L016B - Wed 27 May 1998 / Mer 27 Mai 1998 1
The House met at 1830.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
PREVENTION OF UNIONIZATION ACT (ONTARIO WORKS), 1998 / LOI DE 1998 VISANT À EMPÊCHER LA SYNDICALISATION (PROGRAMME ONTARIO AU TRAVAIL)
Mr Carroll moved second reading of the following bill:
Bill 22, An Act to Prevent Unionization with respect to Community Participation under the Ontario Works Act, 1997 / Projet de loi 22, Loi visant à empêcher la syndicalisation en ce qui concerne la participation communautaire visée par la Loi de 1997 sur le programme Ontario au travail.
Mr Jack Carroll (Chatham-Kent): I'm pleased to have the opportunity tonight to lead off the debate on a very important issue, Bill 22. I think it's well to revisit for a moment the idea behind the Ontario Works program. As I have spent my short time in government, one thing I've discovered is that our welfare system as it exists is one that does nothing other than trap people in poverty. There is absolutely no way that living on our welfare system, a person or persons will ever be anything other than poor. As I travel across the province on my latest task dealing with the issue of homelessness, I've found out that the ultimate result of people who are poor was that they ended up on the street. The one thing we were told that most of these people needed more than anything else was some help.
The Ontario Works program is designed to give them that help. It is designed to give them the opportunity to be something other than poor, because as I said before, welfare does nothing other than condemn you to a life of poverty. I'd like to quote from Mike Harris. This quote come from the Toronto Star and was a comment that he made following the throne speech. He said: "I don't think there's anything kind about condemning somebody to a lifelong legacy of welfare. I think that's the unkindest move of all. Wanting to lift people up to the dignity of a job - surely there can be no greater opportunity for us to help people than that." I subscribe strongly to that philosophy that the best thing that we can do for those folks who find themselves at a disadvantage, who find themselves temporarily without work and dependent upon the system, the best thing we can do is to give them the help they need so they can return to a productive lifestyle.
As opposed to the comments of our leader, Premier Harris, we have the comments of Sid Ryan, the head of one of our famous unions in the province. Sid Ryan says that he would fight against expansion of workfare into the private sector. He's quoted as saying: "Mike, just watch us. We're going to go out and we're going to organize people in workfare programs. We're going to make them members of our trade unions." Can you imagine anything more ridiculous than people who are dependent upon the taxpayers of this province to help them out because of a temporary situation in their life being organized by the trade unions, led by people such as Sid Ryan, so that they, while being paid by the taxpayers because they are temporarily in need of assistance, are put in a position where they can go on strike for more taxpayer dollars or for longer holidays? It's hard to imagine anything more ridiculous than that happening in our province.
I'd like to quote also from another famous labour guy a little closer to my riding of Chatham-Kent, and that's Rick Witherspoon, who happens to be the president of the London and District Labour Council. London has been having some problems with the Ontario Works program. I'm quoting from a letter that Mr Witherspoon sent to several -
Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): They begged you not to put the law in.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Gilles E. Morin): Member for London Centre.
Mr Carroll: - sent to several social service agencies and volunteer agencies in the city of London. This particular one is addressed to Community Living London. He starts off by saying:
"Dear Friends:
"As you are aware, many of you will soon be called upon to make some choices due to the introduction of workfare. Agencies will be offered the opportunity to participate in the Tory forced labour system under the guise of community participation. In this regard, we are writing this letter to make a heartfelt appeal but also to issue a frank warning."
Mr Witherspoon goes on to say, "If you participate in workfare, whatever rationalizations you may employ, you're acting as a cop for the Tories."
As opposed to understanding that participation in workfare offers people who need our help an opportunity to rejuvenate their lives, Mr Witherspoon goes about threatening agencies who are in the business of helping people, and because they want to help, Mr Witherspoon thinks it appropriate to threaten them with repercussions. He says at the end of his little diatribe here: "Please reject workfare and work with us to prevent the spread of this vile and abusive system." How in the name of everything that's sacred could anybody look at a system that's designed to assist people in need as a "vile and abusive system"? It's really difficult to understand.
You might be interested in the press's response to Mr Witherspoon because they also picked up on this issue, and I'm going to quote from an editorial in the London Free Press from May 8 headlined, "Labour Out of Line with Bully Tactics."
This editorial says: "Labour was not elected by the people of this province to determine social policy." Isn't that a pretty profound acknowledgement? "Labour's threats to already overstressed local service agencies are an attack on the most vulnerable members in our community."
It goes on to say: "Welfare recipients in Ontario are crying out for opportunities to get into the workforce and off welfare. Matching them up with a social service agency who could use the help and who might give them training and some good work habits makes a lot of sense. The labour council's attempt to deny welfare recipients this opportunity is a huge step out of their bounds."
It's interesting that a program designed to help the working men and ladies of this province who find themselves disadvantaged is criticized by labour and those who want to participate in it are threatened.
Just yesterday it came to my attention in the city of Sarnia, just north of my riding of Chatham-Kent, that a union there threatened to withhold funding from the Heart and Stroke Foundation, a very, very worthwhile foundation that we all are very much aware of and probably many of us participate in, because they were participating and trying to help some people get off the welfare system through the Ontario Works program. Incredible in this day and age that the trade union movement would be so narrow-minded.
I'd like to contrast that with what's happening in my particular riding. I would say that in the city of London, by a quote in the paper, they've had a very difficult time meeting their objective of the number of folks who should be involved in community participation because of the threats from organized labour.
In my community of Chatham-Kent where organized labour has been much more responsible and in fact has taken a laissez-faire attitude and has understood the importance of us helping people who need our help, we in Chatham have had over 500 people involved in community placements. We've had some wonderful experiences of people getting training on a job and moving on to paid employment.
We actually focus the program two ways: We look at folks and ask what are their needs and what are their skills and the people in the social services department go out and find a meaningful placement for those folks. The other side is, they have agencies coming forward with meaningful placements and then they match some folks who are on welfare to those placements.
1840
We have had some wonderful experiences. I had an opportunity recently to visit Rondeau park, one of our fine provincial parks that's located in the south end of Kent county, and Rondeau park has about a dozen Ontario Works participants working there. I talked with several of them but the one who impressed me the most was a young single mom who had been working at the park for about two months. She actually had had a fair bit of school training in horticulture and had not been able to find work because she had some personal issues she was dealing with.
She was now working in the entranceway to Rondeau park and was getting some additional training on computers. According to the people who were working with her, her whole life had changed dramatically as the result of somebody saying to her, "We're going to give you an opportunity to help yourself to get out of that terrible life that you've been living because of the fact that you were trapped in the welfare system." This girl had nothing but glowing, positive comments.
In addition to that, I have several other quotes from different people across the province involved in the program. "I get references on my résumé that I wouldn't have had," said one. We all know how important résumés are when it comes to finding meaningful employment. Another one told us, "It's a good way to get out and get more job experience."
It's easy to get trapped. If you get caught sitting at home, it's easy after a very short period of time to understand, "Maybe all I am capable of doing is sitting at home." We need to offer people the opportunity to get out and to assist and help themselves.
Another quote: "I think workfare has given me the go-ahead to do what I've learned." Finally, "I have a brighter outlook on my future."
There are hundreds of examples across the province of people who have taken advantage of the opportunity and of agencies that have provided the opportunity. We've put the two together and we've had some remarkable success stories of the benefits of Ontario Works.
These are real-life stories, the positive experiences from people who were trapped in that cycle of welfare dependency, and they can now see that they have a brighter future thanks to Ontario Works.
The other side of the issue, of course, is we must have an economy in our province that is generating new private sector jobs that will allow people who get the training through Ontario Works to find some meaningful employment so they can become taxpaying citizens.
Taxpayers have told us that they want welfare to offer real assistance to people. They don't want it to become a way of life. They have told us they want to see people get off welfare and into jobs as soon as possible.
This government will not stand by and allow labour leaders to stop people from getting this valuable experience. We will not allow the organized labour movement in this province to dash the hopes of people on Ontario Works.
Bill 22, if passed, would provide that the Labour Relations Act, 1995, does not apply with respect to participants in a community participation activity under the Ontario Works Act. Its purpose would be to prevent those participants from unionizing or striking. Individuals participating in community placements would continue to have, as they should have and are very much entitled to, basic health and safety protections. Everyone in the province is entitled to those.
We promised major reform to Ontario's welfare system. We are following through on that commitment, and three principles have guided us through this process of change: fairness, accountability and effectiveness.
Social programs must be fair to the recipient and to the taxpayer who's paying the bill. A mutual and interlocking set of accountabilities must apply. Ontario Works participants are accountable for their own efforts to become self-reliant and to join or rejoin the workforce. Government is accountable to the taxpayers and to those for whom the programs are designed.
Ontario Works is aimed at creating critical links between welfare recipients and employment, and that is because, as I stated at the beginning, staying on welfare does nothing other than condemn a person to abject poverty their entire life. The only hope to improve the quality of life for those people who find themselves on welfare is through employment, the only option.
The program, Ontario Works, has three key elements: community participation, employment supports and employment placements. It provides access to work experience, job search, basic education, job-specific skills training and referrals to job placements. It also provides financial assistance to people in need.
Community participation is a fundamental element of Ontario Works. Community placements provide welfare recipients with the opportunity to contribute to their communities, acquire skills, gain valuable work experience and make contacts for future employment. This is what we are trying to protect.
Ontario Works is now in place across the province. It's making welfare work. More than 273,000 people have participated in one or more of the program's three activities. Already we have seen an unprecedented decline in the number of people on welfare in this province. Over a quarter of a million people, 250,000 people, have moved off welfare since June 1995, partially due to an improving economy, partially due to the efforts of the Ontario Works program.
This bill will be another step in our plan for welfare reform. By protecting the integrity of Ontario Works, it would enable the full benefits of our welfare reform to be achieved for those on welfare who want to escape its cycle of dependency and for the taxpayers who pay for the system.
Ontario Works restores the welfare system to its original purpose: a transitional program of last resort that provides people on welfare with a stepping stone back into the workforce.
Some critics have falsely claimed that workfare would displace people in paid jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the beginning we have stated very clearly that the Ontario Works guidelines would prevent this. Ontario Works placements will not displace people in paid jobs.
It's very hard to understand why union leaders want to torpedo this program. I can't understand why they are threatening community agencies with picketing and with the withdrawal of donations if these agencies participate in a program that is designed to assist people trapped in the welfare system. Instead of trying to sabotage this successful program, why won't unions work with the agencies and devote their energies to helping people help themselves?
It's interesting: Every person who could move from the welfare system into paid employment would then necessarily be eligible to become a member of a trade union. I fail to understand why it wouldn't be in the best interests of our trade union movement to say, "We're going to assist the government to assist these agencies to help these folks get the training and the opportunity they need to join the workforce where they can then become full taxpaying members of society," and then possibly the unions would have some more folks that they could go out and try to unionize. To me that would just make sense and be good for business. I fail to understand why they do not approach it in that kind of a sensible way.
Union opposition will not deflect us from our goal of helping people get back to work. We believe honestly that people are better off working. I cannot imagine that our members opposite do not feel the same way. There is no better way to assist the people who are trapped in the welfare system, some of them for many years, to get back to work than through the benefits of Ontario Works where they get an opportunity to improve their skills, to network with some people, to get some additional opportunities to put on their résumé - no better way than we've come up with or that anybody else has come up with to assist those folks.
The net result of the passage of Bill 22, should that occur in this Legislature, is that we would avoid the absolutely ridiculous situation of those persons who are being paid by the taxpayers because they find themselves temporarily indisposed going on strike to increase the amount of money they get from the taxpayers or to increase their vacation time. This bill, if passed, would prevent that ridiculous situation from happening.
1850
I would hope that the trade union movement would somewhere, in its wisdom, in the near future remember its original concept, and that was to help people, to help the working men to improve their lot. That was the original concept of the trade union movement, and I don't know how that possibly jibes with the fact that they now think it is in their mandate to threaten social service agencies that are intent on helping the working man who finds himself indisposed to get back to work. I do not understand how the trade union leaders of today, the Sid Ryans of today, can square the mandate of trade unionism to help the working man with their total resistance and opposition and, quite frankly, threatening of the Ontario Works program that will do nothing other than help people help themselves get back to work.
It will be my pleasure to support Bill 22.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments?
Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): Twice the member referred to ridiculous situations. I'll tell you, it's a ridiculous situation that we're even discussing this bill here tonight. I think the people of Ontario ought to be reminded that one of the reasons that this one-page bill is before us tonight is the fact that the members of the government caucus were asleep at the time when a particular section was called in the original workfare bill that dealt with the section we're dealing with now. You may recall they didn't put up their hands. They were asleep. There was quite a story about this at the time. I don't think the parliamentary assistant himself put up his hand at the time. It's another case of the government simply not knowing what it's doing, being totally unprepared, having to call a bill over and over again. The minister is shaking his head, but he knows I am right.
The thing I really find amazing about all this is the fact that when you think back on what this government has done over the last three years, it all comes down to attacking groups of people in our society. It started with the attack on the people on welfare by cutting their benefits, and then we went to the OPSEU workers who work for the government, and then they attacked the firefighters. You may recall that. Then, after that, there were the nurses, and who can ever forget the teachers? Now it's the union bosses.
