. The reality is obviously that the student pays for it, the parent pays for it or the taxpayer pays for it. The reality is that all three of the above pay in some proportion for the cost of post-secondary education.

When the member was in government between 1985 and 1990, they allowed post-secondary tuition fees at universities to rise by 35% and got absolutely nothing for it. We are demanding of our post-secondary institutions a quality program, a program to enhance the quality of our post-secondary institutions. We are demanding that they set aside 30% if they choose to increase tuition - some won't, some will - but if they do choose to increase tuition fees, that 30% be set aside to assist our students. We have implemented a quality program guaranteeing accessibility and more opportunity.

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): My question is also for the Minister of Education. Students all across Ontario at the community college, high school and university levels are worried about your tuition tax hikes. They don't know how they're going to be able to afford to go to school.

Yesterday you told some people in the media that if people needed more information about how they were going to afford an education and how they were going to pay for it, they should call your Ministry of Education general inquiry lines. So I did that this morning. I called your first inquiry line - 325-2529 - and I got government voice mail. Then I tried your 1-800 line that you list for student inquiries - no answer at first, and later I got Dominion Securities, where a very nice woman said, "I'm sorry, I don't know why they gave you this number." Then I tried the first public inquiries officer, who said, "We are not here to sort out the public's financial situation and I don't know how you're supposed to pay for your education." Minister, why don't you just tell the students you don't have an answer for them?

Hon David Johnson: Unlike the previous government, represented by the leader of the third party, which allowed tuition fees to rise by 50% - I don't know where the leader was at that point in time, what the students get for a 50% increase - we are ensuring, if any students suffer an increase in tuition, if any post-secondary institutions put the tuition up, that 30% of that go in terms of assisting students who need assistance. We're also ensuring more opportunities for our students.

There are a number of ways this will be paid for: through the trust fund, through the 30% set-aside, through the extra $600 million this government is pouring into post-secondary institutions.

If the member wants to take that back to any students who are enquiring, I would be more than happy to speak to them as well.

Mr Hampton: Minister, that's exactly the problem. You stand up here and you give your smug answers, and anyone who takes a second to think about them knows they are completely phoney and completely false.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Member for Durham East, you're not in your seat. Please go to your seat if you're going to - you can't heckle anyway, but go to your seat regardless. Member for Etobicoke-Humber, please come to order. Thank you. Leader of the third party.

Mr Hampton: The reality is that you have already increased tuition fees by 60% over the last three years, and now, this year, on top of that you want to pass on a further 100% increase. It's very clear that young people who happen to have parents who are well off will be able to afford this, but modest-income families and middle-income families simply can't take on the risk. They can't take on these new tax hikes. They can't do it. When they call your 1-800 lines and they call your telephone lines at the Ministry of Education, as you told them to do, they don't get any answers there either.

Minister, what are middle- and modest-income families going to do? How are they going to afford these $5,000-a-year tax hikes that you've put on them?

Hon David Johnson: First, the member knows, and he's absolutely incorrect as usual, that the tuition fees have not risen by 60% in the last three years. There is the fact that under his government they did rise by 50%, but tuition fees have not risen and he knows that. I guess he likes to spread that information, however incorrect. I guess that suits his purpose.

Second, unlike the previous government, which did nothing but permit institutions to raise tuition fees and got absolutely nothing for it -

Hon Mr Harris: No quality.

Hon David Johnson: No quality - we've implemented a quality program. No further assistance to students? We have almost doubled the amount of assistance through direct grants at the highest point of the NDP government, over $200 million more assistance to our students than ever under an NDP government, plus the opportunities trust fund, and the 30% set-aside. We have done much more for students in Ontario than the previous government ever did.

The Speaker: Final supplementary. Member for Windsor-Riverside.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): Minister, we weren't able to get any answers on the telephone and we're having a hard time getting answers here, but we're going to give you another chance.

Last week in the budget you talked about a $9-billion Canada-Ontario fund for student assistance, one of those promises that's going to take over 10 years to deliver on. In that it included $400 million that already exists in student assistance funding. Earlier this week, and we heard earlier today, you were bragging about over $500 million in student assistance. Your office couldn't explain what looks to be a 25% cut in student assistance. We tried on the phone; we couldn't get an answer.

Minister, why are you trying to disguise a major cut in student assistance under the cover of a 10-year commitment to spend federal money? Please explain that to us.

Hon David Johnson: The member opposite, in line with his leader, is conveying information which is totally incorrect. My suspicion is that what you are referring is the fact that in the $9-billion Canada-Ontario millennium fund, which we are proud to be associated with, which will include more money for more students in Ontario who need support, we have not included the default money, which is extra and over and beyond that again, so there will be more money which, if there continue to be defaults, as they climbed under your regime - when you were in government more and more defaults every year, unfortunately.

We are giving more assistance to students through the opportunities trust fund, which will start this year, not 10 years from now but this year, more money through various means. But if there is still default, that again is over and above, beyond, and that's where you're missing the point.

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USER FEES

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): My next question is for the Premier. The Premier in the Common Sense Revolution says, "Under this plan, there will be no new user fees." I want to ask the Premier about user fees in the health care system, particularly Mrs Margaret Currie of Hamilton.

Mrs Currie's husband is blind and suffers from geriatric dementia. Mr Currie was moved from Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital, because there were not enough beds, to St Peter's chronic care hospital. Now Mrs Currie has to pay $1,240 per month in copayment fees at the chronic care hospital and, on top of that, she has to pay $1,100 per month for a private duty nurse to look after her husband because there are not enough nurses in that facility after your government's cuts.

Premier, how can you say that you haven't added new user fees to the health care system when you look at Mrs Currie's situation?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): I would be happy to take the initial question, and if there are follow-ups the minister can take a look at them.

As we said in the Common Sense Revolution under the section to do with the Canada Health Act, "there will be no new user fees" contrary to the Canada Health Act. Any user fees that are in the system today, particularly in the area of long-term care -

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Order.

Hon Mr Harris: Mr Speaker, this was a very significant commitment because, as you know, the New Democratic Party was against the Canada Health Act - contrary to that - violating the Canada Health Act with the extra payments that you charged Ontarians who legitimately might have been out of the province for travel.

Given that the trend of the Ontario government had been contra the Canada Health Act, this was a very important commitment that we made, and it was a commitment made and a commitment kept.

Mr Hampton: We've just heard how the Premier says that $1,100 in user fees for someone who is very sick is not somehow a user fee. We've just heard the Premier try to tell us that those aren't user fees. Premier, let me try again.

As of April 1, your government changed the fee schedule for doctors so that there is a user fee for a doctor to visit a sick elderly person in a home for the aged or in a nursing home more than once a month. Your government will pay if a doctor has to visit someone in a nursing home or a home for the aged for one visit a month, but if a doctor has to go back more than once a month there's a user fee. A sick person in a home for the aged or a nursing home, under your government, is only entitled to see a physician once a month.

Premier, what if there's a problem with medication? What if there's a change in the person's condition? What if the patient is dying? I guess then they have to pay a user fee under your government's new rules.

Hon Mr Harris: Absolutely not. There are absolutely no user fees over and above what your government had in any of the cases you've presented to me so far. There's absolutely no reason why 100% of all medical bills will not be paid for all medically necessary visits to any patient in a nursing home or in another home or to the doctor's office or to the hospital. There are some user fees in the system, the same ones you had in the system.

Mr Hampton: I'm sure the frail and elderly people across this province will be happy to hear from the Premier now that if a physician has to come in and see them, say, twice a month, three times a month, four times a month, there will be no user fee. I'm sure all the administrators and the people who work in those homes for the aged or in the nursing homes will be happy to hear that as well. We got that on the record.

Premier, the fact of the matter is that for people like Mrs Currie, who now has to pay $1,100 a month for a private nurse because there aren't enough nurses in the chronic care hospital, and for elderly people in homes for the aged, you've added a lot of new user fees. Elderly people who need prescription medicine have to pay a new drug copayment fee, a new prescription copayment fee, and it's adding up to over $300 a year in many cases. In addition, if someone needs acne treatment, they have to pay a user fee. If they want to visit an optometrist, they have to pay a user fee. Pregnant women who need an ultrasound have to pay a user fee. Premier, with all of these new user fees, copayment fees, administrative fees, why don't you just come out and admit it? You're slapping all of these new taxes on people who need health care.

Hon Mr Harris: I remember when the NDP hiked the user fees on ambulance services. I would say that when somebody needs an ambulance, that would qualify as a medically necessary service. You saw absolutely no difficulty in increasing the user fees on ambulance services. You saw no difficulty in increasing the copayment for living expenses at the same time as maintaining 100% of the health care costs when you're dealing with the elderly, when you're dealing with homes for the aged and when you're dealing with nursing homes. In those areas we brought in absolutely no new user fees other than the ones that were in the system when you were there and were accepted then and have been accepted as legitimate non-health-care expenses, or those that the medical community have deemed not to be medically necessary.

Unlike, I might say, your government, now for the first time since 1991 or 1992, when you put us in contravention of the Canada Health Act, Ontario is no longer in contravention of the Canada Health Act, exactly as we committed in the Common Sense Revolution.

NURSING STAFF

Mr Gerard Kennedy (York South): I also have a question for the Premier on health care. You met and heard directly, on March 4, from nurses in this province. They said to you directly, Premier, that the Harris health care system is a mess, that there's a crisis. They gave you a document called Putting Out the Health Care Fire, in your Ontario, Premier. You personally heard from them what was required, that nurses were stressed and angry, frustrated, devalued and leaving the profession. They asked you to put back $325 million, to invest that directly into nursing, to show respect and to admit that you'd made mistakes that have worsened health care in this province. The nurses of this province came to you with that proposal and you've rejected them. Do you want to tell us why?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): I'm surprised that you continue to make stuff up. You were not at the meeting and I was at the meeting, so let me report to you what they said. They said, "Thank you for the meeting and thank you for your interest, thank you for your support of nurses. Here's what we think in addition that needs to be done." We agreed and we've done it.

Mr Kennedy: I've got the letter from nurses which I'll send across to you. If people are wondering why the health care they get doesn't conform to what they need, it's because this Premier can't understand what's going on with the health system. His remarks just proved that to us.

I'll quote someone else to you. Here's a nurse who called the Liberal health hotline: "Yes, I'm a nurse and I'm sick and tired of hearing how this government is putting money here, putting money there. We don't see anything like that happening in the hospitals. All we hear is they'll be slashing this, slashing that."

Your own minister talked about 4,000 unemployed nurses in this province. I talked to some today, and they're responding to the new Harris health ads - the ones from Connecticut, the ones advertising for nurses in London, England, the ones from California - because that's where nurses in this province have to go to get full-time employment. You've made them work part-time or not work at all and you're going to privatize them in terms of home care. Premier, will you or will you not put money back into acute care hospitals dedicated to hiring qualified nurses in this province? Will you do that?

Hon Mr Harris: We had a real positive meeting, the minister and myself, with the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario. I think they will confirm that. They made some suggestions. I think they've been astounded that for the first time in 12 years the government listened to them and took their advice into consideration. I might add that on the area of the recommendations, we are following through on that. But as far as the numbers the member quotes are concerned, the numbers are as accurate as most of the other information the member comes forward with. There's absolutely no truth to it.

1420

CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH

Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): My question is to the Premier.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Come to order. Premier, can you come to order, please? Member for York South, come to order.

Ms Lankin: Premier, in the last few months I've been meeting with families and service providers in the area of children's mental health services. They've made me aware of some significant concerns that I hope to share with you today, and I hope to enlist your help in solving some problems.

Children's mental health centres come under the Ministry of Community and Social Services, but children's mental health beds in hospitals come under the Ministry of Health. Currently, it's not a priority for either ministry and there's no centre for planning and delivery of those services.

The recent Health Services Restructuring Commission report said that there needed to be a focus for mental health beds for children as part of a comprehensive delivery system, and they said that hospitals should work with children's mental health centres which have overall responsibility in the community for planning and delivery of children's mental health services.

That same week the child advocate report came out and said that 80% of children in the young offender system have mental health problems and they called on the system of children's mental health centres -

The Speaker: Question.

Ms Lankin: - to take a lead in planning delivery. They would like to do that but they've not been empowered to do so by your government. Premier, would you respond by indicating that you support them and their association taking -

The Speaker: Premier.

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): Let me say that I think the member is quite correct in identifying a coordinating or lack of coordination concern, and I think she quite appropriately is representing the concern we also have heard from those groups and from those advocates. We are looking at their recommendation. I appreciate the member's interest.

I suggest that the Minister of Health would be prepared to include the member. We like working with all those who take a positive concern and care, and certainly you, on behalf of your party, have demonstrated that today. If you would like to work with us in making sure that we have a far better coordinated system, a more responsive system to deal particularly with children's mental health, we would like you to be part of that because we recognize there is some work to be done in that area.

Ms Lankin: Premier, I appreciate that. What I'm hoping for is that children's mental health centres and their provincial association would be recognized as a lead partner in planning and delivering those services.

Right now there's major restructuring going on in the hospital sector, as you know, and the Ministry of Health, and in Comsoc, through the report of Making Services Work for People. In all of those areas, they have to focus on priorities and on mandated services. Adult mental health is mandated by legislation; child welfare is mandated by legislation; young offender services are mandated by legislation. Children's mental health services aren't.

We need a focus and we need to be reassured, as there are growing service demands in all these other areas, which we recognize and we have to meet by legislation, that we don't lose services and don't lose sight of and see children's mental health services fall through the cracks.

The two things I would like to ask you to commit to are that we will not lose any level of current services, that at a minimum we won't lose those services for children's mental health out in our community, and second, would you give the minister responsible for children's issues the job of taking a look at and leading the process of giving us mandating legislation for children's mental health services in this province?

Hon Mr Harris: The member is quite correct. There are some silos that need to be broken down, interministerial silos as well as agency silos. On the suggestion of who takes the lead, there are some conflicting views, but we're not saying no to any of those. We think we do need to do that.

Secondly, the minister responsible for children is in fact doing exactly that and is taking a lead role in trying to assist both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services. As well, as you say, there are others that are affected there.

If it takes legislation, we'll bring in legislation. I'm not saying no to that either. But it is the kind of thing I think we could work on cooperatively, in a non-partisan way. I would invite Margaret Marland in that coordinating role, and we would welcome your participation, and if there's anybody in the Liberal Party who wants to work cooperatively, they could too.

YOUNG OFFENDERS

Mr Bob Wood (London South): My question is to the Attorney General. The changes to the Young Offenders Act proposed by the federal government yesterday contain tougher treatment for some serious offenders but not for drug traffickers. This is a glaring omission. Apparently the federal Liberals do not fully understand the direct relationship between illegal drug use and crime.

I challenge their provincial cousins in this House to stand up and publicly tell the federal Liberals that they are wrong. Is the Attorney General prepared to ask the federal government to reopen their package and include tougher treatment for drug traffickers?

Hon Charles Harnick (Attorney General, minister responsible for native affairs): I appreciate the question from the member for London South. He's quite right that it's going to be very important to speak to the federal government and to tell them about some of the omissions in their package.

Part of the package that Ottawa delivered yesterday includes certain offences for mandatory adult sentencing. They include murder, attempted murder, aggravated sexual assault, manslaughter and youth with a pattern of serious violent offences. But when you look at that list, certainly there is nothing there dealing with weapons offences, where a crime is committed and there's use of a weapon or possession of a weapon. There's nothing there that deals with drug-related offences. There's nothing there that deals with issues of robbery or other kinds of assault.

While there are many things to recommend the federal recommendations, certainly these are glaring omissions. We will be, let me give the member my assurance, pressing this -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Supplementary.

Mr Bob Wood: There's a wide consensus among the public that we have to get tougher on serious young offenders. There has certainly been a deafening silence today from the Liberal benches on this issue.

Interjections.

Mr Bob Wood: We're beginning to hear something now.

Will the minister ask for the support of the other provinces, the police community and the other two parties in the Legislature in his efforts to get stronger federal legislation for serious young offenders?

Hon Mr Harnick: Certainly I will be asking for the support of all members of this House if they've been listening to the people in Ontario, who have felt over a long period of time that the Young Offenders Act is a failed experiment and now see this as an opportunity to have new legislation, to create a new act to deal with young offenders, to deal properly with the issues that have so long been affecting the safety of communities.

Certainly as we look at this package in terms of the way it deals with 14-, 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds, in some respects it really is a move in the right direction. But a lot more needs to be done. I know that certainly members of the Liberal Party have a great stake in listening to what people in Ontario are saying, and I hope they'll speak to their federal cousins and remind them of some of the glaring errors in their package that was released yesterday.

1430

AIR QUALITY

Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): My question is for the Minister of Health. Yesterday the Ontario Medical Association held a session to inform us that Windsor is the most polluted area in the country and more people here are dying from heart failure and respiratory illness. That especially affects young children and seniors. That means more emergency visits and more hospitalization. That is the last thing, as you know, that Windsor hospitals need.

Minister, I'd like to know, how are you fighting for us with your colleague the Minister of the Environment, who not only has done nothing for our environmental air quality issues but in fact has made things worse since he has become the minister?

Hon Elizabeth Witmer (Minister of Health): Mr Speaker, through you to the Minister of the Environment, who has been working hard.

Hon Norman W. Sterling (Minister of the Environment, Government House Leader): I want to assure all members of this House that we are very concerned about protecting and improving the air quality for the people of Windsor and the rest of the province.

