L023b - Tue 9 Jun 1998 / Mar 9 Jun 1998 1
RED TAPE REDUCTION ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 VISANT À RÉDUIRE LES FORMALITÉS ADMINISTRATIVES
The House met at 1830.
ORDERS OF THE DAY
RED TAPE REDUCTION ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 VISANT À RÉDUIRE LES FORMALITÉS ADMINISTRATIVES
Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 25, An Act to reduce red tape by amending or repealing certain Acts and by enacting two new Acts / Projet de loi 25, Loi visant à réduire les formalités administratives en modifiant ou abrogeant certaines lois et en édictant deux nouvelles lois.
The Acting Speaker (Mr Bert Johnson): Further debate? The Chair recognizes the member for Scarborough West.
Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Riverside): On a point of order, Speaker: I don't believe we have a quorum.
The Acting Speaker: Would you please check if there's a quorum.
Acting Clerk at the Table (Ms Donna Bryce): Mr Speaker, a quorum is not present.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Acting Clerk at the Table: Mr Speaker, a quorum is now present.
The Acting Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Scarborough West.
Mr Jim Brown (Scarborough West): Today I'm pleased to address the House and speak in favour of Bill 25, an act to reduce red tape. I'd also like to recognize the hard work of the members of the Red Tape Commission. As a small business person myself, I know what unnecessary red tape does to business. I know at first hand how it takes away incentive, inhibits development and kills the entrepreneurial spirit. As a red tape commissioner, I know how hard my colleagues work at cutting regulations and red tape.
Running your own business is hard enough; at times it seems like everyone's against you: the competition, the suppliers, even your clients. The last enemy you need is government regulators telling you how to conduct your affairs. You certainly don't have time to waste filling out unnecessary paperwork for some bureaucrat who could care less about the success of your business.
The government should be the best friends of small business people. These entrepreneurs are the backbone of our economy. They produce 80% of all new jobs, and the unprecedented job growth we've experienced in the last three years is due in no small part to this government's efforts to untie the hands of the private sector, to be best friends with the risk-takers.
The problem is, in the real world, most people have a profit motive. Their job security is tied to the bottom line. However, in the artificial world of government bureaucracy, red tape is the product. Bureaucrats build a fortress of regulations around themselves. Their job security depends entirely on their ability to produce new regulations, new paperwork, which they in turn oversee. It's like making a mess and paying yourself to clean it up.
This province has 45,000 regulations and, if we're not careful, they'll continue to grow. These regulations are costing Ontarians billions of dollars annually. Red tape kills jobs by discouraging outside investment in Ontario. Red tape makes it more difficult and expensive for job-creating businesses to start up.
Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): On a point of order, Mr Speaker: I know what the member has to say is extremely important and I think some of his colleagues ought to be here to listen to it. I do not believe we have a quorum.
The Acting Speaker: Would you please check and see if there is a quorum.
Acting Clerk at the Table: Speaker, a quorum is not present.
The Acting Speaker ordered the bells rung.
Acting Clerk at the Table: A quorum is now present, Speaker.
The Acting Speaker: The Chair recognizes the member for Scarborough West.
Mr Jim Brown: We now have quorum, and I think we've got three Liberals and no NDP present.
Interjections.
Mr Jim Brown: This is a very important bill. I know you don't think it is, but it's a very important bill.
Reducing red tape is important because red tape kills jobs by discouraging outside investment in Ontario; red tape makes it more difficult and expensive for job-creating businesses to start up, expand, survive and grow; red tape makes government less efficient, creating additional costs, delays and service problems; red tape creates unnecessary paperwork for the job generators, small business; and red tape impedes Ontario's economic growth and our ability to compete in the global economy. In short, red tape wastes valuable time and money for everyone: businesses, the taxpayers and the government.
But thanks to the good work of the Red Tape Commission and efforts like Bill 25, we are reversing the trend. We've finally knocked a hole in the swelling bureaucracy. We are attacking red tape on several fronts. First, we are cutting our own bureaucracy while at the same time improving our service. It's right there in the Common Sense Revolution. We're doing better for less.
For instance, since 1995 the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations has reduced its budget from $156 million to $102 million. Staff has gone from 2,100 to 1,700. Yet, remarkably, average transactions per staff member have increased by 50%. It just goes to show how cutting red tape saves money while increasing efficiency. It's better to have less people working more effectively than to have a bunch of people who are all bogged down by process and unnecessary paperwork.
We need to completely reorient our thinking. Customer service should be our main objective in government, not paper pushing. Government offices should be run on the same principles as any other service-related industry. Government offices should be run like a business. We deal with people and they need quick, effective service. When asked, Canadians identified the reduction of red tape and the simplification of forms and procedures and regulations as their top priority for service improvement.
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What kind of changes are we talking about? I remember not long ago when there was only one place in Ontario to go and register your business. It could take up to six weeks just to get the name reserved. Close to half the applications were returned as incorrect, and an application error could delay the starting of a business up to 16 weeks and, of course, the creation of jobs by up to 16 weeks.
That has all changed and it has changed quickly. Now there are over 100 locations for registering a business across the province. The registration can be done on your own computer and it only takes 20 minutes. There are no errors, no lost files and no mailing costs, not to mention the dozens of new services being provided, including Internet application.
The government has no right to interfere with a private citizen's right to start a business and make his or her own livelihood. On the contrary, we should be doing everything possible to get out of people's way and allow them the freedom to make their own decisions and investments without the hindrance of red tape, regulations and unnecessary bureaucracy.
Another good example of the benefit of cutting red tape like Bill 25 is the changes made to the Ontario tourism information telemarketing centre. Before we licensed it to Bell Global Solutions, it was a mess. There were over 69 ministry staffers manning the phones and, even with all those people, they were unable to meet the call demands. During peak times callers would often have to wait up to one half-hour for service. It was a nightmare.
Now the service is private sector operated and financed. There is no ministry staff. They are able to adjust the number of travel counsellors to meet seasonal demand. The waiting time has gone down to two to three minutes from one half-hour. This call centre is a major success story. Instead of booking for 100 hotels, they now book for over 700. They've gone from 16 to 60 communities. Reservations have gone from 2,000 to 15,000 and, incredibly, the value of hotel bookings has gone up from $420,000 to $4.3 million. It's an excellent example of the success of red tape cutting strategies.
Many government programs are too costly and run inefficiently. If we let the private sector have the opportunity, it will do it better. We get all the benefits, like a boost in Ontario tourism, and it doesn't cost us a cent.
What can we do about this? Some of the proposed changes include eliminating the annual corporate filing fee. This will save Ontario businesses about $14 million every year. Also, we will eliminate the first $400,000 in annual business payrolls from the employer health tax by next year. This will significantly reduce payroll taxes, which are a major barrier to job creation. We will eliminate more than 1,000 unnecessary annual licences, permits and reports for farm and food processing businesses. The list of changes that the red tape committee will be recommending is as impressive as it is long. Then again, with over 45,000 regulations, there is still a lot of work to be done.
Once we've made the changes, we need to stick to them. As I've already said, there are a lot of people out there whose livelihood depends upon regulation and, as soon as we turn our backs, they'll be back at it again. It's not enough to cut away the red tape and go back to business as usual. We have to permanently change the system.
Mr Joseph Spina (Brampton North): Red tape, does that mean Liberal tape?
Interjection: It's the colour of the ink they use in their books.
Mr Jim Brown: Liberal red ink.
We still must establish a regulatory watchdog. An ongoing commission reporting directly to the Premier will help ensure that the red tape doesn't begin to grow again. We must put in place permanent testing in the form of a "less paperwork" jobs test, a template through which all new laws and regulations will pass.
I won't go through all the new ideas the red tape commissioners have proposed, as I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunity to discuss them later. I will say that what this requires is nothing short of a complete system overhaul. We have to eliminate the culture of bureaucracy, regulation, duplication and waste, and we're doing it.
Mr Spina: What are we eliminating?
Mr Jim Brown: Overregulation, overduplication, red tape and waste.
Speaking as a member and as a former small business person and a red tape commissioner -
Mr Gerretsen: And a crime commissioner.
Mr Jim Brown: - and a crime commissioner, I am encouraged by the work of this commission. I am proud to speak in favour of this bill. It will mean more growth and opportunity for the people of Ontario. It will mean millions of dollars in savings and increased service and efficiency. It will mean support for entrepreneurs and anyone who works for or operates a business in this province. Simply put, it will mean lots and lots of jobs.
Bill 25 tries to cut through some of the red tape and put "service" back into "customer service." Cutting red tape, establishing customer service in the government, eliminating duplication, cutting regulations - Bill 25 is another step to that end.
The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments? The member for Scarborough West has two minutes to respond. No? Further debate?
Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-Walkerville): I am pleased to join the debate this evening on Bill 25, which the government talks of as being a bill to carry forward initiatives in nine red tape bills which were originally introduced in February 1997. I'd like to address this topic a little differently from the way my colleague from Scarborough addressed it in his remarks a few moments ago. I'd like to actually talk about some of the major provisions and the schedules in the bill, which say not so much about a piece of important legislation but talk, in my view, more to the way a government does business, more to the way a government wants to control and regulate both our economic and political climate.
Bill 25 is titled An Act to reduce red tape by amending or repealing certain Acts and by enacting two new Acts, and I think there are three main points in this bill that we have to talk about.
First, just like the eight red tape bills that the government introduced in 1996, this bill has less to do with reducing red tape for business and consumers and more to do with providing new powers to implement fees and give new powers to cabinet ministers, that is, more power to cabinet ministers, less accountability, less responsibility on the part of this government, not so much to this House but to the people of the province of Ontario.
The member from Scarborough failed to mention that the bill also allows new or enhanced fee-setting powers under 40 different statutes. That's the ability to raise fees by a minister without any consultation, without any public debate, without any opportunity for public input, more power concentrated to the cabinet. Here we come back to this theme about democratic government, about openness, about accountability, which leads naturally to questions of money, both in terms of where it comes from for political parties and how much they can spend.
One of the more interesting schedules in this bill, and I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about it, is schedule J. This is the repeal of the Policy and Priorities Board of Cabinet. What does this mean? It is, I will confess, something of an inside-the-Beltway issue, but it speaks again about the way a party governs. They get rid of a cabinet committee, a committee composed of senior elected officials who enjoy the confidence of the Premier, and put power into the hands of the backroom organizers, the whiz kids, as we like to call them.
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What does that mean? This bill, like many others that the government has brought forward, is an omnibus bill. The title doesn't reflect what's in the bill. The members of the government party will get up and speak about different issues and attempt to tie them back to this legislation. Frankly, they don't do a good job of it. They review what they want to talk about, and not the reality of the bill. Tonight they want to talk about eliminating red tape and making it easier to do business in Ontario. They want to talk about things like that. But this bill only deals with it indirectly. This bill deals, through a number of different schedules, with a whole variety of issues.
It deals with agriculture, food and rural affairs. This is what the government says in some of those areas. It amends the Drainage Act. It exempts municipalities from sending copies of engineers' reports to affected landowners whose properties are assessed at a value of less than $100. It amends the Drainage Act again, to allow the minister to pay a subsidy of any amount less than the current 50% on approved drainage projects. The Sheep and Wool Marketing Agency is repealed. The Tile Drainage Act is amended to exempt municipalities from OMB approval for borrowing bylaws and from being required to register such bylaws in the land registry office.
The Attorney General's department is affected: 12 acts are amended to allow corporate and public trustees more flexibility, it's claimed, in managing trust funds. The Courts of Justice Act is amended to allow for the electronic processing of writs and land registry documents. The Attorney General will no longer be required to approve applications to stop vexatious proceedings. The Evidence Act is amended to allow for official recognition of statutes and regulations in electronic form.
And on it goes: citizenship, culture and recreation, consumer and commercial relations. This act deals in a lot of areas. It makes 100 amendments to 30 ministry acts, almost all of which are minor technical amendments. It deals with energy, science and technology, and it deals with health in a number of instances, by amalgamating various boards in the Ministry of Health to supposedly make them more effective and accountable.
It amends the Conservation Authorities Act to remove the need for provincial approval of the enlargement, amalgamation or reduction in size of conservation authorities and to allow conservation authorities to enter into agreements to allow the oil and gas industry access to conservation area oil and gas reserves. Interesting: Give oil exploration companies access to conservation land for exploration.
A more controversial amendment to that act will identify flood control as a provincial interest in conservation authority matters. The Minister of Natural Resources will now have to approve conservation authority plans, regulations and amendments impacting floodplains, shoreline areas and unstable slopes and wetlands. The conservation authorities of Ontario believe that this amendment will result in substantially more overlap, more duplication and confusion between the role of conservation authorities and the role of the province in protecting these areas.