There are some good union bosses and there are some bad union bosses, just like there are some good people and some bad people in the world, and to listen to a speech like that from a parliamentary assistant of a government that is supposed to unite the people of Ontario I think is shameful. I cannot understand why this government can't get it through their heads that eventually they're not going to win by -
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Further questions or comments? The member for London Centre.
Mrs Boyd: It's always a pleasure to have an opportunity to comment on the speeches of the member for Chatham-Kent, particularly when he adds such gasoline to the fire that's already burning in so many people around this unjust law.
The member talks about not having any idea why organized labour would in any way oppose this program and makes the assumption that they somehow resent people coming off welfare and having jobs. That's not the issue. What they resent is that this government is forcing people, is creating a system of slave labour, in order for people to get the basic necessities of life, a very different prospect.
The member talks proudly of this young woman at the gate of Rondeau Provincial Park. Who used to be at the gate? Who used to earn dollars? Who used to have a job that was a real job guarding that gate at Rondeau Provincial Park? Why wouldn't organized labour oppose a scheme that is designed to create an underclass of people who are forced to work for whatever the government chooses to hand out from time to time, without having any real opportunity to seek real jobs?
If the member were so concerned about young women like the woman he talked about getting ahead, he wouldn't have made it impossible for these young women to get adult education in their communities. He wouldn't have made it impossible for them to go to college and university because they would have to fund it all out of OSAP loans and go into debt as opposed to being able to get that training as they used to, with dignity, under the family benefits plan. The member is simply carrying out his government's anti-labour, anti-vulnerable program to create a permanent underclass of people in this province.
Mr Doug Galt (Northumberland): I'd certainly like to lead off by complimenting the member for Chatham-Kent for just an excellent presentation, excellent content. We're talking about a bill that we find is necessary to bring in, but it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be if the unions and the attitudes -
Mr Gerretsen: Yes, because you bungled it the first time.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Kingston and The Islands, you had your turn.
Mr Galt: - of the third party weren't such as they are, we wouldn't have to be bringing in this kind of legislation. It's hard to believe that it's necessary, but it's only in Ontario that this could possibly be.
I listen to the member for Kingston and The Islands and some of his comments and, wow, when did the welfare rates increase the most? It was in the good times in the 1980s. That's when it was really going up. Why? Look at the amount you were paying and the kind of response that the public -
Mr Gerretsen: Yeah, sure. You were getting rich on it.
Mr Galt: - and so they ended up, it was better to be on welfare than out taking minimum wage or working. Why do we bring 10,000 people a year into this province to help with the crops? Because of the kinds of things that your government did, it ended up that people felt more comfortable being on welfare.
Mrs Boyd: Nobody's comfortable on welfare.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr Galt: The member for Chatham-Kent was talking about the fairness and accountability and the effectiveness of this program. I couldn't agree more on the fairness of trying to help people out of that trap of welfare and getting out into a job -
Interjection.
The Acting Speaker: Order.
Mr Galt: - that's accountable to society and to the community. It provides that hope, the opportunity that people want, and the opportunity for them to have some growth in their community and within their inner self. No one is happy - at least no one should be, and I don't think anyone is - being at home on welfare wherever. People feel so much better being out. The program of Ontario Works is the kind of program that's making this happen.
M. Jean-Marc Lalonde (Prescott et Russell) : C'est avec plaisir que je viens répondre aux propos de notre collègue de Chatham-Kent. Je crois que ça devrait être laissé à l'individu, s'il veut adhérer à un syndicat ou non. L'individu devrait avoir le choix ; d'après tous, nous sommes dans un pays démocratique. C'est la démocratie. Lorsqu'un employé veut contribuer à un système, s'il veut contribuer au système de syndicalisation, le projet de loi dit : «Loi visant à empêcher la syndicalisation en ce qui concerne la participation communautaire visée par la Loi de 1997 sur le programme Ontario au travail».
Je crois que c'était facile pour encourager les gens à retourner au travail. Nous n'avions seulement qu'avoir un «incentive» comme nous l'avons actuellement dans le système de la section 25 d'emploi, des personnes sans emploi sous le programme d'assurance-chômage. Actuellement, nous avons essayé de les remettre sur le marché du travail, les gens qui sont bénéficiaires du bien-être. Mais jamais, jamais sommes-nous arrivés à dire : «Nous allons te donner tant plus que 520 $ par mois si tu veux participer au programme.» Il faut s'assurer qu'avec ce programme, il y a de grands dangers que les personnes qui vont se joindre au programme Ontario au travail prennent la place des étudiants.
L'été s'en vient à grands pas. Les étudiants qui sortent de l'université, nous savons que leurs frais d'initiation augmentent à tous les ans, et aujourd'hui, ces étudiants ont besoin du travail pour payer leurs études. Mais, avec le programme que vous allez mettre sur pied, non seulement vont-ils être dictés : «Vous ne pouvez pas vous joindre à un syndicat», maintenant, est-ce qu'il est possible qu'ils vont prendre la place des étudiants qui doivent défrayer leurs études à l'université ?
Donc, ce sont les points que je veux aborder.
1900
Mr Carroll: I appreciate the comments from the members for Kingston and The Islands, London Centre, Northumberland and Prescott and Russell, if I could just address some.
The member for Kingston and The Islands talked about - I'm not really sure what he said actually - but he talked about us constantly attacking people. He basically would give the same comment on whatever speech we gave over here. He talks about us attacking people, and I guess the only people we're attacking are those who would stand in the way of the poor who are trapped in a welfare system getting some help. I think it's okay for a government elected to serve the people of Ontario to attack people who would stand in the way of those who do not want to help the poor.
It's always interesting to hear the comments of the member for London Centre. I know her heart is in the right place. She and I disagree obviously on how we get to the end result, but I think we both want to get to the same place.
She talked about a scheme designed to create an underclass of people. My God, I think we have one now. What we're trying to do is take that group of people who find themselves in that position and elevate them to a more meaningful lifestyle. I think that is a worthwhile objective. I believe she understands the objective. We disagree on the means and we will continue to disagree. Our system, I believe, is working. We inherited a system from her government that had one out of every eight people in this province trapped on welfare. Their answer obviously didn't work.
The member for Prescott and Russell made reference to the fact that we're taking jobs away from students. I have heard recently that in Toronto there are an awful lot of summer jobs for students. I know down in my part of the country there are lots of summer jobs for students. In the Leamington area they can't find people to work in the greenhouses because they don't have any people to work. There are lots of jobs available out there.
Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): Mr Speaker, I would like to request unanimous consent to defer our leadoff speaker.
The Acting Speaker: Is there unanimous consent? Agreed.
Mr Patten: I am pleased to join in the debate tonight. As has already been pointed out, the bill is one page and it's one page in the form of a new bill because the government side at committee, as has already been pointed out by my friend from Kingston and The Islands, was asleep at the switch and didn't put in the clause at that particular point, so here we are.
What this does, though, is point out a pattern. The pattern is that this is unfortunately another way in which this government practises its politics of division. The government, in my opinion, is exploiting the sentiment held by certain members of the public who have been led to believe that unions are the root cause of anything that is wrong in our economy or anything that is wrong in our social fabric.
In this particular instance, the government's legislation seeks to insinuate that unions are somehow not in favour of people getting into the workforce, nor are they in favour of people getting off welfare. I would suggest that the contrary would be true.
But a few basic questions come to mind when I read the bill, which doesn't take very long because it's a very short bill, as you know, and there really is only one section in it that is the heart of it. Will this legislation prevent people from openly associating? Why is the government acting in such a negative and confrontational manner?
I quote from the heart of the bill: "...no person shall do any of the following with respect to his or her participation in a community participation activity." The wording and the tone of the legislation suggest that the provincial government is dispensing with the deeply held and long-held beliefs of the majority of Canadians, as well as people who cherish the democratic principles around the world.
The first part of what I am going to say is in response to my responsibilities as the human rights critic. I know that all members have a concern for that, and we have heard indeed on the government side Minister Bassett who in December of last year dedicated that 1998 would be a time for "reflection, education and re-dedication." Of course, she was speaking on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Why then does the government bring in this legislation which does so much to perhaps threaten the rights that it acknowledges? There may be a legal technicality here where in fact the bill is fine, but it's a slippery slope when we begin to take away rights that are really universal.
Let me say a few words about human rights as defined by that great document and by our own Canadian Constitution. I'd like to quote Professor Roy Adams of McMaster University. This was actually in last Friday's newspaper on the topic of freedom of association:
"Its status as a basic human right was reaffirmed in the covenants of the United Nations adopted in the 1960s. It is referred to as a fundamental democratic right in the constitution of the International Labour Organization, which is the UN agency that deals with labour. It recently received additional reaffirmation and support in the Vienna Declaration of the World Conference on Human Rights, which was signed by the representatives of over 170 countries in 1993. It has been recognized as a fundamental right by such diverse international organizations as the World Trade Organization, the International Organization of Employers and by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development."
This is what Dr Adams had to say. But note the endorsement of freedom of association and assembly as a basic right by the WTO and the OECD, both of whom are trade-oriented and market-encouraging organizations. It cannot be argued that it is just the UN and its affiliates that encourage this particular principle.
Furthermore, it is a right which is firmly entrenched in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in section 2:
"Fundamental freedoms:
"(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
"(d) freedom of association."
Those are two of the four listed fundamental freedoms in the charter within our Canadian Constitution.
I propose to you today that this legislation may be in contravention of both the spirit and the substance of these basic democratic frameworks. It's a negative and a mean-spirited bill that I believe discourages the participatory ideals certainly that we as Liberals hold dear and hopefully all members of this Legislature hold dear.
My caution of course on the human rights side is that it comes so close to the right and freedom of assembly. What would happen if some - and I can't really imagine this happening frankly because of the nature of the people who are in these work situations, struggling to try and get ahead. There are many single mothers who are struggling to keep their children healthy and fit and managing a home front at the same time. I can't imagine them looking at ways in which across the province they might want to get together with others and whether indeed they would qualify, even under existing arrangements, to join a union in their particular area, because they're not permanent staff, they're temporary, they're in a training mode, some are part-time and this sort of thing.
I want to say that as Liberals we fundamentally oppose what we believe is an intent to be undemocratic, which further attacks mainly the poor or those people who are caught in a poor circumstance in this province and unions as well.
Our leader, Dalton McGuinty, in his response to Minister Ecker's introduction of this bill said, "The minister and the other members of her government are suffering from a terrible dearth of positive public ideas." Then he went on to provide some examples that our party has been working on, a document called First Steps, and indeed had offered this to the minister as some positive steps that could be taken in order to address the real root causes of the situation in which people find themselves when they're unemployed.
I'd also like to quote Dalton McGuinty from the throne speech debate when he said: "...what this tells us" - and he's referring to the response of the government to many cutbacks that affect poor children and affect people who are on welfare - "is that Mike Harris somehow thinks that the poor are different from the rest of us. What he doesn't get is that but for fate, we would be the poor and they would be us; but for fate, we would be the disabled and they would be us; but for fate, we would be the sick and they would be us; we would be the homeless and they would be us, and so on and so on. The people of this province didn't elect the Premier just for the healthy and the wealthy. He was elected as a Premier for all Ontarians."
1910
I agree with that. It seems to me that the government, not just with this, but it seems to be a point in a pattern, has contributed to a climate of confrontation with labour, from making replacement workers illegal, to cutting benefits to injured workers, to attempting to give sweeping powers that would override long-standing labour negotiation rights for workers affected by amalgamations of our school boards, municipalities and hospitals. Of course, that was Bill 136 that was brought in earlier last year.
This government, it seems to me, is anti-worker - the cancellation of the employee wage protection program - since employees are far down the scale on the list of creditors after bankruptcies. Employees have almost no chance of recovering lost wages. They will go on to other systems, such as employment insurance, and if that runs out, then of course they will be stuck on welfare and perhaps even workfare.
From that standpoint, is it a wise investment to not provide initial opportunities for some resources when people are not paid due wages? We can make sure that they will pay the big banks who are making billions of dollars, but some poor workers who are due past wages are at the end of the line. We want to do something about that.
The government is ignoring the significant problems on the economic and social fronts and the tremendous changes that take place. We've got tremendous changes in our economy now that we haven't had before, with the new information age, with the new service emphasis, with the impact of economic globalization. It's a whole economy we have to come at, helping people get out of unemployment in a completely different manner. So we need to be creative. This isn't creative; this is punitive.
The quality of life index in Ontario in 1997, prepared by the Ontario Social Development Council and the Social Planning Network of Ontario - this was just last week; I'm sure you have read the articles - indicates significant impacts and in fact suggests that our standard of living, as most people will know, shows a drop here in Ontario. That's most unfortunate.
I want to spend a moment comparing with other jurisdictions on this whole area of workfare and what is the record. It seems to me the record is in dire need of improvement, because it is surely wanting. I've been doing some homework on this and I'll share with you what I've discovered. We've looked at comparisons with other jurisdictions and I'd like to quote an article in the New York Times, April 15, about New York's workfare program. The mayor of New York said his workfare program has played the central part in the dramatic reduction of New York City's welfare rolls. We hear this wherever there's a workfare program. The numbers he cites are stark and indisputable.
Quoting from the article: "The rolls have dropped more than 30% in the last three years, to 797,000 from 1.16 million." Imagine that. "But an examination of workfare shows that the program's role in that decline often has little to do with offering a route into the job market. In many ways, workfare has become welfare's back door, allowing the city to trim thousands of people from its welfare rolls each month for violating its work rules.