We have moved forward very aggressively on updating our air quality standards in this province. We have brought in a new particulate standard for Ontario for the first time. We are going to implement a vehicle emissions testing program, primarily and first in the greater Toronto area and the Hamilton-Wentworth area, but I have asked the municipal council of the city of Windsor, if they would like it at an earlier date than it is planned for in that area, to please write to me with a resolution and we will see that that comes to fruition.

Mrs Pupatello: I'm sorry the Minister of Health will not advocate for Windsor health care concerns, because she knows what kind of situation we're facing.

To the Minister of the Environment: You had the nerve today to send out a fax sheet on air quality accomplishments and you talk today about how aggressive you are? You have been a kitten in this area. Let me tell you about your record. You don't have accomplishments when it comes to air quality. What you've done is you've cut the budget in half. You've reduced the staff by a third. In the Windsor area, which has the worst air quality in Ontario and Canada, you dropped the number of air quality monitors, and the Environmental Commissioner reported two weeks ago that you don't do anything with the readings from the monitors that are left.

Every other Minister of the Environment has been really aggressive in fighting issues that we're facing. You have to come to the table and actually do something. The people of Windsor want to know, what action will you take to resolve our air quality issues?

Hon Mr Sterling: We are not shy about the accomplishments that we have made in this province with regard to air quality, but the member from Windsor well knows that 90% of the air quality problems with regard to the Windsor area are caused by the United States of America. I have invited her Liberal federal colleague to become involved. I have invited the Honourable Christine Stewart, the Minister of the Environment for Canada, and Herb Gray, the Deputy Prime Minister, who comes from Windsor, to go with me across to Michigan, to Ohio and to 10 other states where I have tried to carry the message that we are concerned with what they are doing in their states to our air quality here in Ontario.

Mr Speaker, you know that international relations are more within the federal jurisdiction than they are the provincial. Notwithstanding that, I'm doing my part, and on July 8 or 9, or in that time frame -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Thank you. New question.

Ms Marilyn Churley (Riverdale): Minister, you're no kitten; you're just a scaredy-cat. You're just too afraid of your big corporate friends to do anything about this. That's the reality.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order. Stop the clock. Come to order.

Member for Riverdale.

Ms Churley: We all know about the Ontario Medical Association's groundbreaking report yesterday linking smog directly to health problems and death. This is not an abstract issue; this is a health crisis. Yet your government's electricity reform could mean more smog and an even bigger assault on our health. Electricity competition will mean dirty Ohio coal invading our electricity market. But they won't be just sending over their power, they'll be sending us their smog.

Minister, your government's Hydro white paper made vague and general commitments to the environment. That is not good enough. Will you commit today that all generators selling electricity to Ontario will be bound by law to smog standards that are at least as tough as those that now apply to Hydro? Will you guarantee that today?

Hon Mr Sterling: The electricity restructuring legislation will come forward very soon, and I think the member opposite will be pleasantly surprised when she reads that legislation.

The Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): Deaths from heart disease and respiratory problems are higher in the city of Windsor than any place else in the country. This is a health crisis that we can no longer ignore. The Minister of Health doesn't want to respond to our questions, so I'll direct this to the Minister of the Environment. We need more than vague assurances; we need more than voluntary compliance. We don't need delays, we need regulation and, more important, we need enforcement.

Even Donald Macdonald, your free market deregulation competition guru, says that deregulation of Ontario Hydro is not going to be good for the environment. That's going to mean more smog, more health problems and more deaths, especially in the area I represent, because of dirty Ohio Valley coal-burning electricity plants. Your policies are going to open the door to dirty Ohio coal unless you act, and we want to know what steps you're going to take to ensure our health and our environment are not threatened.

Hon Mr Sterling: As I mentioned to the previous questioner, I think that people who are concerned about air quality and the problem with American generators of electricity will be very pleased.

Ms Churley: Meow, meow.

Interjections.

The Speaker: That's out of order. Come to order, please.

Hon Mr Sterling: Unfortunately I treat the air quality of the people of Windsor very seriously and not in a very, very humorous and silly fashion as the members opposite.

You will find in the electricity restructuring legislation the strictest controls on importers of electricity into this province as there are anywhere in North America.

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Mr Jerry J. Ouellette (Oshawa): My question is to the Minister of Health. There has been much discussion lately in a number of different sectors about the millennium bug computer problem, and I'm concerned about the possible impact this computer problem will have on our hospitals. A number of my constituents are reading reports and articles about how governments are unprepared and not properly addressing this problem, clearly referring to the feds.

Some of my constituents are concerned that local hospitals need assistance from the province to address this computer problem and ensure the continued delivery of quality patient care. Minister, could you please inform my constituents about what steps the government is taking to ensure that our local hospital will be prepared to handle this millennium computer problem?

Hon Elizabeth Witmer (Minister of Health): We are certainly aware of the concerns that the hospitals have. In order to address the concern of the year 2000 computer issue, we set aside in our budget this year $300 million. That is before the medical renewal fund. We are working with the Ontario Hospital Association to ensure that we provide the appropriate support to the hospitals and that they can make sure they address this computer issue in the year 2000.

Mr Ouellette: I know your ministry is committed to ensuring that Ontarians receive quality patient care and treatment. Not long ago, your ministry approved an Oshawa General Hospital project to upgrade their existing laboratory services. Oshawa is a high-growth area with growing patient care needs and ministry attention to these types of service upgrades recognize the patient needs of our community and others like it. I understand that the medical renewal fund will serve many purposes in assisting hospitals such as Oshawa General Hospital.

Minister, could you identify some of the key purposes that this medical renewal fund will serve and what sort of feedback the minister has received about the creation of this fund?

Hon Mrs Witmer: Yes, again, we do know that there is a need for this medical renewal fund, the $300 million that was set aside in the budget to ensure that we address the year 2000 issue. I will very shortly be announcing the details of the fund and how the fund is going to be made available to the health sector. In the interim, however, David MacKinnon, the president of the OHA, has indicated to us that patients in Ontario should feel very confident that we will be operating very successfully on January 1 of the year 2000 as a result of the investment that has been made by our government in the budget for the medical renewal fund.

1440

PHYSICIAN SHORTAGE

Mr Frank Miclash (Kenora): My question is for the Premier. Tomorrow, word has it, you're going to be in Ear Falls. I must say that the community, the reeve, council and the company Avenor are certainly looking forward to your visit. But, Premier, you must realize that the community of Ear Falls has been without a doctor, a nurse or a clinic since last November.

In an article taken from the local newspaper, Miss Gloria Williamson, a member from the wellness committee, has stated that, "The Canadian prisons, with more than 400 inmates, are required to have medical services," while her entire community of over 1,000 residents, with a new industry being opened tomorrow, has no medical facilities.

After months of frustration with the Minister of Health and her ministry, the folks of Ear Falls will be looking for you to come with a solution to this problem for their community during your visit tomorrow. Premier, can they expect a solution to this problem?

Hon Michael D. Harris (Premier): Yes.

Mr Miclash: Thank you very much, Mr Premier. The residents are certainly looking forward to that solution. They've been working on this problem, as I say, since last November. They've been without medical services, without the service of a doctor or a clinic or whatever. Frustration is extremely high. The reeve himself, Reeve Desmarais, has indicated that, "The MOH asked us to present options, and we can't get anyone to look at our options." I have to say that they will certainly be looking for that solution tomorrow, one they've been looking for since November.

Hon Mr Harris: It's the first time the member has raised it with me. I'm sure he has raised it with others. It's not a new issue, as you know. It has been a problem in a number of northern communities particularly; in fact it was an election issue, as I recall, in every one of the elections I've run in in the last 17 years. I want to tell you that as a result of new initiatives that this government has taken over and above what the Liberals took, over and above what the NDP took, we are getting more doctors in the north. We are constantly looking at new initiatives. I think just today Helen Johns, the member for Huron, has come up with another exciting new suggestion.

I thank the people from Ear Falls very much for the invitation. I'm looking forward to coming up, to the excitement, under the policies of our government, of Avenor's expansion and the new jobs, and the excitement that brings to the community. I believe we are close to a solution. I am happy to talk to -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): New question, third party.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Member for Kenora, come to order. York South.

Point of order, member for Kenora?

Mr Miclash: Did the Premier not say he was coming with a solution to Ear Falls tomorrow?

The Speaker: That's not a point of order.

New question, leader of the third party.

Mr Howard Hampton (Rainy River): Premier, I want to talk just a bit further about Ear Falls. I met with some of the representatives from Ear Falls and I know it was your government's change of policies that has resulted in the closure of the clinic there. The operation of the clinic under your government is tied to having a physician, and when the physician went under your government's policies, the whole clinic closed.

Premier, I think you owe it to the people of Ear Falls - since you're going to go there and try to take credit for the sawmill - and a lot of other people in northwestern Ontario who are having similar health care problems under your government, you owe it to tell the people now what the solution is you're going to announce tomorrow for the lack of a clinic, the lack of a physician, the lack of nurses in Ear Falls under your government. What's the answer?

Hon Mr Harris: I welcome you to the announcement tomorrow.

Mr Hampton: I want to ask the Premier something else about this. The reality in that part of Ontario is that just a 60-kilometre or 70-kilometre trip down the road we now have the longest-running gold mining labour dispute in the history of this province, again due to your government's policies. You put in place policies two and a half years ago that allow scabs to come on workplaces, and that has resulted in the longest-running labour dispute.

I can understand that you want to go take credit for a new sawmill, a sawmill the planning for which began in 1993 and 1994, before you ever became the government. I can understand that you want to go take credit for someone else's good work, but what are you going to do about the health care problem your government has created in Ear Falls and what are you going to do about the labour relations problems you've created in Balmertown?

Hon Mr Harris: I'm not going to take any credit. I'm going to represent the government of Ontario, at the invitation - made repeatedly, I might add, because it wasn't on my original itinerary - where they said, "We'd really like you to come, Premier, because quite frankly, in our view, it is your policies that took it from a draft plan to actually investing the money and carrying on." But those are the companies that make the investment.

I think the people of Ear Falls deserve a lot of credit in some trying times. It has not been easy for the people of Ear Falls, for jobs, for the economy, in health care issues and in other areas.

As far as the labour dispute is concerned, if you think we should get involved and legislate and gut contracts the way you guys did with the social contract, we don't plan to interfere with the free collective -

Mr Hampton: Very shallow.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Leader of the third party, come to order.

1450

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

Mr Trevor Pettit (Hamilton Mountain): My question is for the minister responsible for children. Last Tuesday we received some very good news about what this government is doing for children, and it was news that was very well received in my riding high atop majestic Hamilton Mountain. We heard how this government is helping working families through child care tax credits and working with business to strengthen child care supports for their employees. We also heard about funding increases to the children's aid societies and new funding to help provide the education our children need for the future.

Minister, I'd like to ask you about a particular program mentioned in the budget and that is the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program. Several weeks ago, I attended the launch of this program in Hamilton-Wentworth. I know the government initiated this program in order to help children and families get the best possible start in life. How does the government's investment today help benefit children and families down the line?

Hon Margaret Marland (Minister without Portfolio [children's issues]): I'm very glad to have an opportunity to answer this question because our government is extremely proud of our Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program.

Obviously, for the first time, when all newborn babies are going to be screened at birth for whether or not they will be at risk, this is going to be, in practice, the very area that every research points to, and that is early intervention and prevention. Healthy Babies, Healthy Children will make a very big difference to the future of children in this province.

Mr Pettit: As a father, in fact the father of two beautiful daughters, I understand how useful these additional supports can be for any family. New parents have many questions and sometimes need assistance in learning how to deal with the trials and tribulations of parenthood. Last week the Minister of Finance announced additional funding for Healthy Babies, Healthy Children. I understand that the government is doubling the current funding to $20 million in 1998-99 and will increase it again to $50 million annually by 2000-01. How will this substantial investment change the program?

Hon Mrs Marland: The reason our government has decided to double the funding in this program from $10 million to $20 million in this year, and to make a commitment of $50 million annually by the year 2000-01, is because all the people who are already involved with this program across this great province recognize that it is the solution. When we invest in meeting the needs of those children in their early years, we know that when they start school they will be ready to learn, will have the benefits of being ready to learn -

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

Hon Mrs Marland: - and the problems will not be complicated by the fact that they haven't had the interventions in those early years.

The interventions in the early years and the referral -

The Speaker: Point of order, member for Windsor-Sandwich.

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I'd like to register, under standing order 37(a), my dissatisfaction with the answer from the Minister of the Environment and request a late show.

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): File the appropriate papers.

PETITIONS

NURSES' BILL OF RIGHTS

Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): This petition is to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

"Whereas nursing is key to quality health care; and

"Whereas nurses want the right to provide high-quality care; and

"Whereas nurses want the right to be heard and consulted on health care issues; and

"Whereas nurses want the right to be recognized and treated as equals in the health care system; and

"Whereas nurses want the right to have meaningful participation in all aspects of health care reform; and

"Whereas nurses want the right to be advocates for their communities and the people they care for without fear of reprisal; and

"Whereas nurses want the right to work in settings that are free from harassment and discrimination and that nurture learning, diversity, personal growth, job satisfaction and mutual support; and

"Whereas nurses want the right to work in conditions that promote and foster professionalism and teamwork; and

"Whereas nurses want the right to deliver care in an integrated, publicly funded, not-for-profit health care system that is grounded in the principles of the Canada Health Act;

"Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to honour, promote and respect the nurses' bill of rights as outlined above and to ensure that these rights are enshrined in all aspects of health care."

I affix my signature to it.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I have further petitions regarding the Workers' Health and Safety Centre signed by autoworkers, steelworkers, nurses and teachers -

The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Can you read the petition, please.

Mr Christopherson: - from all across the Hamilton region. It reads as follows:

"Whereas each year in Ontario approximately 300 workers are killed on the job, several thousand die of occupational diseases and 400,000 suffer work-related injuries and illnesses; and

"Whereas during the past decade the Workers' Health and Safety Centre proved to be the most cost-effective WCB-funded prevention organization dedicated to worker health and safety concerns; and

"Whereas the WCB provides over 80% of its legislated prevention funding to several employer-controlled safety associations and less than 20% to the Workers' Health and Safety Centre; and

"Whereas the Workers' Health and Safety Centre recently lost several million dollars in funding and course revenue due to government changes to legislated training requirements; and

"Whereas 30% of Workers' Health and Safety Centre staff were laid off due to these lost training funds; and

"Whereas the Workers' Health and Safety Centre now faces an additional 25% cut to its 1998 budget, which will be used to augment new funding for employer safety associations in the health, education and services sector; and

"Whereas the WCB's 1998 planned baseline budget cuts for safety associations and the Workers' Health and Safety Centre will be disproportionately against the workers' centre and reduce its budget to less than 15% of the WCB prevention funding,

"Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to stop the WCB's proposed cuts and direct the WCB to increase the Workers' Health and Safety Centre's funding to at least 50% of the WCB's legislated prevention funding; and

"Further we, the undersigned, call upon the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to direct the WCB to significantly increase its legislated prevention funding in order to eliminate workplace illness, injury and death."

I add my name to those of these workers.

CHIROPRACTIC HEALTH CARE

Mr John O'Toole (Durham East): A petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, to Premier Mike Harris, Minister of Health Elizabeth Witmer and members of the Ontario Legislature:

"Whereas the Ministry of Health has recently strengthened its reputation as the Ministry of Medicine through its $1.7-billion three-year agreement with the Ontario Medical Association; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government is restricting access to alternative cost-saving treatments for patients of the province; and

"Whereas two recent reports commissioned by the Ministry of Health called for increased OHIP funding to improve patient access to chiropractic services on the grounds of safety, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness; and

"Whereas over one million Ontario adults now use chiropractic services annually, increasingly those with higher incomes, because of the cost barrier caused by government underfunding; and

"Whereas the Mike Harris government has shown blatant disregard for the needs of the citizens of Ontario in restricting funding for chiropractic services;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to recognize the contribution made by chiropractors to the good health of the people of Ontario, to recognize the taxpayer dollars saved by the use of low-cost preventive care such as that provided by chiropractors and to recognize that to restrict funding for chiropractic health care only serves to limit access to a needed health care service."

In my riding of Durham East chiropractic services were founded, so I'm pleased to support this.

EDUCATION FUNDING

Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): I have a petition that is addressed to the assembly and it reads as follows:

"Whereas the Ontario government wants to take an additional $1 billion out of the education system this year and every year; and

"Whereas the Ontario government has decided to hire uncertified teachers in kindergarten, libraries, for guidance, physical education, the arts and technology; and

"Whereas the Ontario government wishes to remove the right to negotiate working conditions; and

"Whereas the Ontario government would remove at least 10,000 teachers from classrooms across the province; and

"Whereas the Ontario government has become the sole decision-maker on class size, preparation time and the length of the school day; and

"Whereas the Ontario government proposes to take decision-making powers out of the hands of locally elected community-minded trustees,

"We, the undersigned Ontario residents, strongly urge the government to repeal Bill 160 and create an accessible public consultation process for students, parents, teachers and school board administrators to study alternative solutions that have universal appeal and will lead to an improved educational system."

I affix my signature to this document.

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STUDENT ASSISTANCE

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): I have a number of petitions signed by persons from New Liskeard, Matheson, Marathon, Toronto and Cobalt about the income-contingent repayment plans.

"The Mike Harris Conservatives are promising to have an income-contingent repayment plan in place for 1998-99. Supporters of income-contingent repayment plans claim that it provides a more flexible student aid program by tying a student's loan repayments to his or her income. The lower your income, the lower your payments. If your income drops below a certain threshold, no payments would be necessary. Repayment would continue for a set number of years, usually 25 to 30, after which the loan balance is forgiven. It sounds good, but there are many more factors involved with the ICRP which ultimately make it a bad choice for students.