These conservation authorities are also concerned that the amendment will leave gaps that will result in the elimination of regulations prohibiting polluted landfill to be buried near these sensitive water areas. What does it mean? Once again, slipping in more opportunity to abuse our public heritage, our lands, our conservation authorities. It takes away protections and, according to the conservation authorities of Ontario, creates duplication. It creates the very kind of waste that the government claims it wants to reduce.
We have a mixed bag in this bill. It's an omnibus bill, a bill designed to give more power to unelected officials with less accountability. I guess by now we shouldn't be surprised. I guess today we shouldn't have been surprised when the government introduced the election finances reform that it introduced. That was the bill today that the minister introducing it didn't want to speak about, didn't want any of us to have a debate about, thought he could slip it in behind the Hydro bill. The Americanization of Ontario politics bill, that's what it was, and it exposes all of us when a government introduces a bill that way. Whether they try to not debate a bill or cook up a whole variety of issues that don't relate to a bill, it's the same thing: The message and the substance are different.
The theme that we hear, though, whether it be in the area of election finance reform to allow big companies to impact more directly on our elections or whether it be to take powers away from local education authorities and consolidate them to the centre or whether it be to give the Health Services Restructuring Commission the power to close hospitals, one thing and one theme remain consistent: We have a government that's less interested in democracy and public debate than it is in simply controlling.
That's part of the theme of this bill. It gives great powers to ministers without the protection of even having to gazette some of these things to implement fees, user fees. Mike Harris used to say that a tax is a tax is a tax, but that song has changed, just like his song about not closing hospitals has changed. What was it he said in the all-candidates debate when asked directly about closing hospitals? He said, "It's not our intention to close hospitals," and 32 hospitals later, we see a government that still has not come to terms with its own essential reality.
We support in general the notion of reducing red tape, we support in general the notion of eliminating duplication in government and, to that extent, any number of the issues dealt with in here could, separately or in and of themselves, I suppose, be supported. But when you look at the government's overall record, a record of lessening protection for the environment, a record of centralizing control of our education system, a record of closing hospitals, of leaving people exposed to inadequate or insufficient emergency health care services, or when you look at another aspect of public policy under this government, the imposition of American-style politics, big-money politics, on our electoral process, without any attempt at reaching consensus, a government that's prepared to change the rules governing something as fundamental as how we elect members to this Legislature, how we elect our government, without first seeking consensus, one ought not be surprised when you see a bill like this.
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I say to the members of the government, whether it be red tape reduction, hospital closures, school closures, laying off teachers, laying off nurses, changing election law, the myth of your message versus the reality of your legislation becomes more clear with each passing day, and I can't help but believe that the kinds of missteps and misstatements that are contained in debate around this bill will eventually catch up with the government. I would submit that most of this bill is window dressing.
Yes, it's fair to say that some of the schedules in the bill remove obsolete legislation or provide a minimal amount of government operation streamlining, but for the most part the legislation implements various government downsizing projects such as, for instance, eliminating regional assessment review offices. And look at the mess you've made of our assessment system. Look at the mess you find in each and every one of your communities.
It was reported in my local newspaper just last week that the cost of your screwups to local taxpayers, just in terms of getting the assessment list to the municipality, is close to half a million dollars. That cost will have to be borne by property taxpayers right across the province, particularly in my community. When we talk about downsizing in our communities, we wonder what the impact of policing costs will be on towns like Tecumseh, we wonder what will become of the social housing stock right across our city and how it will be maintained and how property taxpayers can bear that burden.
Fundamental to this bill, at its very heart, is the notion of centralized control with little or no accountability. It's about a government that wants to bully, it's about a government that will impose its will without political discussion, political discourse, whatever you want to call it, and it's about a government that will spend any amount of taxpayers' money.
I see a brochure right here that my colleague from Kingston might want to share with us, yet another example - if I may, John - of taxpayers' money, those very taxpayers you claim to be protecting, being used to advertise your government's message. I would say to the people right across this province who are receiving this last week and this week, take it and send it back to Queen's Park, and put a little note. Put a stamp on it and send it back to the Premier and tell him he ought not to be wasting money on this kind of cheap political propaganda and ought to be investing it in hospitals where there are waiting lists, in communities where there are waiting lists for not only health and hospital services but so many other things - a blatant use, an inappropriate use of taxpayers' money.
Of course, this will all be augmented by the new election finances laws in this province which will allow the government to go out and spend, spend, spend to buy an election, and it will be spent on electronic media and on broadcast media. It has already started. Look at any media in this province over the last eight weeks and how many full-page ads extolling one government position or another do you find? It's positively, I would submit, obscene, absolutely obscene.
As we debate Bill 25, an act that consolidates power, an act that gives enhanced fee-setting powers under 40 different statutes, an act that empowers ministers to do that without any kind of public review, without any kind of public discussion, all of us in this Legislature ought to bear in mind that there's nothing wrong with public debate. The spectacle of a minister introducing massive reform to our elections finances system and not wanting to speak to it in the Legislature to defend the government's position - all that says to the people of this province is that you're not interested in what they have to say.
You can control the agenda so far. You can use your spin, you can use the whiz kids, you can buy advertising with taxpayers' dollars, but the reality of bills like Bill 25 will not be lost. You can talk about red tape all you want, but even according to your own conservation authorities, it creates red tape and duplication. You can try to convince everybody of your position, but it simply won't work.
The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?
Mr Tony Martin (Sault Ste Marie): I found the speech of the member from the Windsor area an interesting exposé of some of what's in this legislation that, at first blush, may seem to some rather nondescript. But he referred to one piece that I think is telling, because it's in keeping with a whole series of attacks on democracy as we've come to know it in this province over a period of many, many years.
It's interesting how in the last two to three years this government has slowly but surely eroded in very significant and meaningful ways the ability of the people out there to send people here to participate in the process of making laws and regulations that affect all of us, so much that you wonder, if they go much further, just exactly what influence anybody will have on that very important work we all do and that hopefully we will continue to do. That's the piece where they do away with P and P.
To a lot of people in this House, P and P doesn't excite you or get you all up in arms in any significant way, but it is an important piece of the whole process of how we vet pieces of legislation that come before this House. It's an elected group of people who advise the Premier, who are accountable, ultimately, to the constituents who elect them, who carry the blame if something goes wrong and take the success when it comes. But that's going to be eradicated. That's in keeping with the fewer politicians we have at this place now. I say keep your eyes open, because there's more to come.
Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West): I listened very closely to the member for Windsor-Walkerville as he gave his speech. I want to touch on a couple of items he spoke to. One of them is schedule J, which is the repeal of the Policy and Priorities Board of Cabinet. I want to point out that this repeals the act, the Policy and Priorities Board of Cabinet Act; it doesn't repeal the board. It doesn't preclude cabinet from setting up whatever committees they wish to set up. For example, the legislation regulation committee does not require an act for cabinet to set up the committee. It doesn't preclude cabinet from setting up whatever committees they wish to set up.
He talked about fee increases. I want to point out that under, for example, incorporation, from 1989 to 1993 the fee for incorporation went up from $250 up to $315. That was between 1989 and 1993-94. Since then we have held the cost; in fact, there has been no increase in cost. So that's not the purpose of this bill.
Let's go back to what the purpose of the red tape reduction bill is. It's to eliminate paperwork and red tape, get rid of barriers, create jobs and help businesses get on with what they do best, which is to create jobs to provide opportunity and hope for families and children, to provide a future for our families and for all our children. That's what this bill is all about. It's not about putting up barriers, about creating fees or costs or increasing regulation; it's about reducing them, eliminating barriers and getting on with the job of creating an economic climate in this province that is going to benefit all Ontarians.
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Mr Gerretsen: The government members always say, "We want to get rid of red tape." Who would be against getting rid of red tape? If it's useless government information or documentation, it has to be gotten rid of. There isn't a person in this House who doesn't believe that and wouldn't buy into that. We are all against needless red tape.
But what this bill is really all about is that under 40 different statutes there will be increased powers to set user fees. That's what it's all about. Yes, you are eliminating the need for corporate seals in certain circumstances and various other things that everybody would agree with, but it isn't only that you're dealing with. You are allowing user fees to be introduced under 40 different statutes.
Getting back to the member for Windsor-Walkerville, we had something happen here in this House today with the introduction of the new Election Finances Act which the people of Ontario must find somewhat difficult to understand, because here we've had a government that for the last three years has been talking about reducing government and reducing the cost of government, yet now they have the nerve to introduce a bill that is going to make it a lot more expensive for people to run in the electoral process. As a matter of fact, in some ridings the amount a candidate will be able to spend is double the current amount. The people of Ontario must think there is some inconsistency there.
Why would you want to spend more money, on shorter elections, if you are a government that wants to spend less money? For the life of me, I can't understand it. I would still like somebody to get up on the government side and explain that, because nobody has today.
Mr Lessard: If this government were really interested in eliminating red tape and that was one of their big priorities, they would have proceeded with this bill a long time ago, when it was introduced in February 1997. They didn't do that. They didn't pass it in the last session; they had to bring it back in this session. The delay has caused significant problems for a number of organizations and municipalities. They could have recalled the Legislature in March, based on the traditional schedule, but they didn't do that. They left it until now, so we have to deal with it close to the end of this session.
The member talked about some of the costs that this government's delay in passing their legislation and dealing with their agenda has caused for communities like the city of Windsor. In a report considered by council last night, the commissioner of corporate services and the treasurer, Gerry Pinsonneault, outlined some of those costs. They had expected that the initial assessment roll was going to be provided to municipalities by April 30 of this year, but on March 27 the Minister of Finance announced that it was going to be postponed until May 29. That has come and gone as well, as a result of Bill 16.
They still aren't in a position where they're going to be able to issue the final tax notices, and because of that they expect the net cost to the taxpayers in the city of Windsor will be $484,000. Those are unnecessary costs due to this government's mismanagement. Capital projects have been delayed and budget deliberations and approvals have been delayed for up to six months. It really was unnecessary. It could have been avoided if this government had managed their agenda. We could have dealt with these red tape bills a long time ago if they had recalled the Legislature to deal with their business when they should have.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Windsor-Walkerville has two minutes to respond.
Mr Duncan: To the government member I say, read the bill. Get off your talking points. Look at what it does. It consolidates power, power for new user fees, right across a number of statutes. It takes power away from elected officials and puts it into the hands of people like the whiz kids, people who want to jack up the price of elections, people who want to take power away from the people of this province and put it into their own hands. You may be prepared to come in here and do what they tell you, but we on this side of the House are not. We will not do that. We will not allow the Americanization of our politics, just as we won't allow you to pull the wool over the eyes of the people of this province.
You said you'd close no hospitals. You've closed 32. Count them - done. You said you wouldn't touch classroom spending. Guess what? Cut - done, fait accompli. You've said lots of things, and it's going to catch up with you. All the spin and all the talking points in the world cannot conceal the fact that this government is about hurting people. It's about closing schools. It's about eliminating junior kindergarten. It's about closing hospitals. It's about waiting rooms and emergency rooms. That's what this government's about.
Mr Alvin Curling (Scarborough North): More homeless.
Mr Duncan: More homeless - good point. Look what you've done with rent control.
When a member from the governing party speaks of spin and not of reality, not of what is contained in the bill -
Mr W. Leo Jordan (Lanark-Renfrew): Did you read it?
Mr Duncan: I've read it a few times, I say to the member opposite. Have you? Based on what I've heard, you've said nothing about what's in the bill. I suggest to the members of the government, spend some money to open some hospitals, spend some money on emergency rooms and on junior kindergarten, and get off your talking points and on to what the people of this province want to hear.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate?
Mr David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre): I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate on the discussion around Bill 25. Speaker, for your benefit I want to raise the fact that under the explanatory note which forms the first page of the bill, it states, "The bill is part of the government's initiative to reduce red tape." So I will be speaking of course to the bill, but also matters that I believe fairly fall under the ambit of the government's overall initiatives vis-à-vis red tape.
When we start talking about this government's agenda with regard to red tape, the first thing we have to do is recognize that this is a government that, as much as it hurts me to admit it, really is masterful at the wordsmithing. I'm sure there are people deep in the bowels of the government who are rubbing their hands with glee looking at the TV and saying: "Thank you. We appreciate that." On a strictly professional level, if you will, I would acknowledge the expertise that's gone into accomplishing this. You have done a good job.
I don't know how much pride you want to take in having done a good job of pulling the wool over the eyes of the general public, in my opinion conning the public. Like a sleight-of-hand artist, you're hoping everybody's looking over here where you're doing all the talking, but all the real action's taking place over here with the other hand. And like magicians, ultimately the goal is to give a pre-arranged success that you've already calculated well ahead of time and also figured out where it plays into things.
What I mean by that - and I've made this argument before on previous red tape bills but obviously believe it important enough to underscore a second time. I think there are two parts to thinking about red tape when we look at this government.