"In the first eight months of 1997, about 16% of workfare participants - or an average of 61,000 out of 36,000 people each month - were cut from the rolls for infractions that ranged from showing up late to refusing a work assignment."
"Now, there's no question that some who leave welfare do get real jobs, but available evidence indicates that they make up a small fraction. A recent state survey found that fewer than a third make more than $100 on the books in the first three months after leaving the rolls. The survey did not distinguish between full- and part-time jobs, nor did it take into account people who were working off the books, were self-employed" or who maybe even moved out of New York state itself.
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton): What's wrong with being self-employed?
Mr Patten: Nothing wrong with that. I think that's great. I'm talking about the appropriate development and the accounting of statistics.
One of the comments that was made was that "It's like musical chairs where there are nine chairs but 12 people." As Liz Krueger, who is the director of the Nonprofit Community Food Resource Center, said, "The real number of people needing welfare is still 12, but the caseload is only nine."
Further from an article on April 13 in the New York Times, and I'll address this as a concern for those who are saying there is a replacement for employment - the member for Chatham-Kent raised this question and I'd like to address it:
"By filling a spectrum of jobs - from feeding hospital patients to painting park benches to translating at welfare centers - workfare participants have quietly become an important, but unofficial, part of New York City's municipal workforce.
"These unheralded workers do much of the grunt work that makes city government run. Workfare participants and welfare experts say many New Yorkers fail to understand a significant fact about the program: the 34,000 people in the city's Work Experience Program constitute a low-cost labor force that does a substantial amount of the work that had been done by municipal employees before" - the mayor - "reduced the city payroll by about 20,000 employees, or about 10%."
There's one piece of direct evidence that suggests that this is in fact a replacement in some instances. It's not all one thing and it's not all the other, but as you piece the whole picture together the evidence suggests that there are not very good results.
I would like to point out in Wisconsin, for example, which I know the Minister of Community and Social Services is often anxious to point out, some of workfare's main features: that benefits on the workfare program don't adjust to the size of the family; that high copayments for child care push people into informal and inadequate babysitting; that even though a single parent must work when the child reaches 12 weeks of age, there is a nine-month waiting list for infant child care.
"In 1997," with stated stats from Wisconsin of low unemployment, "participants were left in deep poverty; the average hourly wage for those in private jobs was $5.65, and little more than half had full-time jobs. Only one in six participants had private health insurance" as well with a very poor safety net.
Another startling statistic: "Since its implementation as of September 1997, homelessness, shelter use and food aid are all up dramatically and the number of children from welfare families entering foster care increased by 60%."
So you have to take a look at the whole picture, I would suggest.
"There have been numerous complaints on the performance of the companies that run welfare" on improperly terminating families and people.
"`Learnfare' was a dismal failure: It required high school students to attend special classes. After one year, 47% of in-school youth dropped out of school completely." That was great.
"Those who left welfare for work got very low-paying jobs: 75% lost their jobs after one year, only 14% of jobs paid full-time wages, and 4% of jobs paid wages that would support a family" - 4%.
"Only 16% of single parents who left welfare in 1996 had earnings above the poverty line and 34% had no earnings."
I've only got a few minutes so I'd like to point out -
Mr Gerretsen: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The member for Ottawa Centre makes such an excellent speech that I think we ought to have a quorum in the House, and there's not a quorum present right now.
The Acting Speaker: Would you please check if we have a quorum.
Clerk Assistant (Ms Deborah Deller): A quorum is not present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
1920
Clerk Assistant: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Ottawa Centre.
Mr Patten: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.
After having done a review, done a comparison, having looked at a lot of workfare programs, I'd like us to place things on the basis of data: good research, objective data. Let's bring that to the House and let's look at it. We get all these partisan comments back and forth, and perhaps all parties engage in this kind of discussion, but I'd like to see what the record shows. How successful is this program? What do the data suggest? What is the success rate of finding full-time employment and meaningful employment in the program throughout Ontario?
One thing I would say is that the characteristics of successful work programs suggest that they have to be long term; they have to be related to long-term skill development and education, not just short-term training and fast-tracking entry into any jobs. These programs cost more but the successful programs that we were able to analyse out of Oregon, Chicago and Oklahoma show they are far more successful and therefore in the long term are far less costly to our society and far richer for those who find employment as a result.
In summary, to successfully get people on welfare into the workforce, the government must implement innovative economic and labour market strategies, invest in long-term skill development training and basic adult education, invest in regulated high-quality child care, invest in job counselling and job support programs.
Ontario Works lacks all of these characteristics, I suggest, and there are others. People do not need to be mandated to take advantage of genuine opportunities when they're available and when they are offered. I believe this bill does not add to the climate and the support and the spirit of people who are looking for ways to get out of being unemployed.
The Acting Speaker: Questions or comments? The member for London Centre.
Mrs Boyd: It's a pleasure to comment on the discussion of the member for Ottawa Centre, who quite clearly understands why the actions that the government is taking are absolutely counter to the notion of empowerment of the people being affected by these actions.
The government has taken an attitude that it knows best, that it must force people to seek out the best course to become self-reliant and independent, and they have chosen to make a mandatory program and they have chosen with this bill to block any attempt of those who are forced to participate under the mandatory program to gain any kind of control over their own destiny.
We do not make people independent by taking away their independence, taking away their ability to make choices, taking away their ability to learn the things they need to know in order to improve their lot. Yet that is exactly what this government has done in bill after bill.
In this bill what they are doing is trying to prevent those who are being coerced by the government under a mandatory program from being able to take collective action to protect health and safety concerns, any concerns around the working conditions, any concerns around the way in which tasks are assigned, any ability to counter any abuses that they may find while in that work. There's no protection for people under this program from abuses by those employers to whom they are being sent. Of course that would be even worse if this government extends it to the private sector, which we fully expect.
Mr Galt: It's certainly interesting to listen to the member for Ottawa Centre and his comments about this very thin bill. He complained there wasn't enough paper there. Then we have a bill that has 100 pages or so and they complain it's a mega-bill. It's just hard to come in and make them happy.
I notice he talked a lot about rights, and I think that was an excellent point that he was making. We're thinking about the rights of these people who are trying to find work. We're thinking about the rights of organizations like the Heart and Stroke Foundation when unions are trying to keep funds from going to them just because they're trying to help people find work. We're thinking about the rights of the United Way that unions have regularly threatened because they're trying to help people find work.
I noticed he also made reference to quotes and their leader, Dalton McGuinty. You notice he didn't make any reference to "mandatory opportunity" that their party talked about in the famous red book in the last campaign. I never did get an explanation of what "mandatory opportunity" stood for and I look forward to that from the member for Ottawa Centre when he gets his chance for the two-minute response, because I still don't understand what "mandatory opportunity" stands for.
He talked a bit about being anti-worker. I can't imagine this being anti-worker. This is very pro-worker, and particularly when during the term so far we've created approximately 400,000 net new jobs, I'm told, just a record with the kinds of net new jobs that are coming into this province.
He also was quoting a lot from American statistics. I'm quite surprised that a member of the Liberal Party would be quoting American statistics, because every time we mention it, "Oh, that's way to the right and that's not the kind of thing you should be recognizing." They're very anti-American. Lo and behold, here's the member for Ottawa Centre quoting American statistics.
Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): Mr Speaker, on a point of order: Yesterday I made a grave error.
The Acting Speaker: Restart the clock, please.
Mr Preston: Regardless of the fact and regardless of my thoughts, I said that there should be people throwing peanuts to the opposition. Regardless of the fact, that was unparliamentary and I would like to apologize for it.
The Acting Speaker: Okay.
Mr Alex Cullen (Ottawa West): That was an interesting intervention from the member opposite, but I'm here to commend the member for Ottawa Centre for his very perceptive comments on this bill. I have to say that the member for Ottawa Centre, in my view, was extremely restrained -
Hon Margaret Marland (Minister without Portfolio [children's issues]): What were you here for yesterday?
The Acting Speaker: Minister.
Mr Cullen: - in his comments with respect to how repugnant this bill is to some of the fundamental rights and principles that we hold in this House.
I cannot believe that yesterday we were talking about national unity but today you want to create two classes of Canadians. You want to deny ordinary Canadians, through no fault of their own, who happen to be -
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order. It's his turn.
Hon Mrs Marland: But what gall. He was not here speaking about Canadian unity.
The Acting Speaker: Minister, please.
Mr Cullen: What this bill says is, "No person shall do any of the following with respect to his or her participation in" the Ontario Works "community participation activity:
"1. Join a trade union." Why can every other Canadian - why can lawyers do it and doctors do it and journalists do it and firemen do it and engineers do it, but the poor cannot?
"2. Have the terms and conditions under which he or she participates determined through collective bargaining." Why not?
"3. Strike." And then to forbid them the right to strike? It is farcical to expect that people in poverty, if they take it upon themselves to say, "We won't take the very cheque that supports our family," this government says: "Oh no, we'll put you in jail. It is illegal." "Oh, please, give me that nice warm home. Please give me those three squares a day."
It is ridiculous what this government is setting up, saying it's illegal for the poor to go on strike. Listen to yourselves. Listen to how you offend the charter, how you say that the poor cannot do what the rest of us can do. And you have the gall to talk about -
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. Your time has expired.
1930
Mr Peter Kormos (Welland-Thorold): This is but a two-minute response to the comments made by Mr Patten, but after Mr Patten replies in his two minutes - in about four minutes' time; here we are at 7:30 - I will be addressing this bill for a good chunk of time here in the Legislature and I look forward to the chance.
Somebody made reference to the blessed briefness of the bill, but I tell you it's a nasty bit of business in its brevity. It's pretty straightforward. There are no hidden messages here. This is as blunt and bold and clear an attack on Canadians and Ontarians as could ever be committed. I talked about this as being one of the most repugnant, vilest, foulest things to cross this Legislature in two and a half years, and I stand by it.
After the two-minute response by Mr Patten, I'm going to be speaking to the bill. I'm going to have a chance to talk about the St Catharines Standard and the workers who are on strike there, because that's very much relevant to the bill. I'm going to talk about the St Catharines Standard strike and the 31 workers there who have been forced for the first time in the St Catharines Standard's history out on to the streets.
I'm going to be talking about the meeting I attended last night with the Welland District Boy Scout Council and their leadership, because that's relevant to the legislation.
I'm going to be talking once again, as I have before in this Legislature, about the Crowland relief workers' strike, which is being revived again. Those dirty days of the Dirty Thirties and Mitch Hepburn and his hussars are being returned to Ontario after decades of workers' struggles to gain some modest rights to organize, to collectively bargain and indeed to strike.
I'll be talking about those things in the context of Bill 22, about some of the people down in Welland-Thorold and what they have told me about Bill 22 and workfare, and I will be looking forward to it. That will be in two minutes' time.
The Acting Speaker: Member for Ottawa Centre, you have two minutes.
Mr Patten: I will begin in the reverse order. I want to thank the member for Welland-Thorold for his advertisement and for pointing out the significance of this tiny bill, the major point that it makes in that it just kind of points its finger in the stomach of some of the unions.
My friend from Ottawa West, who is a fiery and eloquent speaker, talked about the potential for developing two classes of citizens here, and I think if you take a close look at it, he would certainly be looking in the right direction.
My colleague from London Centre makes an extremely important point. It's a fundamental proposition or principle of human relations that you don't help people become independent and self-reliant by taking away their independence and by exercising punitive, mean-spirited elements. That doesn't uphold a sense of dignity.
I say to my friend from Northumberland, who mentioned that this was there in order to support workers, that it doesn't. What we know about human relations is simple. It is that you provide growth in a person by nurturing, by supporting, by providing opportunities, by encouraging, by assisting truly and recognizing the dignity in every single human being. What this does is assume the worst of people. It assumes people are trying to take advantage of a program. I do not believe, and I think most members do not believe, that is the case.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate? Member for Welland-Thorold.
Interjections: Hear, hear.
Mr Kormos: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
I look forward to the chance to speak to this. As I say, it's as brief a bit of legislation as we have seen come through here, but at the same time - the bill is going to pass. Let me tell the Tory members here, the bill is going to pass. Bill 22 is going to become legislation. I have no hesitation whatsoever in anticipating that. I have no difficulty in telling you that.
We have only had second reading debate. There has been but one Conservative government member speak to it, but one Liberal member and now myself. Notwithstanding what will consist of 90 minutes of debate all said and done, the bill is going to pass, not because it's the right thing to do, not because it's fair, not because it's just, not even because it's politically wise, but because we've got a government here, and it's a majority government - my God, I've known that; I'm as sensitive to that as anybody could be - and when it whips its troops into line, they'll do what they are told rather than what they think is right. They'll vote for it down to the last member.
In that final observation, I hope I'm wrong. I would be more than pleased, and I will look forward to being able to stand up in this Legislature and apologize for suggesting that every single member of the government caucus will support this bill just because they were told to. I will look forward to apologizing to the Conservative backbenchers who stand up and say, "No, I believe in something far more profound with regard to basic human dignity and human rights than what this bill represents."
Let's go back. We know the history of the bill. Speaker, you'll recall that. As a matter of fact, it was Ms Lankin sitting in on the committee. They were doing clause-by-clause. There was a narcoleptic member of the Tory caucus who had, well, nodded off for a few minutes, and the section that dealt with exemption of workfare captives from the Employment Standards Act didn't get passed. This member from - Mrs Boyd, the narcoleptic member borders on your riding.