"Under this, students will amass much greater debt loads than they do at present. Increases to the length of the repayment period, the lack of interest relief during periods of non-repayment and the end of loan forgiveness will all contribute to the greater accumulation of debt for many students. The problems of compounding interest and skyrocketing debt loads will be especially severe for students who face periods of unemployment and/or those with lower levels of income after graduation. For these students, statistically longer periods of unemployment and lower wages will result in much greater debt loads. In some cases, low-income students will either pay back many times more than other students or will be in debt for much of their lives.

"As if massive debt loads are not bad enough, ICRPs are also linked to higher tuition fees. The reason is that the scheme allows governments to download the responsibility for funding post-secondary education on to the backs of students. Tuition fees would be allowed to increase at a much more rapid pace because, as ICRP supporters claim, the additional debt burden will be offset by more flexible repayment options. The claim that students can absorb more debt as long as more flexible repayment options are available is false. As it is now, tuition fees and debt loads have caused many students to look at the cost of post-secondary education and decide that it is not an option they can afford. Even without massive tuition hikes, ICRPs mean longer repayment periods and greater debt for many students. With increases in tuition of the kind associated with ICRPs, we would be looking at a critical decline in the accessibility of Ontario's post-secondary institutions.

"ICRPs are not a solution to the problems haunting Ontario students. Currently more and more students in Ontario are requiring loans to commence or continue their studies and the individual debt carried by these students is rapidly mounting. We need steps to lessen student indebtedness, including such things as an end to excessive tuition fees, a system of grants which provides funding to students in need and decent employment prospects. What we do not need is an ICRP that would only accelerate the current debt crisis facing post-secondary students."

HOME CARE

Mr Ted Arnott (Wellington): This petition is addressed to the Legislature of Ontario and reads as follows:

"Whereas sufficient new funds have not been allocated from the province to provide the quality and quantity of services offered by the community care access centre of Wellington-Dufferin, thereby resulting in a change to the eligibility criteria and a decision by the CCAC not to include homemaking services for the disabled, frail and elderly as an insured service and decreasing the amount of support and relief services available for relatives and others who provide care for an individual at home;

"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislature of Ontario as follows:

"Increase the funds allocated for health care in Wellington-Dufferin in order for the community care access centre to support individuals to remain in their own home by reinstating homemaking services to the disabled, frail and elderly, reinstating caregiver support in the form of respite services back to 60 hours per month, as provided by the former home care agency."

It's signed by over 300 constituents in the Wellington area.

CHARITABLE GAMING

Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): I have a petition from the Knox Presbyterian Church in my constituency who are extremely concerned. It reads like this:

"We, the members of Knox Presbyterian Church in Agincourt, hereby petition the government of Ontario to abandon its ill-advised scheme to license permanent charity gaming clubs and video lottery terminals across Ontario.

"Evidence from other constituencies indicates clearly that such casinos bring about a massive increase in community-based gambling with its attendant addiction, broken families, loss to the local leisure industry and increasing crime and social problems. The costs are too much.

"Most of the revenue is related to go not to charities but to operators and to the government. It is the worst kind of regressive taxation.

"We call on your government to respect the clearly expressed wishes of your constituents who have said a resounding no to these casinos with VLTs. We urge you to pursue a course that provides adequate resources for social programs without resorting to methods that increase unhealthy behaviour and pursuit of illusionary dreams of wealth."

I affix my signature to this in full agreement.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): I have a petition to the Legislative Assembly signed by over 100 people from southwestern Ontario.

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas approximately 300 workers are killed on the job each year and 400,000 suffer work-related injuries and illnesses; and

"Whereas the government of Ontario continues to allow a massive erosion of WCB prevention funding; and

"Whereas Ontario workers are fearful that the government of Ontario, through its recent initiatives, is threatening to dismantle workers' clinics and the Workers' Health and Safety Centre; and

"Whereas the workers' clinics and the Workers' Health and Safety Centre have consistently provided a meaningful role for labour within the health and safety prevention system; and

"Whereas the workers' clinics and the Workers' Health and Safety Centre have proven to be the most cost-effective prevention organizations funded by the WCB;

"Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to immediately cease the assault on the workers' clinics and the Workers' Health and Safety Centre; and

"Further we, the undersigned, call upon the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to ensure that the workers' clinics and the Workers' Health and Safety Centre remain labour-driven organizations with full and equitable WCB funding and that the WCB provide adequate prevention funding to eliminate workplace illness and injury."

I am proud to affix my signature.

REGULATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS

Mrs Brenda Elliott (Guelph): I present to the assembly a petition signed by 19 of my constituents in the city of Guelph. It concerns their concern about the intentions of the Ontario College of Certified Social Workers.

They humbly and respectfully ask of the Legislative Assembly that any legislation must include the regulation of social service workers and their clients in order to realistically reflect services provided in our communities, and they request that graduates of social worker services programs are included in any proposed social act.

ROAD SAFETY

Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood): A petition to the Ontario Legislature:

"Whereas red light cameras can dramatically assist in reducing the number of injuries and deaths resulting from red light runners; and

"Whereas red light cameras only take pictures of licence plates, thus reducing privacy concerns; and

"Whereas all revenues from violations can be easily directed to a designated fund to improve safety at high-collision intersections; and

"Whereas there is a growing disregard for traffic laws, resulting in serious injury to pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, and especially children and seniors; and

"Whereas the provincial government has endorsed the use of a similar camera system to collect tolls on the new 407 tollway; and

"Whereas mayors and concerned citizens across Ontario have been seeking permission to deploy these cameras due to limited police resources;

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

"That the province of Ontario support the installation of red light cameras at high-collision intersections to monitor and prosecute motorists who run red lights."

I affix my name to this petition.

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ORDERS OF THE DAY

SMALL BUSINESS AND CHARITIES PROTECTION ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LA PROTECTION DES PETITES ENTREPRISES ET DES ORGANISMES DE BIENFAISANCE

Mr Baird, on behalf of Mr Eves, moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 16, An Act to give Tax Relief to Small Businesses, Charities and Others and to make other amendments respecting the Financing of Local Government and Schools / Projet de loi 16, Loi visant à alléger les impôts des petites entreprises, des organismes de bienfaisance et d'autres et à apporter d'autres modifications en ce qui a trait au financement des administrations locales et des écoles.

Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise to speak on Bill 16. I would like to indicate at the outset of my remarks that I will be splitting my time with the member for Scarborough East.

This government is committed to creating an environment where small businesses can grow, can thrive and can, most importantly, create jobs.

As the Minister of Finance announced last week in the budget, the Ontario economy created more than 265,000 net new private sector jobs between February 1997 and February 1998. This is the largest number of jobs created in a 12-month period in the history of the province of Ontario.

In the first quarter of this year the Ontario economy created jobs at a rate unequalled in the past 15 years. Last month another 22,500 men and women found new jobs in communities across the province of Ontario. In my home region of Ottawa-Carleton we saw unemployment fall to a rate of 7.1%, which is indeed good news for those who have been looking for work for many months, and for many years in some cases.

In fact, just a few short years ago unemployment was well over 10%, even approaching 11%, and the local economy was doing very badly. We were taking 15,000 to 20,000 federal public service job cuts in the federal Liberal government in a difficult restructuring exercise. So that 7.1% unemployment rate is good news for those who have found work. We've got to rededicate ourselves, as public servants and legislators and those in government, to ensuring that we do what we can to create an economy to ensure that every person who wants to work can work. That is a real priority.

When you look at the local economy in my part of the province, I look at some of the headlines:

"Tech Boom Triggers New Development: Skyrocketing business permits show sector's impact.

"The local economy got more good news yesterday as Nepean announced an incredible 365% jump in the total value of building permits issued during the first quarter...." of this year.

"The commercial sector also boasted" -

Mr Alex Cullen (Ottawa West): Higher taxes.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Member for Ottawa West.

Mr Baird: - "staggering improvement with a jump to $8.9 million from last year's $2.5 million...." That's indeed very good news.

"`Everyone's bullish on Nepean,' said Royal LePage vice-president Paul Hindo. `It's very, very busy.'"

That is good news for the contractors and the construction industry, which had suffered very greatly over the last 10 years. That is good news for those people and their families, and we were pleased to see that.

I also look at the local newspaper, the Nepean Clarion, and an article last year by James Ness:

"Five Thousand Jobs Coming to City of Nepean: Nortel announces a $250 million expansion."

That indeed is under way now, Mr Speaker, as you will be well aware. There are actually five cranes coming out of the Nortel campus on Carling Avenue in Nepean. That is indeed good news for the local economy, where the construction industry is doing very well.

The province is also doing its part to reduce taxes and red tape and regulation. We also want to reduce the above-average business education taxes. That was something that was contained in the provincial budget.

But helping small business is a real priority. As the Minister of Finance announced in the budget, Ontario was helping to support private sector job creation, particularly in small businesses, because last year small businesses created an estimated 82% of all new private sector jobs in Ontario.

To supplement this growth, we have introduced legislation to accelerate the final phase of the employer health tax exemption in order to deliver the exemption a full six months ahead of schedule. This means that 88% of Ontario private sector employers will no longer have to pay this job-killing payroll tax. What an absolutely terrible thing to do: Small business creates a job and the first thing we do is whack them with a payroll tax. This is a small step in helping to make it as easy as possible for a small business to flourish in the province of Ontario.

We've also introduced legislation to cut Ontario's small business corporation tax rate in half to 4.75%. This is the lowest rate in Canada, and that tax reduction will be taking place over the next eight years. This tax cut will help more than 90,000 small businesses to continue to grow and prosper and create jobs, because we know that small business is the job creation engine that is driving the Ontario economy, and that is indeed good news.

You cannot just take it from this member. Look at a quote from Judith Andrew, the executive director of provincial policy at the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, who says: "Any time you relieve small business of a tax burden, of all the things that stand in their way of growing and prospering, then of course you're going to create jobs, and already that's happening. We've seen over 200,000 jobs created in the province in the last year. That's a very positive sign, and these measures should, additionally, help."

She goes on further to say, "Because Ontario is seeing growth and some other provinces are not seeing the growth, it has got to be something to do with the provincial policies, and obviously the tax cut is a big one." That is indeed good news for small business in Ontario.

The province, as announced in the budget, as I mentioned earlier, is doing its part to reduce above-average business education taxes. As announced in the budget, the government will introduce legislation to reduce commercial and industrial education taxes in municipalities where these tax rates are above the provincial average. Over eight years, provincial business education taxes will be cut by more than $500 million from their current levels, starting with a $64-million cut this year, 1998.

To guarantee adequate funding for education, grants to school boards will be increased to offset the impact of reduced education taxes. Lower property taxes will help make Ontario businesses more competitive, and that in turn means more jobs for the province of Ontario.

We have listened and we've consulted extensively with small business, with industry leaders, with commercial property owners, with tenants and charities. Bill 16, which we're debating this afternoon, the Small Business and Charities Protection Act, is a result of these extensive consultations. We learned a terrific amount in this place, in debates in the Ontario Legislature and in the standing committee on finance and economic affairs when we've debated property assessment reform over the last year and a half, and we're richer for that knowledge. Those public consultations form a lot of the basis for Bill 16.

In addition, there were representations from literally hundreds and thousands of Ontarians that we listened to in the preparation of Bill 16, letters, whether they be from Weston, from Alliston, from Waterloo, whether they be from a lawyer, whether they be from a county in eastern Ontario. A good number of these letters and faxes we received have said, "This is an urgent memo for Mr Eves." These people have said very loudly and very clearly that they want the government to act. We have listened, we have heard what they've said, we have learned and we have responded to those concerns. I think it's extremely important that the government listen to small business and understand their concerns. I am very pleased to see that many of the suggestions, thoughts and concerns we heard throughout these extensive consultations in recent months are reflected in Bill 16.

This bill will allow municipalities to protect small business from large property tax increases. In addition, it provides protection for charities, and this will become mandatory.

By introducing the Small Business and Charities Protection Act, the government is keeping its promise to limit property tax increases on small businesses to no more than 2.5% a year over the next three years. To ensure that all small businesses could be protected, the 2.5% limit would also apply to businesses that lease their premises, for example, in office buildings, shopping centres or in industrial malls. This means that where a municipality applies the 2.5% limit, no business property or tenant would see a tax increase of more than 2.5% over their 1997 taxes in 1998, in 1999 and in the year 2000 unless there are significant changes to a property, such as a new construction or renovation or a change in the vacancy of the premises.

To provide municipalities with additional means to protect local businesses, Bill 16 also includes a mechanism allowing municipalities to provide rebates of property tax increases. Municipalities would also be able to design rebate programs in ways that best meet their local needs.

An important part of this legislation responds to what we heard from charities across Ontario. Bill 149, which this House considered in the first session of this Parliament, the Fair Municipal Finance Act, permitted municipalities to provide property tax rebates of up to 40% for charities occupying business properties. Bill 16 would enhance that protection and make it mandatory for registered charities.

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Where municipalities apply the 2.5% limit, charities occupying business properties would benefit from this protection. Where municipalities choose not to apply the 2.5% limit, they must provide registered charities with rebates of at least 40% of their property taxes. In fact, municipalities have the option to rebate up to 100% of the property taxes paid by charities occupying business properties. Municipalities would be able to extend rebates to other similar charitable and non-profit organizations.

Municipalities will also have the flexibility to determine which organizations should receive this protection and the amount of the rebate. Even where municipalities choose to apply the 2.5% limit, Bill 16 would also permit them to provide rebates to charities and designated non-profit groups.

The province will share the costs of these rebates for business education tax purposes. I know there was a real concern among charities in Ontario. I myself had the occasion to meet with a number of charities that came in to make representations on behalf of the organizations they serve. I recall specifically meeting with Greg Joy, from the Ottawa Food Bank, who came in and made representations. I thought he made some excellent points. Again, the government listened and the government responded. We are seeing that in Bill 16.

Under Bill 16, owners of commercial, industrial and multi-residential properties will be protected by the 2.5% limit on property tax increases. The bill will also fulfil the government's commitment to ensure fair tax treatment of landlords with gross leases. Landlords in the commercial and industrial classes will be able to pass through the equivalent of the average business occupancy tax, the BOT, to their tenants with gross leases. Landlords with gross leases in business improvement areas will also be able to pass on a portion of BIA charges to each tenant.

This legislation will give municipalities additional power to implement tax reform in a fair and manageable way and to respond to local needs and local priorities. For example, the Fair Municipal Finance Act gives municipalities the power to set graduated tax rates for commercial properties. This allows lower-valued commercial properties to be taxed at lower rates.

Bill 16 would give municipalities the power to apply graduated tax rates to lower-valued industrial properties. Municipalities would be able to apply up to three bands of assessment within the industrial class and apply a different tax rate to each band. Local councils will also have the option to apply four new property classes. These new classes are office buildings, shopping centres, parking lots and vacant land and, finally, large industrial properties. Municipalities would be able to decide which, if any, of the new property classes would apply within their community.

The Fair Municipal Finance Act gave municipalities the power to phase in assessment-related tax changes over a period of up to eight years. The Small Business and Charities Protection Act will extend that power to allow municipalities to phase in all tax changes resulting from the implementation of the Ontario fair assessment system. The province would parallel all municipal phase-in decisions for provincial education tax purposes. As I noted earlier, Bill 16 offers municipalities additional means, in the form of rebates, to protect businesses from property tax increases. Municipalities that choose to offer rebates will be able to design a program to meet the needs of commercial and industrial properties in their communities.

To give local councils more time to implement these measures, the province will extend the return of assessment rolls until May 29. This legislation will also extend the deadline to appeal assessments to July 31, 1998. The province will be consulting with municipalities on the effects of the delay in the assessment roll on their cash flow needs. Bill 16 would allow the government, if necessary, to advance funds to school boards in lieu of the second instalment of education taxes paid by municipalities to school boards. Municipalities would then reimburse the province at a later date.

As the Minister of Finance said last week in his budget speech, all across Ontario small business owners, entrepreneurs and private sector investors are creating jobs. Companies large and small are investing and they're expanding. Something is going on here in the province of Ontario that is simply not taking place in the rest of the country. The British Columbia economy isn't doing well. Many parts of Atlantic Canada still see very stagnant job growth. Something is going on here in Ontario that's not going on in the rest of the country.

To be fair, interest rates undoubtedly have an effect; the health of the American economy undoubtedly has an effect. But they are not having as good an effect in the other provinces as they are in Ontario. I think the provincial government's economic policies, their ability to set and meet deficit reduction targets and expenditure reduction, their ability to reduce personal income taxes, to allow hard-working taxpayers and families across the province to keep more of their own hard-earned tax dollars, are undoubtedly part of the economic success that the government of Ontario is seeing.

We're seeing the job growth in small business, as I mentioned earlier: 82%. That's very much the case in my constituency. Northern Telecom may be creating 5,000 new jobs. JDS Fitel may be creating hundreds and thousands of new jobs. Where we're seeing significant growth is in those smaller and medium-sized enterprises: reducing payroll taxes, reducing red tape, cutting Workers' Compensation Board premiums, designed to encourage the growth of the small business sector.

"Ontario's rising tax burden is cited by business as the province's number one job killer....

"The link between higher taxes and employment is clear." That's not John Baird who said that. That's not Mike Harris who said that. That's Lyn McLeod in her Commitment to Jobs and Growth in April 1994. In fact, we are right. When we reduce personal income taxes, we find that we see consumers having more of their hard-earned dollars. What do they do with it? They take it to the small store at the end of the street, to the market downtown and invest it in their local communities. We see a resulting increase in jobs.