First of all, I agree with my colleague from Kingston and The Islands about red tape that is truly red tape in the sense that most people would think of it: duplication, forms to fill out that don't serve any function, it seems, other than filling out a form, because the information either is not required or is perhaps contained in another form; delays that are unacceptable, that aren't reasonable; procedures that are confusing, that overlap, that in the worst-case scenario send the citizens around in circles over and over again.
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When we say "red tape," a lot of us think of that, and of course that's what you want the public to believe all of this is addressing. But I'm arguing that this is two things, and one is that legitimate aspect. I agree with John, the member for Kingston and The Islands: If that's the kind of red tape you've got, why would anybody oppose eliminating it? Why would we? You could say: "You're the opposition. You're supposed to oppose anything." Well, if you don't have anything on matters that are clearly removing bureaucracy or removing problems, why would we waste valuable political time, since you give us so bloody little of it in this House now -
Mr William Saunderson (Eglinton): Don't talk like that.
Mr Christopherson: What part didn't you like, "bloody" or "House"?
Interjection.
Mr Christopherson: Oh, give me a break. The guy doesn't like the word "bloody"? That's good for me. The fact is that, uh - now you've done it. That was probably your point. Usually I wait for serious heckles; yours was so silly it threw me right off.
To put myself back on track, the fact is that we're not going to waste good political time on issues that just don't have any heft to them. That doesn't make sense. There are enough serious issues that we want to put our time in on.
If you've got things that are going to cut red tape, as we use it in regular everyday language, it would be supported by people, both the concept and the detail, even the legislation or regulation. I'd believe that of the Tories if they were on the other side. I can remember when sometimes we had what are called housekeeping bills. Some of the members were here in the last Parliament and they sat where we are now in the third party. Things can change quickly, I would remind the sitting government. I can recall times when we said, "Look, this is just a housekeeping bill; it's a quick piece to clean up some language and to update legislative numbers and bill numbers etc," and we got cooperation. We'd just whiz them through. It wasn't a problem.
I believe there's a legitimate argument, when there is what we would think of as regular red tape, that something needs to be done. I also believe that most opposition members would believe it's the right thing to do, to pass it and get it out of the way. Also, they're not going to waste time on things that don't matter.
But then there's the other side of what "red tape" means to this government. They've been hoping to convince people that any regulation they cut, any procedure they cut, in fact anything that might be in this bill, which is not a small bill by any stretch, and the other red tape bills, if it's under that label of "red tape," people are supposed to believe automatically that it is nothing but the innocuous, benign cleanup they say it is.
The fact is that that's not true. That is not the reality at all. I'd like to point to something very important to my home town of Hamilton, and that is the issue of the environment. Not long ago, just a few weeks ago in this House, we had the Environmental Commissioner release her report. Lo and behold, in her direct message, "A Message from the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario," which runs over two pages, she states:
"Overall, environmental health continues to be a very low priority for the ministers of this province. Ministry business plans indicate that ministers are withdrawing from their environmental commitments. More and more, they are failing to integrate their responsibility for the environment into their core business plans and into their social, economic and scientific considerations. I remind these ministers that a healthful environment is an important part of a healthy economy and a healthy society.
"Recognizing the acknowledged and direct link between air quality and people's health, I paid particular attention in 1997 to decisions made by ministers that affect air quality. I found that `clean air' commands only a small portion of MOE's environmental protection budget, even though the Minister of the Environment has said that clean air is a major ministry focus."
This is the same minister, I would point out, who says there's still no need for a public inquiry into the Plastimet fire in Hamilton. Although even today there were two individuals found guilty under our provincial laws directly related to that Plastimet fire, still this government refuses to hold a public inquiry. I make the direct link that I believe the reason he doesn't want to do that is because he doesn't want to answer for the cuts in budgeting and staffing that have taken place, ravaging the Ministry of the Environment. I think that's why he doesn't want to call that public inquiry. But that will become clear as I move through the Environmental Commissioner's comments.
"I found that in the US, new standards set by the Clean Air Act will be mandatory in every state" - mandatory in every state - "while in Ontario, our more stringent, but unenforceable guidelines for inhalable particulates are regularly exceeded in cities such as Windsor, Hamilton, Toronto, Sault Ste Marie and London."
Here's the clincher, and this is the Environmental Commissioner speaking just a few weeks ago: "Ontario's focus needs to change from one of granting regulatory relief for polluters to improving its commitments to the environmental health of its residents and the natural environment." Let's repeat that: "Ontario's focus needs to change," because she's saying this is where you are now, "from one of granting regulatory relief for polluters." Well, well, well, surprise, surprise, surprise: The Environmental Commissioner is stating very clearly in her report that you are making regulatory changes that help polluters and hurt the health of our citizens.
That's no big surprise to those of us who remember when the red tape commissioners - you folks really love commissioners. It should almost be "commissar," but we'll live with "commissioner." When the commissioners released their package of red tape, one of the things in there was a recommendation to move to a 50-hour workweek, that that would become the standard workweek in Ontario. Hell, we're already behind the other provinces. We're at 44. People think it's 40; it's not, it's 44, and how long has it been at 44 for Ontario? Even if you thought it was 40, it has been decades.
There's now a serious movement afoot, as we take a look at the new global economy and the new economic pressures on us and the need for decent-paying jobs - of course something you don't care about, because nine times out of 10 it means your friends get a little less profit, as that would require them giving up something and it going to the people doing the work. So you don't like decent-paying jobs. But as some of us spend the time thinking about and looking at how we can provide decent-paying jobs, one of the things one looks at is reduced hours of work.
Obviously, we don't want to be into a situation where we're sort of sharing the poverty, if you will, because once you reach a certain level, that's where that goes, and that's not an easy issue to deal with. But there are people who are at least thinking in that direction. But my point is that they're thinking in a direction that says we need to make sure we are enjoying the benefits of all the new technology we have and all the benefits of the new wealth that's being created and the benefits of this huge boom that's going on being generated by the US economy.
But what are the Tories looking at? Under red tape, they said they wanted to increase the hours of work to 50 hours a week. Not only is that obscene to be talking about - a bunch of right-wing loonies going in that direction in the context of what's going on now in the rest of the world - but what has that got to do with red tape?
That's my larger point: It's not about red tape. It wouldn't be about red tape. It's labour law. It may be found in regulation - though this is actually found in legislation - but if you had a regulation that could merely change that, that still doesn't change the fact that it's not red tape as people would think of it under the loose definition I mentioned earlier.
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It's a major change to an issue that affects people's daily work lives, just like the regulatory changes that you made in the Ministry of the Environment. Yes, they helped your corporate pals in the short term, because it's easier for them to get the approvals and to do all the expansions and things they want. As long as they're not destroying the environment, those are wonderful things. But when we're asked as citizens to pay the price of our environment for somebody else's economic benefit, there's the rub. That's the point the Environmental Commissioner is making and it's the point that I am making. When this government says "red tape," people should not just suddenly close their eyes and say, "It can't be important, it can't relate to me." Damn right it can, a lot, because this is a game, a game this government takes very seriously and it's about making sure that their friends win.
I'm surprised they didn't announce as part of the changes to the Election Finances Act that it was merely red tape. They got rid of one of the commissions, although I guess for people who create so many commissions and commissioners, it must have been difficult to actually accept you were going to eliminate a commission. In this case, it was one that served a good purpose. It regulated the election finances in the province of Ontario. You've shortened the election period. All this was done just today.
My point is, I'm surprised you didn't say it's merely red tape, although we have heard the Chair of Management Board stand up and say - here are the words, and if you look at other red tape legislation, similar words are used - "streamlining," "efficiency," "removal of duplication" - again, all the things that are so motherhood no one would oppose them, except behind those spin words is the reality that this government is changing laws to suit them and theirs.
They want to change the labour laws, as they've already done in so many sad cases, truly, that have benefited theirs and hurt people. I've shown here today where the Environmental Commissioner - not me as an opposition member - has clearly and plainly showed that you making regulatory changes has helped polluters and hurt our environment and hurt our citizens. That's exactly what you're doing when you introduce your new changes to the election rules and how they're financed.
Do you honestly think that people are so gullible they won't be able to figure out that by increasing the amount of money that corporations can contribute - doubling it - by raising the amount of money that can be spent, shortening the election and making the ridings the size that they are, you want money to be a central part of who wins elections in the province of Ontario? How convenient.
This government held a fund-raiser not that long ago, a few weeks ago, in Toronto and it netted two million bucks. I can't speak for its accuracy but I did read in one of the media that the Minister of Agriculture held a fund-raiser for his riding and netted, after expenses, $50,000. That's a lot of money to be able to raise with one event, at a time when your central party is holding fund-raisers in one evening that put two million bucks in the bank.
Money's not a problem for you and your friends. It never was. It was always about power and control. What's the linkage? The linkage is that when you've got enough money to prop up this kind of government, then you've got a virtual blank cheque, not for more money but to get regulatory laws changed and legislative laws changed so that you can go out and make a lot more money than you ever put in. It's a great system.
The problem is, after a while people catch on and that's what's happened to this government. So what have they done? "Let's change the rules again." You didn't like the way the House operated because there was too much democracy so you changed it. You got rid of a whole bunch of democracy. You don't like the way the next election's likely to be run because of the fact that you're going to have a lot of problems? Change the way we run elections in Ontario, change the way they're funded, make them shorter and make them focused on the ability to create advertising. Pay for advertising air time and get your message out there.
All you have to do is plan the ramp up before the election, because you're the only ones who know when the election is; we don't have a fixed date. What a great deal. Under this new method where money buys - and I'm not saying it buys the whole election but I am saying that the ability to run campaigns that are at the limit and to have enough money to fund the things you need is an important part of running elections in a democracy - crucial. If it weren't so, corporations wouldn't spend so much money on their advertising budgets. Advertising works.
Given the fact that you're the folks who can tap into most of the moneyed people, certainly in North America and probably around the world - Ontario's an important place - this is a great plan for you.
For the poor citizens out there, again, tough. Just sit at home and watch the TV in whatever few hours after your longer work week the Tories will allow you. Sit there and watch TV and soak up all those ads and get spun by one or two or three issues and don't think about anything else the government might do, because there's an awful lot of people who were pretty shocked when they supported you for one or two issues and found out what came with the rest of that package. At the end of the day, march in there and vote for the best bumper sticker slogan you can. That is usually the one that looks the best and is worded the best. Unfortunately, in far too many cases, that means money, and money means power and power means regulations.
I consider all of this to be part of an overall approach that this government has towards the people and power in this province.
The Acting Speaker: Comments and questions?
Mrs Ross: I would like to bring the member for Hamilton Centre back to the act that we're debating here, which is the Red Tape Reduction Act, 1998.
I want to reiterate that what's in this act are responses to a lot of consultation that we heard, responses to the Red Tape Commission, which looked at everything that we do as a government and looked at eliminating obsolete provisions and bringing together harmonization with other statutes, things that made sense to come together, and eliminating those things that shouldn't be there at all. As an example of elimination, there's the - what was it called? The sheep marketing, sheep and wool -
Mr Gerretsen: We'll give you that one.
Mrs Ross: Okay, they're going to give us this one. This is the Sheep and Wool Marketing Act. The act originally authorized the voluntary promotion and improvement of sheep and wool marketing activities. The act has not been used since the 1985 inception of the Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency, which has legal authority for industry promotion and improvement under the Farm Products Marketing Act. It's pretty redundant and that's why we've gotten rid of it.
There are other things in the bill. For example, the Land Titles Act will now allow hearings to be held in locations other than land registry offices or the office of the director of titles, as is currently required. This only makes sense, because it allows for greater convenience for all interested parties and it means the public has greater access to government services. That's an important change.
This act looks at what government does and tries to respond by making things easier, better for the public, easier accessibility to government services, providing business with opportunity to create jobs - I bring it all back to jobs and the economy - and a better future for us, for our children and for our children's children. That's what reducing red tape is all about: making government services better.
Mr Gerretsen: Let me add to what the member for Hamilton West just said. What she doesn't talk about are the number of sections in this bill which allow ministers, under different statutes, the ability to set fees and to collect fees where they haven't before. I'm just looking here and I challenge anybody in the House to look at pages 28 to 32. There are about 10 instances where ministers now will have direct power in effect to set fees and prescribe fees, and nobody knows what they're going to be.
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Mr Lessard: That isn't a tax, though.
Mr Gerretsen: A user fee is a tax. Mike Harris said so, and of course everybody knows it is. It's another way of taxing people. You have really added about 40 new taxes as a result of this bill.
Mr E.J. Douglas Rollins (Quinte): Wrong spin.