Mrs Boyd: Yes, London South.
Mr Kormos: This member for London South nodded all through it, and it was only after a sharp nudge to the ribs that left him in pain for a good 36 hours afterwards and had him crying foul about the -
Interjections.
Mr Kormos: Listen, it was a sight to behold, because all Hades broke loose, let me tell you. It was: "You won't believe what we just did. We blew it. We screwed up the exemption of workfare captives from the Employment Standards Act."
Here we go again, more cleanup. It's like a little bit of Cafon Court, déjà vu all over again, right? So we knew some Cafon Court cleanup was in order. We knew that.
But let me tell you, and to you, the parliamentary assistant, this goes well beyond rectifying the error generated by the narcoleptic London South backbencher. This goes far beyond rectifying that brief lapse in attention. Look, we understand people make mistakes. I have made one or two in my life -one or two that I'll admit to. I understand. People make mistakes, and if you come clean about it and you say, "Look, we screwed up; let's try to correct it," that could have happened.
At the end of the day, I suspect, and I'll test my colleagues here, but I suspect that if the minister, Ms Ecker, had stood up and merely said, "Look, you folks know what happened in committee. Ms Lankin got them" -it was a matter of gotcha - Ms Lankin would have suppressed her Cheshire grin and she would have taken the upper road, and I'm sure there would have been virtual consent to a mere correction of the error made by the member for London South by virtue not of his physical absence but his intellectual absence for the briefest of moments. I'm sure we would have consented to it. I mean, you can't test history that way, but I'm sure all the opposition parties would have said: "Oh, sure, okay. Get it through first, second and third reading. We know it's going to happen anyway."
But this goes far beyond merely correcting the error that was made by the government backbenchers when they screwed up big time. God, they blew it, they really messed up when you think about it, all the work that they generated - and they talk about being efficient and saving money. Their backroom people had to scurry and scramble. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that their backroom people don't dare suggest, "We deserve a little bit of overtime," and I know they work hard for very little pay. Some of them suspect that they're workfare participants because they suspect they don't have a right to unionize or organize either. I'll bet you the mere mention of a union among Tory staffers would result in the biggest purge you saw since the days of Stalin. No two ways about it: There would be purging. The Cossacks would be riding through, whipping those hard-pressed, underpaid employees into shape in short order.
1940
This goes far beyond a mere correction of the error made in committee by those Tory backbenchers. This doesn't just say what the original bill would have told us, that workfare participants are exempt from the Employment Standards Act. I tell you, this very brief bill - it's one and an eighth pages long. That's it. One and an eighth. This briefest of bills speaks volumes about this government's plans for the future of this province, for the future of the poorest in this province and for the future of the rights of working women and men.
I don't want to be critical of the parliamentary assistant. I don't want to be critical at all. As a matter of fact, he chaired the committee that we travelled where we dealt with the so-called Ontario Works Act. He chaired that.
Mrs Boyd: No, she chaired it.
Mr Kormos: But he sat beside the Chair. He was the parliamentary assistant present there. That's right. By God -
Mrs Boyd: It just looked like he was chairing it.
Mr Kormos: But by and large, of the two parliamentary assistants who sat in the chair, he was the more even tempered.
Mrs Boyd: Oh.
Mr Kormos: Well, he was. There were two parliamentary assistants, and the member for - I've got to look at the schematic here - Chatham-Kent every once in a while got cranky, threw a little one, but by and large we lived through it. He did his best, let me tell you. If anybody deserves to make that 10, 11, 12 grand a year extra that parliamentary assistants make in addition to their base MPP's salary, it's the member for Chatham-Kent, because he dealt with some pretty tough issues.
We went to four cities, right? You were with us. You don't remember? We went to four cities, Parliamentary Assistant. Please, it wasn't that long ago, four cities, and they were hard-pressed to find a single supporter in any of those cities for their so-called Ontario Works legislation, hard-pressed to find a single supporter, and they handpicked them. The opposition had no input whatsoever, a most unusual breach of long-held convention here.
The government members handpicked the cities. We said, "Let's go to the northeast." They said, "Okay, North Bay." For Tories, that's the north, North Bay. I mean, they were packing parkas and mukluks and they had their snowmobile jackets. It was North Bay, for Pete's sake, a far cry from - they simply had no idea. I understand. But for the Tories, the province of Ontario ends in North Bay. They picked North Bay. They figured there were going to be good pickings in North Bay. Sorry. Didn't happen. Ottawa, they figured good pickings. Sorry. Didn't happen. London, they figured good pickings, right? London, Ontario. Sorry. Didn't happen. If anything, the floodgates opened in London and we really started to see the antipathy, the antagonism for this legislation.
We ended up in Niagara Falls. That's where this government just granted that casino deal to the group who came number three in the selection process. You know what we're talking about. They came number three by the government's own panel of experts. It's the Falls Management group, dominated in part by Hyatt, this American hotel chain that operates big convention centres over in New York state and doesn't have much of a performance record when it comes to casinos. Niagara Falls, Ontario - we've been talking about it all week.
Our committee ended up at Niagara Falls - the parliamentary assistant was there -where now we see this government paying off its good political friends who have done a little paying off in their own right to the tune of some major campaign contributions. How else do you climb from number three on the list in terms of the competition for the Niagara Falls casino to number one? There's only one way that we've seen so far, and that's the largess that some of those players demonstrated towards their Conservative friends and the utilization of Tory insiders to fix the deal.
That's where we ended up, in Niagara Falls. It was the final day, a mere four days of travelling about the province. Again, the Tories figured they had it in the bag in the Falls, but au contraire, to the contrary, it didn't work for them in Niagara Falls either. There was the slimmest, most marginal - by and large, out of several hundred presentations here in Toronto and then on those mere four days, handpicked communities by the gaggle of Tories who dominate the committee, they ended up with no more than five supporters for the so-called - what a misnomer - Ontario Works Act. Ontario hasn't been working for the last two and a half years. Unemployment in Niagara region is up since this government got elected. It's up.
Mrs Boyd: It is in Sault Ste Marie too.
Mr Kormos: My colleague Ms Boyd speaks of Sault Ste Marie and more than a few other parts of the province as well, but I've got to confess I'm a little parochial when I speak about Niagara region. Those are my neighbours down there, my friends, the people I grew up with. The seniors and the retirees are folks I've seen work hard all of their lives, work like dogs - I tell you that without hesitation - hoping that their kids are going to have a little bit better opportunity than they did. They see their children increasingly unemployed, facing unemployment levels that exceed the majority of the rest of the province and that hover in that 8% to 10% range, and that's just the official unemployment.
We simply haven't got a handle on the number of people who have just given up in despair and said, "That's it. There's nothing out there," which is why when we get into the so-called workfare scheme, and I know Mr Patten spoke to this more than a little bit, at the end of the day you've still got between 8% and 10% unemployment here in Ontario. There ain't no jobs. We've seen massive job losses in the course of the last two, two and a half years, some of them right down in Niagara region. We've seen factories shut down. Oh, I could start the litany.
Down again where I come from - again I want to get a little parochial - folks over at Mott's, Mott's Clamato: out of town, pulled out. Don't buy Mott's Clamato. Buy the President's Choice. It's just as good and you're buying a made-in-Canada product instead of buying something from a runaway company that abandoned the workers in St Catharines and scurried off to warmer climes.
Folks, I suppose, at Black and Decker out in eastern Ontario - Mr Cullen may well be able to speak to that. He's a little closer to them than I am.
Interjection.
Mr Kormos: Brockville - I said out in eastern Ontario. East of Toronto is eastern Ontario, because I'm from Niagara region. Please.
We've seen the loss of real jobs. I'll tell you what. We've seen more labour dispute in the last two and a half years than you've seen in the whole five years when Bill 40 had currency here in Ontario. We've seen some of the nastiest and meanest and hardest, heavy-fisted approaches by bosses like Conrad Black of the St Catharines Standard - Conrad Black, Tubby Black, gobbling up newspapers as if it was kibble, and what does he do with the workers in those papers? He beats them into shape, all right.
Interjection.
Mr Kormos: That's why they call him Tubby. He beats them into shape, all right. Look at the attitude that Conrad Black has taken towards his workers at the St Catharines Standard. In 107 years of that newspaper's history, there has never been a strike action taken by workers. You know its history. You know the history of the St Catharines Standard. Of course you do. Everybody who reads in southern Ontario is aware of that. It was a long-time family-owned paper, the Burgoyne family. There were disagreements between the editorial staff or the other working women and men at the newspaper and the publishers - of course there were - but they've always been resolved.
1950
The St Catharines Standard of course has been on strike since Thursday, May 21, and folks down in the Niagara region are simply boycotting it, because people in St Catharines and across Niagara don't tolerate and will not tolerate the heavy-handedness and the malicious threatening of Conrad Black. Did you read the comments he made apparently yesterday that were reported in this morning's newspaper? Conrad Black made it quite clear that there were going to be no meaningful negotiations with those skilled, trained, hardworking editorial staff at the St Catharines Standard.
Let me explain to you how it's going to work and why it's so crucial that the community support the 31 editorial employees. Editorial employees - I know you know that, Speaker, and I know the folks here know - doesn't mean editors. It means the people who work in the news-writing department as compared to the people selling advertising or the people working the presses or the people doing circulation and distribution. Those 31 employees have been negotiating for months. For months they're been trying to hammer out an agreement.
Let me tell you what the primary issue is. Tubby Black, Conrad - because that's what Barbara calls him. Maybe she calls him Tubby too behind his back, or to his face; who knows? Tubby Black is demanding of those workers that they have a two-tiered system of wages, not an uncommon phenomenon. It's a profitable newspaper. It makes money. He doesn't want his workers, the ones who create the wealth, to have any share of it. One of the observations you can make about the nature of wealth in this province, increasingly so with the advent of the Tories at Queen's Park, is that the people who create the wealth are inevitably never the wealthy. Think about that.
Editorial staff, along with their colleagues working in other departments of the newspaper, are what make the profits for Southam News, owned by Conrad Black, which owns the St Catharines Standard. It's been a profitable newspaper.
In the last two years since Conrad Black bought Southam and the St Catharines Standard, he's reduced staff by 25%. Gone. You call that job creation? It's job losses. Get it straight. Reducing staff by 25%, a profitable newspaper, slashing by 25%, one quarter of the staff gone, out on the streets and no jobs to go to.
Despite those record profits and already slashing, dumping, 25%, one fourth, of its staff out on to the street like so much refuse - "Be gone. Out of my way. Let them eat cake," Conrad Black may well have said. "Be gone with you. I'm making profits and I can make even more if I reduce staff by 25%," and he threw them out on the streets. That's not job creation. That's called job loss.
Then in the pursuit of a new contract, Conrad Black demands of those remaining workers that they sign a contract that would provide wage levels 9% to 12% lower for beginning workers, creating a two-tiered system. You know what that means, don't you? It's not dissimilar to what's happening to teachers here in the province today.
I'm going to talk about teachers in just a minute because 150 public high school teachers in the Niagara board just got their pink slips, 152 teachers in the Niagara board of education just got their pink slips, and that's in addition to 200 who are retiring and ain't gonna be replaced. That's a loss of over 300 teachers.
We'll get to the teachers in just a minute. I want to finish talking about Southam News and the St Catharines Standard and why it's so important that the people of St Catharines and across Niagara region simply refuse to buy that paper.
You see, this reduction in wages that's being demanded by Conrad Black, that's being forced by Conrad Black on his employees - they're the ones who make the money. They're the ones who make the profit. This concession of reduced wages - not stable wages, reduced wages - indeed puts the St Catharines Standard workers behind the workers of other Southam newspapers. What's happening here is the race to the bottom. You understand, Speaker? It's the race to the bottom. Once he forces the St Catharines Standard editorial staff to accept lower wages, then he goes over to Brantford - he owns that one too - and says, "You're going to make less as well." It's that race to the bottom. That's the Mike Harris economy. That's this brave new world order that this government endorses, encourages and nurtures. It's the race to the bottom.
Conrad Black wants to compel his workers to enter into gag orders, to force them to agree not to speak publicly on issues that affect them and their families. He has absolutely abandoned the concept of skilled trades within the news business. I know you're familiar with that, Speaker, because you've been in the news yourself from time to time. Some of it's been flattering, some of it's been less than flattering, but that's the chance we take in this business. That's right.
Conrad Black is stealing a page from CITY-TV with their videographers. He doesn't respect the talents of - and I know the photographers at the St Catharines Standard: highly trained, highly skilled, professional photographers. He wants to see them gone too and to simply equip each reporter with one of those little Pentax 1000s and eliminate the role of photographer at the newspaper. He doesn't care about community newspapers and how valid and important and significant the St Catharines Standard has been to the growth of St Catharines and the Niagara region and to families generation after generation in the city of St Catharines and beyond.