When the previous government increased taxes by a billion dollars in the early 1990s, many in opposition at that time, be it the official opposition today or the then third party, said that that measure would kill 100,000 jobs. While we hoped that we were wrong at that time, regrettably the figures indicate that we were all too correct. Tens and tens of thousands of jobs left the province of Ontario.

It goes without saying that reducing taxes by a billion dollars will create more jobs, not in and of itself, but it will help deal head-on with consumer confidence, which was sagging and pulling the economy down. Consumer spending is up. The retail sales numbers are up. Many, many small contractors who build homes are now experiencing unprecedented demand in the last five or ten years. I know in my own community of Nepean, and in the southern part of Barrhaven and Longfields and Davidson Heights, we're seeing increased new home starts. That's good news for the construction industry. That's good news for all the other folks who earn their living in the real estate and appliance industries, whether it's Camco here in Ontario building appliances for those new homes. That's indeed good news.

But even more important is what we're seeing in Ontario. For a number of years we were seeing Ontario beginning to drag this county down. For many years Ontario had been the economic engine of Canada. We were a magnet for jobs, investment and opportunity. But for ten years we earned a different reputation, a very different reputation. We became known as a mismanaged debtor, overgoverned, overregulated and overtaxed. The Ontario economy, which had been the engine of the Canadian economy, began to pull Canada down.

We're seeing the exact opposite now. The Ontario economy is pulling Canada up, and that's indeed where we want to see it. We're seeing a terrific amount of support towards those job creation numbers come from the small business community. This legislation is designed to deal head-on with ensuring that we protect small businesses and recognize the important role they play not only in the economy but in job creation.

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This initiative, coupled with the plan to reduce the employer health tax and then eliminate it by July 1 for small businesses with a payroll of under $400,000, will help. The budget initiative announced to help small business by reducing the corporate income tax for small business will help a terrific amount. The work of the Red Tape Commission will help reduce needless red tape and will provide another incentive to small business as will a climate of balance and stability in our labour relations. Cutting Workers' Compensation Board premiums will help.

Not one of these things is necessarily the answer to all the problems, but cumulatively they have the undeniable effect of assisting economic growth in the province, and that is good news for small businesses which are the job creators in the Canadian economy. I know that's the case in my constituency of Nepean and I'm sure it's the case in the great city of Gloucester.

The Small Business and Charities Protection Act is an important part of the government's plan to help create an environment where small business can thrive, where it can grow, where it can create jobs, and that's very important for the Ontario economy.

Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East): I appreciate the opportunity to add some comments to the very detailed arguments already put forward by my colleague from Nepean in defence of this important bill.

I think it is important, as the member just said a minute ago, but this bill has to be considered in the context of all the other changes that are taking place, in the context of the extraordinary growth that has resulted in the last three years because of small business making the kind of investment in new physical plant, in new hires, in new and innovative technology. The net result is 341,000 net new, full-time, private sector jobs, an extraordinary increase in the workforce and in fact the greatest increase in jobs in the history of Ontario, to the point that more people are working in our province today than ever in our great history.

I think it has to be seen in the context of the budget brought forward just last Tuesday, a budget that's about more tax cuts for Ontarians to create even more jobs; helping small businesses even further to do what they do best, which is to create jobs and to create new prosperity; learning opportunities for young people. In an increasingly technologically driven world, it is critical that we equip our students with the tools to compete, not just for the jobs of today but for the jobs of 10, 20 years from now.

We're emphasizing work over welfare. It's easy to do in a context of dramatically increased employment. It's easier to measure the philosophy that it's better for people who are currently on government assistance to have a job. There is more dignity. There is more self-respect. There is a greater chance for personal advancement when you're fending for yourself, when you're fending for your family.

The bottom line is that there too we have seen incredible change since June 1995 when we were elected. Fully one quarter of a million people have come off welfare rolls since then. Think about that: one quarter of a million people. That's half the population of an area like the region of Durham, and that's the difference in three short years. And it hasn't stopped. Just last month over 8,000 more people found new opportunities, found new hope by getting off government assistance.

We've got increased funding for health care, because obviously at the same time as the province is keenly grateful for all those who have made the investments in new jobs, it's important to us, particularly to the PCs, as the party that created the social safety net in this province, that it continue to expand. We're putting an extra $300 million into health care, taking us absolutely, truly to the highest spending level in the history of this great province.

We're also putting in additional funding for classroom education. Much has been talked about this already this year but it bears repeating. We were elected with a campaign commitment to take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the waste and duplication at the administrative level of school boards and reinvest them them where they will do the most good, in the classroom, with more teachers, more equipment, newer textbooks, smaller class sizes. That is what we were elected to do; that is what the people of Ontario read in the Common Sense Revolution. It's another promise kept.

Finally, there were a number of budget measures that outlined increased safety in our community. We've already seen some of the tangible expression of that, details of up to 1,000 new police officers who will be hired to ensure that the people who are working and contributing to our society will feel safe in their communities, safer than they have these last few years.

But let's get into the details of Bill 16 again. The member for Nepean outlined a number of the points. I'd like to expand on a few of them, if I may, in the limited time we have here this afternoon. The government is committed to creating an environment where small businesses can grow, can thrive, can create even more jobs. We've heard and responded to a number of concerns that small businesses and charities had that they were facing large property tax increases.

At this point it bears making the observation that historically the role of the provincial government in the area of property tax is that we do the assessment. The province has overseen the actual process of determining the value of properties. The next step was exclusively the purview of the municipal governments. Municipal governments are the ones that decide how much of the revenue they need to deliver their services will come from each of the various property tax classes. They will decide how much they think is a fair distribution between industrial, commercial, retail and residential.

The fact is, municipalities all across Ontario have taken widely divergent approaches to that raising of money. In Oshawa, you will find an industrial tax rate that's much, much lower than the one set here in the city of Toronto. On the other hand, the city of Toronto has a residential rate that's among the lowest in all of Ontario. Clearly, there are outcomes that will be determined by that decision made by a council. Oshawa has kept and expanded its industrial base. Toronto has driven industry into bankruptcy or out of the city. Thousands and thousands of jobs in the former city of Scarborough used to be located in what was called the Golden Mile industrial area, centred on a major GM van plant. They're almost all gone.

The city fathers, particularly the ones from downtown Toronto, would suggest that there isn't cause and effect, but while GM is still building vans, the wire and cable companies that were located there are still producing wire for our homes, cable TV wire and the like, Alcan is still making aluminum foil, still making other aluminum products, the difference is simply that none of those factories are making those products in Scarborough; they're making them out in the 905 area or even further outside the GTA, but they're still making those products.

I think you can very well make an argument that the decisions made by the city councils are exclusively responsible for the dislocation of factories and, to a lesser extent, for the dislocation of people as well. If you cross the Rouge River - the other side of my riding of Scarborough East is of course Durham region, the city of Pickering - you will find, for a house that is the same square footage, sitting on the same-size lot, that you will pay, on average, almost $1,000 less in property tax.

The irony of that is that the people in Pickering have the benefit of the same range of services; in fact, because the community itself is much newer, the services tend to be much more up-to-date, much more accessible and in many cases cheaper in terms of user fees. It does not follow that the level of property tax, even at the residential rate, is a determinant of the quality of services or the range of services. Again, that's totally the decision of a city council.

As we approached the issue of how to fairly deal with the important issue of fairness, of equity, making sure we bring an end to this beggaring of businesses in Toronto and other parts of the province and creating the hole-in-the-doughnut effect, as it's called, we had to look at a system that would ensure that properties everywhere are dealt with on an equitable basis.

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That bill, as you're well aware, was passed last year, and it created current value assessment. As a result, the province reassessed 3.9 million properties, all the homes, the factories, the stores, all across Ontario. Here in the city of Toronto, in many cases that meant bringing up to date assessments that had not been revisited since the 1940s. Imagine that. At the same time other municipalities such as Scarborough were working on assessments that were barely 10 years old, the people in downtown Toronto were benefiting from property values that hadn't changed in 50 years. Imagine that. At the same time as the subway and all the other development in downtown Toronto had clearly disproportionately benefited the people who live in the centre core of what was Metro Toronto, now the city of Toronto, the reality is that it was the suburbs who were paying vastly higher amounts of property tax and yet, one could argue, had less access to many of the cultural and other services here in the city.

The same was true for businesses. Businesses in Scarborough, North York, Etobicoke and elsewhere were facing far higher property tax rates, yet getting the same or fewer services than downtown Toronto.

So we made a commitment. We recognize that when you come out with something like the current value assessment system, otherwise known as market value assessment, it's a teeter-totter. It does not raise one additional penny in new property tax in any community, but it levels the playing field. It ensures that each property of equal value is assessed an equal tax.

The bottom line is that many businesses in Toronto will now be brought up to date, but the flip side of that is that for every dollar that someone with an out-of-date assessment goes up, there must be another business or another factory or another home which goes down by an equal amount.

Again, the city makes no more money and the city can make the decisions about how to allocate on the basis of property classes where it needs that money. Unfortunately, small business then became the victim of perhaps the greatest fearmongering campaign I've ever seen in my almost three decades of being a student of politics in this province.

I think it's extraordinary the extent to which certain people in the city of Toronto administration decided it was appropriate to scare people who had put their complete life savings into their business, to scare people who had sweated and worked and toiled to build up some small business, some small factory into something on which they relied for their income and that hopefully, I'm sure in many cases, they would be leaving to their children to run in years to come. They said that it was appropriate to average all the taxes so that the big office buildings in downtown Toronto would see huge savings, $12.5 million in some cases. But obviously, at the same time those corner retail stores, the small variety store, the dry cleaning shop, the flower shop, would have to pick up that $12.5 million and all the other reductions.

It was a travesty and it was absolutely uncalled-for, because from day one the province had assigned staff from our own Ministry of Finance to sit down at Toronto city hall to work with their finance branch to ensure that they knew all the options that had been presented under Bill 106 and Bill 149, to ensure that they knew the significance of being able to create new classes so you didn't have to average everybody into one class. In fact, the irony is that it was the municipality of Toronto and other municipalities that asked for that power to be put into the legislation last year. Having been given the powers that they themselves requested, they decided that politics was more important than dealing fairly and honestly with their taxpayers, with the people who paid the freight here in the city of Toronto, small business in particular.

As a result of that averaging into one, they came up with a number that would show that 79% of all the businesses in Toronto would have gone up by more than 100% in property tax. How irresponsible. How reprehensible. How utterly uncalled for. But they did that and they continued to play a political game.

I'm sure many people across the city noticed that it was remarkable that all of the public demonstrations, all of that supposedly local groundswell of discontent, occurred in the ridings represented by opposition members. I'm sure many people also noticed the fine hand of the Liberal Party and NDP in much of what was going on in the fearmongering campaign that was terrorizing small business all across this great city.

It was bringing new investments to a standstill while people wrestled with whether or not they would even have the money to pay their property taxes. They had no qualms about joining in that campaign of fear and intimidation. They had no qualms of fomenting this kind of extraordinary unrest and discontent in their own ridings. And for what reason? Pure politics. That's not what we were elected to do in this chamber. It was to serve the best interests of the people in our riding, in our city and across the province. They should know better.

On March 26 the mayor of Toronto threw his hands up literally - I can remember the picture in the newspaper - and said: "We give up. We do not have a solution. We cannot solve this dilemma, even though you've given us all these new powers to create classes and subclasses, even though you've given us a phase-in period of up to eight years, even though there are the existing and the new tools available for the city to do what the city's been doing for every year there's been property tax." They said, "We can't do it," and they called on the province, quite frankly, to bail them out.

The reality is that since January 1 they had seen all the same computer models we had. They had seen all the different combinations and permutations of how you could arrange the various property tax classes to minimize or almost completely avoid any extraordinary shifts in property tax up or down. Instead you could reflect to some extent on ability to pay, but more importantly on the true demand on services, because I don't think anyone would argue that there are different services that are called upon by a 50-storey office building in downtown Toronto than by a one- or two-storey small retail strip plaza.

Having said they had no solutions, remarkably, at 2 o'clock the very next afternoon, the Minister of Finance, in a small restaurant on the Danforth, laid out the plan. In fact, the plan went far beyond anything the city has ever done for its taxpayers in its history. Quite frankly, while its genesis was in the city, the irony from the perspective of the members opposite is that we're giving these same tools to any other community in Ontario that feels that as a result of catching up to the rest of the province and bringing in current value assessment, if there was going to be an extraordinary shift within any classification - not all of them, any one - they could selectively use the tools that are brought forward here in Bill 16 to ensure that fairness and equity were applied.

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I am extraordinarily proud of the work the Finance minister has done here because in the context from 1985 to 1995, the 10 years the Conservatives were not the government here at Queen's Park, Toronto taxpayers saw, on average, an 8% increase in their property taxes year after year after year. I don't recall the Liberal or NDP members getting upset at that. I don't recall them leading parades in the streets back then, even though obviously in that decade the result was that property taxes had almost doubled. Services didn't double, new facilities didn't double and the quality certainly can't be said to have doubled, but they were quite content with 8% a year.

We don't know of course at this stage how they'll vote on this bill, but the reality is that if Toronto opts into this plan, and the mayor has certainly indicated that is his intention, for the next three years - not one year, the traditional budgeting process for every municipality - every business, every factory and every apartment building of seven units or more in Toronto is guaranteed that its property taxes cannot go up by more than 2.5%. Many won't change at all and some will go down by 2.5% each year for three years. That's something that no one has ever seen in our lifetime in Toronto. Remember, the same rules still apply. For every dollar increase on one property, there has to be a dollar decrease somewhere else in the city.

With 2.5% contrasted against the 8%, you would think the members opposite would see that the people in their ridings, not just the Conservative-held ridings in Toronto, will be just as protected, will benefit just as much, will have the same peace of mind, the same sense of security as those in government ridings. Hopefully we won't see the sort of partisanship which marked that original fearmongering campaign; we'll see a recognition that this truly does go far beyond anything the city government has ever given businesses.

I also have to remind you at this point that I'm very proud as well that under the Tenant Protection Act we made it law that when a municipality reduces the property tax on an apartment building, every tenant must be notified and that reduction will automatically flow through to every tenant. Again recognizing that for any building that goes up there's another building that will go down, recognizing the fact that historically they have paid too much tax, those tenants - not the landlord - will benefit. Every penny of reduction will go right to a reduction in their rent paid.

There were concerns brought forward that charities that might rent commercial properties across Toronto would be unfairly affected. As part of this fearmongering campaign we certainly heard from certain councillors and opposition members that it would drive charities out of business. This bill will enhance protection for charities as well, quite simply because they too will be protected by that 2.5% cap, and if a municipality does not opt in for the 2.5% deal, they must rebate registered charities 40% of the 1998 and subsequent years' property taxes.

Municipalities will also have the power to extend that rebate to other charitable and non-profit organizations, and we're going to share the cost of those rebates as they pertain to the business education tax. Of course, from the landlord's perspective, this is good news, not just for charities but for any business that's in there, because there is no doubt that as a tenant faces higher and higher costs, their ability to pay rent is reduced commensurately, the likelihood of their staying in business is reduced, and so to give this sort of cap, to give this sort of long-term protection, is something that will mean a positive step forward in the eyes of landlords and tenants alike.

From the municipality's point of view, this bill brings a number of new powers. We've talked about the ability to cap the tax rate at 2.5%, but it's far more important to look at their ability to create new property classes, to say that there are different demands on services based on the type of use. They can reflect that by creating property taxes which will now capture all shopping centres, for example, in one class. They won't be averaged in with the small retail unit, say, a strip plaza or a free-standing unit out on the street. Similarly, large office buildings can be captured in a class, industrial will be its own classification and on and on.

There will be graduated tax rates for industrial properties. Again, the municipality can reflect on the degree to which it wants to attract or keep industry of various sizes in its community, with the attendant benefits, of course, of all the jobs that industry brings, the value-added component to its work, and it can set different tax rates. It may very well say that, understanding there is a certain demand put on services by a building but a building twice as big does not have twice the demand, you could set a tax rate, say, that the first $400,000 of assessed value is at a certain percent; the next $400,000 would be at half that rate; and the next $400,000 would have lower rates again.

It's a new power that the municipalities have not had before, to be able to tailor the face of their community to ensure that the people not only pay fair taxes in their homes, but that they have a fighting chance to have a job to go to in their own community because they won't have taxed commercial and industrial businesses right out of existence. Surely, that is as important as or even more important than protecting the residential property tax.

We have extended the power to phase in tax changes. We have created new subclasses, that if one unit in a plaza becomes empty, it will pay a lower rate, obviously, because there are lessened demands on services. To give councils more time to implement these changes, the province is going to extend the return of the assessment roll until May 29 of this year. The legislation would also extend the deadline for businesses, charities and individuals to appeal their assessments up until July 31, 1998.

We're also consulting with the municipalities on how the delay in collecting the tax will impact on their cash flow. We recognize that municipalities often budget fairly close to the bone and they would otherwise face difficulties in having a delay in receiving their property tax rates. The good news is we have said that issues such as the payment of educational levies, which would normally flow through the city, we will front-end load and then collect once the municipality gets the tax. Similarly, the payments that they're required to make as a result of the transfer in services will be delayed until September, fully three months after they would likely have received all their property tax.

I think it's appropriate as well, when we're talking about what's happening for small businesses across Ontario, to again point out that the property tax cap in any municipality which opts into this program is not the only good news. The budget saw a reduction in the small business tax rate. It has dropped by half a point, from 9.5% to 9% this year, and over the next eight years will drop in half, to the lowest in all of Canada, at 4.75%.