Mr Gerretsen: You can say no. You've got powers in there for ministers to collect taxes and to set fees that you've never had before. Read the act and you'll see, so don't just talk about the fact that you're eliminating red tape. We've already agreed with the member for Hamilton West on a number of occasions. Cut all the red tape you can where it makes sense to cut the red tape, but also talk about the fees that you are now prescribing.
To get back to the main speaker, the member for Hamilton Centre, who always speaks so forcefully and powerfully in this House, what the people of Ontario should understand is that the election time period is going to be reduced to 28 days, yet the amount of money that can be spent in a riding is in some cases going to be doubled. As well, under the Corporations Tax Act the maximum deduction for a political contribution is going to be raised from $7,000 to $15,000. You are now going to have corporations that in effect can get a $15,000 benefit.
Mr Lessard: I want to commend the member for Hamilton Centre for his very insightful comments with respect to this red tape bill. What he pointed out really is that so often when this government is dealing with the elimination of red tape, people who are interested in protection of the environment and protection of labour standards, for example, have to say, "We better look out; something's coming our way and it might not mean what this government is actually talking about."
We see too often that when they're talking about eliminating red tape, what they're really talking about is eliminating environmental protection. That's really borne out by the report from the Environmental Commissioner, which the member mentioned in his remarks. That's something that's very close to home. The appointment of the Environmental Commissioner was something I was involved in. Her most recent report was one that mentioned the impact on the environment that this government's approach has had.
One of the things she said in her report was, "Overall, environmental health continues to be a very low priority for the ministers of this province." That's the context we have to consider bills like this one in, eliminating red tape, what their approach is going to be. Are they really going to be interested in increasing protection for the environment when we see that's the kind of approach they're taking? We know that the approach they've taken has really led to the deterioration of air quality in cities like Windsor and in my community, and also in Hamilton Centre. It has meant that there are more inhalable particulates in the air, and that's really having a detrimental impact on the health of people who live in our communities. That's something we need to be vigilant about.
The Acting Speaker: The member for Hamilton Centre has two minutes to respond.
Mr Christopherson: I want to thank the members, my colleagues from Hamilton West, Kingston and The Islands and Windsor-Riverside.
To my colleague from Windsor-Riverside I would just state that I'm not surprised that you wanted to reference this in your two-minute response, and I understand you'll also use it as part of your 20 minutes today, because your community is listed almost as often as mine in terms of the risk and the danger that this government's environmental policies, their red tape cutting, has put the citizens in.
To the member for Kingston and The Islands, it's always interesting to hear his comments and I appreciate that he took the time to stand and respond. I would add to what the member has said by also reminding anyone watching that the changes we're talking about to the Election Finances Act and the new way that elections are run and financed in the province of Ontario were always done traditionally by all-party agreement. They were introduced that way; they were amended that way only. This is the first government that has ever brought them in and intends to ram them through the Legislature in the face of opposition from both of the official opposition parties, if I can call them that without having you leap to your feet.
Lastly, to my colleague from Hamilton West, who talked again, the second time I've heard her on her feet talking about this, I understand her need to do that. She's a parliamentary assistant and has to justify the $11,000 or $12,000 she gets, so she has a job to do. But I have to say I'm very disappointed that she would get up and talk about family and children and their future in the face of this government's attack, again in particular on our environment. That does affect our children, that does affect their future. She won't support a public inquiry into Plastimet, but she's prepared to do this for a few pieces of silver.
The Acting Speaker: Further debate.
Mr Spina: I wonder sometimes when we get up in this House if this becomes a debate as to who can shout the loudest, like the member for Hamilton Centre, or who can try to compete with the idiocy or smarmy comments that come from the opposition members about people who are parliamentary assistants: "They make $10,000 or $12,000; they've got to justify their position." Well, hello. These people were cabinet ministers for five years and what did they do for their $130,000 a year? Nothing. They ran up the debt, doubled the deficit in this province.
Let's talk about red tape, because red tape costs money. Red tape destroys the economy in this province. And it comes from the Liberal attitudes and the NDP attitudes: "Business? Well, let's not let them make any money. You know why. Because that means they make some money and they put it in their pockets. Oh, heaven forbid. We don't want anybody to make money. It might create jobs. Oh, my goodness. Isn't that something new."
Mr Christopherson: Tell us what kind of jobs. Like the ones downstairs in the dining room?
Mr Spina: Powerful jobs, wonderful jobs. I'll tell you the kind of jobs that we create: 1,100 jobs at the Chrysler plant in Brampton, CAW jobs, people who support this government. Chrysler jobs, Northern Telecom jobs. And you know what? I'd lay a bet on this government.
Mr Christopherson: How about scab jobs? You support scabs. Scab jobs, and your freedom is at stake.
Mr Spina: By getting rid of red tape, we will create Boeing jobs in this province.
Mr Christopherson: Okay, who was the loudest, honestly? Don't show favourites.
The Acting Speaker: I'm not concerned about that. I'm concerned that there's only one speaker in this House at a time. I would like to be able to hear the member who has been recognized, who should be up, and the rest I would rather not hear.
Mr Spina: You see, when the blood and the adrenaline begin to run, sometimes it's difficult to control your emotions, but we must do the best we can. My friend the Hansard clerk always warns me about being careful about my interjections. I'll try to help with that.
We ask, what is red tape? Let me do a little quote here: "Red tape includes government measures that negatively effect Ontario's economic competitiveness." How? By adding unnecessary requirements, by adding costs, by adding delays to the normal activities of business and institutions. How are they created? Legislation, regulations, licences, permits, approvals, standards, registration, filing, paperwork enforcement. Boy, I'll tell you, if we added any more stuff here we may as well be in a communist country, where you can't move without 80 stamps and approvals of what you're doing. You couldn't get an apartment without the federal government approving it. That's a Communist environment. I wonder if we were really headed that way.
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The Liberals in their self-righteousness talk about, "Let's eliminate some of the red tape that is necessary." Thank you, member for Kingston and The Islands. Where were you when the employer health tax was foisted on the small businesses of this province in 1989?
Mr Gerretsen: Not here.
Mr Spina: You still believed in your Liberal colleagues to be able to run on a platform that literally killed small business in an environment where the economy was the hottest in the history of this province, in 1989. David Peterson and your government killed it; you killed it.
There are a lot of things that go on in red tape, and cutting red tape - I always liked the colour of that word. It's marvellous. I think we call it "red" tape because it must have been created by the Liberals. That's the only thing I can think of, that it was created by the Liberals and that's why they call it "red" tape. It certainly wasn't blue tape.
Mr Christopherson: What's your favourite, duct tape?
Mr Spina: With due respect to my colleagues from the New Democratic Party, it's not orange tape and that's good, because that would probably be even brighter. But red is there and that's what we refer to it as, red. You know why? The colour red represents a barrier. Red stop signs, right? At a traffic light you've got to stop if it's red. I can see the transition here and I understand now why the Liberals have adopted red for their party colour.
But you know, there were a lot of things that government was doing, and this red tape prevents the government from providing the best possible service to its customers. Hello? There's a new word, something government is unaccustomed to dealing with, the word "customers" - not taxpayers, not people who call us because they've got problems with all kinds of different government departments and God knows which ministry is doing it to them this week, this month, today.
Mr Gerretsen: They are still doing it to them.
Mr Spina: I don't argue with the member for Kingston and The Islands, who says that they're still doing it to them. You know why? Because turning this government around, with due respect, is like turning the Titanic around in a bay.
Mr Gerretsen: It's tough to do that.
Mr Spina: It sure is tough to do that, and you know what? You guys don't make it any easier. We're heading in a direction that is creating an environment for business, for jobs, for hope and opportunity for the people of this province, and you try to hinder us, back-stab us and stop us in any way you possibly can.
Mr Lessard: We're going to be red tape pretty soon.
Mr Spina: The member for Hamilton Centre made a great suggestion. He said, "Perhaps you can call it duct tape." You know, you're right, my friend, because I think red tape is like duct tape. It serves to constrict and block and cover things up. That's what duct tape does; that's what red tape does.
There's a whole bunch of things that this particular Red Tape Commission intended to do. The Premier struck this commission to achieve the objective of eliminating as much as we could, given the phenomenal number of 45,000 regulations that are present in the current legislative structure. We talk about the employer health tax that the Liberals had, and there's the really outdated stuff.
I thought this was kind of neat. When I first got to sit on this commission I thought it was really neat that we were going to change some stuff. I couldn't believe some of the stuff that came across the table, like if I want to be a projectionist in a movie theatre in this province, I have to have 800 hours of training. I don't think anybody would deny that you need some training to run a projector in a movie theatre -
Mr Christopherson: A little more for you. You'd need some tutoring, Joe.
Mr Spina: Let's not get personal.
Perhaps there was a need for 800 hours of projectionist training time, but now, you see, to be a helicopter pilot it took 600 hours of flying time to achieve a certain level of recognition in your training process. What we had to come to grips with, folks, was why it takes 200 hours more to operate a projector in a movie theatre than it does to fly a helicopter. It just doesn't make sense.
That was the objective of creating a Red Tape Commission, and do you know what? As soon as we reduced the number of hours - frankly, I think we abolished it and left it to the film industry to decide how much time they needed to actually train somebody. That's fine, that's up to them. If the individual hasn't had enough training and destroys a projector, that's the responsibility of Odeon or Famous Players or whoever is the theatre operator.
Before you can abolish a regulation or a piece of legislation in this government you have to do something that I think was created by regulation. You have to research the original reason for that piece of legislation or regulation coming into play. So we did the research on this projectionist, and I tell you this anecdote because I think it exemplifies what red tape is about. Do you know why they had 800 hours of training for a projectionist? Because in 1932 there were a couple of reasons.
First of all, film was volatile and could catch fire if there was too much friction. Great. We understand, therefore, that you needed some training so the film doesn't catch fire while you're showing it to the audience. But why 800 hours? It was determined at the time the union of theatre projectionists was formed there that were too many people who wanted into that business. They felt the only way to control it was to have a long training period, and the union set the rules at that time. That was interesting. Perhaps it served its purpose in 1932. Notice, member for Hamilton Centre, I did not slam the union. I just want to draw that to your attention, my friend. The interesting thing is that perhaps it was necessary in 1932, but it sure isn't necessary in 1998.
My friends have spoken about the different things we've done for business, and I want to give credit to the previous government for a couple of things they at least initiated: the Ontario business registration access program, called OBRA. Remember that one? That was created in the last legs of the last government but it was just an experiment, and we're very pleased that we were able to take that and really build it into what it ought to be.
That's the computerized system that the member for Scarborough North talked about that reduces the registration of a business down to 20 minutes instead of us having to drive from my riding of Brampton down to University Avenue. If you lived in Sudbury, Kirkland Lake, Thunder Bay or Red Lake, you either had to deal with a lawyer or you had to mail it in. Sometimes you even had to go to visit the member for Simcoe Centre if you were in Barrie just to register your business. Today you still have to go and see him because of an incorporated business.
Mr Gerretsen: That's absolute nonsense. That is nonsense you are spouting, sir.
Mr Spina: Speaker, I challenge the individual. Is that parliamentary? I don't know, Speaker. The individual says it's nonsense.
Mr Gerretsen: You could register a business by mail for the last 25 years.
Mr Spina: I never said you couldn't. Yes, you can -
Mr Gerretsen: You said you had to go somewhere and do it. All you do is go to the post office and put it in the mail.
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Mr Spina: Speaker, how many debates are on here? I thought I was speaking.
The point is, if you wanted to incorporate a company, unquestionably you had to deal with a lawyer. However, if you were registering a sole proprietorship or a limited partnership, you had two options. You trucked your butt on down to University Avenue to the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations or you mailed in for the forms. Then the ministry mailed them back to you in Red Lake or Kingston and you filled them out. You attached your cheque and then you mailed it back, and after X number of weeks, they mailed it back to you to tell you whether the name was acceptable, the research, the business was okay. That took six to eight weeks.
Obviously, the member from Kingston has no idea what it's like to be in business. You know why? I registered four businesses of my own that way, and I can tell you that it took that long.
Mr Gerretsen: You took the long route then. You should have got somebody competent to look after it. You didn't know what you were doing.
Mr Spina: I can tell you, my friend, I've got a university degree and I certainly felt that I had the education to be able to do that in an intelligent, organized and educated manner, and it was not easy.
What do we need to do? We are attempting to introduce a one-window approach to doing business in this province, but it's not just for business. We are also trying to develop what I said earlier, a customer service attitude. In some places it's starting to work. You cannot turn around a 65,000-employee company, called the government of Ontario, overnight. You can't do it in two weeks, you can't do it in two months, but you can at least begin the process. That's what we have begun, the process of developing a customer service system in this province.