That's why it's imperative that folks down in Niagara boycott, simply don't buy, the St Catharines Standard. If you've got to read the obituaries, do like I do. I go to Denistoun variety over at Denistoun and West Main. Denistoun variety used to be a Becker's or an Avondale but was bought by some real good people, Sangbok and his family. His wife and his son Jay run the store. They work there, and they work hard too, let me tell you, from 7 in the morning until 11 or 11:30 at night. Do like I do: Go over to Denistoun variety at the corner of West Main and Denistoun in Welland, pick up the Standard, look at the sections you want to look at, fold the paper neatly and put it back. The variety store owner really won't mind. Don't buy the paper. Just read it real quick, refer to the sections you want to refer to - if it's the obits, refer to the obits - fold it, put it back. You can have the best of both worlds. The fact is there isn't too much left in the Standard anyway, because it's a scab paper. It's a scab newspaper.
You won't even have to go to the corner store and sneak a look at the wedding announcements or the obituaries or what have you, because beginning May 30 and through to May 31, a newspaper called the Independent is going to be distributed to every resident of St Catharines, to every household in St Catharines, absolutely free: the Independent, written, composed and published by those very same writers from the St Catharines Standard, and it's free, no charge. It's going to have obituaries, it's going to have news, it's going to have editorial comment. You won't have to pay a dime and you will be assisting hardworking, skilled professionals, the editorial staff of the St Catharines Standard, in fighting back on one of the meanest, mean-spiritedest, greediest - Conrad Black and greedy are synonymous - people who exist in our society. I'm boycotting the Standard, and I hope that every single resident of Niagara region does.
2000
If you don't think working people should have decent wages, then I guess you shouldn't boycott the Standard. If you don't think that people should have the right to organize into trade unions, like this government, I suppose you should go ahead and buy the Standard. If you don't believe that the right to refuse to work in the course of unsuccessful contract negotiations is fundamental, then I suppose you should go ahead and buy a St Catharines Standard. But if you believe in any of those things, if you believe in the right of people to collectively bargain and the right to organize into trade unions, the right to not work to give effect to some meaningful negotiations, then I urge you, Speaker, and I'm confident you will, and I urge the people in the Niagara region to simply not buy the St Catharines Standard.
That's the loudest, clearest message that Conrad Black could ever get. Do you know why? Because it's the kind of message Conrad Black understands. The only thing Conrad Black understands is the buck, the almighty dollar. That's it for Connie Black. He doesn't care about families, doesn't care about communities, doesn't care about a newspaper that has a magnificent 107-year history, doesn't care about his skilled working editorial staff. All he's interested in is the almighty buck, and if you want to talk to Conrad Black you've got to talk in his language. You do that by standing beside the St Catharines Standard workers and by not buying a scab newspaper, not buying the St Catharines Standard.
Don't forget, the Independent is going to be distributed beginning May 30, totally free to every household in the St Catharines Standard reading area. It's going to be written by those same staff persons, Vince Rice and others, who have been providing good news coverage for a long time now.
How does that tie into Bill 22? I'm going to tell you. The connection is really pretty clear. We're witnessing the drive towards a lower-wage economy. You see, the government talks about the jobs it has created. The problem is that we haven't seen any hard data; neither have the government backbenchers. We've heard numbers - my goodness, today the line was 400,000. What do you guys do, just pick a number out of the air, whatever seems to have some spin or some coin that day?
Come on. There are no hard data. You people know that. Your claims about job creation clash with the reality of so many unemployed people who remain unemployed out there living in increasing desperation in every community in this province. The reason people are forced on to welfare - by God, it's not because they want to live on welfare. It's because they don't have any work, because this government hasn't come close to fulfilling its promise to create 725,000 new jobs. You remember that promise - not close.
This government is collaborating with the high-unemployment policies of Ottawa. Look at the crisis we had in this country back in the fall of 1997. There was a crisis in Canada, and it was a crisis to which governments promptly responded, especially the federal government. Unemployment stood a chance of dropping below 9%. That was a crisis, and what did the government do, along with the Bank of Canada? They raised interest rates. God forbid that unemployment should drop below 9%. That's exactly what the increase in interest rates was a response to. The government was unashamed in its acknowledgement of that: the fear that there might be some economic growth.
Who drives that? I'll tell you, one of the sectors that drives this high interest rate policy, one that perpetuates unemployment and maintains unemployment at that level of 8% to 10% that we're suffering from in the Niagara region and across most of Ontario, one of the big players in that whole scenario is one of the biggest profit-makers this province and this country have seen now, for the third year in a row. It's your good old CIBC and Toronto-Dominion Bank and Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal, and the list goes on.
Look what has happened in Mike Harris's Ontario. Banks enjoy bigger and bigger profits. We're not talking millions any more, we're talking billions - billions of dollars in new profits. How do the banks respond? After they pop the champagne corks and have a few themselves out of their little Waterford - I guess they drink out of Waterford crystal. Would they? I don't know what kind of crystal they drink from, but it sure as heck ain't the stuff you get at the drive-in movies when you go there and try to get your plate collection together. They've got the Waterford crystal and the champagne, so after they celebrate their huge profits with the champagne and the Waterford crystal, they start planning how they can lay off yet more employees.
That's how the banks have responded to huge new profits. They're no different from Connie Black. How does Conrad Black respond to profits down at the St Catharines Standard? He lays off - no, he fires 25% of his staff and then tells the rest of them that they've got to take lower wages. And how do the banks respond? They destroy more and more jobs within the banking industry and try to sell the public - Mbanx, my foot - on electronic banking: do it over the phone and use the ABM and the auto teller.
I'm a big fan of the credit union movement. If you're really sick and tired, as most people are, of the banks gouging and ripping you off and scamming you and taking you every chance they can get, robbing you blind - I mean, crooks don't rob banks any more; they own them.
Interjection.
Mr Kormos: Well, think about it. Crooks don't rob banks, they own them. If you really want to stop being gouged, want to hold on to a couple of more bucks than you would have had otherwise, tell the banks to go pound salt and go to a credit union. I go to the Atlas and Civic Employees' Credit Union down in Welland. The Atlas and Civic Employees' Credit Union is no slouch when it comes to automation, but they haven't displaced one worker in their branches as a result of introducing and getting in tune with the new technology. Their membership wouldn't let them; I'm convinced of that. They are the antithesis of what the banks are because they're owned by their membership.
I told you a year or year and a half ago about how the Toronto-Dominion Bank here in Toronto robbed me blind. They did. I told you that story. I'd left a couple of hundred bucks in that account, then went back a couple of years later and I owed them $1.45. It was service charges. It was a savings account, for Pete's sake. They robbed me blind. They fleeced me. I would have far sooner been mugged on the street. At least I could have confronted my assailant. These guys did it in the secrecy of the bowels of a computer. Honest, I had 200 or 300 bucks. It was gone. "What happened to my money?" "Well, service." "Service charges for what?" It was a savings account.
That was the Toronto-Dominion Bank. I asked them then, "Please" - well, I didn't say "please," quite frankly. How polite would you have been under the circumstances? I didn't say "please." I acknowledge that. I wanted to. I should have said "please," so let's pretend I did: "Please, would you send me an accounting of what happened to my money over the course of the last two years?" They promised, and of course I haven't seen anything in the mail. They robbed me. The Toronto-Dominion Bank stole some 200 or 300 bucks that I'd - you think you keep your money there for safekeeping.
I talked about this a year and a half ago. I already tore a strip off them. They don't care. They already got all my money. They stole it. It paid for two or three of those Waterford stem glasses that they drink the champagne out of in the back boardrooms after they announce huge new record profits. And none of us on this side even got an invite.
2010
Hon Mrs Marland: You know, they can't put the Waterford in the dishwasher.
Mr Kormos: They don't use dishwashers; they've got workfare recipients to wash their dishes for them. I have no doubt about that.
We know the solution to the banks, and that's to invest in credit unions. Down in Welland we've got a whole bunch of credit unions. Niagara Credit Union has grown to enormous proportions.
We were talking about the drive towards a low-wage economy, sustained by high interest rates and perpetuated by fiscal policies which are endorsed, and not just endorsed and not just bought into, but which are - I confess I've read Linda McQuaig, okay? I tell you, if you haven't, you should. You don't have to take everything she says for gospel truth, but there's some stuff she writes about that's just so consistent with what you've read about in a dozen other sources that it's inevitably the truth, and nobody has contradicted it.
Read Linda McQuaig and read a little bit about the flim-flammery that took place in Ottawa when it came to that so-called fall of 1997 crisis where unemployment stood a chance of dropping below 9% and the Bank of Canada responded - to great applause by the banks - by raising interest rates. Higher interest rates mean higher unemployment. You know that; everybody in this province knows that. Who profits from higher interest rates? Think about it. The people who lend the money benefit from higher interest rates, and they're the ones who seem very much to be in control.
Bill 22 is part and parcel of this. I can't remember how many pieces of legislation we got up to before the House prorogued. Was it 200-and-change? It was something akin to that. It was like putting a puzzle together; some were tiny little pieces and you couldn't identify what they were part of but just had a shade, and some were bigger pieces and a little more substantial. Bill 26 was very much a cornerstone of that puzzle, because the picture starting getting clearer and clearer. Now here we are at Bill 22 after sitting for, what, three weeks now, and this goes far beyond the mere exclusion of workfare participants from the Employment Standards Act legislation. It speaks to a far broader agenda on the part of this government.
We have already witnessed twice in this House a private member's resolution from a Tory backbencher and a private member's bill by a Tory backbencher that would have revoked, in both instances, the Rand formula. These people have a sad recollection of history. These people refuse to understand or they simply hold in disdain the history of working people and their struggle to acquire the right to organize and to join trade unions and to collectively bargain. Twice we have seen that in this Legislature now, both from Tory backbenchers.
What was interesting about it was that even the capo de tutti capi, even the Tories, didn't show up to vote on it. I don't know for sure - I was going to speculate - but clearly they didn't see it as in their best interests at that point in time.
But this isn't a bill by some crummy backbencher which is destined to fail; this comes right from the minister herself. Ms Ecker herself announced this bill. This bill went through cabinet, unlike the private member's bill and resolution that would have revoked the Rand formula. This is the real stuff. We're not just playing to the ultra-rightists out there who - we know the rhetoric. Parliamentary Assistant, I don't want to be critical of you, but I checked the Tory handbook, the lexicon, and the handbook clearly says that when you're referring to Sid Ryan and others, you don't refer to them benignly as "union leaders." You call them "those union bosses." You neglected to do that and I hope you don't get into trouble for that. That's part of the rhetoric, part of the spin.
Do you know what I brought? I brought the notes that Ms Ecker used when she announced this foul bit of work in the House. Here it is. Remember what she said? It was oh so clever, too clever for words. You guys didn't write this stuff, did you? It was none of those back there. I suspect it was the high-priced, $1,000-a-day consultants who did this one. The language was just wild. Unfortunately, it lost credibility, even with many of the Tory faithful out there among the public: "Union opposition will not deflect us from our goal." Boy, them's tough words: "We're gonna kick butt, kick those unions' butts."
Using the words "the labour bosses," is trying to create division between labour leadership and the membership. Well, let me tell you something: Sorry, that don't cut it. What Ms Ecker and this government have done with this bill, this anti-union, anti-collective-bargaining, anti-strike bill, with all due respect to the leaders in the labour movement, has solidified labour in a way that no labour leader himself or herself ever could. I suppose we should be grateful, because this government has galvanized unionized workers out there and united them. This government finally showed its hand, finally demonstrated what its agenda really was all about.
Think about this: You don't need this bill if so-called workfare consists of people participating in volunteer agencies doing volunteer work. You don't need it. Those people aren't covered under the relevant legislation like the Ontario Labour Relations Act and so on. Oh, the hyperbole coming from the other side about the Heart and Stroke Foundation and others, which all of us of course support. This has nothing to do with somebody who might be volunteering with the Heart and Stroke Foundation or the Canadian Cancer Society or whatever charitable organization you want.
Workfare hasn't worked. The numbers they toss around are pure rubbish. I challenge them to come up with anything akin to legitimate documentation of anything even close to their numbers. Workfare hasn't worked, isn't working and quite frankly won't work. This government has every intention, because that's what Bill 22 is all about, of forcing workfare into the private sector. It won't have to force the hand of the private sector, but you heard what some folks have said about it, that it very much will force the poorest people in our society to work for subminimum wage and, in the course of doing that, is going to displace workers who have been working in those same workplaces at real jobs with hopefully real wages.
What do I mean? You've already heard about the American experience, where there has been significant job loss because of the displacement by those workers of so-called workfare. They're not participants. No. You participate in something when you do it willingly and voluntarily. Otherwise, it's forced labour, nothing more and nothing less. No other language could be appropriate.
2020
We know what the response of the working people has been. There's a return to chain gangs. We know that labour is going to resist this attack on real jobs, and even minimum wage. We talked about this low-wage economy and the dissent, that race to the bottom. We're talking now about creating a subminimum-wage-level job, that old two-tier thing. What we're going to see, and why this legislation is crucial, is we're going to see any number of private sector employers that don't have a particular demand for highly skilled work buying into workfare all of a sudden in a way that it hasn't been bought into yet, knowing that they can displace workers, not have to pay any wages at all, and that they'll have a set of employees who are disentitled, who are denied the right to collectively bargain, to even form a union.
If you want to talk about what that means, let's go to some of the southern states which I know are such models held in the highest regard by the Tory members of this government, places like Arkansas, where for all intents and purposes there is no minimum wage. What has that got to do with high levels of unemployment? You've got to maintain high levels of unemployment if you're going to increase what Ms McQuaig calls the level of desperation. You've got to maintain high levels of unemployment if you're going to force would-be workers to compete more and more aggressively for lower- and lower-paying jobs. This is the most shortsighted thing you've ever seen.