Also in the budget, and this really does play as well into the property tax debate, we recognized, when we changed the funding mechanism for education, that there were municipalities where the existing school boards, when they had taxation powers, had raised their business education tax rates far higher than the average of municipalities all across Ontario. It did not translate into higher-quality education; it did not translate into higher marks. It certainly translated into Taj Mahal headquarters for the school boards. It translated, in the case of the city of Toronto, into 90 superintendents, when they themselves have said there are only eight businesses, there are only eight functions that school boards oversee - but we've got 90 people, each at the top of their own pyramid. That's where the business education tax excesses went, not into modern textbooks, not into more science equipment or athletic equipment or more music programs in the schools in the city of Toronto; it went into more duplication and waste at the administrative level.

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In those municipalities which were charging above-average business education tax rates, the total amount of the excess was about $500 million, just slightly over half a billion dollars. The reality is that we understand that there is no fairness, there is no legitimate reason why the school boards did what they did and now what the municipalities have had to pick up with the new format for collecting business education taxes and remitting them to the school boards. But we also understood that it would not be fair to take half a billion worth of excesses, worth of folly, in certain school boards and apply them to the taxpayers of all the responsible jurisdictions across the province of Ontario. They had no role in that half-billion-dollar folly. They had no say in the excesses that have built these Taj Mahal school board headquarters. They obviously don't have a role in bailing out the problems in those municipalities.

But the province recognizes, with the goal of fairness, that we will clean up the messes, and we've already announced how we're going to do that. Some months ago the Minister of Finance was quite definitive. He said that our goal is to bring all of those jurisdictions which currently overtax back down to the provincial average. We delivered on his commitment - a promise made, a promise kept - in the budget by saying that one eighth of that excess will be eliminated each year, starting with $64 million in this year's budget. By the way, here in the city of Toronto, which was the biggest offender, there was a $50-million reduction in the business education tax rate, a $50-million reduction in the taxes paid by commercial and industrial properties here in the city of Toronto.

When you couple that with all the other changes we're seeing - an ongoing reduction in the welfare rolls, recognizing the municipalities pay 20% of every welfare dollar - it's a marvel to us that we haven't seen incredible surpluses in municipalities all across the province each year for the last three years.

In the 10 years that we were not in government, the cost of running the welfare system in Ontario went up by more than $6 billion. Again, municipalities paid a 20% share of half of that. The reality is that part of their justification for higher property taxes year after year was, "We're paying more for welfare." That's what they said to us, the taxpayers.

Isn't it interesting that starting in June 1995, and almost every single month since, that reduction in welfare rolls hasn't translated into a press release by all those communities that now see a decrease in their cost of welfare and a report that they will be having a tax windfall for those same taxpayers who were assaulted when the other direction was the trend in welfare? We haven't seen the over $120 million worth of municipal reductions translated into tax decreases in Ontario. I think that's something else the people in Ontario, and small businesses in particular, will be quite intrigued to ask their councillors as it becomes more and more obvious to people exactly what sort of games are being played here: that when costs go up, your taxes go up; but when costs go down, your taxes still go up.

I don't see more bus routes. I don't see more police officers on the street, not from the Toronto budget; there will be from ours, but not from the Toronto budget. I don't see better roads. I don't see new rinks. I don't see new libraries. Those welfare dollars have gone somewhere, but they sure haven't gone into hard services that you can look at, that you can touch and feel and use.

When you take all of these things in concert, I think it's obvious to all small business in Ontario that we are committed to helping them in their goal of increasing the size of their business, making sure the investments they have made pay big dividends, make them proud to be operating a business in what was, and now is again, the greatest jurisdiction, I think, not just in Canada but probably the world, truly the most self-sufficient part of North America. It's a shame that we were beggared in those 10 lost years. It's a shame that businesses had lost hope.

Many people on the other side like to joke about my background in Canadian Tire. I'm very proud of the fact that, as a small business person myself, having 160 employees, we were part of that system out there. But under the previous government it had reached the point that one third of all the Canadian Tire stores in Ontario were losing money, losing money before the dealer had taken one penny of salary himself or herself.

They will talk about the fact that this was a worldwide recession, but isn't it interesting that that wasn't the same case in the stores in Alberta and Saskatchewan or even Prince Edward Island? The reality was, in the other provinces of Canada, their sales were still growing; their profits were maintained or growing. The same was true for all the other small businesses in general, but not here in Ontario.

While I'm sure it is something they don't exactly like to dwell on, the fact of the matter is there is a stark contrast when you look at the province today, when you look at all the new businesses which are opening, when I look out the office window and see five construction cranes just in that one block south of my ministry office.

Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): Why don't you drive east of Cobourg?

The Acting Speaker: Member for Kingston and The Islands, please. Order.

Interjections.

Mr Gilchrist: There wasn't one construction crane in downtown Toronto from 1992 until we were back in government. The fact of the matter is that at that level down to the retail level, investment had stopped.

Mr Gerretsen: Which is your ministry office?

The Acting Speaker: Order. Member for Kingston and The Islands, please.

Mr Gilchrist: We've heard earlier today in question period about mills in northern Ontario which made the decision to expand after we were elected. I can tell you that out in Scarborough, since we were elected, there has already been over 600,000 square feet of new retail built. There is another 600,000 square feet already approved by the planning department and actively being developed today.

I look at Cedarbrae Mall, which is just outside my riding, right on the boundary with Scarborough Centre, and that retail complex is being redeveloped. It had run down to quite an embarrassing state, but a company has come in, bought it and redeveloped it. The net result in that one location will be almost 600 new jobs: 600 new jobs in one retail plaza alone. Similar developments are taking place all across Ontario; it's not unique to Toronto.

This bill guarantees that the province will make sure that small business is not taxed out of existence by the municipal council. It will guarantee that the 2.5% cap ensures they can plan their budgets, they can plan their investments, not for one year but for three years, and then knowing, because the finance minister has already intimated the surpluses that we expect and that the people of Ontario expect as a result of the belt-tightening and the reinvestments we've made, in just the next couple of years, once we're in a budgetary surplus situation - there's no reason to be concerned about the fourth year - we're going to maintain property tax stability for years and years to come.

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The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?

Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I heard the member mention - somebody said "my ministry office." I did not know, first of all, that the member for Scarborough East had been elevated to the cabinet. Perhaps I've missed this announcement and someone can help me out on the government side. Second, I thought they belonged to the taxpayers of Ontario, not the individual members.

But I was glad that he mentioned rent control, because most Conservative members have not wanted to mention that the Conservative government of Mike Harris has abolished rent control in this province. I'm glad the member brought this to our attention. It hasn't been implemented yet because they can't get their act together, they can't get the regulations together, so it has not been implemented, as it was supposed to be, on April Fool's Day, April 1 of this year.

I do thank the member. All of those students who have to move each year, for instance, and then go back to try to rent the next year will certainly notice that significant increase in terms of the rent, as will seniors who may have to move from one accommodation to another and others. I'm glad the member mentioned that the Conservative government of Mike Harris, though it didn't say this during the campaign, to my recollection, has abolished rent control.

I also want to thank him for mentioning the downloading that's taken place with all of the new additional responsibilities which have been placed - onerous responsibilities, I might add, financially - on municipalities. We can understand why they would express objections.

What the government has done is it's going to give some transition funds out there so that this year or next year, when the provincial government may be going to the polls, the impact won't be so great. But two years from now, when the municipal politicians have to go back to the polls, we will see the real impacts taking place. So I don't think the municipal politicians are whiners. I think they're very realistic.

Ms Frances Lankin (Beaches-Woodbine): I'm pleased to have an opportunity to respond to the member, although I think I spend entirely too much time every week responding to the member on the various political panels that we sit on jointly.

With respect to the bill, I have some concerns about the member's interpretation, first of all. Moving to put the caps on the increases of taxes to business is a very important move. It's one which the government didn't acknowledge a need for for a long time, including the member, because I had that debate with him on one of our panels, but I think it's important that that has happened.

I disagree that it is in some way simply to control these errant municipalities, the way in which you made it sound. It's important that the government acknowledge that one of the vagaries of market-value-based legislation - the CVA has got those elements - is what happened in Toronto, where you have the downtown core and the office buildings in the assessment period having been valued very low because of what had been happening in terms of an economic move out of the downtown core, and that meaning that other business classes had to pick up the slack for that overall class. Over a period of three years they're hoping, and we've already seen a change in the status of the downtown core, that this will correct itself. I think there is more that could be done to stabilize the situation, including creation of different classes, and that's something that we'll look to in the future.

My current concern, though, is that while I will applaud and support provisions that will give some sense of security to the small businesses particularly in my community that I've dealt with and their concerns about the bill as it was, I remain concerned about homeowners. Because of the way in which you have structured these amendments, it not just being assessment-related increases that you are capping for businesses, you are passing over some of the cost to the homeowners. I think that's unfair. I think you should provide the same protection for the homeowners of our community.

Mr Jack Carroll (Chatham-Kent): It's one thing to have an opportunity to comment on a speech by the member for Nepean; it's another thing to have an opportunity to comment on a speech by the member for Scarborough East. But to be granted this opportunity to comment on the two of them together is wonderful, and I thank them for that. It's rather appropriate that the two of them should be seated at about the same strategic place in the assembly.

The member for Scarborough East talked about the flexibility that's put into Bill 16 to allow municipalities to have different classes of assessment, to allow for graduated assessments so that they can have the flexibility to control taxation to a certain extent in their municipality, which they should have. At the same time, it gives small business the opportunity to be comfortable with the fact that their taxes are not going to be able to go up any more than 2.5% a year.

Small business, as all of us know, is the backbone and the future of our economy. They are creating 82% of the new jobs. I look at my municipality of Chatham-Kent and small business is flourishing.

When we talk, as the member for St Catharines did, about the issue of change in responsibility between municipalities and the provincial government, my municipality has done many things, as the city of Toronto has, to help itself. It's eliminated a lot of unnecessary local government structure, a lot of unnecessary local politicians and it has done some things to restructure government so that it can deliver more efficient services on behalf of the taxpayers it serves. That is the appropriate thing. That is consistent with our role, as a provincial government, of providing the best services at the best price to the taxpayers of Ontario.

Mr Gerretsen: The member for Scarborough East just absolutely amazes me. He antagonizes more than any other member in the House at any time. He talked about fearmongering by the councils and the opposition etc. I would like him to explain why, for example, the member for Scarborough West was involved in one of those rallies in which small business people were rallying against the tremendous increases in property taxation.

The mere fact that you've now had to bring forward a bill that will limit the increase to 2.5% indicates that the local politicians and the opposition were right. As a result of your downloading and as a result of this implementation of the market value system on a complete basis, small businesses were going to get extremely large tax increases in most municipalities. That's why you're putting this bill forward of a 2.5% increase, because small business was concerned that with everything else you're doing, their taxes were going to go up by an extremely large amount.

The other thing that I very quickly want to raise is something in an answer that Mr Eves gave yesterday in which he equated market value with current value assessment.

Mr David Caplan (Oriole): What did they say about that?

Mr Gerretsen: He said, or at least Al Leach said, "My party and I will never support the imposition of market value assessment in Metro Toronto." I would like him to explain. Since Mr Eves has said that market value and current value are the same, has Minister Leach now breached his promise to the people in his riding, saying that he would never support the imposition of market value assessment? Would you please answer that?

The Acting Speaker: The member for Scarborough East.

Mr Gilchrist: My thanks to the members for St Catharines, Beaches-Woodbine, Chatham-Kent, and Kingston and The Islands for their comments.

To the member for Beaches-Woodbine, we share the concerns as well. As I'm sure you are aware, last night there was a panel discussion on one of the local TV stations. Remarkably, there wasn't a single comment about concerns for commercial or industrial in the whole hour, but there was a fulsome discussion about the challenges the cities will face in dealing with residential taxpayers.

It is true that if a city opts into this deal, the cap is the cap, the 2.5% increase is all that a business can go up. If a municipality wants to raise its total budgetary expenses, it can only go to those categories it has not fixed with a cap. I'd remind the member that a municipality doesn't have to take an all-or-nothing approach. You could do just industrial or just commercial or just shopping centres, or you could do them all. The reality is that those categories you don't cap will be the ones to which the municipalities must turn if they want budgetary increases.

Isn't it ironic, though - and I'm sure the member would agree with me here - that for the first time, if it were to be the case here in the city of Toronto that they couldn't do it by applying it to factories, they couldn't do it by applying it to retail stores and - I think I can say that we've discussed and agreed on this - they couldn't do it to apartment buildings because they've already done it too much to apartment buildings and to the tenants therein, the only people they could turn to now would be the actual people they look to for votes. They won't be able to hide it in the rent paid by a tenant and they won't be able to bury it in the cost of doing business. This is accountability. This is honesty. I hope the council reflects on that before they pass their budget.

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The Acting Speaker: Further debate?

Mr Gerry Phillips (Scarborough-Agincourt): I'm pleased to continue the debate on Bill 16. I want to start by reminding the public of something I think they already appreciate, that this thing has been messed up from the beginning. This is now the fourth major bill around this one issue, all within a year. We started a year ago on something called Bill 106. The government then was forced to bring in Bill 149 to amend Bill 106. Then they brought in Bill 164, and now Bill 16.

The reason I raise that is that if the government members are wondering why there was confusion and anger and anxiety out there, there's no one to blame but the government. The government simply has bungled this. I do not use my own language here. Let me use some language that the clerks and treasurers of Ontario used. They are the senior municipal civil servants. These are the senior people who are involved in our municipalities. They warned us about how badly mismanaged this process is. As I say, this is the fourth major bill now.

The clerks and treasurers said - they were commenting on Bill 164 - "Surely this illustrates better than anything that this government in its haste is making legislation by the seat of its pants without proper thought or planning. Yesterday's bill is amended by today's which will likely be amended by tomorrow's." They were right; we have another bill to amend it. "No wonder the municipal clerks and treasurers are confused. No wonder they say they are facing an administrative nightmare."

The member for Scarborough East was blaming the municipal politicians for the confusion and anger. It truly has been mismanaged from the start. I might say that many of the issues being dealt with in today's Bill 16 were raised a year ago by those of us in the opposition. We raised the issue of the gross lease, that this was simply not thought about properly. We raised this issue, by the way. I would say to small business in Ontario: Beware. What the series of bills does is to eliminate something called the business occupancy tax, BOT.

What Bill 16 specifically does is to legalize landlords, even in what's called gross lease situations, passing on tax increases to their tenants. Those tax increases will be the average for the BOT for that municipality. The reason that's important is that banks right now pay BOT, business occupancy tax, at the rate of 75% of realty taxes. I'm generalizing. Small business pay at the rate of 30%. Now business occupancy tax is gone. What Bill 16 says is that landlords now will be allowed to pass on to their tenants the average BOT for that community. The BOT is 30% for small business, 75% for banks. You average it and it will be higher for small business and, obviously, lower for banks. The bill legalizes the passing on of that.

The landlords are caught here because the municipalities have to send them a tax bill that has the BOT averaged on it now, and the realty taxes. Landlords in a gross lease situation were going to be bankrupted. This was raised a year ago with the Minister of Finance. We said, "Listen, what are they going to do about gross leases?" He said, "Oh well, over time they'll be renegotiated." They were warned a year ago about this. I say to the members of the Legislature, this is not a pro-small-business bill, this is an anti-small-business bill.

We've talked a lot about the 2.5% cap. My understanding is there'll be relatively few municipalities across the province that will utilize that provision. Certainly the city of Toronto will utilize it.

The member for Scarborough East was accusing the municipal politicians of fearmongering and - he used some very extreme language - of causing anxiety, implying that the municipal politicians were fearmongering. I think he used the term "fearmongering." I would say to him, I don't think Mayor Lastman was fearmongering. He was expressing a legitimate concern about what was going to happen to small business. In the city of Toronto, bank towers were going to see their taxes drop by $5 million to $7 million per tower, and that was all going to be picked up by small business. We have in this bill a provision to allow three years at a 2.5% increase, and that is not as a result of fearmongering; that is as a result of small business legitimately being dramatically and negatively impacted by this property tax bill.

I say again what we have said in the debate on this from the beginning. We started the debate on Bill 106, and we said: "Will you please give us what we call impact studies? Will you tell the people of Ontario what these tax changes are going to mean?" As a matter of fact, some members may recall we had a debate here in the Legislature about releasing those studies a year ago so we and the taxpayers would know what the impact would be, but the government stonewalled; the government refused to release any study. When the municipalities began to deal with this issue, that was finally when people began to realize the impact of the property tax changes.

I say to the government, you are right that people were fearful, but they were fearful for legitimate reasons, and you could have avoided it. It was wrong not to let the public know what the impact would be. Sure enough, when they found out, the government was back on its heels and was forced to acknowledge that it had made a mistake, and now we've got this bill designed to protect some municipalities that were going to see those dramatic changes.

I want to talk about some other aspects of the bill. This bill gives Premier Harris the unilateral right, through regulations, to raise about $6.1 billion of revenue from property taxes. Now the fourth-largest source of revenue for the province will be property taxes. This is interesting.

I'll just tell the public that we have a briefing; the opposition gets a chance to ask questions of the bureaucrats involved in the bill's design before we come before the Legislature. We said, "Now that the province is setting the educational tax rates" - in the case of businesses, about 55% to 60% of all business property taxes are now set by Mike Harris. It's not your council that's doing it; it's Mike Harris that's setting 55% to 60% of your property taxes. The problem is that it will be done through what's called regulation. The problem with that is that normally people say, "If you're going to tax me, I want an opportunity to have some input into that and I want to see that my democratically elected people are making that decision," but it will not be done here in the Legislature; it will be done down the hall in the cabinet room with the stroke of a pen. Bill 16 makes an even more sweeping move. It won't even set rates; it will simply send a bill to the municipality and say, "We want you to raise X hundreds of millions of dollars from property tax for us," just a letter saying that.