I'll give you a small example. As the parliamentary assistant for Northern Development and Mines, I'm very proud of the people in our ministry who put together what they called an area team concept. What happened in the past was, and perhaps to some extent in some communities it still happens, if I happened to be living in Pickle Lake and the only government representative in my area was the MNR officer, I went to the MNR office. If I wanted to get information about any government services, if I wanted to be able to find out what's happening with health care or with education or with my fishing licences - he was able to answer the questions on the fishing licence. Why? That's an MNR responsibility. But heaven forbid I should ask him a question about anything else because, you know, that's not their ministry. That was the attitude they had: "I look after MNR. I'm really not into the mining stuff. You're going to have to talk to the prospector people over in Red Lake. I'm in Pickle Lake. You've got to go over to Manitouwadge or Marathon."
How do we resolve this? We created these area service teams. I compliment the deputy minister in our ministry, Donald Obonsawin, who put together the concept with the people in northern development and mines and created the area team concept. We brought together groups of people in different communities in northwestern Ontario, and in northeastern Ontario, I might add, that each represent their own ministry. But you know what? They are now trained to handle all kinds of government questions and, if they aren't able to answer the question for that customer/ taxpayer, they can very quickly get the answer by phoning another member of their area team who is the expert in that particular subject matter.
I think this is an excellent example of how government can better serve its customers. You put together area service teams in a very large, vast, geographically remote area and you try to serve them the best way you can. But in a larger urban area you can also work hard to centralize the services, to help still give that one-window approach, so that if I want to talk about my lost driver's licence, my lost birth certificate, my fishing licence, how I enter the hunting draw, then you know what? I can deal with one person who can help me. That sounds idealistic and perhaps it is, but that's the direction in which we want this government to head. That's what the Red Tape Commission is trying to help achieve. That's what it's about: helping to create a system that is better for the taxpayer, the customer who pays us for our time and our wages.
The Acting Speaker: Comments and questions?
Mr Gerretsen: Let me just say that what the member stated about the manner in which one registers businesses and corporations and the difficulty that one went through to accomplish that hasn't been the way he stated for at least the last 20 years or so, and I suggest that he get his facts straight.
The government wanted to be more business oriented in giving customer service. I suggest that you give the same customer service to the property taxpayers out there. You have had four different property tax bills before this House and you have had it wrong each and every time. Last week we almost had to start a filibuster in order to get one day of committee time with respect to Bill 16 that's coming forward for third reading tomorrow, and you still got it wrong. Let me read you a very short little paragraph from the clerks and treasurers once again:
"Although we appreciated the opportunity to appear before the standing committee on finance and economic affairs, it is unfortunate that a two-week delay in the implementation of Bill 16 produced minimal results. We had hoped the delay would have produced thoughtful and rational amendments to what we consider to be a seriously flawed bill. The changes made to the bill will not have any positive effect on municipal operations this year, nor will they provide municipalities with relief from flawed legislation."
So, sir, you still haven't got it right the fourth time around, and the property taxpayers of Ontario will only realize that when they get their final bill. God knows when they'll get it, because we know, first, the assessment rolls will have to be prepared and, finally, the clerks and treasurers will be able to get the tax bills out after the councils have set the actual tax rates in the various municipalities. Only then will the property taxpayers of Ontario realize the seriously flawed legislation that you have brought forward and you still couldn't get right the fourth time around. So, yes, do your research a little bit better than you have been doing.
Mr Christopherson: I appreciate the opportunity to respond to the member in this few minutes. I made a couple of notes as he was talking. First of all, by the way, I realize that your little parody at the beginning was meant to put me in my place, if you will, but I've got to tell you, I thought it was a lot more interesting than the rest of it. If people aren't interested, they aren't listening, and if they aren't listening, what's the point of trying to lead anybody anywhere?
Having said that, I was interested, and I always am, when Tories members start off with "citizen," quickly get over to "taxpayer," and then from taxpayer they want to go to "customer." There's a reason for this. There's a reason they like the business lingo. First of all, it still has a nice resilient sound to it, if you will, with people to say "businesslike fashion," because that suggests, of course, the lack of excess, the lack of bureaucracy. It means doing things in a crisp, clean kind of way.
We know if that alone did it, there would never be any bankruptcies in this province, so it guarantees nothing, but it does set them up nicely because when they start talking about customers, people don't think of themselves as patients in a hospital. But when you're a citizen, especially of the province of Ontario in this great country, we tend to think of ourselves in that holistic sense, the rights we have to a decent health care system, the rights we have to a decent education system, the rights we have to good public health. But as a customer you're limited. I think that's why they like to use that word.
I would just suggest if we're talking about the environment, which I have reflected on a lot because of its importance to Hamilton, who is the customer when we're dealing with you allowing our environment to be damaged and destroyed to make a few bucks? The land, the air, the company, the water, the citizens? Who is the customer? I can tell you who the citizens are and how they feel.
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Mr Joseph N. Tascona (Simcoe Centre): I'm pleased to comment on the address made by the member for Brampton North. I think it's a very insightful approach taken by the member for Brampton North, considering his responsibilities as parliamentary assistant. Certainly his focus on what the red tape is about is how government can better serve its customers and essentially get the red tape out of the way of businesses and citizens of Ontario. The approach that has been taken with respect to registering businesses and streamlining the process comes from an individual who has great experience in the business world, and I think he has added a lot to the Red Tape Commission, of which I am a member, and I certainly think has done a very good job.
It's very interesting to note the one example of a 1932 law with respect to the number of hours that had to be spent by a projectionist to get the licence, 800 hours. It certainly shows that the 45,000 regulations that are out there are going to create a lot of work that has to be done to make sure we can streamline the business world, because when you're looking at laws that have been in place since 1932 with no basis, we have to focus in terms of making things better and removing the red tape.
It's interesting to note the comments of the member for Kingston and The Islands and the member for Hamilton Centre. They really don't focus on what we're talking about with respect to red tape. When the member for Hamilton Centre says that removing the red tape for businesses which create jobs guarantees nothing, he really is talking about nothing, because the fact of the matter is that it is focusing on removing red tape for businesses to create jobs, and the customer is the primary person we should be serving. That is the taxpayer. I think the approach of the Red Tape Commission is right on, and I commend the speaker from Brampton North.
The Speaker (Hon Chris Stockwell): Questions and comments? Response, the member for Brampton North.
Mr Spina: I thank the members for Kingston and The Islands, Hamilton Centre and Simcoe Centre for their comments. There were some interesting comments made by the member from Kingston, and the interesting thing is that he says there was a bill we brought forward four times and still didn't get it right. That's his opinion. That's his perspective. But you know something? I look at all the legislation that came out of the Liberal government for five years, and I don't think any of it was right. I think of the user taxes they charged on the public parking lots that they foisted on the municipalities, the employer health tax that I mentioned. What we are trying to achieve here is having all proposed bills vetted by the Red Tape Commission to ensure that we really don't have an increase in red tape and more regulations. It's not a perfect system, we're not there yet, member, but we're working on it. At least we feel that we are making the effort to move in the right direction.
The member for Hamilton Centre says that we're taxpayers and customers. Yes, we are customers of all the different systems that we participate in. But he asks, "Who is the customer when it comes to the environment?" It's you and me. It's Joe Public, John Q. Public, Susie Q. Public. We are the customers when it comes to the environment, and what we have to do is ensure that the industries are able to quickly and efficiently make changes within their industries that are still environmentally safe for you and me, the public.
The Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): I'm pleased, as always, to be here at night to listen to the debate. It got very lively earlier there a while ago.
The red tape bills, the Red Tape Commission - there's an awful lot here that sensible people would have to applaud, and I would say not for the first time. I know that every new intake, every new class, thinks it's doing things that no one has ever done before. Just about every government that I have been around for had its omnibus bill or bills to clean up or make consistent the myriad of legislation that had been passed in a previous time and that, for a variety of reasons, had fallen out of sync with current practice or with the reality of the day.
I think it was in our time in government that my old friend Ian Scott actually found that, 25 years after we had formally abolished capital punishment in Ontario, we actually had on the books the provision to pay a hangman. There would be many people in the current company who I'm sure would want to reinstate that, but the fact of the matter was that we had abolished capital punishment, I think, in the early 1960s in a campaign ably led by my old friend Arthur Maloney. But 25 years later there was still a mechanism on the books of the government of Ontario to pay, and I think we were in fact paying, a hangman. So it happens. That's why parliaments of -
Mr Douglas B. Ford (Etobicoke-Humber): They are a rare species.
Mr Conway: I think the member from Humber makes a point: They are a rare species. It's not a job for which all of us are qualified and it's not a job to which many of us would incline, rhetoric notwithstanding.
Yes, a lot of interesting stuff here. I can't think of a reason why we wouldn't want to repeal the Sheep and Wool Marketing Act. We repealed a while ago - were you here for the repeal of the warble fly act and the pregnant mares' urine? - I'm not making this stuff up. We do that all the time around here. Five or 10 years from now, a successor Legislature is going to do things that we did and they will look back a decade and say, "What were they thinking in the place in 1996 or 1997?"
Mr Lessard: You may be here to speak to that.
Mr Conway: I may be here to speak to it, yes. But I was listening the other night and I think the members who have a business background make a good point. It's no secret; I've not met a payroll of any major kind. But I was here the other night when the member from Humber made a very strong speech that, quite frankly, had a very real credibility as far as I'm concerned about the pressures and the problems that particularly small business people face today.
Some of my siblings, many of my constituents and some of my very close friends are engaged in the business of small business - it's not easy; I don't want to, for a moment, suggest it's easy - and nothing aggravates those people more than layer after layer of apparently incomprehensible, unintelligible and not particularly relevant government red tape.
Red tape is often in the eye of the beholder. I have to tell you when I'm winging my way eastward Thursday nights, often after midnight and under a full moon, and I encounter Her Majesty's constabulary on Highway 41 some place between Callander and Eganville, I make a pretty vigorous speech about red tape. But the officer's view is not necessarily my view. Red tape is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.
But there is no doubt that there is too much of a tangle out there, and we have an obligation, all of us, to help clean it up. It's not lost on me that a number of the initiatives contained in Bill 25 are, as my friends have observed earlier tonight, of the nature to allow for an increase in fees. That couldn't be clearer. I'm sure my friends have read the bill. There are scores of amendments here that have the effect of opening the door to additional fee increases. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. I think the fees should be adjusted from time to time.
I must say, as a member of some 23 years' standing and someone who spends some time dealing with constituents in rural eastern Ontario where, unlike Hamilton and London and Kitchener and Kingston, we don't have very many government offices, my impression is, both as a local member and certainly as a citizen living in the city of Pembroke in the county of Renfrew, there is no doubt in my mind that I'm paying more for less service. In fact, I'm surprised that more people aren't kicking the door of my office at Pembroke for the truly outrageous level of certain Ontario government services.
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I was the other day, for example, trying to just make a routine phone call into the department of which I was once the minister, the department of education. It was outrageous. I could just imagine phoning long distance from Salford in Oxford county or from Rolston in Renfrew county - and on my dime - to be put through that rigmarole. I'm glad Bill Saunderson's gone, because he was a bit offended by some of the rather colourful language of Christopherson earlier. I would be spitting not very nice language into the telephone if I could find somebody at the other end of it. That's just one small example.
Interjection.
Mr Conway: I'm sure my friend from Quinte has had his.
There certainly seems to me to be a fair bit of evidence out there that at the service level we have in many ways reduced access to public service paid for by the Ontario taxpayer, particularly in those places where you can't drive down to or walk into the regional office in a city like Kingston or London or Hamilton. That's most of the people I represent; it would certainly be most of the people the minister responsible for the treasury board would represent, and others here.
I repeat: I am surprised that more people don't come to my office door at 84 Isabella Street in the city of Pembroke and lambaste me for the kind of runaround and rigmarole they get, particularly with government of Ontario voice mail. Mel Lastman never spoke a more eloquent truth than when he denounced voice mail up at North York city hall two years ago. On the basis of my own daily and weekly experience, I think the Ontario government has a lot to answer for with respect to not very user-friendly voice mail. That is just an observation I would make.
I was reading earlier tonight today's Wall Street Journal, and I was noticing an article that's reported in other of the American press today. Again I'm surprised that there has been not more discussion, and I suppose we as an opposition have been derelict to this extent. It says on the one hand, is there oversight or regulation that is too oppressive, too omnipresent? I think we've heard in the debate tonight - the member for Scarborough West was certainly eloquent in pinpointing a number of his concerns where he felt, and I think many would agree with him, that there's simply too much intrusion and too much tangle and too much red tape.