Don't these people get it, that down where I come from there are a whole lot of small businesses that depend on there being decently paid working people in the factories, in the retail stores, in the shops and so on? Low-paid, subminimum-wage workers don't buy shoes at the local shoe store. They don't buy refrigerators over at Don Hammond appliances up on Niagara Street. They don't buy shoes over at Elio's Shoes & Repair in downtown Thorold. They don't go into the haberdasher and buy new suits and new shirts. These people aren't consumers. They're also not very significant taxpayers.
The people where I come from have struggled so hard to build, call it what it is, a high-wage economy, a high-wage economy that's been able to sustain small business and that's been able to sustain social programs and health care and decent education - publicly funded. They know that the attack on those things is part and parcel of the drive towards lower and lower wages. That's very much what Bill 22 is part and parcel of. Remember what I told you. We heard the protestations, how dare we suggest that Bill 160 - I told you, the pieces of the puzzle. Bill 160 is yet another piece of the puzzle. The picture is getting clearer and clearer. The pieces are falling together.
Let me remind you again. Let me be very parochial. Ontario is a great province, but I love the Niagara region. You know that. I was born there and raised there. I was born in Crowland as a matter of fact. I grew up in Crowland. Niagara region will lose 200 teachers by retirement, not one to be replaced, and another 152 being fired, gone. That's not job creation. What are these guys talking about? You destroy 352 teaching positions and you call that job creation? My foot. That's increasing unemployment and creating more and more despair.
You talk about your tax break. Some tax break. You guys have got to borrow $5 billion a year in new dollars to finance it.
Interjection.
Mr Kormos: You do. They're your numbers, not mine. You've got to borrow $5 billion a year, plus all your cutting and hacking and slashing so that your rich friends - isn't it enough you gave them the casino in Niagara Falls at the expense of tourism? Isn't it enough that you gave your rich buddies the casino and abandoned the convention centre and the Gateway tourism project, that you've got to pick the pockets of the sick and the elderly and working people and students and the poor to finance your tax break for the richest? There are 352 teachers gone from the Niagara region.
Let me tell you about what the city of Welland had to do. I told you earlier today about how police forces have been forced into going out there and doing crass fund-raising. Let me tell you what happened in the city of Welland Tuesday night. The city of Welland has been struggling to maintain a zero tax increase, what with all the downloading. The region just couldn't do it. We knew that.
Remember the day when the Ministry of Finance screwed up? We were here Thursday waiting for the numbers. Do you remember that, Ms Boyd? We sat here all Thursday waiting for the numbers. Again, screwed up, fouled up, messed up, mucked up.
Mr Garry J. Guzzo (Ottawa-Rideau): A computer glitch.
Mr Kormos: Yes, a computer glitch. That's the last refuge of the -
Mrs Boyd: The computer knew it had to come up with zero.
Mr Kormos: We looked at those numbers, and quite frankly, it was worse than many people had imagined. You've got to pay now to die in Welland. The plethora of user fees is just astounding, and that's in their struggle to maintain a so-called zero tax increase.
At the regional level the fact is the tax increase for taxpayers across Niagara region is going to be 10%, 11% or 12%. They haven't quite ironed out the numbers yet and there's just no two ways around it. They've already cut all the fat. But Wellanders aren't off the hook yet. Welland city council last night voted to increase water bills by 33%. Zero tax, call it what you will. The water bills have gone up 33%.
What's interesting is that the actual cost of purchasing water has gone up 4.8%, but the water bill's going up 33%. Let me tell you what it means. Look, I'm not crying the blues. Where I live in my old house on Bald Street - and I understand, the fact is I make a whole lot more money than a whole lot of people do. I understand that. Everybody in this place does, and I'm the lowest-paid member of this place. MPPs make significantly more money than a whole lot of people out there in the community.
But what that means for my neighbours who are retirees is an increase in water bills over the course of a year, which comes out to around $109, $110 a year. Peanuts, you say? No, I'm sorry, it's not peanuts. You are talking about people who have been faced with new user fees, with so-called copayments, notwithstanding all the promises that were made, who have increased transit fares because of the downloading by the province on to the municipality, in fact, the abandonment by the province of municipal transit. Gone, abandoned, you're on your own.
I'm telling you, a whole lot of seniors on fixed incomes are living on a daily basis with the real fear that their homes may not be their homes much longer. We're talking about homes they've lived in for 30, 40, 50 years, homes that they've raised their kids in, indeed raised their grandkids in. We're talking about seniors who are starting to get frail, whose physical agility just isn't what it used to be and, quite frankly, they're acknowledging, "Jeez, you know, the memory isn't as good as it used to be either."
2030
Do you realize how frightening it is for a senior in that position to also be confronted by the real risk of losing their home and of not knowing where they're going to go to? The senior citizens' residences are increasingly underfunded, the staff in them becomes fewer and fewer, the lineups grow longer and longer and these people live with increasing despair and fear. Surely these seniors deserve far better than that. They do. They worked too hard for too long. They worked like dogs, I'll say it again, and yes, they paid taxes.
They contributed to the common pool to build public health care and public education and build a social safety net that was going to protect the disadvantaged, yes, and the weak and the disabled. They did it knowing that was a legacy they could leave their kids and grandkids, and this government's taken that legacy away from them and those same kids and grandkids.
Bill 22, we know what it's all about. It has so little to do with welfare reform, if you even dare call it that, and so much to do with the broader agenda of this government and its real bosses. Let's face it. This isn't a Mike Harris policy. He's simply not that clever. We understand that. This isn't a policy generated out of cabinet. Do you really think any single one of those cabinet ministers wrote Bill 26 or Bill 160 or the megacity bill? Far from it.
Mrs Boyd: Most of them haven't read it.
Mr Kormos: Most of them haven't read it. We learned that during the presentation and debate and questioning about those bills.
This bill is all about giving - and I'm not talking small business. Part of me doesn't think that these people understand small business. I grew up in a small business culture. My grandparents are small business people. I grew up working in my parents' small business from when I was 10 or 11 years old. Yes, I understand small business. I ran one myself when I ran a small law office, employing two, three, sometimes four people at a time. Don't tell me about small business.
I know the difficulties of small business and this bill has nothing to do with small business. This bill has everything to do with big corporate bosses and their agenda to maintain higher and higher levels of employment. You increase that level of desperation, you get unemployed workers literally fighting, competing for scarcer and scarcer jobs, you drive wages lower and lower, and profits go up and up.
Is that the kind of province, is that the kind of society you want to live in? I am sure there are some who would say yes, but I tell you, it's not the kind of province or the kind of society or the kind of community most of the folks I know want to live in, where corporate profits climb, unemployment climbs with it and where real wages drop and where young people are increasingly denied access to post-secondary education so they'll never have a grab at the brass ring. It's not the kind of society that our parents and grandparents worked and struggled for. By God, we know that's the Tory vision; it's certainly not ours.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Garry L. Leadston): Questions and comments?
Mr Tim Hudak (Niagara South): I am pleased to rise and respond to my colleague and neighbour the member for Welland-Thorold on the issue of Bill 22, a somewhat long but interesting speech from my colleague. I only have two minutes.
But I think you can make this issue very succinct in the two minutes, a very salient issue. The title says it very clearly, the Prevention of Unionization Act (Ontario Works), 1998, and I'm willing to let this issue stand in the court of public opinion, very clear, very plain. Should people on welfare participating in Ontario Works be able to form a union? Should that be allowed, to form a union, potentially to go on strike, being on welfare and going on strike, to bargain for higher rates, to ask for holidays?
I think if there's someone at home watching this debate, say the nurse just finishing a shift or the GM worker who drove home tonight back to Port Colborne, they would just be perplexed that the Liberal Party is endorsing the idea of people on Ontario Works forming a union, if you look at it from the perspective of that taxpayer paying their bills almost up to half, despite our tax cuts, lots of taxes from their hard-earned dollars, going in generosity to help out those people who are disadvantaged, who may be out of work. Ontario Works is there to help them to rebuild their skills, to make connections within society, help them find work again. But I think that nurse, that GM worker, the guy who's pumping gas early in the morning as the others go into work or get up, in the doughnut shop, would just be shocked that the Liberal Party, the Dalton McGuinty Liberals, are so far on the left wing, so far out of touch on this issue.
I challenge them to respond. If they believe people on welfare should be able to unionize, to go on strike, to bargain for holidays, I just think people back home would be totally shocked.
Ontario Works makes sense. It's a success. It helps people return to work. We want to see that program expanded to help even more people. I don't think, and I think people at home agree with me, that people in Ontario Works should be able to form a union.
The Acting Speaker: Thank you. The member for Ottawa West
Mr Cullen: It's always a delight to comment on the remarks of the member for Welland-Thorold. On this particular bill, I think he's covered a large number of issues.
This bill is the government's intent to take away a fundamental right from a class of society. One has to wonder what causes this. What is it about people who are poor that this government, for the first time in over a century, feels compelled to enact a law to stop people from using rights that any other middle-income, lower-income or upper-income person can have?
The previous speaker spoke about someone at a GM plant or a nurse, and what do these people say when they hear these comments? They look at each other and they say, "Thank goodness we have a free enough society that we can protect our pensions" - do the poor have pensions? - "that we can protect our working conditions" - the poor would love to have work - "that we can protect our jobs." The poor would love to have jobs, "Give me those jobs." This government isn't giving them any jobs whatsoever.
Some 32% of welfare cases are due to disability. Oh, they're really going to organize a union, aren't they? Some 28% of welfare cases in Ontario are single parents. The union of single parents, I can see it now. What do these people really want? Why would they organize?
Again, why doesn't this government, if it's so fearful about unions organizing, forbid the unions? It doesn't do that. It says, "Those people who are poor cannot use a right that anyone else has."
They talk about, "Should the poor be able to go on strike?" It is laughable. What happens when you go on strike? You don't get paid. Really.
Mrs Boyd: It's always a pleasure to congratulate my friend from Welland-Thorold on the passion and the commitment that he has to people who are not well off, who need support, who need to have a strong advocate on their behalf. I'm pleased that he was able to do our leadoff speech on this bill, because this bill is about people who are probably among the most vulnerable and, yes, probably among the least friend-filled group in our society.
The member who commented from Niagara South suggested that collective action is all about going on strike. That's not what collectivism is about. Collectivism is about giving mutual support to one another so that you can ensure that you won't be exploited, so that you can be sure that your rights will be respected, so that you can be sure that your health and safety will be protected.
The whole issue of "union equals strike" is a cooked-up issue by you people. That's not what unionization is about. Any union member will tell you that strike is absolutely always the last resort, that the issue of collective action is not to enable you to go on strike but to enable you to mutually support and protect one another from exploitation by those who would exploit you.
It would be hard to find a group more exploited than this group, who have been condemned to work for the basic necessities of life, in a mandatory way, no control over where they work, no control over their working conditions and no control over the insistence of this government on their lack of worth.
2040
The Acting Speaker:Thank you very much. I have to get your riding right, Jack. Mr Carroll from the great riding of Chatham-Kent.
Mr Carroll: Thank you, Mr Speaker, the finest part of the province of Ontario, need I add.
It's always a pleasure to listen to the member for Welland-Thorold. I still have not mastered the art of taking an hour to say what you could say in five or six minutes. But anyway, he's very good at it and he's quite entertaining to listen to.
His recollection of the committee process on Bill 142 is just a little different from mine. Right, we did go to four cities. The four cities we chose to go to were negotiated by the three parties, as is always the case, and in fact in those four cities we did find many supporters for Bill 142 and for the Ontario Works program. Our recollections are just a tad different in that respect.
But what's interesting about this whole debate is the position that our friends in the Liberal Party have taken. I can understand the member for Welland-Thorold. I understand exactly what he believes in: The whole world should be a member of a union. I understand that and I accept that that's his belief. But for the Liberals to stand up and say that they believe that people who are on welfare, on Ontario Works, should be allowed to be members of a trade union is absolutely unbelievable. However, it is those new MM Liberals that Mr Marchese referred to this afternoon, the mushy middle, or whatever he called them. It's not unusual for them to not have any position.
I would like to suggest to the member for Welland-Thorold that he talk to the trade unions and say to them, "Why don't we all work together to help these people get the skills and the contacts so they can find some work?" After they've found a job, after they have work and they're out there at a paying job, then the union should come along and do the best they can to organize them. We don't mind that. But beforehand? Please, give them a chance.
Mr Kormos: I appreciate the comments of all the people. Folks, it was my speech, and they used their two minutes to dump all over the Liberals, for Pete's sake. Somebody's been reading the polls and somebody got a pep talk over the last couple of days. I don't think it's going to last, though. I've got a feeling it's not going to last.
Interruption.
Mr Kormos: That's a forewarning of what privatization of Hydro is going to do to you.
The sad thing is that this debate around Bill 142 and around Bill 22 has really missed the point. What we should have been talking about and what I urge the government members to be talking about is poverty in this province: who's poor and why they're poor. That's what warrants consideration.
We know that seniors are poor. We know that seniors are becoming increasingly poor. We know that young people are poor. We know that certain types of workers, notwithstanding that they're working, are poor. We know that women are poor. We know that students are poor. We know, certainly, that the unemployed are thrust into devastating poverty. This government has failed to address that much broader and much more important issue.