By the way, as an aside, the government will see these taxes increase year after year. They're not freezing how much money they're going to raise, they're freezing the rate, so as the assessment goes up - we're now on market value assessment - the government is expecting a windfall of revenue increases here.

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That's our second concern on the bill, that it now gives the cabinet the authority, with the stroke of a pen, to send a bill to any municipality in the province ordering them to raise business taxes and to collect money on behalf of the government.

In my opinion, the government now has 100% control over education. It controls all the fund-raising. Mike Harris sets the educational mill rate, $2.5 billion of residential property taxes are now set by Mike Harris and $3.6 billion of business property taxes are now set by Mike Harris, all by regulation. Many of my Conservative friends, before they got here, would have railed at that thought, that any government would ever give itself the authority to raise property taxes and to do it all through regulation, but that's what this bill does.

A proper accounting of the finances of Ontario now should include that $6.1 billion of property taxes set by the province and ordered by the province. If it doesn't, I think we are not stating our finances properly, because the province now has 100% of the obligation to pay off the debt of school boards, which is, I gather, about $4 billion, but it's all kind of hidden off the books.

We've said this many times: If there's one document that the people of the province rely on to understand the state of the finances in their province, in their government, it's the budget, and I don't think the budget any longer reflects that, because we're not properly accounting for our education expenditures.

By the way, this bill contains several of the amendments we moved eight months ago that were rejected by the government members. We made proposals on timing. We made proposals on charities. There was a charitable organization, I think called Daybreak, from Ottawa - the member for Nepean may know the name - dealing with homeless people. They had a proposal, and if the government had listened to them and listened to our amendment, all the charities in the province would not have gone through the anguish they've gone through.

But you know what happens around here. It's unfortunate, and I must say I don't necessarily blame the Conservatives, but we're in a mode here where if the opposition proposes something, the government's got to vote against it. You may some day want to go back and look at the amendments that were proposed by us and I suspect by the NDP. Many of them the government has now had to recognize were reasonable.

One of them that you didn't adopt that I still believe is an appropriate one: The people of Ontario cannot appeal their assessment after July 29. The problem with that is that no one in this province will know the impact of their assessment on their taxes until they get their tax bill. The assessment is simply a number, until people actually get their tax bill and say: "Wait a minute. I didn't realize that my assessment now results in that level of taxation."

I say to all of us that when people find out they have missed the date to appeal their assessment - the last day you can appeal your assessment is going to be July 29. As we heard earlier, hardly anyone in the province is going to get their final 1998 tax bill until August or September. It will be then that people will say, "I want to appeal my assessment," and the answer they will get is, "Sorry, you missed the date." I think the government's making a big mistake here. It will unnecessarily anger people. You can say, "Assessment and what you pay in taxes shouldn't be related," but that's how people understand the impact of assessment.

Again, this Bill 16 delays only for a month the appeal date. If the government were, in my opinion, astute politically, you would look at that and say, "For 1998, when all this chaos is going on, surely we should give the people of Ontario an opportunity for maximum fairness here on appeal." I would hope the government would look at that.

I just want to focus a little bit on gross leases for a moment because once the landlords begin to implement this, we're all going to get phone calls. In the city of Toronto I gather they will implement the 2.5% cap for three years, and I think it's fairly straightforward. The way I interpret the bill is that if you're a tenant on a gross lease situation, your landlord will be allowed to charge you what you paid in 1997 for realty taxes plus what you paid for business occupancy tax plus 2.5%. That will be fairly straightforward.

In the city of Toronto and others that use the 2.5% measure that will be fairly clear. But in other municipalities, and I gather that's the vast majority, people are going to be quite surprised when they find that their landlord is passing on to them a substantial increase in realty taxes, well beyond what tenants paid before in realty taxes plus business occupancy tax, for the reason I talked about earlier, and that is, they're going to pass on the average of the community business occupancy tax.

Mr Baird: Not in the capped environment.

Mr Phillips: The member says, "Not in the capped environment." I made the point that I think most municipalities are not opting for the 2.5% cap. They see significant problems in it, and I believe most municipalities will not. If across the province all the municipalities do, we've simply made virtually no progress on any property tax changes. It's just like freezing for the next three years what's been going on in the past so that to the extent that everybody uses the 2.5% cap, then that has nothing to do with property tax reform. That's just essentially for three years institutionalizing whatever problems existed there before.

Again I want to go back to the municipal clerks and treasurers' comments on the tax bills. I think Ontario was looking for a simpler system, certainly the clerks and treasurers were looking for a simpler system, and the government was selling it on the basis of this being a simpler system. The fact is, according to the clerks and the treasurers - and they are, in my opinion, the most knowledgeable in this area because they work with it on a daily basis and their whole fiscal future relies on the property tax system.

By the way, before, the further complication. The bills get thicker, by the way. Bill 106 was about 45 pages long, then Bill 149 was about 55 pages long and then Bill 164 was bigger. It's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Every time one bill tries to fix the previous bill up, it gets bigger and more complicated.

It goes back to what most people said. We, the Ontario Legislature, would have been far better served if this thing had been at all properly thought through. We, the government, but we, the Legislature, have jerked the Ontario population around. This is the fourth major - in the community I represent, the city of Toronto, it has upset in a very major way a whole bunch of lives and caused an awful lot of real, legitimate anxiety.

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What we're ending up with - this is what the clerks and treasurers said about the bill: "The system will be immensely complicated by creating 84 classes and subclasses and up to 156 tax rates." By the way, I have not yet had a comment from them on Bill 16. These were the comments on the previous bill. They said: "The bills will create serious problems. They are a recipe for administrative chaos." This is their language. "This is downloading the government's confusion and indecision to the municipalities." For whatever reason, we have been dealing with one bill amending another bill amending another bill, and now the fourth bill amending those bills. As I say, it's unfortunate.

My background is business. I too had three businesses, with a significant number of employees, and I started up a couple of them from scratch. So I have some appreciation of the business community. We have caused untold anxiety in the business community out there with these four bills, which would have been unnecessary if they had been properly thought through.

I did want to talk a little bit about one of the government members, the member for Scarborough East - this is how we have to refer to them - who was talking about the commitment you made. My colleague from Kingston and The Islands mentioned this earlier, but the commitment of "A promise made, a promise kept." Let me just say that this is Al Leach's promise: "My party and I will never support the imposition of market value assessment." That was underlined and what not. He would not have got elected if people in his community had ever thought he was going to bring in market value assessment. By the way, this is market value assessment. As a matter of fact, the member for Scarborough East said -

Mr Tony Silipo (Dovercourt): He said it last night.

Mr Phillips: Well, he said it today, Tony. He said, "Current value assessment and market value assessment are the same thing." They are the same thing. In fact, if you read the act, the definitions of "current value assessment" and "market value assessment" are word for word the same. We now have market value assessment.

The member for Scarborough East was saying, "We said we would do it," and all those sorts of things. Actually, you said you wouldn't do it. That was Mr Leach and Ms Bassett. So you do have some enormous anger out there of people who believed they were getting a commitment from two cabinet ministers who said they would never support the imposition of market value assessment in Metropolitan Toronto. I just raise that because the member for Scarborough East said, "We promised we would do it." You promised you wouldn't do it.

I was interested in the teeter-totter analogy too. He said, "One business tax goes down, another goes up." Let's recognize that banks go down, small business goes up. That's just the way it works because, I repeat, the banks and the financial community and institutions have been paying 75% BOT. They take realty tax and then 75% on top of it. I'm not making a value judgement on whether that was fair or unfair to the banks; I'm just saying that's the way it was. Small businesses, generally speaking, were paying 25% to 30%. Now it's going to all be averaged. So on the old teeter-totter that Mr Gilchrist mentions, I'd just say it's banks down, small business up. That's the teeter-totter.

I was a bit intrigued by him using the small business as a selling feature, when in many respects the bill is anti-small business.

The caps are a challenge. One of the problems will be that they are for three years. Once you start them, you are there for three years. It means that, for whatever reason, now that municipalities all have 100% of social housing and a major part of social assistance, if municipalities' costs go up, now, because of this bill and the way it works, there'll only be one source to cover it. If the costs are going up and they have no other choice but to look at some form of property tax increase, it has to be on the residential.

You may say, "Well, they don't have to do that," but there are municipalities across the province of Ontario, well-run municipalities, efficiently run municipalities - I believe the town of Markham is well run, well regarded. I think their taxes are going up this year, the latest I'd heard. So it does happen.

If it were to happen in any community that adopts this, they have only one choice, and that is, they have to take all of those increased costs on to the residential property tax. That's a risk in this proposal and it's a risk that municipalities now are wrestling with because once they start down the road, it locks them in.

I just wanted to chat as well, once again, on the education issue because I don't think many people in Ontario have yet recognized what an extraordinary move we've gone through here. Previously the province had no access to property tax and now it has given itself the authority to move in a very major way on property taxes. I think businesses will be quite surprised to find that now 55% to 60% of their property taxes are set by the province of Ontario.

I will be very interested to finally find out the numbers when they set them. I gather the province is expecting a fairly substantial growth in income from this. As the assessment rises on businesses and both the value of the business goes up and the assessment goes up, revenue will grow at least 2%, and probably more.

As we deal with Bill 16, and I assume that we'll be having an opportunity for further debate in committee, I look forward to dealing with some amendments to the bill and also some better government explanations on why it is that they want to do that.

One thing I forgot to do: I should have mentioned earlier that I would be splitting my time with one of my colleagues. I'm not sure whether I have to do that before we start or whether it's -

Mr Baird: Who's the other member?

Mr Phillips: Mr Colle.

The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): No problem.

Mr Phillips: No problem. I appreciate that, Mr Speaker. I will now be turning the floor over to my colleague, Mr Colle.

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Mr Mike Colle (Oakwood): I just want to comment on one of the key things that my colleague from Scarborough-Agincourt mentioned. The arbitrary cutoff date for appeals is not going to work. They've said July 29. I ask members across the way to make sure that you contact the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and ask them to put that back, because the tax bills are delayed. Some of them won't come out until July or August, some are even saying September. It's not fair for someone not to have any idea of what his or her new assessment is going to be, since they won't be getting their tax bills.

There are so many appeals on the board and a lot of people who are trying to find out what is actually going on. There are just so many people who have never been called back. They had this 1-800 number or hotline for the assessment department, and they could never get a human being. Sometimes they talked to a couple of people, and each one of them gave a different answer. So I certainly urge the government members to get the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Municipal Affairs to put the date back another couple of months so people can have a fair shot at appealing their taxes.

The first thing about this bill is they've given it a name which I really find laughable. I think they call it the protection act, the Small Business and Charities Protection Act. I say, protection from what? Do you know what it's protection from? It's protection from the previous bill that this government passed. It's protection from all the horrendous mistakes they imposed on people because they rushed that bill through. In fact, this bill is bigger than the one that it's protecting you from.

That was the bill that the government members said was perfect, that it was going to solve this tax mess, that we had to rush that bill through. I remember at that time we asked for the three impact studies the government had in its hands. The Ministry of Finance had three impact studies based on the assessments. They refused, under freedom of information, to give the opposition those three impact studies.

The privacy commissioner then encouraged us to ask - no, they said it had then gone to cabinet. So we had to ask cabinet for it. Cabinet replied back, saying it was confidential cabinet material and they couldn't release the impact studies.

If they had released the impact studies at that time, there would have been more ability to see that the bills they passed, Bill 149 and Bill 106, were just filled with horrendous errors. We could have avoided the tax revolt that took place. We could have avoided that if they had listened a year ago. What they did was they rushed it through so quickly that in the city of Toronto itself this assessment ended up that more than half the small businesses in Toronto were to get a tax increase of over 100%. About 19,000 businesses were going to get a tax increase of over 100%. Didn't they look at this scheme and do an analysis to see what the impact of that would have been? No, they basically just rammed it through, and then they wondered why everybody had to take to the streets. This is the government that refused to even release any impact studies, so the people couldn't find out what they were up to.

Now we're back to the square root again where they've had to correct the thousands of mistakes they made in the other bills with this other protection bill against the Tory acts that were passed previously. We didn't have to be in this spot, but we are, and there are still problems. There are still very many problems.

Perhaps to put this in context, I remember, when the first information came out about this bill, the government said: "The bill is perfect. You don't have to change it. There are just people that are being alarmist in the street. The small business people have nothing to fear. This bill is great."

Well, the small business people I know in Toronto got their tax bills. They couldn't believe it. They were going from 10,000 bucks a year to 40,000 and 50,000 bucks a year for some shoe store or some barber shop because of the Tories' rushing that previous tax assessment stuff through. People who saw their tax bills couldn't believe their eyes: "I've got a shoe store and I've got to pay 60,000 bucks a year in property taxes?" This wasn't in one shoe store; these were 17,000 to 19,000 small business people who got these tax assaults by this government because they didn't stop to evaluate what they were doing. In fact, it's all part of this mad rush to try and somehow deal with their downloading problems and everything else that they end up making these unbelievable mistakes, and the small guy pays.

The other thing that's very interesting about this is that even now we're asking the assessment guru - there's a person by the name of Mr Larry Hummel. By the way, Price Waterhouse refused to take on the job because they said they couldn't do it in the short time frame. Price Waterhouse said they couldn't do it, but Larry Hummel said he could do it.

We asked this assessment guru from the Ministry of Finance, "Would you give us the magic formula you used to come up with this assessment system and these assessment numbers?" We asked him on March 9, "Produce the quality control data to show us how you arrived at these magical assessments." He refuses to this day to hand that information over. I hope the members on the other side will push Mr Hummel in the Ministry of Finance to hand over the quality control data to make sure this assessment was done somewhat accurately.

My contention is that the assessment is an awful mess. I even talked to the mayor of Tiny township, Mr Anthony Lancia. He said that everybody in Tiny township is appealing because they fouled up all the assessments even in Tiny township, never mind Toronto.

A lot of people think the assessors came to their door. The assessors didn't come to anybody's door. They didn't even drive by. They concocted these magical formulas with some computer geek. In some back room, they came up with something that's going to affect your business or your home for the rest of your life. We're saying: "At least come and look at our property. Maybe you'll find out that my property isn't worth $400,000, that it's maybe worth less than that. Come and look at it." But they haven't looked at the properties. They didn't have the time. They rushed it. We would like to get that information.

In fact, I know the city of Toronto has also asked for another important piece of information. They've asked for an audit of the assessment to make sure it was done properly. Royal LePage, the real estate company, has offered to do the audit of the assessments. They already have a lot of data in their data bank. Royal LePage has said they'll do it for $50,000 to see whether the assessments were done properly.

I hope the government, the Ministry of Finance, undertakes an audit of the assessment process, because if you look at the assessments - certainly what I'm familiar with, in the city of Toronto - they're all over the place. People who bought their property on June 30, 1996, person after person, say: "Hey, I bought it at this price. The assessment is way off, by 40,000 or 50,000 bucks."

Another thing that's very interesting is that they did a bit of a magical touch-up of the assessments. It seems that across the city a lot of the assessments in certain neighbourhoods have been low-balled and underassessed. They have no correlation with market value as of June 30, 1996. People are telling me that they think the Ministry of Finance cooked the assessment. Why did they low-ball them and make them lower than they are? They thought they could suppress the number of appeals. They said, "If your assessed value is lower, keep quiet, don't say anything, because your assessment is lower." So people are saying, "I'd better not appeal, because my assessment is actually a little lower."

They don't realize that they're not going to escape the assessor, because this assessor is going to keep coming back over and over again. Even though your house or business is under assessed this year, they're going to get you in 1999 when they come around again and do this other formula to probably increase your assessed value. Even though they seem to be a bit lower on the average, those assessments will come up again, so don't think that because the assessed value is a bit lower you can get away with it.

This system of assessment is going to guarantee that a person who does any renovations to their home - God help you if you put in air conditioning, a skylight, if you put a bathroom on the main floor. By the year 2001, when they come around every year for the reassessment, it's going to be punitive for anybody who fixes up their home, because as soon as you get an improvement on your home, this system the government has put in is going to trigger higher taxes. It says, "Fix up your home and we're going to hit you with higher taxes forever."

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In the past they used to do the reassessment every five, 10, 15 years, now they're going to come every year. Every time you dare paint your house or put air-conditioning in or, God help you, you put another tub in the house or another faucet or something, or fix your roof or put in a new window, they're going to come running with a tax hit. That is what the guarantee is going to be with this new system, which they say is fair.

If you look at what's happening here in Toronto, about 55% of the properties are going to get a tax decrease. That's great and we all applaud that decrease. The problem is that another 237,000 households are going to get a tax increase. That's about the size of the city of Ottawa. Do you know what the average tax increase is going to be? It's going to be an average tax increase of about $673 to 237,000 homes in the city of Toronto, and 43,000 of those homes are going to get an increase of between $1,000 and $5,000 a year, almost the size of the city of Kingston getting a tax increase of up to 5,000 bucks.

I don't care who you are or where you live in Toronto; nobody can afford all of a sudden to be hit with a $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 or $5,000 tax increase all at once. This government has the wherewithal to stop that. Just last week in the budget they gave away another $625 million in that tax cut. I would tell the government, use that to lower property taxes. That's $625 million they basically gave to a tax cut by accelerating the tax cut from January 1 to July. They could have used the $625 million to keep property taxes lower. Instead, in the city of Toronto, 237,000 homes are going to get whacked with this tax increase.