The question one might ask on the other side is, are there places in the jurisdiction of the Ontario government where we have important regulatory oversight and where we're not doing a very good job? If you read today's Wall Street Journal, there's quite a story here about the Ontario Securities Commission. What a laughingstock we are. They're talking about Bre-X, but you could talk about a half-dozen other cases. We look like some kind of Third World laughingstock down at the Ontario Securities Commission, and I've got to tell you, the Toronto Stock Exchange, for all its braggadocio, doesn't look much better. I don't expect them to be perfect, but you know, when you think about that Bre-X fraud and the number of people - yes, caveat emptor. It's gold mining stock and you've got to know what you're in for. But when you think about the scam that was perpetrated on investors in this country and across the world with that, and you say there are 200 people down at the securities commission?
I know hindsight's 20-20, but it's not the only one. I see there's another bunch with a connection to the Russian Mafia. The FBI seemed to know all about them, well before the OSC and the TSE. Now they're acting, of course. If I'm a citizen of Ontario and I'm an investor, I'm expecting that there's going to be reasonable oversight at the OSC and at the TSE. You know what, pals, I say to my friends down on Bay Street? You haven't done a very good job. Just as our friend Brown makes a strong case for too much red tape and too much tangle on the one side, I want to say to the assembly and particularly to the department of finance and those purebreds down at the OSC, you'd better clean up your act. You'd better show me.
My friend the elegant superannuate from Ontario Hydro days at Lanark-Renfrew looks incredulous.
Mr Jordan: What about Peterson's connection?
Mr Conway: I'm not here to excuse that. I saw that, and that's a fair point. That's a very fair point. He's not the only politician sitting on boards. I opened up the financial page of the Ottawa Citizen the other day and I saw a former Premier of Ontario and a former federal Minister of Financial Institutions up there with Michael Cowpland. If I were, and I'm not, a shareholder at Corel, I'd have some pretty tough-worded questions for those people about some of the insider trading and other stuff that's been going on at Corel in recent months. Maybe there are answers.
My point here is about regulation. In today's Wall Street Journal, but there are other places where it has been reported, we don't look very good. I was here in the days when we had those unbelievable scams down at Crown Trust and Seaway Trust and Greymac. The Ontario taxpayer should have taken the whole lot of us out and court-martialled us from one end to the other. It was an absolute outrage, what was perpetrated on the taxpayer there. A complete raid in broad daylight by fast-buck artists, to use a very polite phrase, and a multimillion dollar cleanup bill sent to the farmers down in Hastings and the rest of the taxpayers in Ontario, and we paid it.
So the question remains. Do we have some obligations as legislators and as ministers to demand that in areas like this - and I would argue that the Ontario Securities Commission is a pretty important regulatory function - we improve the standard? Maybe there's not enough oversight there. To me it's clear that there wasn't. As I said a while ago, I don't expect perfection, but when I read that Bre-X story and I read about YBM, all I can think about is, you know the old referee in the professional wrestling match? He's distracted by some irrelevance in the upper deck while the good guy's eyes are being gouged out by the villain. That's the kind of image that's conjured up by some of these so-called regulators.
We're not talking nickels and dimes. The Bre-X fraud was a multibillion dollar fraud. We can't wait, most of us, to get in here and get up and talk about welfare reform: "There's some single mother up in Renfrew county who didn't report $12.16 worth of income and we've got to get that." You know what? I suppose we do. I would just someday like to hear somebody stand up and say, if somebody scams investors to the tune of X billions of dollars, using perhaps not very legal means, maybe, just maybe, someday we might want to work ourselves into a bit of a lather about that. Because you know what? That is our statutory responsibility under the laws of Canada and of Ontario.
The member from wherever, Mr Spina -
The Speaker: The member for Brampton North.
Mr Conway: Thank you, Mr Speaker. The member for Brampton North was particularly exercised earlier tonight about those bad old days when it was all tax and spend, particularly the Liberals. Well, it's true. We did tax. I did my share of it and supported it. Looking back now, 10 years later, if I had some of it to do over again, I probably would do it a bit differently.
Mr Lessard: Would you spend now?
Mr Conway: Listen, we spent. All I remember was the lacerating criticism, "Not enough and not soon enough," and Mike Harris's famous line: "I want my share. Every last sou of that gravy train I want for North Bay-Nipissing." To good old Mike's credit, he got more of it than some of the rest us who were apparently in government at the time, and there wasn't a ribbon-cutting that he wasn't the first out to join.
The point in this connection, as we look at the so-called red tape bills, is that there are certainly very substantial revenue matters, as I indicated earlier. It is quite obvious to many in the community, particularly in places like consumer and commercial relations - I've had business people in my county, in my district, come to me and quite incredulously say, "I just spoke to somebody down at the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations and they said they would come up and inspect certain aspects of this operation," which they said and I agreed ought to be inspected, "if we paid their way." I've had more than one of those.
I don't know how widespread it is, but I'll tell you, in Ottawa there are stories now almost every week about some of the funny stuff that's going on at Agriculture Canada and some of the food protection and veterinary protection branches. CBC Radio news has been running several of those stories. There's one running this week. It certainly does not give me, as a citizen of Canada, a very high comfort level that we are protecting the public interest, particularly in health matters, to the extent or in a way that the average citizen would expect.
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Mr Jordan: That's a federal issue.
Mr Conway: That is a federal issue, but the issues in this matter that were brought to my attention had to do with business people asking me, could it be possible that inspectors would only come the 250 miles up into Renfrew county if the business paid their way? I didn't ask too many questions and I don't want to embarrass anybody, but there was one case in particular which, on the basis of what was told to me, I would have expected to be a routine matter of inspection that would have been initiated by the government of Ontario and carried out by inspectors. The last thing I would have thought is that I as the business would be expected to pay the way of the inspector. You don't have to be very creative to begin to understand how those kinds of relationships could lead to some very questionable practices.
There was at least one of those cases - well, two. I don't want to make too much of them, but certainly it is my impression that in the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations it is now just like a consultancy. You simply view that ministry as a technical consultant and you would hire them like you would Price Waterhouse or Coopers and Lybrand.
A subject for another day, by the way, is the extent to which we have privatized the public service of this province. I am amazed. Particularly in the health and social services sector, it is absolutely true that we have reduced the full-time equivalent staff in the government of Ontario.
But make no mistake about it. Price Waterhouse, Coopers and Lybrand, Ernst and Young - they are everywhere. I can't believe the number of meetings that I attend regionally now in eastern Ontario where somebody will tell me, "We had our meeting and Coopers and Lybrand and/or Price Waterhouse and/or Ernst and Young was here on behalf of the Ontario government," carrying out functions that have historically been done by the in-house public service. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but one of the questions that presents itself to me is, I wonder what this is all costing. I have a feeling that at the end of the day the cost may not be as we might imagine.
A final observation has to do with the department of lands and forests; I guess we call it the Ministry of Natural Resources these days. In lands and forests there is a reference to the conservation authorities. My friends tell me that what we are doing here is establishing a very real combat as between the responsibilities of the local conservation authorities and the Ministry of Natural Resources over floodplain planning. It's just the view of some people I've spoken to, but if this red tape process is to reduce those border clashes, I'm told by sources that I would consider reliable that in terms of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the amendment to the Conservation Authorities Act in the area of floodplain control, we've now created more, not less, opportunity for border conflict.
With that, I will quietly and calmly conclude my remarks.
The Speaker: Questions and comments?
Mr Lessard: Once again the member from Renfrew has been very eloquent in his remarks with respect to the red tape bill, as he is with most other statutes that he speaks about. He really put some flesh on the definition of what red tape really means for himself and for this government. One of the interesting contexts he put that in was with respect to the Ontario Securities Commission.
If you were a big investor down on Bay Street or a large corporate enterprise you might look at what the Ontario Securities Commission does as a whole lot of red tape. But many small investors, those people who have their pension funds in mutual funds, for example, would be quite interested in ensuring that the Ontario Securities Commission is very vigilant in enforcing what might be referred to as red tape so people who find their investments in corporations like Bre-X, for example, don't find their entire savings placed in jeopardy. There are many times when what might be referred to as red tape is there for the protection of consumers and small investors as well.
He also talked about what the changes in this bill may result in with respect to user fees. There's a great deal of responsibility for imposing user fees being placed in the hands of ministers, and some of those areas involve user fees for inspections. I was quite interested in the fact that there was going to be a demand for the payment of transportation costs for persons who do those inspections. I know that where my wife works as an environmental health inspector at the Windsor-Essex county health unit, they're talking about imposing user fees on restaurants, for example, for inspecting restaurants. Those are the sorts of thing we're going to be seeing more of.
Mrs Ross: I always listen with interest to the member for Renfrew North, a member of 23 years' standing in this Legislature. He brings with him a tremendous amount of knowledge, experience, background and history that I always find interesting. I can certainly learn a lot from him, so I always listen very carefully to what he has to say.
He said he agrees that from time to time we have to make some changes to legislation and regulations and rules to eliminate some of this because of obsolete bills - he talked about the Sheep and Wool Marketing Act - and because of the changes in technology that are taking place. We totally agree, and a lot of the changes in this bill respond to that very thing.
The Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations takes great pride in being one of those ministries that is very open to meeting with all the stakeholders involved in whatever field it is, whether it's real estate or the travel industry or the liquor licence, any stakeholders or concerned citizens who want to talk about certain pieces of legislation, and we do make changes based on some of those consultations. I'm very interested in hearing what he might have to say about what could be positive amendments to this bill that would address some of the issues he's talking about.
He commented that being in the business of small business is not easy, and he's absolutely right. As a small business owner prior to being elected, I can tell him it's tough. Small business owners put their lives on the line. They put everything they own into that business, and what they do is try to provide opportunities for themselves, for their families, and create jobs in the province. What we're trying to do is to help business by eliminating those pieces of red tape that are inconsequential and shouldn't be there.
Mr Gerretsen: I too always listen with great interest to anything the member for Renfrew North has to say, either in this chamber or elsewhere, because he has a tremendous amount of knowledge in a lot of different areas and certainly shares it freely and wisely with all of us. We really learn something from him in that regard.
One point he brought out was what happened with respect to the Bre-X stock exchange fiasco. Yes, we would all like to get rid of as much red tape as possible, but we also owe it to ourselves and the general public in Ontario to make sure that before we get rid of any rule or regulation, we find out why that rule or regulation was put there in the first place. There should always be the underlying question of making sure the public of Ontario is protected. I'm sure that the rules and regulations that have come into existence in all the various acts dealt with in Bill 25 were put there for a good reason. To merely get rid of them for expediency's sake isn't good enough.
We've heard tonight on a number of occasions about what's happened to our environment. The Environmental Commissioner has reported on it. I'm convinced that one of the reasons this is happening is that there simply aren't as many environmental officers out there doing their work for you and me, for the general public of Ontario, as there used to be.
It's good to cut a lot of this stuff out, but if the general public of Ontario suffers as a result, I don't think we're doing anybody a favour.
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Mr Martin: The member for Renfrew North makes some very important and telling points in his comments here this evening, one of them being the whole question of why we have regulation in the first place. I think it's important that people reflect on that as we move so expeditiously to reduce various and sundry pieces of regulation and red tape that over a number of years have been put in place for, I would suggest, some very legitimate reasons if one took the time to actually assess and analyse and understand the particular circumstance existing at the time that regulation or red tape was brought forward and applied. I think we ought to be really careful.
He also talked a bit about the double standard that has often seemed to permeate this place over the last three years. Certain groups of people are seen as bad or wrong or getting in the way of progress: unions, for example, government, the poor, anybody out there who finds himself caught up in one way or another with the criminal justice system. This government is using all these people or groups as a scapegoat or a straw person to make rather interesting political points.
On the issue of why we have regulation, it is important for people to think for a minute about why it is that over in Britain right now they have this very difficult challenge called mad cow disease. If you trace that back, you will find that it was a reduction in red tape and regulation around the whole question of the health of farms and farming operations that eventually led to the very troubling to the economy of Britain mad cow disease. I'd be careful and I urge caution.
The Speaker: Response, member for Renfrew North.
Mr Conway: I thank my colleagues for their kind remarks. There's one observation I would make. As someone said a moment ago - perhaps it was the member for Hamilton West - really, we must always keep first and foremost in mind the point: Why are we regulating? What is the point of the regulation?
One of the real issues that I see as a growing problem in the political culture that is now overwhelmingly suburban is that there's a part of this province that's rural and northern that more and more people just don't understand - haven't a clue. I represent a big slice of rural Ontario, and I find a greater difficulty just trying to explain to people in this chamber and elsewhere some of the reality in places like Calabogie and Khartum and Matawatchan.
Interjection.
Mr Conway: Well, we all laugh. We make bloody fools of ourselves, as governments and legislatures, trying to legislate from an urban and suburban world into this rural and northern world, which looks at us and says: "What a pack of clowns you must be. What was the problem for which this was the solution?"