Unionization? You count on it. I believe as strongly as I could ever believe in anything that every working person, working under whatever guise, call it whatever you want, has the right to organize themselves into a trade union to collectively bargain, yes, and to put down their tools if need be. That is as fundamental a right as any Canadian could ever have, and we in the New Democratic Party will defend it with every bit of energy we have and can muster in the future.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Galt: It's certainly a pleasure for me to be able to take part in the debate on this extensive bill, Bill 22, An Act to Prevent Unionization with respect to Community Participation under the Ontario Works Act, 1997. We've heard a lot of complaints in the past from the opposition about some our bills being too long. They've called them mega-bills and a lot of other things. There is no way they can complain that this one is too long. It's sort of one fold-over page, but it's very concise and to the point.
It's extremely unfortunate that we have to bring in a bill such as this. It's about Ontario Works, about a program giving people an opportunity to finish school, to be educated, to be trained. It's a program whereby we're asking for some 17 hours per week of community work.
What does the head of the OPSEU union, the Ontario public service union, do? He goes out and threatens that he's going to unionize these poor people who have been on welfare and want to get some experience. He wants them to pay union dues. He wants them to be in a position to go on strike. Look at some of these union dues. I don't know what they would want from people who would be on workfare, but for the teachers, it's $1,000 or so a year that's expected for union dues. I expect they would probably try to take most of what these poor people would be getting on Ontario Works. For those 17 hours, they'd probably take all the revenue they're getting in.
Anyway, here's this union after dues. It's just beyond my comprehension. Consequently, we have this very concise and idealistic bill that we're bringing in at this time called Bill 22. If you look at it, the people we're talking about and protecting with this bill are not employees. Even if Sid Ryan thinks they're employees, even if the NDP thinks they're employees, even if the Liberal Party - Dalton McGuinty - thinks they're employees, they're not employees in the truest sense. They're not even there as part-time staff.
They're there to get some experience and do a worthwhile job. There's no more satisfaction than to be able to do something that's worthwhile, get up in the morning and have a purpose to go and do something. That's why so many have been caught in the past in the vicious circle of welfare, where they don't feel that life is worth anything any more. When they go and apply for a job, of course the employers ask them: "And where have you worked? What does your résumé say?" There's a great big blank space on the résumé where they haven't been working. This is about filling in, giving a spot on that résumé for what they've been doing and having an employer, a person they have worked with, give them a recommendation and a reference. A reference is so important and that's what most employers are looking for: job experience and a positive recommendation from an employer or a person they have been associated with.
This workfare, or Ontario Works, is all about fairness, accountability and transition.
Mr Cullen: How can it be fair?
Mr Galt: Let me tell you why it's fair. In your government, the Liberal government, all you did was give extra to the welfare people. What happened while your party was in government from 1985 to 1990 was the welfare rolls climbed significantly, went way off. All you have to do is look back in the records and you'll see that's what happened. That was in the good times when there was lots of money out there. Of course you bragged about balancing the budget, when in fact, when the NDP got a look at it, you didn't balance it at all. You were just juggling hundreds of millions of dollars around to try to make it look good, when in fact that wasn't the case.
Mrs Boyd: Sounds familiar doesn't it, Doug? Just like you.
Mr Galt: I know the member from London would fully agree with that because she was in cabinet at that time and noticed how the books had been fixed. However, the following government, from 1990 to 1995, came along with two sets of books. I don't know which would be worse, juggling the figures around or having two sets of books, but at least I'm pleased to report to the people of Ontario that there is only one set of books for the province of Ontario. That's all the Honourable. Ernie Eves, Minister of Finance, operates with. We also returned the $60 million to the northern Ontario heritage fund that somewhere or other disappeared during the last term. I have no idea where it went, but it has been returned. That's the fairness I wanted to come back to, that we're talking about in Ontario Works.
This government is very fair in how it deals with people on welfare, how it deals with Ontario Works and how it deals with even the opposition at times. It's also very accountable, to give these people the opportunity to be back to work. What could be more accountable than coming up with approximately 400,000 jobs in the first three years in office? I think that is just absolutely tremendous. From February 1997 to February 1998 we came up 265,000 net new jobs, which is a provincial record. Never before in the history of Ontario had that many jobs been created in this province. That's accountability of a government.
2050
Coming back to this fairness and accountability, this is a transition. Ontario Works, having people going out and getting experience, is all about transition from being on welfare, a situation which most people feel is pretty hopeless. They're distraught. They want out of it. We're giving them the opportunity for the transition from that category into a working category where I'm sure most, if not all, of the people caught in that trap really want to be.
It's about hope, it's about opportunity and it's about growth. Hope for the future: It must be pretty depressing to be sitting at home, drawing welfare and having no hope for the future and where you are going to end up. We've had some working in my office and the hope - they're so excited about it and they get jobs because of that experience. It provides that kind of opportunity and they're pleading regularly for opportunities.
There are certainly far more people looking for these job placements than there are placement positions out there, and the reason those opportunities are not there like they should be is because of the unions attacking organizations like United Way. They're convincing the membership not to give to United Way if United Way should use somebody from welfare to help a little bit in their office and learn some computer techniques. They just don't want to give them the opportunity, I guess, to get out and become part of the worthwhile work community.
It's also an opportunity for growth, for the community as well as for the inner self. Just having different jobs and experiences is really an opportunity for growth of the inner self.
It's interesting to observe how the NDP, the Liberals and the union supporters seem to be opposed to absolutely everything as it relates to change. I know that change is stressing. I know it's bothersome. I know it's difficult to handle. But really you should be up for the challenge because it's good fun to change things and make things happen and get on with life.
Education reform is one good example that they just couldn't handle. We brought in a bill like Bill 160 that just had so many good things in it, looking at classroom size and keeping more dollars in the classroom and on the list goes, and you people resisted it. You just couldn't handle a little bit of change for the better. It certainly is change for the better. Teachers are realizing that and coming to me right now, saying: "Thanks for putting that bill through. We really appreciate that it's now in place and things are now being looked after."
I've been sitting here listening to some of the debate and I've come up with a definition of how you run a government. A government is run, in my opinion, by a Premier like we have who has a vision. He's leading with a vision. He's guiding. He knows where this province should go and we're going in the right direction, there's just no question. We have a cabinet and a caucus that have their foot firmly on the accelerator. We're making this vehicle go and it's going places with the Premier steering, leading and guiding.
Then we have the unions in this province with their foot firmly on the brake, trying to hold us back, trying to resist.
Then of course we have the opposition and the third party with eyes firmly fixed on the rear-view mirror, and they really couldn't care less who the car happens to run over. They're trying to drive and give directions as critics, looking at the rear-view mirror, trying to see where they've been and not looking ahead.
That's one of the problems that the public is having currently with the official opposition and the third party, that they're not coming up with alternatives. They're looking at yesteryear and not paying any attention to where we're going and what the public needs and wants and should be having. They have no vision. They're still looking in that rear-view mirror, looking out behind to see where they've been and remembering yesteryear, and it's most unfortunate.
It really comes back simply to the NDP, the third party, the old saying, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." Obviously, in this case, you're not part of the solution. I guess you fall into the other category of still being part of the problem, similar to the unions holding things back.
I hope the kind of thing that's going on will not happen here. I just read recently about the drywallers' strike and the destruction of houses as they work with this strike. It's extremely distressing. The union leaders say, "Oh no, we don't support that kind of thing," but what it says in the paper is: "Guess who's out there? Guess who's creating damage to these homes?" Far be it from me.
Anyway Ontario Works is really about a hand up, not a handout. That was a saying we had at campaign time and I think it still holds very true, that it is a hand up; it's certainly not a handout. The people I have talked to certainly agree with that very much.
This is really all about a program of assistance. These people are well covered. It's not like yesteryear when unions had to go and provide an awful lot of protection. These people are protected by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board - it used to be the old WCB. They have that kind of protection. They have protection of the labour laws of this country. They have the protection of health and safety laws. These people in the workplace are indeed well protected in this day and age in Ontario.
This program is about an opportunity to prove oneself, to be able to prove oneself in front of a regular employer. That's what they need in their résumé, the fact that you have a proven track record. It's really about restoring self-respect. That's one of the things that happens when you get in this vicious welfare circle: You lose self-respect. It's about the dignity of a job. Human beings are biological units that really enjoy work and want to get out and work in the workplace, want to get up in the morning and feel needed. There's tremendous satisfaction in having a job and going out and doing something worthwhile. It's also very beneficial for their children as you become a role model, rather than being at home on welfare and not doing anything caught in this vicious circle.
There are large numbers of people who are saying, "Thank you for the opportunity of being involved in Ontario Works." I mentioned just a few minutes ago that there are people who want jobs, want placements, and there are not enough placements out there. The demand is greater than the supply, mainly because of the negativism that has been put on this program by the official opposition, by the third party and by the unions in this province.
A year ago I was speaking on the budget in Windsor. When I'm in another town, I like to pick up the local paper and see what's going on, what's happening. I picked up the local Windsor paper and what was on the front page but a very large picture of a woman with a young child she was picking up at school and she was interviewed about what she was doing. She was on Ontario Works. She was so pleased to be part of the Ontario Works program and to be getting experience and having that opportunity of getting into the workforce. She was saying thank you and was really pleading that more placements would be available. That's in quite a union town, I understand, in Windsor, so I find it just a little surprising when I hear comments from the third party, some of their positions, when here's a woman, front page on the daily paper in Windsor.
I think back to the lost 10 years, 1985 to 1995.
Mr John R. Baird (Nepean): Did they find them?
Mr Galt: We're still hunting, but we know something happened because of the size of the debt. The debt tripled during that period. The budget doubled. We had the Liberals tax-and-spend, and then we had the NDP spend-and-borrow period.
What I'm really thinking about and want to come around to is, what were they doing for our people who were caught on welfare? They certainly were not in there creating jobs. From 1990 to 1995 there was a net loss of 10,000 jobs, when across Canada during the same period there was a net gain of 400,000 jobs. Why did Ontario lose so many? I really don't know, other than the old tax-and-spend program of the Liberals. That just drove away jobs. And then we went into a recession as soon as the NDP got elected. During that 1990 to 1995 period, Ontario was really like an anchor around the rest of Canada. Now we're helping Canada and really leading it right along.
2100
Of course, welfare is considered as a last resort. We don't consider it a way of life. However, I think the third party, when they were in government, did consider it as a way of life. I think one of the most harmful things we did as a government - I'm talking about collectively as a government when the Liberals were in government - was overpaying welfare recipients and encouraging them that it was in fact a way of life. That was most unfortunate.
Our government is doing something about it. Ontario Works is an excellent program. There's the old saying that comes from many moons ago, I believe from the Bible, that if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime. There's also an interesting saying - I think I mentioned it the other day but in case I didn't - an old Yiddish saying, and it goes along this line: You can't hold your head up with your hand out. That's why we consider that welfare is really a last resort, and then Ontario Works is an opportunity to escape from it.
Ontario Works is about community participation, and that's what we've really been talking about here. It's about employment support and it's about employment placement. We're talking about the opportunity for work experience, the opportunity for a job search, for basic education and for developing job-specific skills.
We've heard a lot from the critics here this evening, and of course in the past over the last three years, that Ontario Works is going to displace people from regular jobs, and maybe they can list off some of those.
I think the member for Chatham-Kent just had an excellent speech. He was pointing out that once these people are trained, then they get jobs and can join the union in some of those jobs. You would think the unions would be very enthused because they can expand their role and expand the dollars - I suppose $1,000 a year that they would be taking in when these people get a good job.
Mr Bill Grimmett (Muskoka-Georgian Bay): That's the union steward.
Mr Galt: They might even get a job as a union steward.
As came out earlier, the kinds of threats that come from these organizations are really unfortunate, suggesting that they take support away from organizations like the Heart and Stroke Foundation. I personally am experienced and involved with the United Way and know how they have threatened the United Way. They really bucked anything the United Way was doing. They didn't want donations given if the United Way was to give one of the people on welfare the opportunity to develop some experience.
There were some comments made earlier, especially from the official opposition, quoting Dalton McGuinty. I made reference earlier that I thought we would hear from the member for Ottawa West when he spoke and when he had his response I thought he might explain to me "mandatory opportunity." I'm still waiting for an explanation on "mandatory opportunity." I'm sure that when they get a chance to respond after I sit down they will explain "mandatory opportunity" to me. It's in the red book, it's still there, right in this book.
Mr Baird: We have a copy right here.
Mr Galt: We have a copy here. It talks about, for welfare recipients, that you'll require "mandatory opportunity."
Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I look forward with great anticipation to the explanation on "mandatory opportunity."
The Acting Speaker: Comments and questions?
Mr Cullen: I'm glad to have this opportunity to participate and comment on the member for Northumberland's remarks. We heard a lot of self-justification, a lot of self-rationalization for a program that after three years is still not off the ground, is still not functioning, is still actually doomed for failure.
Why is Ontario Works doomed to failure? We hear the justification, how it's a wonderful program, how it's a hand up and not a handout, and yet we know after three years that the Association of Municipalities of Ontario continues to oppose the program. We know after three years that many community organizations and charities continue to oppose the program.
I hear the member opposite speak about the Heart and Stroke Association. I can tell the member opposite that the Heart and Stroke Association of Ottawa-Carleton, along with many other charitable organizations and social service agencies, refuses to participate in this program. Why? Because they do not believe in enforced employment for the vulnerable in our community. What they believe this government should be doing is focusing on job creation to help out the vulnerable in our community. This has not been the government's objective.