Their own members said that if this system were put into place here in Toronto, they were going to resign, all the Tory members in the city of Toronto. Al Leach said to the homeowners in Cabbagetown, Moore Park and Rosedale, "My party and I will never support the imposition of market value assessment in Metro Toronto." That's what he said when he was going door to door in June 1995. Isabel Bassett, going door to door, said: "The policy of the PC Party has always been that they will never impose market value assessment in Toronto. We remain firm in that position. A Mike Harris government will review all alternatives to market value assessment, including unit assessment, to determine whether there's an alternative. Mike Harris will relieve the upward pressure on property taxes by stopping the downloading of mandates on municipal services."

Here are two cabinet ministers who went door to door saying, "We will never impose this system." If you go up the Yonge Street corridor in Toronto, there are about 200,000 homes getting the biggest tax whack in history, and this is a government which said it would never impose this system. This is a government that came in here and said, "We will fix this system." This is about the fourth bill they've introduced to fix and fix and fix. They keep on making it so confusing that you have to be a Philadelphia or a Bay Street lawyer to figure out what the system finally is.

The ironic thing is this: This was the perfect tax bill, they said. Back in January, people all across the city began to realize that this was going to destroy small business in Ontario. So we organized small businesses across the city. We actually had to take to the streets to tell Mike Harris and the Conservatives that this tax scheme was going to kill small business. Do you know what they said? They said: "Don't worry. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just a minor blip. Our tax bill has fixed it all. We'll fix it. Don't worry." You know, from about 10 people who started this fight back in January, it increased. Before you know it, we went from 10 to 20 to 50. We were ready to go with 10,000 small business people who were going to march on Bloor Street. That's what was going to happen.

That's why this government was forced to back down on their stupidity, because they were afraid of the 10,000 people who were going to march on the streets of Toronto. They were forced to capitulate because they had no choice, because the small business people and their supporters understood that this government was going to ruin small business in Ontario. They had to wave the white surrender flag.

Even Mr Eves himself, who I remember quite well, in Mississauga on February 7, said: "Well, that Toronto has got to pay more in taxes. They haven't been running a tight ship. They've spent too much on education, they've spent too much on public health, so Toronto should pay an extra $400 million in property taxes." That's what Mr Ernie Eves said, I think to the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, in Mississauga on February 7.

You notice we're getting closer to the election. Mr Eves saw those thousands of people in the streets of Toronto rebelling, revolting against him. He was forced to eat his words. He said, "Oh sorry, I didn't really mean in Mississauga that Toronto had to pay this." Now he has been forced to backtrack on that $400 million extra tax on small business in Toronto. But on February 7 he was boasting: "We're going to teach Toronto a lesson. We're going to kick Toronto around. We're going to make them pay for all their past sins."

As you notice now, as the new Mike Harris mask is on, where they have to write cheques to get re-elected, all of a sudden they're coming along and saying, "Whatever we have to do, we will now pay the piper." That's what part of this bill does. It acknowledges the fact that Ernie Eves and Al Leach and Mike Harris were totally wrong in this assessment system they tried to force down the throats of the people of Ontario, and they've had to rewrite the whole darn thing.

Ironically, this was the system that was supposed to fix all systems because the old outdated thing didn't work. Do you know what they're doing with this bill? Half the property tax system is now frozen, based on the old assessments again. That's what they did. In other words, the 60 million bucks that we paid the assessors to concoct that computer formula is useless, because this bill says it's no longer a valid assessment system for the commercial side, which is half the system, so they put a freeze on it. Do you know what values they're going back to? They're going back to the 1940 values again. They've admitted that the assessment process they've undertaken was totally flawed, totally wrong and totally fraudulent. This bill says that the assessment concoction of Ernie Eves and Al Leach was totally flawed. Now they're going back to the system they were complaining about that had to be fixed and saying, "No, it's frozen again." It's frozen again for the commercial side.

I wonder what's going to happen to the other 250,000-odd people - not odd people - taxpayers in the city of Toronto and other cities who are going to get huge tax increases because of this tax scheme. I wonder if Ernie Eves and Al Leach and Isabel Bassett are going to leave these people out to freeze. I think this government owes it to them to also protect these people from these tax increases because this tax scheme, this tax assessment system, was concocted by them, it was forced upon them, and this is a government that ran against this being imposed. I don't think this government has any choice but to also protect the 237,000 people, certainly in Toronto and people in Tiny township and everywhere, who are going to get this mammoth tax increase. The government should come in and protect them.

It has been forced to come in and protect small business. It had better come in and also protect the homeowners who are getting this big whack, because this government has the money. In the budget, as I have said, it gave up $625 million without even batting an eyelash. Why not put some money where your mouth is and lower property taxes for these people who, through no fault of their own, are now going to have to pay mammoth increases?

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I have seniors living in Leaside on a fixed income of $15,000. One senior told me her taxes are going from $1,000 to $4,000. You tell me how that senior in Leaside who is paying $1,000 or $1,200 - you may say that was too low - now can pay $4,000. What will she have to cut out of her budget? Will she have to do without heat, light, a telephone bill? Will she have to do without a grocery bill? What will that senior do who, as I said, wants to stay in her little bungalow in Leaside? She doesn't want to be a burden on the government. She wants to stay in her house that she worked her whole life to pay off. She raised her family in it. She is in that home. She doesn't want to be pushed out of her home, but when she goes from $1,000 to $4,000, she is in trouble. She, like many other people in older homes, through no fault of their own are victims of this government's not thinking of the consequences.

It's up to this government, as I said, to think of those on fixed incomes especially, where they get a break. One of the things the government says is, "They can put a reverse mortgage on their property." If you have worked your whole life trying to get rid of your mortgage, why would you in your later years all of a sudden want to put another mortgage back on your property because you can't pay your taxes? These are not business people. They're not corporations that can write things off. These are people who are making $15,000 or $20,000 a year on a meagre pension. How can they go from paying $1,000 or $2,000 to $3,000, $4,000 or $5,000? They can't do it.

Everybody says Toronto hasn't paid its fair share or Oakville hasn't paid its fair share or Tiny township hasn't paid its fair share, but it comes to a point where you say this government now has the money. It now controls education. Tax revenues are coming in. We're no longer in the recession. It has the money to protect these people who are going to suffer these horrendous increases.

I worry about even the people who get decreases. I know in my area of the city some people are getting $200 decreases, but I wonder what happens if they're on a street that all of a sudden, by the year 1999, becomes hot on the real estate market. Maybe it doesn't happen in Listowel, or maybe in some parts of Listowel it happens, or in Tiny township, but in Toronto the history has been that you may have a home on a street and all of a sudden, because the real estate chemistry takes off, your street can go from being a very ordinary street to a so-called hot street. You're sitting in a house that you thought was a modest house, and all of a sudden it goes up in value.

What this bill doesn't protect is that all of a sudden there's an escalation, and sometimes property values in Toronto go from $150,000 to maybe $250,000 overnight. That can happen, and it has happened in the past. People living in those homes have no protection. What are they going to do with their house, when this reassessment takes place year after year, if their property taxes go up? They worry about that.

Another interesting anomaly about this bill is where you have two similar residential properties. In one residential property you could have a sixplex or a fourplex, and next door is a single-family home with two people on a fixed income. In that fourplex you've got four income properties maybe giving the owner of that fourplex $20,000 that he or she could make on it, and maybe there are about 12 people living in that fourplex. Do you know that under this bill, the person living in the single-family home - it could be two people or one person - pays the same as that income property which is a fourplex or sixplex? I ask you if that's fair.

I don't think it's fair. I think that if you have a multi-income property which is a threeplex, fourplex, fiveplex, sixplex, you shouldn't pay as much as the person next door who has one or two people living in the house with no income. It's not an income property. But this bill doesn't protect people in that regard.

Therefore, what people are telling me is they're going to turn all their homes into fourplexes and threeplexes. You might as well do that, because you could get all the income from renting the first, second, third, fourth floor. If I'm sitting in a home and I've just got my own income, I don't rent it out, I lose out with this assessment system.

This is not fair. It is something the government has refused to fix. It is not fair, again, that someone in a single-family home who doesn't have any income is paying the same tax as someone next door who maybe has the same size property, same size lot, but has divided it up into four or five or six income properties. That should be looked at and should be made fair. Perhaps what to look at is, how does this help that person, as I said, especially on fixed income who has no potential to get any other income? That's another anomaly I pick out of this bill.

A person I like to quote and who I've quoted in the past, someone I disagree with many times but I agree with on certain occasions, is Terence Corcoran from the Globe and Mail. He said basically that this government was acting too irrationally, that it should have slowed down and looked at the consequences. "Uniform assessments and tax rates simply cannot survive the real world for long. Dazzled by the beauty of its One Big System models, the government pushed ahead with a rushed property assessment schedule. Valuations were conducted as of 1996, making no allowances whatsoever for distortions that existed in the market then or any changes that have occurred since. It was rushed, it was poorly planned, and it was ill-considered from the start."

That's why I think it's critical for this government and members of this Legislature to make sure that audit is done of the assessment system. That is available to the government. If they want to do it, Royal LePage has offered to do the audit to make sure the assessments were done properly.

Councillor Norm Gardner in the city of Toronto has launched a legal suit against the assessment system because he says that basically the whole assessment process is totally fouled up. He's got example after example of properties that were bought on the magic assessment dates that are way off the market price and the sale price. Whether you go to Bloor Street, King Street, Queen Street, all over the place, the assessed values don't correlate with the real market price.

That's why it's important to have an audit done of the assessment that was done. It's also important for the Ministry of Finance to hand over the quality control data and to show us how they concocted this computer formula to give people their assessed values. We need that information as we proceed in examining this bill. The last time the government proceeded without giving us that kind of information, you got yourself into one heck of a mess where you had to come back again here in May with another bill to protect us from the passed bills. We don't need to come back here again in six months with another bill to protect us from Bill 16.

I ask you at this time to stop and listen to people who are saying: "Don't shut the gate for appeals on July 29. We need a couple of more months."

We also need to get that information from the Ministry of Finance so that we can find out whether these assessments were done accurately. My assumption is that these assessments were not done accurately, that they were done in too much of a hurry. I agree with Price Waterhouse, who said you can't do this type of analysis.

In closing, the only Conservative member I saw marching with us on the street was the member for Scarborough West, Jim Brown. He was there because he knew you guys were wrong. He had the guts to join us in the street. I wish the rest of you had been in the streets to stop this craziness. We may have to get back on the streets again unless you fix this tax mess that you've got us into in Ontario.

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The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. Comments and questions?

Mr Gilles Bisson (Cochrane South): I think - not I think; I know - I enjoyed the presentation by the two previous members. There's an irony in this when you read this bill, because it really demonstrates that a government can make choices, and clearly this government has made a choice. They've chosen this particular instance to give businesses within Ontario a cap of 2.5% on their municipal taxes, guaranteeing that because of the assessment fiasco in Toronto, businesses would be protected and they would not see their taxes go up more than 2.5%. That I understand. I want to see the small business community have a fair shake and I don't expect them to pay more than they should because of this government's bungling. But when it comes to other people in our society, the government doesn't seem to make the same kinds of choices.

I listened intently to the Minister of Education. He has now made a decision that he's going to deregulate tuition fees for university students in post-graduate work and a whole bunch of other programs. We know what that means. We know that a student's tuition fees at the university level are going to go up far more than 2.5%. In some cases we expect tuitions to rise as much as 50% in one year.

It's interesting that the government is able to make a choice that they're going to cap the increases on taxes to businesses in municipalities, because clearly the government has chosen sides. They say, "We like business, we support business, so we're going to cap the taxes, but to heck with the students." The students of Ontario are not getting the same kind of treatment that the people in the business community are.

Clearly this government has made a choice. I understand what that choice is but I think it's the wrong choice. If you're going to afford one segment of your population some protection because of government fiascos in taxation and downloading and a whole bunch of other things, you should afford the students and other people in our society the same kind of protection.

Mr Baird: I'm pleased to respond to my colleague the member for Oakwood and, before him, the member for Scarborough-Agincourt.

Let's be clear on one thing first with respect to the comments made by the member for Scarborough-Agincourt. In a capped environment, those landlords who have gross leases must pass through the actual business occupancy tax that their tenants paid in 1997. So it's not an average where banks would pay 70% and small retail would pay 30%; it's the actual. That's something important to put on the record.

The second thing which I think needs to be responded to is with respect to the appeal date extension. Extending the appeal date until after the final tax bill is to be sent out is somewhat of a red herring because people can't appeal it, ever. They can't appeal the municipal tax rate that their local municipality puts forward; they can only appeal their assessment, which they are in current possession of. I think it's important to put that on the record because I believe it is somewhat of a red herring.

This assessment system is not perfect - no tax is perfect, that it's all good, with no down side - but it's more fair and it's more equitable. Homeowners, be they in Scarborough-Agincourt or Nepean, are being treated very unfairly by the current system. They have been overpaying for many, many years. This government is addressing the inequities in the system and getting control of some absolutely spiralling education taxes. This government has announced it will be cutting, over the next eight years, the huge inequity here in the city, which these two honourable members represent, by more than $402 million.

I think the actions of this government contrast sharply with our friends in the Liberal Party. They sat by and watched education taxes spiral out of control, and their answer to this problem was to bring in the commercial concentration tax - not only did they whack Toronto once, they wanted to go for a second time - a tax that was so bad that even Tony Silipo and Frances Lankin in the NDP got rid of it. When the NDP get rid of a tax, it must be a really bad tax.

Mr Gerretsen: I'd like to congratulate the member for Scarborough-Agincourt and the member for Oakwood for their excellent presentations.

To the member for Nepean I would simply say that he doesn't know what he's talking about. It's as simple as that. He has to understand that local property taxes are based on two factors: One aspect is the assessment, the current value or the market value of your property, which, by the way, Minister of Municipal Affairs Al Leach said during the last election his government would never impose. It's the valuation of the property times the tax rate.

Mr Baird: You can't appeal the tax rate.

Mr Gerretsen: Of course you can't appeal the tax rate. You can deal with your councils every three years if you don't like what they've done with respect to the tax rate. You fire them; you don't elect them again. But it's the assessment we're talking about.

Mr Baird: But they've got the assessment now.

Mr Gerretsen: But, sir, what you don't understand is that since the assessment numbers -

The Acting Speaker: Address your comments through the Chair, please.

Mr Gerretsen: I always address the comments to you, Mr Speaker, because I know that's the way it's supposed to happen.

The point simply is this: The assessment information that has been given to people this year is so different from the previous assessment information that the average person will not be able to understand, from the assessment numbers in themselves, whether their taxes are going up or down this year. It is only after they have received the final tax bill for a particular year that they can determine whether the assessment numbers have gone up or down, by taking the total amount of taxes they pay this year, less the total amount of taxes next year, and say, "Yes, I'm paying more," or "I'm paying less." Until that bill actually comes in, the average person will not know whether their assessment went up or down.

Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): If there were some common trends borne out by the comments from the members for Scarborough-Agincourt and Oakwood, it is that this bill is really another example of government mismanagement. They came in with the bill to try and deal with assessment of property taxation, then they had to bring in another bill to try and fix that up, then another bill to try and fix it up. What that has done is really just cause confusion, not only to ratepayers but to municipalities. Windsor is as good an example as any. They're going through budget deliberations right now, as we speak, and this is so late in the year compared to previous years. In previous years they would have done this in December, but they hadn't had the numbers available to be able to have those budget deliberations.

I recall going to a briefing for city council shortly before Christmas with respect to the downloading numbers. In Windsor they had no idea what they were going to be. The chief administrative officer said, "This download exercise is like giving someone access to your chequebook." They were going to have to pay for services that were going to be downloaded on the municipality without having any idea of what the cost of those was going to be and what portion of them was going to come back from the province.

We know the government has said this is all going to be revenue-neutral, but it's not. Taxes are going to go up almost 5% in the city of Windsor, and now councillors are going to be faced with having to decide whether they're going to put a cap on some taxpayers with respect to their property tax increases of 2.5% and trying to sell to residential ratepayers the fact that they're going to have to make up that difference. It's a tough choice and it's not fair.

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

Mr Colle: What this exercise may bring to light is that this whole property tax approach we have, even going across party lines, has got to be looked at. I think even the government realizes they're caught in a real quagmire here. I think they're in quicksand. They're not going to get out of this tax mess, because as they try to plug one hole they have to plug 10 others.

As you know, this government had to be forced to come to their senses, and it wasn't because they wanted to, believe me. As I said, people had to take to the streets. Day after day we took to the streets, not with big media, not with big business. They were small residential taxpayers, small business people who had to go to the streets day in, day out. They scared the bejabbers out of this government.

Now this government is running a bit scared, because we're much closer to the election. I encourage everyone across Ontario to take heed of this message: Don't pay that extra tax. Whether you're in Peterborough or Sarnia, make Mike Harris pay the tax. I know he went to Ottawa and wrote a cheque for $25 million. Mike Harris has to pay the bill. Don't pay the extra tax bill, those of us across Ontario who get a higher assessment because of this tax scheme. Mike Harris should pay for that. He's got the money.

Don't go quietly. If you have to go to the street, get their attention. Now they want to be re-elected and, believe me, they'll write the cheques. But they're not going to do it if you're quiet and passive. I encourage you to organize. Be focused. Let the public know that you're fighting for them and you will get this government to also be fair to you. Don't take it sitting down. Get up and fight back.