I don't have any easy answers, but I am increasingly concerned and disturbed, in a province as large as this, at the difficulty of all of us to legislate and regulate for a reality that is so large, so important, so complex as rural and northern Ontario is and yet so completely foreign to the overwhelming majority of people in the province and country.
That, I think, is going to become more, not less, a problem. I'll tell you, we're going to find lots of politicians in this and succeeding parliaments who are going to be able to stand up and make government look like a regular ass with regulations that were clearly devised by and for people within the shadow of the CN Tower which, when applied to north Hastings, are going to look quite ridiculous.
The Speaker: Further debate?
Mr Lessard: It's a pleasure to be able to rise and participate in the debate with respect to Bill 25, An Act to reduce red tape by amending or repealing certain Acts and by enacting two new Acts.
At the outset I just want to say I agree that we as legislators need to do what we can to try to eliminate and reduce red tape, but in the brief time that I have to talk about this bill I want to talk a little bit about differences in interpretation between how I as an NDP member view things that are red tape and how this government, the Mike Harris government, looks at things they consider red tape and want to eliminate and what that really means for the public here in Ontario, what that means to consumers, what that means to small business people, what that means to people who are interested in protecting and enhancing our environment, and what it means to people who have to go to the hospital to try and get health care these days.
I want to start out by saying that what I consider to be red tape and what this government considers to be red tape are quite often two totally different things, because when we're considering regulation, when we're considering legislation, when we're considering what might be referred to as red tape, we really need to ask ourselves, what was the reason, what was the purpose for the regulations or legislation to be put in place in the first place? There must have been some good reason. There must have been some legitimate pressing need that needed to be addressed at the time these regulations were put into place in the first place, and before we just go about willy-nilly eliminating all regulations, we need to look at the context in which that is being done and the context in which those regulations were put in place in the first place.
I want to start out by talking about the environment. I made reference earlier on this evening - the member for Hamilton Centre referred to this as well - to the annual report from the Environmental Commissioner from 1997. This is a report that was introduced quite recently. It talked about this government's performance when it deals with the environment. She said in her report:
"Overall, environmental health continues to be a very low priority for the ministers of this province. Ministry business plans indicate that ministers are withdrawing from their environmental commitments.... I remind these ministers that a healthful environment is an important part of a healthy economy and a healthy society."
What she's saying is that even though there is environmental legislation and regulations on the books, this government really has a lousy record when it comes to enforcing them. When they're looking towards getting rid of some of those regulations, I ask myself, what impact is that going to have on environmental protection?
Some of the things that she goes on to talk about in her report are budget cuts. This government has gotten rid of a lot of people who traditionally had been providing inspection of the environment in the province, and Windsor of course was one of those areas that was really hard hit. On page 49 the commissioner says:
"But because of MOE budget cuts, this committee has become inactive" - that was the Windsor Air Quality Committee - "the Windsor MOE office has lost half its staff, and there appears to be no local action plan or target to improve Windsor air quality."
That's the result of this government's approach to environmental concerns, that the air quality in my community in the Windsor area is suffering. It's suffering because of cuts to the staff in the Ministry of Environment office in Windsor and the failure of this government to regulate, inspect and diligently enforce the laws we have in existence in Ontario.
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This is a government that in its haste to eliminate red tape is saying, "Our preferred option is voluntary self-compliance, self-regulation." What they're basically saying is that the foxes should be the ones guarding the hen house. Although I am very critical of the government's approach, because I just don't believe voluntary self-compliance works when it comes to the protection of the environment, I need to remind my Liberal colleagues that was a similar approach they had referred to in the red book in the election of 1995. They seemed to be moving towards voluntary self-compliance as well. I hope they realize that is really the wrong direction.
Bill 25 refers to some amendments with respect to the Ministry of Natural Resources. There are a couple of those that I would like to highlight with respect to my concerns about this government's elimination of red tape and how that's going to affect the environment.
One of the things they intend to do, and this is in schedule I, is going to give conservation authorities the ability to enter into agreements to allow for the exploration for and extraction of oil and gas reserves. It makes you wonder why conservation authorities are going to be given the ability to permit oil and gas exploration in areas that are near conservation authorities. Is this really the sort of role we expect conservation authorities to play? My view of a conservation authority is of a local body that really wants to do what it can to try and ensure the environment is protected.
Something else I found quite interesting in that same section, that is, in schedule I, is that it permits the authorities to make regulations applicable in areas under their jurisdiction to "restricting and regulating the use of water in or from streams, rivers, inland lakes, ponds, wetlands and natural or artificially constructed depressions in rivers or streams."
It's interesting that this government would be giving conservation authorities the ability to pass regulations dealing with the use of water, because we saw a very troubling example recently with respect to the granting of a permit by the Ministry of the Environment to Nova Group in Sault Ste Marie to extract huge amounts of fresh water from Lake Superior to load it into a transport barge and cart it over to Asia. Thankfully, the Minister of Environment has finally seen the common sense of not permitting this to happen and has posted on the environmental register a notice to revoke that permit, but it really wasn't until this issue was highlighted by a congressman in northern Michigan and my colleagues. The environment critic, Marilyn Churley, and our leader, Howard Hampton, and I went down to Windsor to do a press conference on the Ambassador Bridge a few weeks ago to highlight the international significance of permitting a corporation to extract water from the Great Lakes to ship to Asia. That's something that never should have been permitted to happen.
It is because of this government's failure to have the people in place to be monitoring these sorts of things and their inability and their unwillingness to put in place laws that are going to protect the sovereignty of our fresh water here in the Great Lakes from being exported to Asia that something like this was permitted to happen.
We cannot permit future situations that will enable people to profit, and that's what they were going to do because this was water that they weren't going to have to pay for. They were just going to load it up into boats and ship it over to Asia and presumably make a profit in doing that. I'm sure they weren't going to get into it with the intention of losing money.
When this government talks about the elimination of red tape, I ask myself what that really means as far as protection of the environment is concerned, especially based on this government's less than exemplary record in that regard.
Another thing that is quite prevalent in Bill 25 is the authority being granted to ministers to impose user fees in areas that hadn't traditionally had those user fees. I recall when Mike Harris used to get up, when he was sitting over on this side of the Legislature, and say, "A user fee is a tax." He doesn't seem to be saying that any more. Apparently user fees are okay. They don't want to raise taxes, but raising user fees for services is something they don't have any problem with any longer.
One of the areas we're seeing quite a few user fees in is health care. I received a letter recently from persons who are on the Health System Labour Advisory Committee in the city of Windsor. That's a committee of the Windsor and District Labour Council. It was a letter that was signed by numerous prominent people in our community: Pierina DeBellis and Valerie Walter, who are the co-chairs of that committee; also people like Ray Drouillard, from the Service Employees International Union, and Ken Brown, who is the president of Service Employees, Local 210; Mike Longmoore, who is from the Windsor Health Coalition; and Gary Parent, who is the president of the Windsor and District Labour Council.
In that letter they talked about the incredible onslaught of user fees that have come into place with respect to health care since this government has been elected. Some of the things they talk about are user fees that are quite often imposed on seniors who need health care, everything from prescription drugs to casts for broken limbs. If any people have had experience in going to the hospital with a broken leg, for example, when you show up at emergency you're told: "You can have a plaster cast and there's no charge for that, but if you want a fibreglass cast it'll cost you about $75. By the way, we don't have any plaster casts." So if you're in the hospital and you have a broken leg, you don't have much of a choice as to whether you're going to get a fibreglass cast or not.
There are fees being charged for booking things like cataract surgery. I got a call recently from a Paul Micallef from Windsor. He's a retiree. He had a cataract operation and had to pay user fees of $185. That's not the sort of fee that we would have seen imposed before this government came into place. This is putting an incredible strain on hospital budgets and on the budgets of seniors who are on fixed incomes as well.
Also, recently the local community care access centre has notified many home care patients that they'll no longer provide incontinence supplies, skin care ointments, catheter or osteotomy supplies that are required to maintain them in appropriate conditions while they reside at their homes. These are seniors. In some cases, they've been getting these sorts of supplies for a decade or more. They're going to be expected to have to cover the costs of those supplies in the future. For persons who are on fixed incomes, those user fees are going to be substantial. They may not be able to pay those fees, and if they're not able to pay for those sorts of services, guess what? They're going to end up back in the hospital, the most expensive form of treatment that's available, when they should be in their homes.
I ask you whether, when we're debating giving ministers the ability to impose more user fees, we're not really penny wise and pound foolish. We're saying, "We can save a few bucks here," but if people end up in the hospital getting expensive care, is that really going to save us any money in the long run? I don't really think so.
But it does provide an opportunity for some people to make some extra money. I clipped this ad recently. It is from Ingram's Home Health Care Centre, who have an establishment on Giles Boulevard in Windsor, and it's got a picture of a gorilla. On the top it says, "Did you just get bad news from the Ministry of Health?" It's got the picture of the gorilla underneath it and it says, "If you've been notified that your medical supplies and equipment may be reduced, call us for help." So there are people who are going to be able to cash in on these user fees being imposed for services, these cuts being imposed by the Ministry of Health.
The people who are going to end up having to pay for those services, and who are going to improve the income of people like Ingram's or other companies that may be able to provide health care services, are most often the most vulnerable: seniors, people who are ill, people who are in the least likely position to be able to pay for it.
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That's what I'm concerned about when this government starts talking about cutting red tape and giving ministers the ability to impose user fees. I wonder what the impact is going to be on the delivery of health care services to the most vulnerable in our community.
This government talks a good line about the elimination of red tape, about how we need to make things smoother for business, about how we need to be able to create a climate where business wants to invest in our communities. They have really neglected a number of areas where they could have moved faster, where they should have been doing something when this Legislature wasn't sitting - I'm talking about March of this year when we weren't sitting and we should have been.
Municipalities like the city of Windsor were waiting for this government to get on with its tax assessment legislation and now find themselves, because the final assessment hasn't been delivered, in a position where they don't expect it's going to be available for a number of weeks because of the incompetence of this government. They find themselves in a situation where they're not going to be able to issue tax levy notices for payments that would have been due tomorrow. June 10 would have been the fourth instalment of property taxes in Windsor, but they don't even have the final assessment rolls in. They aren't able to issue those tax notices.
Because of that, capital projects have been delayed and budget deliberations and approvals have been delayed for six months. Because they're not going to be getting that tax income they expected, they're going to have to borrow the money to cover the costs of their day-to-day operations. They estimate that the cost of that is going to be $484,000. You multiply that by communities throughout Ontario and that's going to come up to a substantial amount of money. It's going to cost the property taxpayers here in the province for this government's incompetence in dealing with its legislative agenda. They expect that each two-week delay subsequent to that is going to cost the city of Windsor $272,000.
Who is it who is going to have to make up that loss because this government wasn't able to manage their agenda, when they should have been passing legislation like Bill 16? We're dealing with Bill 25 with respect to red tape and amending what they consider to be really inconsequential legislation. That's the sort of thing we should have been doing.
There's one final thing I want to mention. This is an article that I noticed in a magazine that's called Out Front. It's a publication from the Canadian Labour Congress. It talks about a publication and a poster they unveiled. It's called "Protecting Public Health Care from Private Greed." What they recognize is that funding cuts and deregulation and corporate manoeuvring have undermined accountability, compromised health care and have really led to the privatization of health care and increased profit to the private sector.
The Speaker: Questions and comments?
Mr Dan Newman (Scarborough Centre): I'm pleased to respond to the member for Windsor-Riverside. I find it interesting that he now is interested in deficits and spending. He was here in 1990. He was part of the NDP government that hiked taxes 32 times and hiked the debt by $50 billion. The net effect was a loss of 10,000 jobs in this province. He ought to be ashamed of himself for that.
I challenge him to come forward today with information with respect to our health care system. He said there were some incidents in his community. If he truly wants to solve the problem, he could have contacted the minister's office, or myself as the parliamentary assistant, to have that problem solved, if it indeed existed.
We're now spending $18.5 billion on health care in this province. When his party was in office, $17.4 billion was spent on health care. That's an increase of $1.1 billion in health care spending in this province. That doesn't even take into account the over $2-billion reduction from the federal Liberal government that has affected Ontario.
The member also referred to days when we should have been sitting. I should also remind him that in the last year of the Bob Rae government in 1995 they sat for a total of 19 days. Nineteen days: That's all they sat. I think in the last three weeks we've probably sat more than 19 sessional days in this House. That says something about our government over the Bob Rae government.
Just a reminder that the NDP government had 32 tax hikes, increased the debt of this province by $50 billion and drove 10,000 jobs out of the province, and that's just not acceptable. We're bringing many bills forward, including bills that reduce red tape, that create a positive environment for jobs and investment in this province. I'm proud to be part of this government.