The government's objective since day one, since the Common Sense Revolution, is to reduce benefits to the poor in our community and to bring into place a program called workfare. Yet today we've had the minister go down to the United States to find out what went wrong. After three years, we find the municipalities still in opposition and we find the community agencies still in opposition. So what did this government do? "Oh, bread and circuses distract the public. We're going to stop those unions from organizing the very poor in our community. We're going to stop them from going on strike." Can you imagine that, people who are poor on strike?
Mrs Boyd: I always want so much to be able to respond to the member for Northumberland, because every time he gets up he shows what an ideologue he really is.
This is all about your insistence on treating people who require social assistance as if they have to be forced to work. You said yourself that they want to work, that they want jobs. You didn't have to force them to work. There are many ways in which the government could have provided the kind of job experience that you say is what people want. In fact we know from our experience with Jobs Ontario, we know from our experience with placements from adult education, co-op programs and so on, that voluntary placement doesn't enrage unions at all. They work side by side with people who are voluntarily placed. You know that some of the best mentors for people who were placed through Jobs Ontario or who are placed through college or school placements are union members.
This is about forced labour. This is about the fact that this is mandatory. This is about the fact that you are forcing people into this situation. Yes, indeed, some may benefit from that, but the whole issue that has been an issue all along is the fact that this is a forced program. The number of people who have been forced into this program is probably less than you would have had if it were voluntary, and certainly the community agencies would not be having the problem, the ethical problem, that they have accepting these placements, because it's forced labour.
Hon Mrs Marland: I haven't had the privilege until this evening of hearing the member for Ottawa West speaking and I can almost understand why he's speaking in the vein he is, because it certainly sounds to me as though he's going to walk right across the aisle here and join the New Democratic Party. I guess he's going to join the New Democratic Party because after yesterday's vote his leader probably doesn't want him at -
Mr Cullen: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: The standing orders, rule 23(i), forbid members from imputing or avowing motives. I've been a Liberal for 25 years and I'm very happy where I am.
2110
The Acting Speaker: Please continue.
Hon Mrs Marland: Of course the member for Ottawa West may be very happy where he is; I'm sure that perhaps the leader of his party isn't happy where he is sitting.
It's interesting to listen to the Liberals in their pious argument, and particularly from the member for Ottawa West, because in their red book they talk about, and I quote, "However, when people who are able to work refuse to participate in any of these programs, they will receive only a basic allowance that reflects the national average and is less than the current allowance."
It's very interesting because when someone like the member for Ottawa West does what he did yesterday, which was very obvious, that he was voting against the unity of our wonderful country, and then has the gall to stand up and try to make the argument he's making today against a very fair and just bill, he must be an embarrassment to everybody in the party.
Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): We're getting a little bit precious in this. It's dangerous territory into which the member for Mississauga South ventures, because when you start talking about last night, it forces me to start to look across and see how many members of the Conservative caucus were not here to vote for it. I didn't want to do that, I really didn't. Last night I think was a very conciliatory night. I did something last night. On behalf of the government House leader, I moved a motion that would have been difficult for the government House leader to move. Yet I hear you now talking about last night and who voted how. If all the members in the House were present, I would venture to say there might have been people in each of the political parties who might have had some difficulty with it. I would have thought it was very dangerous.
Hon Mrs Marland: Every member of our party voted for it. The member for St Catharines knows it.
Mr Bradley: Even Mr Vankoughnet would have, would he?
I just think when you venture into that territory, I just say to the member when she ventures into that territory, it becomes very difficult when you see the number of people who were absent.
Interjections.
The Acting Speaker: Order, please. Madam Minister, could I have some order?
Hon Mrs Marland: I am just speaking to my colleagues.
The Acting Speaker: Mr Bradley had the floor. You did not.
Hon Mrs Marland: I am not speaking to Mr Bradley.
The Acting Speaker: I'm not going to argue with you. Mr Bradley, do you want to continue?
Mr Bradley: The one aspect I wanted to look at that I think has been neglected in this is that I think many of us met with the representatives of the disabled community last week, who met with as many members of the Legislature as they could to talk about their job opportunities. What I'm looking for in terms of this program is legislation that the Premier promised and that I hope the government will deliver within the next period of time, which would help disabled people to get into the workforce. There was a passing reference to it in the budget; however, those people out there are very concerned that they're going to be shut out of opportunities to enter the workforce. I don't think this bill solves that problem.
Mr Galt: It's a pleasure for me to respond to the various comments, particularly the member for Mississauga South. I thank her for her thoughtful comments. She was commenting that the member for Ottawa West might just as well walk across the aisle and join the NDP, but I don't think he would get in, they're quite discriminatory about who they let into their party. I see a lot of heads shaking over there in the NDP, the third party. I can understand why you would be discriminatory and wouldn't want somebody in that would have such a definitive statement as "mandatory opportunity," which he still hasn't explained to us. Although the member for Mississauga South did quite a good job reading from the red book, and we find out it may not be pressure, that they may have an opportunity, but if they don't take part, they get a very basic allowance. It really drops down. I guess that's what mandatory opportunity is really about.
I noticed the member for St Catharines started to talk about the member for Mississauga South entering into dangerous territory. I thought he was referring to her reading the red book, because that certainly is dangerous territory to enter into. I would have agreed with him if he had pursued that particular point.
I always appreciate the thoughtful responses and comments of the member for London Centre. She is very concerned about force or pressure. This is about getting experience, this is about opportunities, and she's saying, "We can't force people." You encourage. You get them out. She says, "Make it voluntary." Well, it was voluntary all through your term in office, it was voluntary through the opposition's term in office, and look what happened. The rolls went way, way up.
We are doing something very constructive, very worthwhile, and it's really working.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Ottawa West.
Mr Cullen: Thank you, Mr Speaker. "Ottawa West is the best."
I'm engaging and participating in a debate dealing with Bill 22. Bill 22, in second reading here, was offered by the government just last week, where we had the unusual circumstance, on first reading - we normally give the courtesy of allowing a bill to be introduced for first reading, but we found this House being forced through a vote because of the absolute repugnance of this legislation.
What is so repugnant about this legislation that it requires a division on first reading and the opposition we're seeing today leading into second reading? Hopefully, we will not see this bill live past second reading.
This is An Act to Prevent Unionization with respect to Community Participation under the Ontario Works Act, 1997. This was moved by the Honourable Janet Ecker, Minister of Community and Social Services.
What this bill does is give authority to this government to ensure that people who have to participate in workfare, which this government has legislated - against tremendous opposition across the province, this government has legislated that people who are to receive welfare benefits must participate in workfare. That bill was introduced and passed some time ago. It was a promise in the Common Sense Revolution back in the 1995 election.
Workfare itself, the very program this government has introduced, has yet to find itself on its feet. It has yet to be in full operation three years after talking about it, after introducing legislation to require people to participate in it, three years after this government has heard from the people who have to manage the program: the municipalities, the regions and the counties that administer the welfare system in our province, who have said repeatedly, to a person, to an organization, that they're opposed to this kind of legislation. We're not talking about special interest groups. We're not talking about social service agencies. We're not talking about advocates for social causes. We're talking about the men and women who are elected to represent property taxpayers at the local level, and to a person, they have opposed this legislation.
On top of this, from the overwhelming majority of the agencies that form the United Way, that do the volunteer work in our communities, the message they've given consistently and persistently to this government is, "No, we do not want to participate in a program that we feel violates the rights of the poor and impoverished, who cannot help themselves."
So we have a program here that's not getting very far, that's not working. And what did this government do back on May 14? On May 14, the government introduced legislation, Bill 22, that for the first time in the history of this province will deprive such a large class of people of their rights as guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: the freedom of association.
I have to ask, what would prompt a government like this to bring in such draconian legislation so that the poor could not go on strike? We know what happens to anyone else who goes on strike. When the teachers go on strike, do they get paid? No, they don't. When employees in an auto plant go on strike, do they get paid? No, they don't. That is why when we have labour negotiations with our unions, over 96% of unions end up settling their disputes at the table and we do not have strikes. In a sector where we have unions, it is absolutely amazing that the overwhelming majority of these negotiations, the overwhelming majority of the conduct between employer and employee - we do not have strikes.
2120
But this government wants to ban strikes among the poor if they participate in Ontario Works. It boggles the mind. I cannot imagine that when this proposal came to cabinet there wasn't a memorandum to the minister from the bureaucrats who serve the people of Ontario, saying, "Note to Minister: Minister, please be aware that this proposed legislation violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms." I cannot help but think that somebody wrote that in the memo to cabinet.
Of course, we can recollect that this government is driven by political considerations. Indeed, when there was another memo to cabinet dealing with a speech from the throne about reference to a young offender, that cabinet just said, the minister's office just said - it was actually the Premier's office: "Oh, forget it. We have other fish to fry. Political considerations are important. We'll just ignore this charter obligation, this recognition that there's a law that defends the right of young offenders." But that's under investigation now by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, so we can't say anything further on that.
I cannot believe that such legislation, which would have such a clearly written memo to cabinet saying, "This offends the charter" - it's black and white, folks. I find it amazing. What is it about the poor that so frightens this government that it feels compelled to bring in such a law? It didn't ban teachers from their union, although it did try to pick on the principals and vice-principals, but we found that offensive and we opposed that. So what happens here? When we have strikes any place else, do we find this government coming in with such legislation? No, it doesn't. Why doesn't it? Is it because the poor can't speak for themselves?
Can you imagine the poor going on strike? Can you imagine a single welfare mom with two or three kids standing up and saying, "Hell, no, I won't take that cheque"? That's what happens when you go on strike. When people are finally driven to a strike - and remember, over 96% of negotiations with unions are settled peaceably at the table, and we brag about that. When the government goes abroad and markets itself across the world as a place to invest in Ontario, it talks about how well regulated our industry is, how well educated our population is, how well run our economy is. When it comes time for a photo op for the opening of a new plant, the Premier will be there with his arm around whoever the union local president is - you bet - working together for all of Ontario. But not when it comes to the poor.
What happens here? After three years of a program that has yet to get on its feet, it brings in this piece of legislation. Why? What did the minister say? "We will not be pushed around by the unions who threaten to organize the poor, the union bosses who threaten to organize those people who would be forced to come on to Ontario Works, forced into workfare." Here's a government that's forcing people on to workfare and here are unions saying, "We would like to perhaps organize these people so they can protect their interests," and instead of the government saying, "We should stop unions from doing this," they're saying, "We should take away the rights of people who are poor for freedom of association."
I'm not following the logic here. If the idea was to stop unions from coming in - I mean, there's nothing that has stopped anyone who's receiving welfare, for over 100 years when you go back to the poor laws and everything that succeeded that, from forming a union. It's as if we have a hotbed of labour unrest among our poor. What is it when a government is so far committed to a revolution that they want to start taking away rights? Let's face it. This is a PR exercise, purely a public relations exercise so the government can try to thump CUPE or thump OPSEU or thump the OFL for daring to talk about organizing people who are struggling from day to day to pay the rent but who, because of the welfare cut, don't have enough money for rent and therefore from day to day are in the food banks and are struggling to find a job, struggling to get some employment opportunities, struggling to get some job training. That's all these folk want.
But this is bread and circuses. The government seeks to distract. It seeks to create the straw dog, the straw figure, the straw man, if you would, by saying: "The union bosses are coming in and we're going to - wait a second. We're not going to stop unions. Oh, no. We're going to stop the poor from exercising the rights that any lawyer has, any doctor has, any civil servant has." Why doesn't this government ban unions among the civil service, for crying out loud? I'm not recommending that. Don't get me wrong. I firmly believe in the right and the freedom of association, and isn't it great that we can stand up in this House and so say? Isn't it great that here in our country we pride ourselves for being a free and tolerant country?
But we look at the side opposite and we hear them introduce farcical legislation. We know this legislation is farcical. It cannot withstand a challenge to the courts. Is there any compelling reason in a free and just, democratic society to limit these rights? An essential service? I think not; not at all. Are we talking about a situation where they're a menace to a free and democratic society? Well, my Lord, the government just crows about the declining numbers of welfare cases. It can't be that we have revolution running in the streets.
Would the exercise of their rights to join a union seriously threaten anyone else's fundamental rights? Let's see. Could they bargain for a pension? What happens when a union goes through the bargaining process and ends up with the ultimate sanction? The ultimate sanction in our collective bargaining process, which this government still adheres to, the Ontario Labour Code, the Canada Labour Code, developed after more than a century of conflict within our community, of give and take, of compromise, of recognition of collective bargaining rights, which the Minister of Labour for this government will stand up and spout for when it comes to Labour Day - for sure he talked about the value of collective bargaining.
What is the ultimate sanction when the collective bargaining process fails? The employer can lock out, right? If you're someone on welfare who does not participate in Ontario Works, you're cut off. You are cut off if you refuse to participate, for whatever reason. It's amazing. When we go through the list of what has happened to welfare recipients and how easily they can be cut off - because it's not just by not participating in the program that they can get cut off. Adult children who live with their parents can be cut off, even if they're single parents themselves and are paying rent. You'll be cut off.
The Acting Speaker: Member, I ask you take your seat.
It is now 9:30 of the clock. This House stands adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 2129.