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The Acting Speaker: The member's time has expired. Further debate?

Mr Silipo: I'm glad to have the opportunity to join in this debate and to lead off debate for our caucus on this. I would just like to advise you at the outset that I will be dividing my time on this with our municipal affairs critic, the member for Cochrane South.

I want to start by going back to the tone and the approach that was set in this debate on Bill 16 by the spokespeople for the government today, the member for Nepean, the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Finance, and the member for Scarborough East, the parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

I think both of them said we ought to look at this bill in the broader context of the budget and the economy and the economic policies of the government. I'd be quite happy to spend the whole hour talking about the economic policies of the government, but we'll have an opportunity to talk about those on other occasions as well, particularly when we debate Bill 15, which is the bill that puts in place a number of the measures contained in the budget. But of course this bill does as well, so I understand, from their perspective, their wanting to talk about what they see as being the positive things that are happening in the economy.

Again we heard the line about, "Why is the Ontario economy growing?" To hear them it would be because Mike Harris is Premier of the province and because of the policies of the government. They conveniently forget that there are many other factors that not only we would say are far more important than the policies of Mike Harris but also economists are saying are far more important than the policies of Mike Harris in terms of what is going on in our economy: the link that we have, for example, to the American economy and what is happening there; the relatively low interest rates that we're happy to see the federal government continue to ensure happen. Whether they are ensuring them actively or not, I don't know, because they've tended to take kind of a hands-off attitude in the past, but they're there and they are helping.

I also hear them say from time to time, "If that's all it is, then why, for example, are jurisdictions like BC not doing as well?" Of course one of the reasons is that a jurisdiction like BC is tied in much more to the Asian economy than Ontario is. That explains, at least in part, the difference.

But at the heart of what they always talk about is the 30% income tax cut and how that is injecting money into people's hands. I don't want to talk at length about the income tax cut because that's not directly in front of us here in this bill, but it is, of course, something they continue to put forward as being the main reason why the economy is growing, why the jobs are there. Again, I think it's all those other reasons that not just I but, more important, various economists say are assisting the economy to grow, assisting Ontario to grow.

We know that on a day-to-day basis people are feeling the impact of the tax cut in all sorts of ways: in terms of money that isn't there to pay for the services in health care and education that we need in this province; in terms of the additional user fees that many taxpayers across the province are having to pay in a variety of ways to make up for the lack of services and the reduction in services; and of course knowing, as we do, that the people who benefit from the tax cut are not the typical families, are not the middle- and low-income families in Ontario, but indeed are those among the richest in the province and that there is very clearly in the policies of Mike Harris a shifting from individuals and families of modest and low means to those who are well-off. There is very clearly a shift in this way in terms of money, in terms of power, in terms of decision-making. That is at the heart of the Mike Harris revolution. That is at the heart of the Conservative government's policies and that is what is happening.

One of the things we see as a result of this is that there is an increasing shift on to the property tax base for a number of costs. The exercise that the government got into which began in a big way last year and which resulted in the government having us here for the good part of a year in this Legislature with piece after piece of legislation, with, as we now see, not particularly well-thought-out legislation, has resulted in a number of decisions that have pushed on to the property tax base the cost of many services which ought not to be on the property tax base at all.

Some of those services certainly have been there - education - for some years and, quite frankly, no government has been able to fix that one in terms of moving them off the property tax base. The government seemed to be prepared to want to do that, but of course even they were looking at a trading back and, as they've done in the end, they have traded back some of those costs for social service costs and some health care costs, which again are costs that have no relationship to the property tax base.

Why do I talk about the property tax base? It's because that essentially is what this bill deals with. Within the whole treatment of the property tax system, we see that again there has been an interesting evolution if not in the government's thinking, at least in the government's actions.

I go back to the way the government spokespeople began this debate, and they talked a lot about the budget context. I want to suggest to them, and I want to suggest to you, Speaker, that it would have been more appropriate for them to have talked about the other context, which of course brings us this bill, and that is the pre-election context.

We know that one of the fundamental reasons why Mike Harris and Ernie Eves have changed their minds on some important issues with respect to property taxes in this province, particularly as they apply to small business, is that there is imminently, in the near future, an election looming. I think, because of poor management or because of I'm not sure why, they had to change their tone, because the tone that was set out by the finance minister of this province back on February 5 - as recently as February 5 - when he was trying to justify why there should continue to be a differentiated business tax rate for the education portion of the property tax that they had chosen to leave in place, why there should be a differentiated rate across the province, why businesses in the Toronto area ought to continue to be taxed at a much higher rate than businesses across not only the rest of the province but even the rest of the GTA - he had some very harsh words. It wasn't just a soft explanation about the past. He had some very harsh words. I'd like to quote a couple of them for you, Speaker.

He said on February 5: "Let me be blunt about what Toronto wants us to do. Toronto is asking us to make the rest of the province responsible for the cumulative impact of decades of irresponsible spending decisions and questionable programs approved by successive Toronto councils and schools boards. Toronto is asking us to make businesses and municipalities in the rest of the province pay the freight for the fact that Toronto politicians raised spending year after year and took the easy way by loading taxes on to businesses."

That was the attitude of the Minister of Finance back in February of this year. Isn't it interesting that one of the changes we see in this bill is doing exactly what the minister said at that point he was not prepared to do, which was to begin at least a process of addressing the inequities in the funding? I'm glad the minister and the government have come to their senses on that.

I'm glad they have taken literally and virtually piece by piece the proposal that was put forward by Mayor Lastman - I don't know whether it was officially adopted by council, but it certainly was put forward - which was to say, "If you're not prepared to deal with this inequity now, as you should, at least begin to phase in a solution." There was a proposal to phase that in over eight years and, lo and behold, in the budget of the week before last what did we see but exactly that approach.

To start by addressing one piece that's in this bill directly, I would have to say that clearly is something we are glad to see is there, although I would be interested in seeing the actual legislation because I understand that what's going to happen on the piece that applies to this year is that that's going to be done through regulation and then we will see legislation come this fall that will deal with the rest of the package.

Why that's the case, I don't know. Maybe it's because the government wants to finally be careful in terms of putting legislation together that makes sense as opposed to the kind of mess that we've seen on the rest of the pieces here in which we have parts of this bill trying to, for the third and fourth time, fix the problem that they have caused with previous pieces of legislation.

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But on that piece, that is, on beginning to phase in a change that is to bring in a partial equalization of the commercial and industrial education taxes as announced in the budget, we're happy that at least that realization has fallen upon the shoulders of the minister. The government has finally realized that was a problem that was real and that their position, as set out in a really strong and I would say confrontational tone, to say the least, by the Minister of Finance on February 5 was just not on. They have realized that.

They have realized that they could not continue to stand up against the small business sector, not just because they could not afford politically to alienate that particular component of the community - I suspect that's probably the primary reason why they did it. But I hope that somewhere along the line they also realized that in terms of the economy of this province the words they had been saying to us, that small businesses create the jobs across this province, you can't say on the one hand and continue to beat up on small businesses in what continues to be the core of the small business sector and indeed the business sector across the province, which is Toronto and the rest of the GTA. I'm glad that they've come to that realization.

That really is the approach I want to try to take to this bill as a whole, which is to say that I find a number of provisions in this bill ones that certainly move in the right direction. I mentioned that one; I want to mention a couple of others.

I want to also be very clear in saying to the government that we're glad, even though they're not prepared to admit it, that they're finally realizing they've made a mess of this problem, particularly on the small businesses taxes. Although, as I say, we'll never hear the words from them admitting they made a mistake, at least the provisions that are in this bill clearly say to us and, more importantly, clearly say to small businesses out there that they have made a mistake and they are trying to fix the problem.

We will have an opportunity, I hope, when this bill goes to committee to actually get into the details of this and to see if they've fixed the problems as they should. But I want to just say at this particular juncture in the debate that I'm happy there are some improvements here.

One of the other major changes in that direction is this cap on increases in taxes for small businesses at 2.5%. It's an interesting way in which the government has gone about doing this, but let's just again remind ourselves and remind people about the background that led to this.

We had a situation in which the government, first of all, put out the initial decisions. Municipality after municipality, certainly my own municipality here in the new city of Toronto, looked at the impacts of this. Small businesses finally began to realize, when they actually began to see the numbers, what many of us had been saying to them over the last year, which is: "Watch out. These changes the Tory government is making are going to hurt you and are going to hurt you big time."

Of course, we realize, as with many things, it isn't until people see the writing in black and white that they actually believe or do not believe what is going on. In this case, it was not very hard for them to see that the new assessment scheme that the government of the day, the Harris government, had wanted to implement and still wants to implement is the market value assessment system, which they call current value assessment. We finally, after a couple of attempts, have had some sense of admission from the government side through the member for Scarborough East that in fact it really is one and the same. Again, it's going contrary to what they said in the election they would do, or a number of them, including the Minister of Municipal Affairs. But here we have it.

Current value assessment, market value assessment, actual value assessment, whatever you want to call it, the scheme that's in place now, if not stopped or reversed by this or future governments, will mean that businesses, small businesses in particular, would get hit big time. They would see huge increases in their property taxes. We're not talking about small increases here of 3%, 4%, or 5%. We're talking about major increases. In fact, on the business side, we would be seeing increases, subject to this 2.5% cap - and I want to come back and talk about this - in the range of, on the average, 175% across the whole commercial sector.

That kind of increase, according to figures here in the city of Toronto, would simply have put many small businesses out of business. I have example after example of small businesses saying to me, as they said to many of us, "It's not just a question of us not wanting to pay these taxes; it's quite simply a question of not being able to." The increase alone in the tax would have been higher for many small businesses than the actual revenue coming into the business.

I kept saying to people, "We told you for a year that this was going to happen." Finally we see the numbers there. What can be done? Will this government listen? My sense all along was that the government had no choice but to listen at the end of the day. The government had no choice, because they could not allow small businesses to go under in this way. Even they, in the worst of their ideological bent, would have had to acknowledge that this would have meant that many small businesses would have gone under. The solution that the government came up with was to cap increases for small businesses at 2.5%.

On that, I want to, on a first level, say that at least it's a step in the right direction. Of course, what it doesn't do - and I have to admit that for many small businesses they have created a huge sense of relief, a huge sense that at least they will be able to manage if that's what they have to deal with. Zero would have been better, but 2.5% they can manage. Of course, it is 2.5% for each of the next three years, so it's not just 2.5%. But then we have to again, as we tried to do before, say to the small businesses and say to the government: "What happens after this three-year period? What happens then?" Who knows?

The only thing that's certain is that three years from now the provincial election will have come and gone. That's about the only certainty. Because no matter when Mike Harris decides to call the election, whether it's this fall, next spring, or whether he decides to go to the full five years, it certainly will be within the next three years. So the one convenient objective that the 2.5% cap for each of the next three years achieves is that it pushes off the big decision to the time after the next election.

One of the things, for example, that I wonder is what's going to actually show up on the property tax bill. Is it going to be the 2.5%? Obviously that will be the increase for municipalities that opt to go into this, and certainly I suspect that the Toronto municipality will do that. A few others might; perhaps many will not. But one of the interesting things will be to see what happens on that tax bill. On a pure application of the legislation, as I understand it, you would have to show, not just the 2.5% - you might want to say, "Well, this is what it is obviously because that's what you have to pay, small business operator, because that's what it is on a 2.5%," but I think in full honesty and in fairness, that bill would also have to show what the tax might otherwise have been.

I certainly want to suggest to municipal councils, as they are doing this, that they could put out that information, not as a way to scare people but as a way to remind people that all we've got here is a temporary solution at best. As I say, in the worst of my thinking, it would be a solution that simply allows Mike Harris to get over the next election, and then we'll see what happens. But that's what we've got. This is a partial solution. It's a solution that gets us beyond the next election. It's a solution that says, "Yes, we'll manage the situation for the next couple of years." And then what?

The other big piece that comes into this and has to be played into this is, "What about the rest of the property taxpayers?" As happy as we are that at least the government is taking some steps to protect small business, what about homeowners?

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To hear again particularly the member for Scarborough East earlier on, you would think that he stands proud, although he stands proud of whatever decision the government makes, whether it's the same as last year's or last month's or completely the opposite of that. He's certainly one who's able to continue to take the line that the government puts out on any particular issue. That's fine. That's his prerogative. That's certainly part of his makeup and his ability, and that's the way it is.

But what about homeowners? Why does it make sense, I want to say to the government members, to provide this protection only to small businesses? Why does it not make sense to provide the same protection to the homeowners who are going to see huge increases in their property taxes?

I want to give some examples. Across the city of Toronto there will be, yes, a majority of people who under the current value assessment scheme will get a decrease, but there is a huge chunk of people, 44%, who will get increases, and not just small increases but major increases of, on average, $600, $700. In fact, those averages translate percentagewise to about 35%.

In fact, even with the phase-in, whether it's here in Toronto or other places - and I realize this is particularly an issue here in Toronto - if a municipality decides to use the full phase-in period of eight years that the legislation allows, they're going to be facing increases of 5%, 6%, 7%, and that's assuming that the overall budget of the municipality will stay what it is today. We know they've decided that for this year, but we don't know what's going to happen next year and the year after. We don't know what's going to happen, and the reason we don't know is because the full impact of the download is yet to be felt out there. While we can all rejoice and be happy about the growth in the economy, I don't know anybody in this room who would really want to make a strong argument that three years from now the economy is going to be continuing to grow as it is growing today.

What if it isn't? Then the only choice municipalities have is to make really major decisions about what services they not only tinker with but really drastically cut, or in order to maintain those services they have to increase property taxes. Who's going to have to pay for those? It's going to be the homeowners who will already have been hit by that time with double-digit increases just to deal with the assessment changes alone and then will have to face even bigger increases to deal with those costs.

To hear some of the members opposite, when we say those things it's fearmongering. They also accused us of fearmongering when we were raising the very same objections around small businesses, and we've been proven right on that. In fact, the government's actions in this bill prove us right on that. The government's actions in this bill tell us very clearly that not only were we right but that many small businesses were right when they realized they were on the brink of extinction and the government simply had to do something.

That remains for us a major concern: Why not provide the same kind of treatment to homeowners that we are providing in this bill to small businesses and to multi-unit residential categories? That to us would seem to make a lot of sense and we'll be pursuing this issue as the bill proceeds from here. I ask the government to seriously consider that as something that would show the same kind of equitable treatment right across that you are prepared to show at least to small businesses. In the same way that small businesses would have been hurt by your actions had you not brought in the provisions that are in this bill, many homeowners will find it impossible, not just difficult, to deal with the increases in the property taxes that will come about as a result of the changes, as a result of the new system.

Tonight, for example, the Toronto city council begins its discussion on this issue in terms of what they are going to do. I expect there will be lots of citizens, both outside Metro Hall and inside Metro Hall, watching and following very attentively what's going on. I certainly plan to be there. I know there have been rallies and other things planned in front of Metro Hall at 7:30 tonight. I think it just shows the concern that's there.

I want to say to the government that they ought not for a second to think that if people aren't expressing their dissatisfaction today, somehow that's an issue that's going to disappear or that somehow people don't feel as strongly about this. I want to remind the government members again that just like on the small business side, when it wasn't until people actually saw the numbers in front of them that the reaction came, in the same way you will see the reaction from homeowners on this.

I don't think the fact that it's going to be during the summer is going to make this issue go away. In fact, it's going to be a hot summer, I say to the members opposite, and it's not just the weather I'm thinking about. It's going to be a hot summer, because that is when people will realize - that's one of the unfortunate things with this, that people will not realize until July, maybe even August, when they get their final tax bill, what's going to happen. But when that happens, believe you me, the reaction will be at least comparable to what we've seen with the small business sector.

Maybe the government will want to wait until then to resolve the problem. Quite frankly, they can take the wiser action now, when this bill goes to committee, and be prepared to make some amendments to resolve the problem that is otherwise going to be there and that is going to continue to be there through the summer and when we come back here in the fall. I say to the government that I hope they will look at that.

At this point I want to mention briefly that in the business occupancy tax we have another very clear example.

Speaker, looking at the time, perhaps I can just leave that for when we resume debate. I'd be happy to pick up at that point.

The Acting Speaker: It being almost 6 o'clock, this House stands adjourned until 6:30 of the clock tonight.

The House adjourned at 1757.

Evening meeting reported in volume B.

May 13, 1998

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES

AIR QUALITY

FISH KINCARDINE SALMON DERBY

FRENCH-LANGUAGE SERVICES SERVICES EN FRANÇAIS

POLICE SERVICES

WELLINGTON COUNTY FESTIVALS

BETHLEHEM PLACE

DAVID SAWCHUK RIDE FOR CAMP TRILLIUM

POLICE SERVICES

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

ROSS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL ACT, 1998

SAFE SCHOOLS ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LA SÉCURITÉ DANS LES ÉCOLES

ORAL QUESTIONS

GAMING REVENUE

TUITION FEES

USER FEES

NURSING STAFF

CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH

YOUNG OFFENDERS

AIR QUALITY

HOSPITAL FUNDING

PHYSICIAN SHORTAGE

CHILDREN'S SERVICES

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

PETITIONS

NURSES' BILL OF RIGHTS

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

CHIROPRACTIC HEALTH CARE

EDUCATION FUNDING

STUDENT ASSISTANCE

HOME CARE

CHARITABLE GAMING

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

REGULATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS

ROAD SAFETY

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SMALL BUSINESS AND CHARITIES PROTECTION ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LA PROTECTION DES PETITES ENTREPRISES ET DES ORGANISMES DE BIENFAISANCE