Mr Gerretsen: It's interesting how the member for Scarborough Centre talks about public debt in the province. Their own budget documents clearly indicate that over the last three years that party over there, the government party, the so-called business party, has gone from $89 billion to $115 billion; you've added something like $16 billion.
Interjections.
Mr Gerretsen: Yes, they added $50 billion and before that the Davis government added another $40 billion.
Interjections.
The Speaker: We've got a quiet evening here. I think everyone has been given an opportunity to speak and debate. The member for Scarborough Centre, you've been given ample opportunity to state your case. I think we should just let the member for Kingston and The Islands maintain this quiet atmosphere.
Mr Gerretsen: Thank you. Just for the record, the total public debt of $115 billion, all of it except for $10 billion that was added during the Liberal years, was the result of your incompetence and their incompetence.
What I find very interesting about these red tape bills is that - you've got to remember this - they like to give you the impression that they are against red tape. What has happened to all of these red tape bills? The first batch was introduced on June 5, 1996, two years ago. Do you know how many of those have been passed into law so far? None. The second batch of red tape bills, nine of them, were introduced on February 1, 1997, almost a year and a half ago. Do you know how many of those have been passed into law? Two. Seven of them never went beyond first reading. As a matter of fact, seven of those bills are now contained in Bill 25. So don't give the public of Ontario this impression that you're so interested in cutting out red tape.
My question to you simply is, why did it take you so long to move on this? You introduced some of these bills more than two years ago. We didn't sit in January, February and March of this year. We could have sat during that period of time and passed them all. You are just as incompetent as the group that was there before you.
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Mr Martin: After that comment, I mean - anyway, I appreciate the opportunity to compliment my colleague from Windsor-Riverside for again, in the way he always does, contextualizing the piece of legislation we have in front of us and showing us where it has some shortcomings, and also pointing from time to time to where it might be helpful to the people of the province. In this instance, I think it's important that we look at this piece of legislation within the context of all the other pieces of legislation that have been rammed through this House over the last three years, all of it targeted to hurt most specifically certain groups of people and to assist others, and those others always seem to be the bigger corporate interests of this province, to give them more opportunity to come in and make ever more obscene profit - at the cost of what? At the cost of jobs and the interests of so many of the working class, middle-class people in this province.
This government doesn't seem to want to spend a whole lot of time asking why it is we have the kind of regulation and checks and balances that we have in this province, and why they were put in place in the first place. They don't seem to want to recognize that in many instances they apply a double standard when looking at what new initiatives they bring forward and present to the people of Ontario.
For example, I have been trying for the last two years to get this government to recognize that they need some regulation in the business of franchising. Big franchisers are forever hammering the life out of franchisees. If you want to do something, do something right.
Mr Bart Maves (Niagara Falls): Further commenting on the comments of the member for Windsor-Riverside, referring to the member for Scarborough Centre, the PA for health, I also would like to know which hospital it was that told the member for Windsor-Riverside that they wouldn't do plaster casts and would charge anyone who needed a cast $75 for a fibreglass one, because I would like the member for Scarborough Centre, the PA to the Minister of Health, to follow that up and check on it.
It reminds me of the time the Liberal critic for health, the member for York South, Mr Kennedy, did a little press conference, I believe it was at a Durham hospital, and told a bunch of stories about hospitals and services in those hospitals around Durham. He was thrown out of that hospital. He was written a letter that said, "Don't come back and tell your stories, because they're inaccurate." The St Catharines General Hospital also told him, "Those stories aren't true, and we would like you to cease and desist from telling those stories." I hope the member for Windsor-Riverside wasn't stooping to those low levels that the member for York South stooped to some time ago.
Also the member for Kingston and The Islands mentioned red tape bills, where were they and why didn't they come forward previous to this? The Liberals wouldn't let us bring them in earlier. They blocked them time and time again when we wanted to bring them in.
There was a point the member for Scarborough Centre brought up. I remember that from 1990 to 1995, every time the NDP brought in a tax increase, he used to hit the roof in this place, and now here the member is talking about being upset about seniors who may have an increase in some sort of fee. They jacked up taxes and fees more than any government in the history of Ontario, and now all of a sudden, he has a new-found sympathy for someone who may have to face something like that. I guess he's the new taxfighter in Ontario.
They also used to support the school boards that used to increase taxes and they want them to have that ability again. We took that away and won't let them do that to people on fixed incomes.
Mr Gerretsen: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Maybe you could help me out. I believe that it's necessary to tell the truth in the House at all times.
Interjection: Absolutely.
Mr Gerretsen: It is necessary. Then I think -
The Speaker: No, member for Kingston and The Islands. We all tell the truth in this place as honourable members, and it's not for me to determine what is truth and what isn't. Therefore, you don't have a point of order.
Mr Gerretsen: I have another point of order then. I just want to set the record straight that the member for Niagara Falls was not at the House leaders' meetings, and the Liberal never, never indicated to the government that they wanted to block the red tape bill. As a matter of fact we encouraged the government to bring the bill forward, and the government House leader would not do so.
Mr Bert Johnson (Perth): It's garbage, that's what I call it. Get it right, garbage mouth. That's what I call it.
Mr Gerretsen: On a point of privilege, Mr Speaker, that has arisen out of the situation right here and now: Is it parliamentary for a member of this House to refer to another member as being a piece of garbage?
Interjections.
Mr Gerretsen: It is not?
Interjection.
The Speaker: Member for Perth.
Mr Bert Johnson: I want to apologize thoroughly. I withdraw the comments about calling the member for Kingston and The Islands a garbage mouth. I apologize and I withdraw it and I take it all back. I'm awfully sorry I even mentioned it. I want to get it straight that he's not garbage. I didn't say that.
The Speaker: I'll accept that. You've pretty much withdrawn. There can be no doubt about that.
Mr Gerretsen: Let me just say -
The Speaker: There's no more "Let me just say."
Mr Gerretsen: I accept the member's apology.
The Speaker: That's wonderful.
Response, member for Windsor-Riverside.
Mr Lessard: You can tell the hour is getting late when the quality of the debate deteriorates to the level it has.
I want to thank the member for Scarborough Centre for showing the interest he has with respect to the health care problems we're having in our community. I look forward to using that telephone number in his office to bring some of those problems to his attention so he can address those. We need all the help we can get in Windsor.
You talk a good line about the increased spending on health care in our community, but we're waiting for the minister to come down and make an announcement with respect to capital funding. The minister was supposed to be in Windsor this morning to make that announcement and didn't come. That has been postponed once again. We find that so often, that announcements are made but the money doesn't flow, or we're expecting announcements but they never get made, and the quality of our health care continues to deteriorate.
The member for Kingston and The Islands talked about how long it has taken for these bills finally to be introduced and to come back and to go through the process, and addressed this government's incompetence. If this government was so interested in reducing red tape and was really good business managers, these bills would have been taken care of a long time ago, but the fact is that they haven't.
The member for Sault Ste Marie talked about why we have those checks and balances, and we really do have to consider why we have regulations here. He also talked about the importance of having those balances and some of the other legislation that we should have in this province but don't. He mentioned one example. I'd like to bring up another, that is, the persons with disabilities act that we're still awaiting. We haven't seen that. Where's that? We should be bringing that forward.
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The Speaker: Further debate?
Mr R. Gary Stewart (Peterborough): It's my pleasure tonight to speak to Bill 25 in my capacity as a red tape commissioner. I believe that this act is long overdue, Bill 25 being An Act to reduce red tape by amending or repealing certain Acts and by enacting two new Acts. We must continue the ongoing effort to eliminate red tape, and this bill is part of the government's initiative. It is an initiative that was promised in the Common Sense Revolution, and it's one more indication that promises made are promises kept.
This bill, as mentioned, repeals a number of acts. If you look at some of the acts it is repealing, they represent six different ministries. They represent regulations and acts that should not any longer exist.
One of the things in that Common Sense Revolution is the commitment of this government to break down barriers to economic growth and jobs creation. Any of us who have been in business, who have employed anybody, know that red tape does not create jobs.
Because we're on television tonight, I'm going to let the people know a little bit about what the Red Tape Commission is, which many people may not know much about. The Red Tape Commission is made up of 11 government members from various sections of this province, representing the urban, semi-urban and rural members of this great province, and it is chaired by Frank Sheehan, the MPP for Lincoln. Frank has been a long-time resident of that area, has been in business many years, and knows what red tape is all about. He knows, and we all know, as I've mentioned before, that one of the biggest barriers to job creation and economic growth was indeed red tape.
As my colleague from Brampton North mentioned, by definition, any government measure that negatively - and I want to emphasize the word "negatively" - affects Ontario's economic competitiveness by adding requirements, costs or delays to the normal activities of business and institutions is unnecessary red tape.
The member for Windsor-Riverside asked a question a little while ago about what red tape is. In my mind, any individual who sits in this House who has to ask that question has not been very observant of what has gone on in this province for the last number of years. Let me tell him and tell you what red tape is all about.
In an area of this province in 1986, a gentleman tried to get through a development of 150 lots. On October 6, 1997, he finally got the approvals. That is red tape. In the area where I come from, there is a development they have worked some six years to get through. They finally got it through about a year ago. Now they have to put it up for sale because they spent their money trying to fight red tape before they got the development through. A development was shut down in this province for three days a few weeks ago because the building official and the fire chief could not agree on where the meter should be in that particular building.
Those are some of the things we're concerned about. As some of you know, there are a couple of us working on a one-window approach to try and make it easier for everybody in business, for the person on the street who is trying to get a licence through or whatever, to make it easier for them. We've heard tonight about customer service, something that has not been thought about very much in government over the last number of years. We have to make sure customer service is a priority if we're going to turn this province around. Business doing business and creating jobs in Ontario is a must.
On the other hand, any regulations that do not protect health, safety and the environment - and we've heard all this gobbledegook from the opposition suggesting that we are not cognizant of the environment. One of the things we have said in this bill is that we will not compromise health, safety and the environment in this province. The sheer volume of unnecessary rules, regulations and government intervention - let me emphasize government intervention - has been half the problem. If governments at all levels would stay a little bit out of people's faces and out of their pockets, maybe we could turn this around a little more easily and a little better.
When it comes to filling out the forms for business, you heard tonight that now you can do it in 20 minutes; before, it took four or five weeks. The length of time to get it through government offices - and here we've got an individual who was mayor of Kingston. If that man did not know about red tape when he was in that capacity, then I'm sorry, he wasn't a very good mayor, because there's not a municipal politician in this province who does not know about red tape. They have constantly said: "Will the province and the feds get out of this thing? We will do it." The municipalities wanted this authority and we gave it to them, because gentlemen like him and many more of us in this room who were municipal politicians said, "We can do it."
Now, all of a sudden, because we're at the provincial government level, we don't think they can do it. We don't think they have the ability. That is what this fellow is saying. I can't believe it: "All these user fees they're going to put in." I suggest to you that I have a lot of confidence in the municipal politicians in this province. I was one of them. I had confidence when I was a member of that level of government, and I know I still have in all those folks.
Mr Gerretsen: So do I.
Mr Stewart: Then I suggest that you possibly give consideration to thinking about what you say before you do.
One of the things we want to do, as I said, is to prevent more red tape being created. We can't have that. We did reduce the time to register a business. We've eliminated more than 1,000 unnecessary annual licences, permits and reports from the farm and food processing business. As my colleague mentioned, can you imagine 800 hours to learn to be a projectionist, but it only takes 400 to be a helicopter pilot? How ridiculous can you possibly be?
One of the things we've done in the Red Tape Commission is that we have listened to and we have learned from not only some of the bureaucrats who have been involved in making this regulation but, more important, from the stakeholders themselves. I want to give you a for instance. Recently, we had the people in to the Red Tape Commission who are involved in the you-brews and the you-wines. After two or three meetings, when we found out that they couldn't agree, we suggested to them: "You people have to live with regulation. Why in the name of goodness would you not go out of here, decide among yourselves what you can live with, what will help your businesses, and you do it? Be back to us in two weeks." Within a week and a half they were back with the regulations they want, the regulations they can live with, and none of it is red tape. That, I'm suggesting to you, is what this process we're doing is all about.
The stakeholders spent hours and hours. On the one-window approach, we had three days of 60 to 70 people there telling us the problems they have with red tape in their industries. They represented probably every business sector in the province. It's not always the "what" of the regulatory system that's the problem, but the "how": the paperwork, the enforcement, the overlap, the delay. That's what the problem is. We have to design a system and make sure it is well designed. That's what this bill is all about. We have to make sure it is customer-friendly, is acceptable and is indeed well designed.
On that note, Mr Speaker, I will let you take over till tomorrow.
The Speaker: Thank you, I appreciate that.
It's now 9:30 of the clock. This House stands adjourned until 1:30 of the clock tomorrow.
The House adjourned at 2130.